Sanae wasn't exactly surprised when the kitchen phone rang, but he still felt a jolt of nerves. Joshua was on the floor behind the kitchen, sound asleep, with makeshift pillow created out of a resealable bag and some plush stuffing he'd found buried in storage, leftover from an old project. Sanae stepped over him to answer the phone.

"Good afternoon," said the Author. Of course it was the Author. He couldn't detect any malice in her voice, but she had to have known. And if she didn't, it would just mean he had to be the one to tell her, which would be worse.

"Hey, Boss," he said steadily. "I was just gonna call you. I kinda… interfered with your game a bit."

A pause and a prolonged sigh before she responded. "Yes, Sanae. I am aware of that. Do you care to explain yourself?"

She didn't like excuses, but he didn't know what else to say. Sanae bit his lip, leaned across the counter, let out a brief sigh of his own. "Yeah. I'm sorry, Boss – dunno what came over me. He cried out my name and I just carried him back here without thinking about it." Sanae glanced back at Joshua. His injuries had been healed, but he was still a bit muddy and disheveled. The kid wouldn't be pleased about that, when he woke up.

"You do realize, Sanae, that I put in tests for a reason? That even the simplest missions are written for a purpose? My field is designed to be at an appropriate level of difficulty for the Players at their current average stage of development. A new Player intentionally shirking the mission, manipulating an innocent into going with him, to pursue his own agenda – in the process, causing his companion to be erased senselessly – is not generally the kind of Player I would take mercy on."

"I understand."

"It would be one thing if you had asked me first, but this degree of interference without prior approval could change the results of the Game entirely. I do appreciate that you at least didn't attempt to hide it."

"I understand. I'll accept any consequences you may deem appropriate." He was speaking a bit more formally than normal, but a wrongdoing of this nature probably warranted something like that.

"Would you erase the boy?"

Sanae looked back at Joshua, still sleeping straight on his back with his arms at his sides, unable to relax and let his vulnerabilities show even in sleep. It would be shame to lose him, but he couldn't claim it was an unfair punishment. Saving him was an act of disobedience. Erasing him would simply be recreating the results of what would have happened had he not broken the rules.

Joshua wouldn't hear him, couldn't hear him, but he still lowered his voice a bit before solemnly muttering "Yes, ma'am."

A pause. Sanae looked at the ground, rubbing his neck. At least Sanae would be able to do it painlessly. That was a happier ending than a lot of Players got.

"…You're forgiven, Sanae. No punishment. I just wanted to see where your loyalties lay."

The reminder of the bigger picture in her last sentence quelled any relief he might have felt. He'd bought Joshua a few more days of existence at most. Even if the kid managed to find a new partner to work with and win the Game, he was still planning on challenging the Author at the end of the week, and that would result in the loss of one of them – almost definitely the kid. Not that losing his boss would be much better. But none of that was the Author's fault, and it didn't change the fact that she was being incredibly merciful. "Thanks, Boss. I really appreciate that."

"You're welcome."

"I take it you've learned something about becoming too attached to mortals."

"…Yeah. I guess I have," said Sanae. But he still couldn't regret what he'd done. There was still a chance that all of this could work out for the better. Regrets could come after he'd done all he could and failed; no point in mourning prematurely.

As if reading his mind, the Author added, "You may wake him up, if you'd like. Talk to him. He may be plotting to assassinate me, but if he does the rest of the missions properly, I'll forgive it. He can be a Reaper, or perhaps return to life, if he learns his lesson and scores enough points."

"…Thanks, Boss. I appreciate the permission."

"You're quite welcome. Have the rest of the day off, now. Oh, and Sanae?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Do not do this again."

"…Understood." The phone clicked to signal the end of the call. Sanae put his own phone down before crouching down next to Joshua. Sanae placed a hand on his shoulder, letting his Imagination poke at the boy's Soul, counteracting the Imprint that had been placed over all the Players to get them to fall asleep. He didn't stir, even after the Imprint was all gone, so Sanae shook him gently by the shoulder. "Hey. Josh. Wake up."

It took a few more seconds of shaking before anything happened, but then he shot up all at once, panicked and confused. Upon seeing Sanae, he glanced around at his surroundings, glanced at his hand, looked at his watch, and finally slumped back down, looking more defeated than Sanae had ever seen.

"Funny. Looks like running away didn't manage to solve all your problems, did it, now?"

"I never said it would."

"You sure seemed to think so."

"Do you really have to give me one of your speeches now?" Joshua snapped. He broke eye contact, looking down at his knuckles pressed against the kitchen floor. "I've made my choice. I can't exactly go back now."

"Yeah. You're right. Sorry for the lecture." Sanae sighed and leaned back, shifting his legs to a more comfortable position. "…Joshua, you really should've talked to me."

"Why? So you could stop me?" He was still staring at the ground. "I can make my own decisions, Mr. H."

"Your decisions don't affect just you."

He clenched a fist against the tile floor.

"Josh – "

"People don't pay attention," said Joshua. "They're so focused on school or work and they don't even take the time to stop and look at what's in front of them. Even in the Game. They find themselves in a new world entirely and they can't even take the time to question their outlooks. All they care about are the precious trivialities they left behind."

"These things take time, J. You can't blame other Players for not thinking the way you do when they've only got a few days to process what you've known your whole life."

"They don't try to process anything. They're too busy trying to reaffirm what they know." He finally stood, swiftly, and paced around the kitchen for a few seconds before going to the other side of the counter and plopping down on his usual stool. "I think I'll wait here 'til the next mission comes in."

"That… might take a while," Sanae muttered, but he decided not to mention that a day hadn't even passed. He was sure Joshua would figure it out eventually, but he didn't see the point of bringing that up when there were things of much more importance to talk about. He got up and walked around to the other side of the bar to join J on the stools. "Why don't you tell me what happened?"

"I've decided to take over Shibuya," Joshua said. He stared Sanae down, as if looking for a reaction.

Sanae didn't give him one. "Why?"

"Because I can do better," Joshua said matter-of-factly.

"How so?"

His stare turned into a frown, as if offended by the challenge. "The Game is old. Too traditional. Doesn't give Players enough freedom to be who they are. Do what they want. And yet the person in charge of this stuffy old Game is the driving force behind all the creativity in Shibuya? I can only imagine how stifled our creativity is."

"So you don't think Shibuya is creative enough?" Sanae asked, an eyebrow raised. He'd spent very little time outside it, but as far as Sanae knew, Shibuya's creative scene was thriving enough to rival any city in the Plane of the Living. He also knew the Author had been around for a very long time and, pragmatic though she was, was no stranger to creativity in any medium.

"Think of how it could be with someone better in charge," Joshua said, and it hit Sanae how typically teenage his arrogance was. Joshua would deny that he was a typical teenager – and that just made him even more of one. Even though he was smart, even though he saw the Plane of the Dead, even though he felt he didn't belong in the mortal realm with everyone else, he still had so much to learn. "I'll give the Players more choices. Dress how they want. Do what they want – so long as they complete the missions, of course. When they have the chance to fully express their creativity, without constraints imposed on them from either the pressures of normal life or the Game itself – that's when they'll achieve their full potential."

It sounded rehearsed. Joshua must have been rationalizing his actions to himself for a long time – or planning ahead for the moment when he'd have to rationalize things to Sanae. He sighed, stretched, and plopped down on the stool beside Joshua before he said his next words: "Do you really want those things for Players? Or yourself?"

Joshua looked taken aback – he clearly hadn't appreciated being called out on his mental processes. Joshua didn't like people acknowledging his emotions; he never admitted that his opinions stemmed from his own dark feelings rather than some objective truth. Sanae usually accommodated this defense mechanism. Maybe he'd been accommodating it too much. Maybe if he'd pushed him a little more, let him catch on to the truth that his feelings weren't quite so secretive and his angst not so unique, he'd have realized it wasn't the end of the world when people saw through him. Maybe then he'd have opened up more. Maybe then none of this would have happened.

But he could spend millennia searching for the parallel universe where Hanekoma Sanae had never made any mistakes, and none of it would make a mite of difference to the Joshua in front of him right now. All he could do, was figure out the right things to say going forward – if there were any right things to say.

"I want it for Shibuya," Joshua finally answered, looking away. When Sanae didn't respond, he added bitterly, "You don't want me to succeed?"

"I want you to live, Joshua!"

The grief in Sanae's voice was just as surprising to Sanae as it surely was to Joshua, who looked startled.

Sanae supposed he didn't usually show strong emotions, either.

"It's not too late for you," Sanae said. "Get back out there and focus on the missions. They might bring you back."

"They won't," said Joshua. Before Sanae could think of a way to refute this without admitting to his insider knowledge, Joshua added, "There's nothing for me to go back to, anyway."

Sanae could think of a great many ways to refute that statement. He also knew that Joshua would ignore all of them. "…Do you want some coffee?" he said, instead of trying.

"…I don't have any money."

"You can pay the tab another time," said Sanae, starting up the machine. This conversation might go better if it wasn't so direct. Joshua resisted being told what to do. He resisted imprinting, or at least the direct kind that Players did with their pagers, the kind of imprinting he could recognize. The only kind of manipulation that seemed to affect Joshua – for all the good it had done – was the subtler kind, the kind of message spread through artwork.

Sanae had been taking advantage of their meetings to show Joshua his paintings, to which Joshua usually responded with indifference. Despite that, Sanae had thought he was getting through to him. He'd suspected that his imprints had seeped into Joshua's subconscious enough for the messages to pop up when they needed to – he couldn't verify by scanning him, as he would have for anyone else, but he hadn't been quite so gloomy the last time he'd visited the café. He'd mentioned having spoken about some of his problems with his parents, and that he was looking for a new piano teacher who he was excited about. Sanae had taken it as a sign that the imprint was affecting him.

It hadn't been enough. But it was all he could think of to keep trying.

"How did you know?" Joshua asked abruptly, though still looking ahead and not at Sanae. "About how I died?"

"…Well, you're kinda the talk of the town among the Reapers," Sanae said, thinking of an excuse on the fly. "They all know you as the living kid who spies on them. Since the beginning of this week's games, they've been gossiping about what you're trying to do here. …It wasn't too hard to put two and two together. I'd like to think I know you pretty well by now."

"Hmm," Joshua said. "I'd wondered if my mother had been by."

Sanae, again, was not sure what to say to that. "…If she does come, should I pass on a message?"

"No." Joshua crossed his arms and slouched in his seat.

While the coffee brewed, Sanae rummaged around in a drawer full of miscellaneous art-related items for which he hadn't found any other place. Among these miscellaneous items were several hand-painted collectible pins, each bearing a particular imprint – messages that would be good for most people in general to keep in mind, but while painting many of them, Sanae had been thinking of Joshua. Joshua did like to collect the things. He took out the newest one, the one he'd started painting once he found out Joshua was dead, though he hadn't thought he'd have the chance to see him. Sending that message out into the atmosphere of Shibuya had been all Sanae could do.

He placed it on the counter next to Joshua, who barely spared it a glance. "What's that?"

"A gift," said Sanae. "I painted it for you. Think of it as a good luck charm."

"Hmm. Thanks." Joshua picked it up and examined it. The pin depicted the earth being split in two, releasing a beam of divine light from the opening. The text on top bore the message Sanae had imprinted into the drawing: "Open up your world!"

When the coffee was done, Joshua elected to take it to-go. He'd noticed the haiku of that day's mission was still burned into his hand, and had decided to see if he'd be of any use in helping the others complete it. The day was nearing its end, and if they couldn't complete the mission, anything he did would be in vein.

Sanae's instinct had been to try to keep him there, where he was safe, where Sanae could influence him. But he realized it was a good sign that Joshua was getting back on the horse that threw him, and thinking about how he could help others, for a change.

He'd sat on his front porch and watched him go, petting his stray cats, wondering if he'd ever see him again.

That's where he was when he saw another figure on the horizon. He didn't think much of her at first, just another passer-by, but when she got closer, he noticed she had her eyes fixed on his store, near the ceiling where the name of his business was, but there was something about her body-language that didn't jive with her being a normal customer. She was walking with a fixed determination, and with her arms crossed across her chest defensively.

By the time she was close enough to greet, her features gave her away. Pale skin, curly blond hair, sharp violet eyes. He'd know that face anywhere. He stood as he approached, causing the cats on his lap to scamper into the bushes next to the porch.

"Hello," Sanae said, greeting the woman with a bow. "You must be Mrs. Kiryu."