So I found out that Aya can go on for days eating nothing but rice and perhaps a few steamed greens or pickles. Rarely both: he tries to stretch his resources that far. He will have miso with every meal, diluting the broth so much that it is barely flavoured hot water, and he will eat his rice vinegared or not at all, no matter whether he is starving hard enough for his stomach to rumble.
He has his tea weak and without sugar. It has to be a particular brand, or he won't touch it. Once we returned from a mission, went through our routines, and were about to turn in for the rest of the night, until he found he'd run out of his tea. Dismissing Omi's offer to share, he went out to a twenty-four-hour supermarket to buy some, thinking nothing of driving across half the city to that particular place that would sell this specific type of tea at that time of the night. All that after having murdered half a dozen goons and barely showered off the stench, with police and other folk newly reeling at our latest scene of action.
He hardly ever eats meat, or eggs, or anything with milk in it. He prefers fish, in any form or shape, and some of the seafoody things he puts on his plate on special days I would not touch with a barge pole. I like fast food, and he finds that gross. Soon enough he made it plain that he'd shun our grocery shopping round in favour of buying his own stuff. He is extremely picky. I tried to surprise him one day – only to test his reaction – with some sashimi tuna, bought with the help of Omi's advice from a specialist fishmonger. Cost us a fortune, too, and we were curious. Ken called us stupid, describing small circles with his index finger near his temple.
Aya set the package onto the kitchen counter – on a plate, of course, because he is paranoid about catching any of our germs – peeled back the clingfilm and inspected the piece of loin. "It's ok," he pronounced, with a small twitching of his mouth that I recognised for a conscious effort to smile. He insisted on paying me for the fish. This annoyed me big time, and we had an argument which ended with Omi snatching the money from him and stuffing it into my fist. The chibi was slamming doors after that, and Ken was laughing as they went to open the shop for the afternoon shift.
Aya can be such an ass.
He prefers to eat in his room, but when he deigns to sit down at the table with us on one of those rare evenings when everyone is in, the shop closed and no mission waiting, and we will chat and laugh and make plans for going out later, he will eat in silence, mannerly with his chopsticks and The Bowl. He picked that bowl when he had recovered enough to creep around the house, and claimed the thing as his own ever since. Not that anyone would dispute it – there are a few chipped doorjambs in our house, and we have learned to be wary of Aya's steel-enforced wrath...
He fusses if we leave more than a couple of mugs in the kitchen sink. He will even do the washing up, neatly by hand, instead of using the dishwasher, leaving us cross and embarrassed because he does it purposefully, so we see what he is on about without him having to say a word. He seems to take a peculiar kind of pleasure in making us look like a bunch of foulmouthed, loutish loons. Ken has taken rather ill to the silent disdain Aya radiates, consciously or not. Omi is watching along with me, but at a careful distance and with a coolness I had not known in him before.
Before Aya got caught in my wire, when we fought Crashers down and he stormed at us, ran into our line of fire and came down with my harigane slung around his thin white neck, his gloved fingers tugging frantically to loosen the loop. When he passed out with my fingertips drilling into the soft hollow beneath his adam's apple, we hauled him along on Omi's orders.
Omi has his ways. I suspected something was planned when he asked us to keep Aya at the Koneko until he had recovered. A file with Aya's name appeared the very next day from a folder Omi kept in his room, in a locked filing box. But Omi knows what he is doing, and we – Ken and I – trust him with our lives, mission after mission, day and night because the kid is a genius. I had my own thoughts when, not long after that, he contacted Kritiker to demand they 'take Aya back' – those were his words. Not 'away', not 'rid of'. "I want you to take him back," he fairly yelled through the phone at Manx, "he's fucking up the team, I bloody told you it wouldn't work..." Omi can swear when he's really riled up, and from his pretty mouth it doesn't sound right...
Well, they refused. Aya stayed. Whether we, or he, liked it or not: Ken didn't, neither did Omi, but I was not so sure. I've always been a sucker for a challenge, and this time it happened to have hair dyed a garish crimson and a fighting outfit that send my head spinning. I admit I like good visuals, too, and he is one hell of a picture.
Next chapter: Clothes