.

Part 2

(In which Yato awakens, but nothing is the same.)

Yato blinked himself awake, or that was what it felt like. He opened his eyes and found himself standing next to his shrine in the room he shared with Yukine in Kofuku's attic. He hadn't the faintest idea how he had gotten there. Waking up in strange places wasn't new, exactly—he'd spent plenty of time finding safe places to spend the night over the centuries when he'd had nowhere to call home—but he didn't usually sleep standing up. He imagined that if he managed it, he'd immediately fall over and wake himself up.

He looked around, feeling lost and unmoored. Something was off, but he couldn't put his finger on what it was. It wasn't so much something he was feeling as something he wasn't. Aside from his confusion, everything else felt distant and far away. Insubstantial, almost.

He shook away the nagging feeling impatiently as he spotted Yukine sitting on his futon across the room, head in his hands. Time enough to sort himself out later.

"Whatcha doing?" he asked, stepping across the floor towards Yukine. "Man, I must've been really tired or something! Or super zoned out."

Yukine said nothing, and Yato wondered if he hadn't been asleep at all, but had lost focus during one of his kid's rants.

"Don't be mad," he said. "I'm listening now. Anyway, have you given any more thought to the keychains?"

Something tugged at his memory—had something happened during their last conversation about the keychains?—but he didn't have time to think it through. Yukine still didn't look up or acknowledge his presence. When Yato crouched down beside him, he saw tears leaking from between his kid's fingers.

"Yukine?" he asked in alarm. "What's wrong? You aren't still fretting about Father, are you? I already said it wasn't your fault. We're good, right? Talk to me."

He reached out, but his hand went right through Yukine's shoulder. Yato froze and stared. He blinked a few times as if clearing spots from his vision, but when he looked again, his hand was still buried wrist-deep in Yukine's shoulder.

He opened his mouth, but left it hanging. No words came to mind.

It finally occurred to him what felt so off, what was missing. He didn't feel tired or hungry or cold or hot. He didn't feel the floorboards beneath his feet or the touch of fabric against his skin. And, most of all, he didn't feel any pain in his chest or ache behind his eyes or fatigue dragging at his limbs. He didn't feel Yukine at all. Yukine was crying right there, and Yato felt nothing.

"Great," he said. "I'm a ghost."

But inside, he could feel himself cracking, shaking himself to pieces. It was an odd feeling, because physically he felt nothing at all. His heart didn't race, his breaths didn't come fast and ragged, no nausea uncoiled in his stomach. He was all serenity, calm and unfeeling as air. A mirage. Ghost, even, if he had been properly dead. Panic felt different when your body didn't understand it anymore, when you no longer had a body to feel it. So did shock and confusion. So did grief.

"Yukine?" Yato asked in a small voice.

Yukine didn't look up, and Yato wondered if it was just impossible for anyone to hear him or if he wasn't making any sound at all when he had no vocal cords. Maybe his voice was just in his head after all. That thought stoked his panic again. If Yukine just couldn't hear him, then maybe Yato could find a way to be heard. But if Yato's voice was only an imaginary echo, what chance was there that it would ever be heard by anyone again?

"Yukine," he said more urgently. "Yukine, look at me. Come on, kid. I'm right here, I'm…"

He grasped at his hafuri—was he, anymore, when Yato barely existed at all?—but his hands met only air and passed right through. No matter how hard Yato tried to focus or touch or will himself into being, no matter how loudly or urgently he called out, Yukine remained huddled in a quivering ball on his futon, hands pressed to his eyes.

"Yukine, Yukine, please. I'm right here. If you'd just look up–"

And, amazingly, Yukine did. He dropped his hands away from his face and looked directly at Yato, amber eyes glassy with tears. In another world, Yato would have caught his breath or his heart would have thumped wildly in anticipation. In this one, his surprise and hope and trepidation were still sharp and bittersweet but quieter.

He opened his mouth and–

"Yukki?"

He spun around. Kofuku hovered in the doorway, manicured fingers gripping the frame tight and teeth gathering in her lower lip. The laughter was gone from her eyes, which were tinged red and smudged with shadow.

"Yukine," she said again, "please come eat something."

Yukine's gaze dropped away, moving across Yato without a flicker of recognition. "I'm not hungry."

"But–"

"What does it matter? I'm already dead, aren't I?"

There was an emphasis on 'dead', a flat note with a sharp edge, that itched at Yato. If this were a normal day, he would have pressed Yukine on the point, dug down to the root of what had him on edge. If he had to take a guess, his first thought would be that Yukine was not coping well with his disappearance.

Even Kofuku winced, picking up on the dark note. Daikoku appeared behind her in the doorway, peering at Yukine overtop her head.

"Come on, kid," he said gruffly. "Yato wouldn't want you to starve yourself and hide in bed all day."

Yato started in surprise at the sound of his name. "I'm right here, you know," he said, but of course no one heard.

"Well, Yato's not here, is he?" Yukine snarled in a voice like acid. "At least I haven't forgotten."

"We haven't forgotten, Yukki," Kofuku said quietly. "We miss Yato-chan too. But you still have to keep living. And there's no point being angry with Hiyorin."

Hiyori. She must have forgotten, and Yato had…disappeared? Somehow, he had always imagined disappearance as something…different. Something more final. There one second, gone the next. Nothing.

So then, if no one remembered him, why was he still here? Was this just the way disappearing worked, or was there still hope that it was reversible? If he had blinked out like a light, he'd be gone for good. But he still lingered, so…

Yukine pressed his lips into a tight line and looked down at his hands.

"Kofuku's right," Yato said. "Go eat something, kid."

He slipped out the door past Kofuku and Daikoku. His elbow passed through Kofuku on the way, but he felt nothing at all. Downstairs, he paused in front of the door. He reached out a hand to hover around the doorknob and concentrated on the feel of smooth brass beneath his fingertips, the soft snick of the latch and creaking of the door swinging open. No matter how hard he willed it, his hand didn't make contact.

The stairs creaked behind him, hushed voices floating downward, and he gave up and stepped straight through the door. He found himself outside in the street and grimaced. While there was no tingling or pressure or any other sensation when passing through a solid object, it left his mind reeling. It wasn't right.

The sun shone cheerily overhead, but he felt neither its warmth nor the touch of the breeze that tugged playfully at the hair of the humans ambling up and down the street. He waved his hands in front of humans' faces and shouted in their ears as he hurried along, but no one so much as twitched.

Hopelessness welled up inside him, black and acid, but he shoved it down. He had survived for centuries on boundless optimism. Without optimism or hope or determination to chase away the shadows, it was all too easy to lose yourself. Yato would certainly not give up. Not now, not like this.

Not yet.

He practically flew through the streets, but when he reached Hiyori's house, she wasn't there. He phased through her window and looked around wildly, the panic he'd just barely kept at bay flaring back to life. Hiyori's things were exactly as he remembered, but there was no sign of her in her room or anywhere through the rest of the house. Yato raced room to room calling her name, but was met with only silence.

What if something had happened to her? Forgetting wasn't the only way a human could stop believing in a god. But Kofuku had told Yukine not to be mad at Hiyori, hadn't she? He wouldn't be angry with her if she was dead. She must have forgotten, which meant she was still alive. She must be okay, even if she was okay without them.

But then where…?

His eye caught on a digital clock blinking the time across the room, and he let out a sharp, high-pitched bark of laughter. School.

"Bakagami," he muttered aloud. His relief didn't quite wash away his fear, but it was a lifeline to grasp onto.

Whirling about, he threw himself back out the window. Although his body moved as expected, dropping to the ground as if gravity still had a hold on him, there was no weight to his movements. If he put his mind to it, forgot how corporeal bodies were supposed to work, he wondered if he could unchain himself from the ground and fly. He hoped to never find out. Dreaming of being so far removed from himself seemed tantamount to giving up.

At the school, Yato found Hiyori right away. He'd had plenty of time to memorize her schedule and had used it on more than one occasion to interrupt her school day, although not as frequently as he would have liked. She always hated when he interrupted her classes, and he was liable to take a beating afterwards.

Today he found her sitting in the back of her mathematics class, doodling idly in the margins of her notes while the teacher droned on.

"Hey," Yato said. "Hey, Hiyori."

She continued doodling. Her head nodded a little, eyes fluttering closed, but then she pulled herself together and propped her head up on her arm. Pressing her lips together in determination, she fought to keep her eyes open and focus back on her teacher.

"Wake up," Yato said, before it occurred to him that maybe it was a good thing. When Hiyori fell asleep in class, that was when she slipped her body. If she couldn't see or remember him now, maybe she would be more likely to if her soul slipped out. Perhaps spirit was more likely to sense spirit.

He waited impatiently as she alternately nodded off and shook herself awake. He didn't realize he was tapping his foot at first since there was no sound or feel of floorboards beneath his boots, but stopped quickly when he noticed his foot was actually tapping halfway through the floor. Half expecting to fall straight through the center of the floor, he eyed it like it might be quicksand. When he focused on standing still and staying on top of the floor where he belonged, his feet seemed to rest just atop the floorboards like they should. Except that sometimes the edges seemed to blur, like his feet and the floor didn't quite match up.

He looked away. It took too much concentration to force his spectral body to fit just right against the physical world, and watching his feet waver beneath and above and halfway through the floorboards would have made him queasy under the best of circumstances.

Finally, Hiyori lost her battle, head drooping and pencil slipping from between her fingers. Yato drifted forward, leaning against her desk and hurriedly drawing back again as his elbows went through the tabletop.

"Come on, Hiyori," he murmured. He kept a sharp eye out for her spirit escaping her body, but nothing happened and his heart—such that it was—sank.

One of Hiyori's friends—Yama, was it? Yato had never paid enough attention to her human friends—tossed a paper ball at her head and she woke with a start, face going pink as she straightened back up.

"You really did forget, didn't you?" Yato asked, his voice little more than a whisper.

Now when Hiyori fell asleep in class, she only dreamed. Her soul stayed snuggled tight in her chest where it belonged, and anything it might have seen or felt or touched stayed locked away somewhere beyond memory.

But Yato was not one to give up. Hiyori had been an unusually perceptive girl from the start, which was what had gotten her mixed up with him in the first place. If anyone could sense him now, surely it was her.

He tried everything, making a fool of himself in the middle of the classroom to catch her attention, willing her pencil to fall off her desk or scratch his name on her paper, shouting at the top of his lungs. What good was being a ghost if he couldn't do a proper haunting and move objects or whisper in ears? But then, he wasn't really a ghost, was he? He wasn't dead. He didn't exist at all.

No, he wasn't ready to accept that just yet. He was still here, somehow, in some form, and that had to count for something.

He followed Hiyori all day until she was released from school, and then followed her home. No matter what he tried, he couldn't catch her attention. Nor her mother's, when she arrived home later in the evening, which was a pity since she had seemed awfully perceptive for a human too.

He attempted summoning up all his strength to move Hiyori's pencil and draw a capyper on her homework one last time before giving up. Hiyori only continued to scribble away at her homework like a dutiful student. Just a normal human girl once more, no gods or shinki or ayakashi intruding on her life.

That was the way it was supposed to be, really. That was why Tenjin had urged Yato to cut her ties. This Hiyori here was the Hiyori that should have been.

Yato couldn't fault her for that. He couldn't be angry that she had forgotten. He wasn't about to give up trying to make her remember, but he wouldn't hold her forgetting against her.

"I'll be back," he promised, casting one last look at her before hopping out the window.

He had always expected this to happen, he reasoned with himself as he shuffled down the street, trying to keep his panic squashed down. He had always expected Hiyori would forget one day, that his father was his lifeline, that he would eventually disappear. Why kick up a fuss now? But that was cold comfort, and this right here, whatever phantom-like existence this was, was not at all what he had expected. He had to believe that it was a chance. As long as he was still here, in whatever form, he had a chance to find his way back.

Hiyori would be his ticket, he decided. Who else could? If he could enlist Yukine's help, they would have a better chance of success. Yukine was literally bound to Yato's life—such that it was, anymore—and still remembered him. If anyone was going to realize Yato was still here, it had to be Yukine.

How he would make Yukine see him, Yato wasn't sure yet. But there had to be a way, and he would find it.

He was waist-deep in plans when he turned the corner and nearly walked straight into a birdlike ayakashi the size of a small horse. He wrenched himself out of his thoughts and scrambled backwards, Sekki automatically forming on his lips but dying just as fast. Yukine couldn't help him now. He couldn't call his shinki, nor could he hope to name another in this state, even if he fortuitously stumbled across a soul in need of a name.

He had no way to defend himself at all, so he did the only thing he could think of: he turned and ran.

Running didn't feel the same without the slapping of boots against pavement or pounding heart or gasping breaths. He might as well be a gust of wind blowing down the street, except that he couldn't feel so much as a breeze whistling past.

He risked a glance over his shoulder, but he didn't glimpse the ayakashi on his heels. When he turned back, he screeched to a stop. Half a dozen ayakashi prowled in the gloom between buildings, drifting along in search of prey. He hadn't paid attention, hadn't noticed the traces of gloom lingering in the air from the aftermath of some storm, and he would pay the price.

He backed away slowly, inching back into the shadows in the hopes they hadn't noticed him yet despite his headlong rush. He might be invisible, but he wouldn't put it past an ayakashi to notice him even if no one else did. Ayakashi sensed gods on a primal level and were attracted to them in any form. They hunted gods, and Yato was easy prey.

He made it only a few steps before the sound of ayakashi chittering filled his ears. He whipped around just in time for the ayakashi behind him to step straight through him and make a beeline for something farther down the street. He pressed his hand to his chest, where it met no resistance and dipped through his skin without even the smallest of ripples to distort the image.

He pulled his hand away hurriedly, sickened at the sight even though his stomach didn't heave and nausea seemed like a thing of the past. Nothing burned against his skin or ate away at him like acid. No blight.

He looked back at the ayakashi, who ignored him and continued prowling about the shadows and pouncing gleefully on any unsuspecting human who dared venture outside at this late hour. He approached cautiously and reached out to tap one. His hand sank through its glowing side, and no blight spread from the touch.

"Finally," he said. "A perk."

Somehow, this did not make him feel any better. He was safe, it seemed, but he had lost far more than he'd gained. At least nothing would kill him until he got himself sorted out. It seemed he was worse than dead now.

None of the ayakashi looked his way as he turned and drifted back down the street. When he reached the shrine, everything was quiet. The soft murmur of voices floated from the kitchen, but when he popped his head inside, only Kofuku and Daikoku were there.

"But what will happen to him now?" Kofuku was asking.

"We'll take care of him, of course," Daikoku said gruffly, swirling his tea around in its mug.

"Yes, of course. But he was very attached to Yato-chan and Hiyorin. Without them…"

"We'll watch out for him."

Kofuku puffed out her cheeks and ran her fingernail back and forth along a groove in the tabletop. "I'm worried too," she said. "I miss Yato-chan too. He's only been gone a few days and I still feel him around every corner."

Yato perked up. Days? How long had passed between his disappearance and reawakening in the attic today? What did it mean?

"I am around the corner," he said, drifting across the floor to wave his hand in front of Kofuku's face. "Helloooo."

Kofuku didn't blink, of course. "I know it's still too soon, but things can't continue like this forever. He needs some time to grieve, but then we'll need to decide where to go from here. He'll always be welcome here, of course, but he needs a new master. It's dangerous for a shinki to wander around without one. I mean… I could name him, but the heavens would throw a fit once they found out. They were furious when I named you. And I'd never be able to use him, because my bad luck would bleed through. In that case…he'll need to find someone else to name him."

"He still bears Yato's name," Daikoku warned. "Even if Yato is… Even if the name is no longer in use, he'll technically become a nora if another god names him. Most of them wouldn't sully themselves like that. Ebisu, maybe. He was the only one known for taking in strays like that."

"I don't have an answer," Kofuku said, sounding unbearably tired. "I'm just saying that it's something we should start thinking about. He'll resist it, even if it's for his own good. He's not ready to let go."

"Can you blame him?" asked Daikoku. "Neither are we."

"No," said Kofuku quietly. "Not yet. But the world is still going to turn, even without Yato-chan. He'd want us to make sure Yukki is taken care of."

Yato looked back towards the stairs, wondering what Yukine was doing on the other side of the wall. "Yeah, you'd better take care of him. At least until I'm back in action. Then I'll take care of him myself."

The thought of another god naming Yukine turned his stomach, or would have if he had any bodily sensations, but he shoved down his instinctual disgust. Things wouldn't have to get that far. He would find a way back to the land of the living before that became necessary. But if, gods forbid, he couldn't return… Well. If it came to that, Yukine would need a new master to look out for him. No need to pine forever over someone long gone.

"But it won't come to that," Yato said firmly. He would find a way to communicate with Yukine by then. In fact, he would start right now.

He headed for the stairs, but paused at the bottom step.

"It's not right," Daikoku was saying. "It's bad enough that Yukine is so upset and Hiyori has moved on, and Yato… It's not the same without him. He was part of the family."

Yato turned just in time to catch a glimpse of Kofuku's tears as she wrapped her arms around Daikoku and buried her face in his chest. Daikoku bowed his head, but his features were ragged and raw as well.

"Even though I'm a lazy, good-for-nothing freeloader?" Yato wondered aloud to no one. In another world, there might have been a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes, but he could only summon up the memory of those sensations now.

He stared at them for a long moment as they huddled together, clutching each other like a lifeline. He had always expected to disappear someday, even if he fought against it tooth and nail. But he had never really expected to be missed. He hadn't expected to make an impression on the world or have someone notice when he was gone, much less care. It was bittersweet to see the suffering caused by the love he hadn't quite realized he had.

Tearing his gaze away, he retreated up the stairs. He felt as if he were intruding on their grief, eavesdropping on something he wasn't meant to hear, and he had never been able to stand tears for long.

Up in the attic, only the lamp was aglow. Yukine lay wrapped up in a wad of blankets. A wad of blankets on Yato's futon, and the kid had dragged the lamp across the room to the other bed.

It seemed the most tragic thing of all that Yukine finally went seeking Yato's comfort when he was no longer there to give it.

"Hey, kid," Yato murmured, drifting over. "You awake?"

Yukine was not, in fact, awake. Even in sleep, his features were scrunched up and he twitched restlessly.

Even with the nightmares, this might be an opportunity. Things surfaced when the conscious mind was submerged and the unconscious rose to meet it. Dreams straddled a line between worlds, and sleep blurred fact and fiction. It was why Yato had been so worried that bits of Yukine's past memories would start resurfacing in his nightmares after Father had chipped his name at the hospital, but maybe it would also afford an opportunity for Yato to make himself heard.

He tried whispering in Yukine's ear, threading his voice into his dreams and sneaking past the skepticism and noise while the barriers of consciousness were down. He tried speaking louder, in case he had to force his way in instead of finesse it.

But in the end, when Yukine woke with a gasp early the next morning, he only buried himself back beneath the covers and cried without sparing Yato a glance. Although Yato could mime a ghostly hug and remember the feeling of a breaking heart, the only thing he could do was watch.