It's pretty hard to keep that sense of self-righteousness and moral high ground when one look at the wrist he's been hiding makes two of Satoru's closest friends look like they want to cry.

"Nishimura," Taki says, holding his arm as if it's made of glass. "Does it hurt?"

That question feels like a test. They saw him hurting earlier. So Satoru shuffles his feet and mutters grudgingly, "A little bit."

They're behind the school, in about the same spot Natsume used to eat his lunches by himself. Satoru has to steel himself not to throw a paranoid glance over his shoulder.

He must give himself away somehow, because Tanuma says, "Is it here?"

"It was earlier," Satoru admits. Better than admitting he's more worried about Natsume popping up right now than the vengeful spirit that stalked him to school. He thinks that might not go over very well. "It didn't come close, though, it just stood by the gate."

And even though Tanuma is arguably well within his rights to be annoyed or frustrated or even angry at Satoru, for doing stupid things and then stupidly keeping the consequences of those things to himself, he only sighs and moves on.

"My father knows how to make o-fuda. For some reason I've never thought to ask him to make any for me," reliable Tanuma informs them both, already feeling out a potential solution. "He's coming home tonight, and I'll ask him as soon as he's settled. The talismans work. We used them on the Nitai-sama that came to my house once."

"The what?" Taki demands.

Despite himself, there's a coil of unease working itself loose in the pit of his stomach. Taki has faced a horrifying monster and insurmountable odds with a sense of dogged determination and her head held high, and Tanuma, for all his frailty, is steadfast and unwavering when it comes to the people he cares about. It already feels better, having them back on his side.

That black mood from earlier is peeling its fingers back from its grip on his soul, making his shoulders feel a little lighter with every second. He rubs his chest as that muddy feeling goes, blinking rapidly. He didn't even notice that feeling until now that it's gone.

"Your wrist—look," Tanuma says, grabbing Satoru by the elbow. "The marks are fading!"

It definitely isn't as dark as it was this morning, Satoru thinks, surprised. The impressive bruising has faded from immediate-trip-to-the-emergency-room to probably-not-a-broken-bone-maybe, and it feels a little better, too.

"Huh," he says eloquently, flexing his wrist with caution. "I wonder what that's all about?"

"I don't know, but I don't want to wait until Sunday to figure it out," Taki says, touching Satoru's shoulder gently. "Tanuma will work on getting those charms, and I'll sneak away into my grandpa's library after dinner tonight. You should go home and get some rest, Nishimura. You look like you could use it."

"Yeah," he says slowly. "Kiyoshi usually doesn't care if I fall asleep in his room while he's working. And I always do, once he starts talking about whatever boring stuff he's studying. Maybe I'll nap there for a bit."

They're circling the building to the front gate, walking at an amiable pace and talking in low voices about how they would make better this situation Satoru landed himself in. Feeling warm, Satoru smiles as he tugs his sleeve back down.

"Maybe we should walk with you," Tanuma says hesitantly, at the point on the walk home where their routes split. Satoru gives him a slow look. "Hey, last time we left you alone to go home—"

"Fair enough," Satoru says, raising his hands. "But this time I'm not gonna play crossing guard for the thing, I'm gonna run the second I see it. And it moves pretty slow, I don't think we have to worry about it catching up to me."

"Well... text one of us when you make it safely, okay?" Taki says, in that reasonable tone it's impossible to argue with. "And I'll text you if I find out anything interesting tonight."

They part ways in their usual spot, and Satoru waves over his shoulder as he goes until his friends disappear around a corner, out of sight.

When he turns around again, the yokai is there. Off to one side of the street, lingering behind a lampost about a block ahead. Staring with those round white eyes in Satoru's direction. The day is getting darker, throwing stretching shadows across the ground, and Satoru's steps falter.

No big deal, he thinks, steeling himself. You knew it was watching you. You can run faster than it can, so it's no big deal. Just stay cool, keep walking.

But each step brings him closer to the spirit, and a cold sweat breaks out on his neck when he's level with it, only a narrow street-width apart. Satoru keeps walking, facing forward; trying to look as though he hasn't noticed it there, trying not to break into a run. His wrist may as well be on fire.

The yokai still doesn't move, sheltering behind the pole and staring at him as he goes. It takes willpower Satoru didn't even know he had not to look back over his shoulder, to carry on calmly instead.

He's so blindly focused on the mechanical one step right after the other that he runs bodily into someone standing in his way.

"You really are out of it today," Kitamoto says, catching Satoru by the elbow before he can fall over. "Do you need to go to a doctor or something?"

Satoru stares at him in horror, that earlier, somewhat cooled panic mounting again into something impossible and terrifying. "What are you doing here?"

"I thought I'd come by to see if you were home yet, even if you did pretty much tell me to get lost earlier."

"I did not tell you to get lost! I just had something to do! And if I did tell you that, it probably would have been for a good reason!"

Kitamoto blinks at his tone, but his grip on Satoru's arm only tightens. "Nishimura—"

Satoru whirls around, heart in his throat. The yokai is in the middle of the street now, staring at him. When he looks back at it, it bends its head to one side at an unnatural angle, like it's hanging off a broken neck.

Satoru flinches a step back. It matches him with a shuffled step forward.

"We need to go now," he says carefully, not daring to take his eyes off the thing. He tugs his arm away in slow, deliberate movements, groping through the air behind him for Kitamoto's hand instead. "Right now. Okay? We're gonna just turn around and—"

"Nishimura, what the hell are you—"

Between one moment and the next, the yokai bursts into motion. Skeletal limbs digging into the ground and propelling its emaciated body forward, it moves towards them on all fours like some kind of horror movie monster.

Satoru's mind goes blank, wiped clean by actual, honest terror. His hold on Kitamoto's hand is probably bruising as he scrambles back, pulling his confused friend along behind him without another word, and runs.

Down one street, around a corner at a breakneck pace, down the next. Sprinting as though their lives depend on it, plowing through crowds, cutting through traffic. This small town was a younger Satoru's sprawling playground, he knows it better than some forest monster probably does, and he winds them breathlessly on a nonsensical path home.

He shoves Kitamoto through the door first and slams it shut behind him. Safe here, he thinks. It can't get me here.

Of course, Satoru doesn't know that for sure—but considering the very real possibility that it might burst through the door behind him is just going to give him a panic attack, so he lets himself think Safe.

Kitamoto is silent beside him, and Satoru doesn't want to risk looking him in the face. They take their shoes off without speaking, and climb the stairs to Satoru's bedroom on the second floor. It's not until the door is closed behind them, and Satoru has paced a careful perimeter (making sure the window and its shutter are closed, too, and the closet is empty) that Kitamoto says, "What the hell, Nishimura?"

He's sitting on the edge of Satoru's bed, staring at him like the short length of the room between them is miles and miles of brand new distance he has no idea how to navigate.

Satoru hates that.

"I know," he says right away, "I know that was weird, I know—I'm sorry—but it's okay now. I just, uh—needed to get home to—"

Kitamoto says, "You're shaking."

Satoru looks down at his hands, surprised to find them trembling.

"Are you okay?" his friend says slowly.

Satoru's wrist is burning. He shakes his head.

"Look," Kitamoto goes on desperately, "if it's something you can't talk about, fine. I don't like it, but I'm not gonna pressure you into breaking a promise. That's the only reason I can think of why you'd be so stubborn about keeping me in the dark, and the only reason why I've left you alone about it for this long. Lately, though, you've been freaking me out. You almost fell down the stairs today, and just now—I don't know what that was." He runs a hand through his hair, pale-faced and worried. "But I won't ask about any of that if you just level with me. Are you okay?"

It's totally futile. Kitamoto has him cornered, whether or not Kitamoto knows it, because Satoru has never been able to lie to him. He can lie to his mom and his brother, and Taki and Tanuma, and even Natsume as it turns out, but not Kitamoto. And the thing is, he doesn't want to.

The adrenaline has faded, leaving Satoru with a trembling, hollow feeling. It fills him up inside with a sense of weighted absence, until he feels both empty and overfull at the same time.

But he's home and safe. It's getting dark outside but his bedroom is well-lit and warm. Kitamoto is a familiar and comforting presence on the other side of the room.

The pain in his wrist fades to a dull ache.

"One sec," he says absurdly, and pulls out his phone. Kitamoto's expression would be comical if it were the appropriate time to think anything was funny. His trembling fingers need a few tries to get his contact list open, and then he's holding the phone to his ear and counting rings before Taki answers.

"Nishimura?" It speaks volumes that she immediately jumps straight to concerned that Satoru is calling, but she's trying to play it down. "Is everything okay? I never got a text."

"Um, everything's okay," he starts, and at the downright dangerous look on Kitamoto's face, he quickly amends, "now. Everything's okay now."

"'Now'? What happened? Was it the—"

"Yeah, it was. And I ran into Acchan while I was running away. Talk about rotten timing, right?"

"Oh." Taki is quiet for a long moment, then asks, "Did you tell him?"

Taking a steadying breath, grip on the phone tightening, Satoru says stoutly, "I'm about to."

"Thank goodness," is the last thing Satoru expects to hear and exactly what Taki sighs in reply. "You keep so much to yourself even when so much has gone wrong, and it's driving me crazy. You're like Natsume 2.0."

"Wait, hold on," he says, waving a hand for no one's benefit but his own. "You're okay with this? No questions asked? I'm about to break my promise, and you don't even—"

"You promised not to tell anyone about Natsume," Taki corrects him gently. When Satoru has no idea what to say to that, standing there stupidly with his phone against his face for a solid six seconds, his friend goes on, "You can tell Kitamoto about me, too, if you want. We can tell him I found the yokai circle by chance one day in my grandfather's library. It doesn't have to go back to Natsume at all."

Satoru kind of wants to cry. He won't, not with Kitamoto watching him, but still. "You make it sound so obvious. Like I should have thought of all that already. I thought we were on the same page."

"That's not what I'm saying," Taki says quickly. "It's only—recently, you've been so different. And today it was almost like there was a shadow hanging over you. You looked at us like we were strangers when we asked to see your arm. I'm scared for you, a little bit. And now that Kitamoto is somewhat involved, it's like—it's like an excuse to tell him, almost? And I'm happy for that excuse. These things you're experiencing are your experiences, to trust to whoever you want. It wouldn't be fair if I had a broken arm but I wasn't allowed to talk about how I broke my arm, just because one of my friends had a broken arm before me and they didn't talk about it." That analogy probably makes sense, but Satoru can't really make sense of it. Taki doesn't give him time to puzzle it out, either. "Natsume goes through it alone because it's all he knows how to do—or all he did know how to do, for a long time. He didn't have a Kitamoto growing up, you know? I think it would have made a world of difference if he had."

That's almost too much for Satoru to unpack in one sitting. He manages to find his voice after a couple tries and asks softly, because this is the whole point and he has to be sure, "So it's okay?"

"It's okay."

They don't talk for much longer. Taki is understanding to the point of being borderline psychic, and seems to know without being told that Satoru wants to get off the phone. She says goodbye, and bids a cheerful goodbye to Kitamoto, too, and only hangs up after assuring him Kitamoto is more than welcome to come along on Sunday.

Taki is also painfully optimistic.

"So, she sort of made it sound like you won't call me crazy and never talk to me again," he says, putting his phone on his desk. "I'm not totally convinced that's not exactly what's going to happen in like five minutes, but—"

"Moron," Kitamoto says, with that fondness-despite-himself that he seems to save for Satoru, and pats the spot next to him on the bed. He still looks worried, but more than that he looks intensely relieved, and Satoru feels like he probably should have told him a long time ago if just to make him feel that much better. "You're stalling."

"Definitely," Satoru agrees, fidgeting with the sleeves of his hoodie.

"Well, remember how we felt when Natsume kept things from us that he would go and tell Tanuma and Taki about, even though we were his friends, too, and we knew him longer? Remember how much that sucked?"

Satoru winces. "Yeah."

"Yeah. This is kind of how that feels."

And there isn't much he can say to that except, "Okay."

Satoru honestly doesn't know if it would be more selfish to exclude Kitamoto at this point, or to bring him even further in. It's dangerous, and he doesn't want any of these walking night terrors anywhere near his friend, but it's not really his call, is it?

Kitamoto isn't going to budge until he gets answers. He watched Satoru have an episode back there and all he did in response was run with him, all the way across town, without stopping to ask questions until they were safely home. He's smarter than Satoru is, more thoughtful and self-aware, for all that he lets himself be dragged into shenanigans without much of a fight. He could handle knowing about all this better than Satoru, probably. He wants to know. And...

And it would make Satoru feel better to tell Kitamoto. He can't shake the idea, as tried and true as it's been for most of his life, that Kitamoto always knows what to do.

"Okay," Satoru says again, gathering up his courage in both hands and trying not to feel as though he's betraying gentle Natsume's unspoken trust. "Do you remember when I found that drawing of a weird-looking circle?"