Matsuo didn't get to Tokyo that often.

No he'd pretty much spent his entire 'career' at the Seventh Division in Seasoning City. After having been discovered, and given an offer that he couldn't refuse, he had been trained and immediately moved to the Seventh Division. He hadn't minded, much, everyone had been at least decent. Well Ishiguro was…herself…but everyone else had been alright. Good pay, plenty of spirits to catch, and a nice spacious apartment. Better than the hole he'd been living in before.

But he didn't like to think about before.

Back when he'd been someone else. Back in another life. Back in another world. Back in a time that he didn't want to think about…so he wouldn't. He would think about now, this year, this moment in time. This moment in Tokyo, specifically the lobby of Tokyo HQ. The whole place screamed 'this is a legitimate business', something that the Seventh Division had never even whispered. Well that made sense. This was a high rise building in the middle of the city, not an evil villain's base in the middle of the woods. This had to look like a normal place where normal people did normal work in the most normal way possible.

While also chair jousting.

"Hey! Get in line! No cutting!" shouted an Awakened. Level three, by the looks of his jumpsuit. A member of the cult of Vice President Suzuki, too, if he blue ribbon around his neck was anything to go off of. Possibly a champion of, or at least veteran of, the official Claw chair jousting league.

"I'm not here to play. I'm looking for Minegishi Toshiki." Said Matsuo slowly. He figured that this Awakened, and most of the ones involved in this craziness, were from THAT batch. The one, well one of the ones, that they had kind of…really fucked up. Well that Ishiguro had really fucked up. Amazingly enough it turned out that turning the machines up to eleven didn't awaken anyone any faster…it just messed them up even worse.

So, yeah, no more of that.

Matsuo was grateful, extremely grateful, that he had been born a natural esper. He was never going to have to go through the hell that was the awakening process. The way you got drowned and shocked and starved and burnt…and everything else that happened…yeah. There was a reason that he had been assigned to a division with an awakening lab. There were always plenty of spirits that needed cleaning up.

Life sucked sometimes.

"Who?" asked the Awakened

"Minegishi Toshiki. About this tall, lavender hair, probably wearing one of more floral prints." Said Matsuo

"Oh! You mean Vice President Suzuki's very best friend!" said the Awakened. At the mention of Vice President Suzuki the Awakened around him perked up like they were dogs in a kennel and someone had just shaken a box of treats. Their heads all perked up and then they went from dressing their wounds to addressing him.

All at once.

"She's coming?!" asked an Awakened with no sense of personal boundaries.

"I knew she was coming!" said another, this one who had a strange fixation with making way too much eye contact.

"Where is she!?" shouted another. This one had mastered the art of using his elbows as battering rams. Matsuo took a step back and reached down to his belt. Sparkles and Butterscotch were done. Coffee Cream and Saltwater Toffee weren't quite under his control yet. Jelly Baby was currently eating French Fry so it would be of no use to him. He didn't want to hurt any of them, just get them away from him.

Sparkles it was then.

He popped opened the cap of the pill bottle on his belt and before he knew it he had space around him. Sparkles was, as the name said, sparkly. It hadn't really formed yet. It was mostly just a cloud of sparkles with claws, teeth, and a tail. He wondered what it would look like when it formed…though there was no way for him to rush this process. Not unless he fed it some more spirits….or made more for it to eat.

He wasn't going to be doing that today.

Vice President Suzuki wouldn't have liked that. She was…a nice kid…it seemed like…but also she was very protective of her friends and cultists. He did NOT want to be on her bad side. He had no idea what happened to people she didn't like but he had been one of the people pulled out of the rubble of the Seventh Division…him and about a million of her cultists.

Yeah. Nobody needed repeat of the Seventh Division.

"Run! We're all going to die!" shouted an Awakened. Matsu couldn't see through the sparkle cloud, but he didn't have to. He could just follow the sound of the rapidly retreating footsteps. He waited until the footsteps were mostly gone before he called Sparkles back. It didn't want to go back…he didn't have it completely under his thrall…but that would happen in time. They always ended up being his at the end.

Or they ended up as food.

Food for other spirits, of course, not food for him. He was a medium, he could consume spirits if he could, but he was never going to do that. He had read about it and reading had been enough. When you absorbed a spirit then it became a part of you, a part of your soul, and he was not going to fuck with his soul. Hell, if he was too afraid to go under the knife then of course any soul fuckery was out of the question. No, he liked his soul for what it was.

For once in his life he was happy with himself…with the person he was.

"Come on, Sparkles, get in there and there's going to be a snack for you…later." Said Matsuo as he capped the pill bottle on his belt. He felt a sticker beginning to peel…he'd have to re-glue that. Replace it too, maybe, if he could find a similar one. He didn't have a specific system, the spirits picked the stickers, but he did feel weird putting a sticker on a bottle when it didn't…fit

The outside had to reflect the inside.

Hence the glittery, reflected, stickers that covered this bottle. Those would be easy to find, in Tokyo at least. You could find everything here. Stickers, tchotchkes, posters, wayward partners…if that was what he and Toshiki even were. He had no idea, really, but he was going to find out. They had been MIA for weeks now. Complete radio silence on all fronts. Not like them at all. He knew that they were fine, there were always concerns with what their line of work was, but he was fine.

Thank God for Vice President Suzuki's Instagram.

Toshiki was fine. They had been travelling with the Vice President. Apparently she was on vacation or something…or she just needed to get away after her meltdown. Toshiki said that she had no idea what she had done, no memory of it, and it hadn't been in any way on purpose…so it was…not ok but…at least she hadn't thrown a Suzuki level tantrum. That man…according to Toshiki he was a dork…but Matsuo had never seen that. No, he'd seen him pissed…violent…and dangerous….but never dorky.

Thank God he wasn't here.

No, there was no President or Vice President in the president's office. There was some teenager or something at the helm of this ship called Claw. Hatori…whatever his given name was….was currently the man making the rules, giving out the jobs, and dishing out the punishments…really weird ones that he hoped didn't wind up being official. President Suzuki was, apparently, doing some very important work that he could not be disturbed from. Well that was good for everyone, particularly Matsuo. When the cat was away the mice would play.

Or, rather, take a slight detour to iron out some things with their possible partner.

"Toshiki…Toshiki…where are you, Toshiki?" muttered Matsuo as he closed his eyes and felt the space out with his aura. He didn't want to send out a spirit, no, that would have just freaked them out. Hell, this visit would have just freaked them out…so there was no reason to freak them out even further. No, they were actually kind of skittish.

Who would have thought?

He had never imagined that Minegishi Toshiki, the person who regularly made traitors disappear, was as skittish as they were. Not about the usual things, of course, maybe more about the intangible things. Love, commitment, all of that shit….not things that he was going to push them for. No, he knew their story, well what they had been willing to share, and he knew that if he sat them down and asked them what they were doing. Were they together? Was he in the relationship with them and Shimazaki…a chilling thought…or were they just hooking up? And what was all this silence about? Were they trying to ghost him?

Well that would have been ironic as hell.

He laughed to himself as he walked in the direction of Toshiki's aura. They were up…very up…and to the left. He went to the elevator. If he was being ghosted then he wanted them to say it to his face…well that was not how ghosting worked….but he would not be ghosted and he never figured Toshiki to be the ghosting type. They were afraid of commitment, not confrontation, but…well he would have believed anything about them at this point.

Especially since they had taken up residence in the President's office of all places.

"Read the sign." Said Minegishi. Their voice carried clearly through the door. There, on the door, was a piece of printer paper with 'go away' scrawled across it in seven different languages. Toshiki was here, the Awakened were big fans of keeping tabs on the Vice President and her very best friends, but he had figured that they were staying in the Awakened barracks or something. Not that they had posted up in the President's office of all places.

Why would they have wanted to be here?

This was where the President 'tested' the scars…which Toshiki was not. He had no idea how they had gotten their job without fighting the President. Sure they had scars but they had been clear that most of those had either been gotten on the job or during childhood. They hadn't ever had to fight the President…which was like trying to fight…nature? Like a force of nature or…or God…or something. Or like trying to fight that spirit that he'd been chasing across Japan for the past three months. Something big and just…impossible….

He felt around for President Suzuki and felt nothing. Good.

"Toshiki? It's me." Said Matsuo as he knocked again. He heard what sounded like an entire recycling center's worth of cans tipping over. That was…not a good sign. They had substance abuse issues, they had been very upfront about that, but he had never imagined that it would have been that bad….not that he knew if it was bad or not.

He could do a lot of things but seeing through doors was not one of them.

"I know it's you…just…go away." said Toshiki

"Can we talk, please? I promise that we'll just talk and then I'll leave you alone…if you want me to." Said Matsuo. He didn't want to go. He wanted to get them through whatever this was. He had no idea what he had done or what they had done or what…they had no idea what any of this had been about. One day they had just stopped texting him back…and also they had stopped taking his calls and responding to his emails. Ghosting was the word for what they were doing…

But he was not going to be ghosted. Not him.

"I...I don't know what I want." Said Toshiki. Their voice was gravelly, sort of, more so than normal. There had always been a roughness to their voice…but now it sounded like they had been gargling glass…and that was just through the door.

"Do you want me to go?" asked Matsuo. Toshiki did not like pushy people. That had been their main complaint about their boyfriend. He was pushy and clingy. He had pushed them into their relationship and he had pushed them away and pulled them close…they liked doing what they wanted when they wanted to do it…and what other people wanted didn't seem to factor into anything with them.

No, he was not going to be an asshole here…even if they were the one who was being an asshole.

"Come in." said Minegishi as the door opened. Matsuo stepped through, careful of the vines that were making their way back up to the ceiling…and the walls…and the floor…and possibly the air ducts too. Apparently the president had decided to do some redecorating…and he was going to for…a recycling center in the jungle sort of vibe.

That was a lot of cans.

Matsuo kicked one of the way as he entered the office, thankfully it was just coffee, but less thankfully it had still been a little full. At least his shoes were black so the stain wouldn't show…but he was going to have to wash these later…and maybe the pile of clothes that Toshiki seemed to have been collecting over in the corner.

And he thought that he lived….less than well.

"Well?" asked Toshiki. They were sitting behind the President's desk…and they looked like shit. Their hair looked like they had chopped it off with those blunt scissors they made you use in school when you were a kid, they had worse ark circles under their eyes than he had ever seen before, and their shirt either had a speckled pattern or it was stained…one of the two. They…were not ok. He swallowed back any anger that he had felt towards them.

"Hey." Said Matsuo as he crossed the room and sat down on the other side of the desk. They closed their laptop and sat back…in the President's chair. If he had been there then he would have put Toshiki through a wall…or maybe not since he had some kind of a crush on them or something. He didn't know. He wasn't in the mood to find out.

"That's all you have to say?" asked Toshiki

"Well it's a start." Said Matsuo

"Well get to the point, then. What are you doing here? How did you even find me?" asked Toshiki

"The Awakened, well the Vice President's cultists, keep tabs on all the-" said Matsuo

"Very best friends." Said Toshiki with a snort…a mean one. He knew what their actual laugh sounded like…and that was not it. They looked like they hadn't laughed in a while…and neither had he…but he wasn't going to start with them. There were…a lot of non-coffee cans on the floor…and a couple of empty pill bottles to. This was not the time to start with Toshiki…they were surprisingly skittish…and delicate.

"Yeah, that's what they called you guys…anyway I was just…in the city…" said Matsuo

"Chasing that evil spirit?" asked Toshiki

"Yeah. How'd you know?" asked Matsuo

"You told me about it." Said Toshiki

"Yeah…and you never responded. Not once." Said Matsuo. If they wanted him to get to the point then he was getting to the point. They didn't even sit up. They nodded.

"I haven't been good about that lately." Said Toshiki. They said it in that same gravelly, bored, voice they said everything in. They sounded as bored as their shirt said that they were…and they had no reason to be bored. They could have at least been a little happy to see him…and happy that he hadn't died or been maimed or seriously injured in the Seventh Division explosion.

"That's true…can I ask why? I just want to talk. If something happened, if I did something, then…tell me, alright? Don't ghost me." Said Matsuo

"….I wasn't ghosting you." Said Minegishi

"Then what do you call it when you stop returning a guy's texts or answering his calls?" asked Matsuo

"….I don't know…" muttered Toshiki. They weren't looking at him. They were looking down at their closed laptop lid. Maybe they were looking at all the stickers on it…some of which he had given them…like the scientifically accurate flowers or the fuzzy Totoro ones…or maybe they just didn't feel like looking at him.

"Can you please just…look at me and tell me what I did? I just want to know…and I want to know how we can move past it…if we even can. I like you a lot, alright? And I know that you don't like pushy guys and I'm trying not to be pushy but…just tell me what I did. Tell me what's going on." Said Matsuo

"…there's nothing going on…" said Toshiki

"Then why have you been ignoring me? And what happened to you hair? And why are you here on your own? And why-" said Matsuo. He could have gone on and on…he had been losing control. His voice had been getting high, grating even, and he had been shaking in place. Even the spirits clipped to his belt had been getting restless…

And so had Toshiki.

"I'm hungry. I'm getting lunch now." Said Toshiki as they got up…and left. They just got up and left. They didn't even bother to put on shoes…or socks…or real pants…or a clean shirt. They just got up and left…and…and he had no idea what he was supposed to do? Wait for them? Follow them? Cut his losses and move on? Fight for them?

He decided to wait for them.

They were…complicated. Well this was Claw, everyone was complicated, they were just…especially complicated. They weren't anything that he wasn't prepared to fight for…but he didn't want to fight…and it shouldn't have been a fight….God. He sounded like Tsuchiya…well maybe she had a point. Maybe he was just being an idiot chasing after someone who obviously didn't want to be with him…someone who obviously didn't want him waiting for them….but he was still going to wait for them.

It wasn't like he had any other business in Tokyo.