viii. one summer evening

When Kaminaga entered the library, the elongated shadow of Miyoshi's figure on the floor was the first thing that caught his attention. The spy was leaning against the window, arms folded, not turning his head even as Kaminaga approached him. He had neither the suit jacket nor the vest on, and the sleeves of his white dress shirt were rolled up to the elbows. An easel was placed nearby—a canvas was set on it, but from his position he couldn't see whether the painting had finished.

Kaminaga took a look outside, the sky was tinged with a pleasant orange by the setting sun. From between telephone poles and cables spreading below he could see streetcars running and people walking by. It was late summer; some of the agency members had finally been sent out for missions, and all left for Kaminaga was to count the day he would depart for his own.

"You come to me with that thing again," Miyoshi broke the silence, his stare had shifted to Kaminaga.

"Well, I need objects," lifting the camera he was holding, Kaminaga's eyes glanced back while his lips failed to hold back a slight smile, "beautiful objects."

Miyoshi let out a hard exhale, one that was still too refined to be taken as a snort, one that he always gave when Kaminaga tried to praise or annoy him. But it wasn't mere flattery this time; Kaminaga did think Miyoshi was beautiful and the man sure knew he was. He then moved back to his painting and picked up the wooden palette left on the stool, adding red paint from a tube and mixing them with a practiced hand.

After each was given details for their undercover mission, it wasn't strange to see everyone was familiarizing themselves with their new identity. Kaminaga had also been practicing using the camera in every chance he got, perfecting his image of Izawa Kazuo the photographer. He heard that Miyoshi would become an art dealer from an affluent family, coming to Europe for his interest in paintings. The man, after all, had always possessed the sort of elegance and posh attitude you'd expect from someone who was born rich; believing his cover was effortless.

"Have you gotten used to it?" Miyoshi asked, rather indifferent. Kaminaga had known him well enough to stop questioning whether man was showing actual concern or was just teasing. "That camera cost a lot of our budget, don't mess up."

"Pretty much, the handling itself is not difficult," Kaminaga said, "but I want to practice some more, why don't you model for me?"

"You can't take photos from memory, after all," Miyoshi mused, "but I'm afraid I'm quite busy."

Kaminaga dragged a chair and placed himself a little to his behind, looking at the painting from the side. The red paint was for a field of spider lilies, bringing him the thought of what they had seen in Hanayashiki the year before. It was not yet the season for those flowers to bloom—and in that instant Kaminaga understood what Miyoshi meant—they couldn't take photos of the lilies now, but they could paint them; one could always paint from memories. Marveling at the details the spy had put in, it was the first time Kaminaga saw him working with brush and canvas; the movements were so natural that he felt Miyoshi had already been familiar with paintings before, and wondered too if Yuuki had chosen him for this role because of his background, or if their spymaster was just trying to show a little sense of humor.

"These flowers kind of remind me of you," Kaminaga said. He wasn't thinking.

"Is that so?" That was all of Miyoshi's response, but when Kaminaga didn't say more, he asked, "Why?"

"I wonder."

Each of them was lost in thought after, but it didn't take long for Miyoshi to speak again. Kaminaga had noticed how the other turned a bit more talkative when he was in a good mood. "Do you remember what these flowers mean? We learned it in our botanical class."

"That boring class," Kaminaga said, "but I did like it when the teacher rambled on about their meanings in flower languages."

Miyoshi chuckled. "What would flower languages be useful for? Do you use them when courting women?"

"Not anymore," Kaminaga teased back, "the person I'm courting at the moment just happen to be disinterested in flowers and their meanings."

"Who says I'm not interested?"

"Who says I was talking about you?"

Miyoshi didn't answer, but from the side he could see the spy rolling his eyes. It was Kaminaga's win this time. What a shame their bantering routine would come to a halt when both of them set out for each mission, once again becoming strangers.

"Lost memories," after giving a final touch to the painting, Miyoshi put down his brush and palette, "abandonment, never to meet again—this flower's beautiful, yet always get associated with painful things."

"The other shore," Kaminaga added the literal meaning of the flower, "they said it guides the soul in the afterlife and brings back happy memories one last time, before they all disappear when the dead crosses the Sanzu River.*"

"'They said'—that's as far as legends could go, but none of us really knows what happens after death, do we?"

"Us of the agency or us in general?" Kaminaga stifled a laugh. "Because Sakuma-san seems to believe his comrades would be waiting in the afterlife."

Kaminaga had wanted to see what sort of reaction he could get from Miyoshi at the mention of a certain liaison officer they had from the General Staff Headquarters, but he only said simply, "Sakuma-san was foolish."

"Maybe he was, but if it was me who died first," he said in a serious tone, "I'd definitely wait for you, Miyoshi."

He turned to Kaminaga. His face showed no emotion. "Is this your idea of being romantic?"

"Not quite, but this is how I have fun," Kaminaga grinned, "as a ghost I'd mess up with your light at night and in the morning I'd appear in the mirror to laugh at your bed hair."

"This is exactly why I don't want you to die."

"How sweet." There were specks of red paint on Miyoshi's chin, and some smudged over his neck as well as the collar of his shirt. Kaminaga reached to wipe them with his thumb, but the remaining made his skin looked like it was smeared with blood. "But I won't die—not yet—you're the one who should be more careful."

"I'm always careful," Miyoshi usually hated it when someone told him what he had already known, but that one time he only gave Kaminaga a smirk, "though in the end, we all still die."

"It's frightening how you sound so eager."

"I'm merely stating a fact."

"Right," he exhaled, "and here I could almost hear you say, 'See you in another life' or something."

He liked the way Miyoshi's eyes widened a little when his eyebrows were lifted. "You believe in reincarnation?"

"You don't?"

"You didn't answer my question."

"Well," Kaminaga leaned back on his chair, "can't really say I do, not right now."

Miyoshi rose from his seat. He took a piece of plain cloth from the table behind them, dipped it into the water in a bowl he had prepared, and started wiping the paint off his skin slowly. It didn't clean his cheek and hands thoroughly, but at least the rag had done a better job than Kaminaga's thumb. "If not right now, would you perhaps believe it later?"

"Depends." His gaze flew to Miyoshi's painting. "You?"

"I just don't think it'd have much relevance. I mean, if such thing does happen, then what?" Kaminaga wasn't seeing him, but he knew exactly where the other man was from the light sound of the bowl being moved and his steps growing louder. Then, sensing a presence behind him, Kaminaga looked up; Miyoshi was standing right behind him, with both hands rested on the back of his chair. "We'd be different people anyway, with no recollection of our past—what would this concept we call reincarnation be of any use then?"

The spy lowered his head, almost whispering to the sitting man's ear. "Some say we'd be reborn to atone our sins, find the happiness we never had, or reunite with the people we lost. But anyone we'd become in our next lives, would have no connection to whom we are now—don't you think?"

"I suppose so."

He felt Miyoshi's fingers brushed his shoulders for the briefest moment, before the man returned to the window side, once again leaning against the frame. "You talked a lot of nonsense lately." His tone was sarcastic, but there was no venom in it. Perhaps it was only his mind playing trick, but Kaminaga could even catch a trace of something akin to fondness in the other's voice.

"And you sound even more of a nihilist."

"I am not," Miyoshi laughed, only a small chuckle, but brimming with sincerity, "just because I think next lives would have no meaning if they even existed, doesn't mean I also apply the same thought for the lives we're currently living in."

"Then what it means to you," with an elbow on the arm of his chair, Kaminaga rested his chin on his palm, his suppressed laugh found its way to his sentence, "the lives we're living now?"

It was meant to be half a joke, but unexpectedly he was met with Miyoshi's poker face. The curve on his lips vanished and he could see the other spy's upper body went stiff. Lifting his head, Kaminaga too stopped grinning. Be it with Miyoshi or the others, he had lost count of how many times their conversation went from idle to serious in a heartbeat, they could be laughing one moment and he wouldn't know whether they were still joking in the next.

If only it was another occasion, with different people, in a different time, Kaminaga would perhaps cheerfully let his charisma take over and lighten up the mood. But not here, not this time; not when the only two people present were he and Miyoshi, not when Kaminaga could feel all the emotions he had tried to bury in the past year overflowed, like a burst of water from a shattered dam. Deep inside, Kaminaga knew he just couldn't, not yet, not ever—not as long as he was facing Miyoshi—going to be a complete automaton.

(Ironic, he wanted to laugh; it's outrageously ironic how the man who was closest to a machine out of them all, was the one who actually made him felt human the most.)

"Being who I am now," said Miyoshi, his stare was fixed on Kaminaga. It was already an answer, yet his words fell oddly, like it was part of a sentence that couldn't be finished. He started again, "If you ask me what it means, then that's all there is to it; becoming a spy—"

—And meeting you, Kaminaga finished his sentence inwardly.

Being a spy was perhaps the whole meaning of their existence, but it was meeting each other that had made their lives meaningful. Fate worked in a strange way, it's amusing how they needed to go all through that trouble of casting away their past, taking up new names and creating new identities just to find someone who finally able to made them whole, who fill all the tiny holes and fit in all of their awkward joints.

Even to the day the world's end, Kaminaga knew Miyoshi would never allow himself to say it—that he'd fallen, that his heart hadn't yet die entirely, that he too longed back—as he had made an automaton out of himself, and a machine simply did not feel.

But it was enough, the way they were now was enough. Kaminaga had let himself be selfish for too long, so even without words, the feelings they both shared was enough. After all, there would no longer be Kaminaga or Miyoshi once they stepped out of this peaceful little world, just like how they should've not existed from the beginning.

Kaminaga drew a long breath, holding air inside his lungs while he indulged in that strange tender feeling and acknowledged that he had, indeed, fallen. But then he had always gotten back up, hadn't he? He could've fallen for Miyoshi again and again but he would always get back up again; exactly in the way Miyoshi at times would let the remains of his emotions got the better of him, before waking up again as an automaton—alive and moving, but not feeling.

Kaminaga rose, suddenly feeling elated as he listened to every sound of his steps. The sand inside their hourglass was running out, he's aware, and therefore he intended to savor every shred of this dreamlike joy to the fullest. He'd laugh and he'd feel and he'd love with every little fragment of humanity he had left, until there would be neither Kaminaga nor a spy, until this luxury was all used up and he would also wake up as a machine.

Resting his elbow on the window sill, Kaminaga spoke, "So, it turned out Tazaki was one of the firsts to be sent out, huh," eyes went back to the camera sitting on the chair he had been just a moment before, a smile finally found its way again to his lips, "I'm actually kind of envy. I wonder why Yuuki-san chose him for this mission."

"There you go again with Tazaki this and Tazaki that. You two are pretty close, aren't you?" Miyoshi asked in that indifferent tone once more, though this time he didn't completely hide his feelings and Kaminaga caught the hint.

"You see, if there's anyone here who I'd call a best friend, then it'd be Tazaki." He lifted an eyebrow. "What, you're jealous?"

"Don't get presumptuous."

"But aren't you quite friendly to Amari yourself?" Kaminaga purposefully made himself sound accusing. "And what about that Sakuma-san? You seem to be a little too fond of him for all I see."

Miyoshi's shoulders finally lose the stiffness they had before, and he smirked as he titled his head. "Aren't you the one being jealous now?"

"So what if I am?"

The canvas was facing the other way, but Kaminaga's trained eyes had engraved the painting into his memory, like a lens capturing scenery. It was in portrait, and the spider lilies stood with their heads held high, while the glowing sunlight showered onto their delicate petals resembled golden powder. Kaminaga adored the deep redness of it, as he imagined how every stroke was done carefully with the tip of the brush, how every shade was created with layers of paint and a skillful hand. Admiring every detail that had been poured into the painting, he raved silently about how it had been composed in such a way it radiated both artistic and surrealist feeling.

He wasn't by no means an expert of paintings, and perhaps yes, Kaminaga was indeed presumptuous, but he felt there was a portion of Miyoshi and the person he had been before, threaded into those flowers. Kaminaga couldn't yet make meanings out of it, and maybe he never would—but it was alright, he thought, because sometimes there were just things better left unknown.

Staring at Miyoshi, whose face exalted under the waning light, Kaminaga had wanted to say that his eyes were gleaming perfectly and he looked divine and any painting in the world would be pale in comparison to him. But pride as well as the realization that Miyoshi would laugh at him held his tongue, and when the other man stared back he said instead,

"You know, Tazaki might be a good friend, but I don't see him that way." Kaminaga let out that boyish chuckle he knew was just irresistible. His charm might not work on Miyoshi, but not that he cared anymore. "Besides, he has eyes on Amari from the start."

"I figured," Miyoshi said, interlocking their fingers as the sky outside grew darker.