Nishimura shows up a little after lunchtime, with his cursed arm curled protectively against his chest and lines of pain in his face. He greets Atsushi with a bright smile that doesn't fool him for a second.
It's a bad day, then. Atsushi's mother is at work, his father is asleep, and Mana is out with friends. There's no one home to comment on how rough Nishimura looks as Atsushi pulls him inside.
Atsushi can't do anything for Nishimura at times like these, but Nishimura comes to him anyway. Selfishly, Atsushi is glad he does.
"Has Natsume heard anything from Natori yet?" Atsushi asks, looking at his friend's marked wrist, where those invisible bruises sit like a grisly bracelet.
Nishimura waves his good hand at him, as if all that is old news. Wrestling back the automatic annoyance at Nishimura's screwed priorities is second nature by now, otherwise Atsushi would want to strangle him.
"Not since last time I asked. That's not why I came over. You gotta see this."
Atsushi stands back with a scowl, watching as Nishimura digs through his bookbag for a notebook. He lays it open on Atsushi's desk and draws one of those strange seeing circles, as big as will fit on the page, in a few practiced seconds.
"Wait," Atsushi says, catching on, "you brought a spirit into my house?"
Nishimura nods enthusiastically. "I wanted you to be the first to meet her."
And then he extends his bad hand over the circle, the one he was cradling close to his center as if in pain, and a bird appears out of thin air. It's a magpie, perched prim and docile on his wrist like a household pet. The bruises beneath its feet are faint, yellow and soft purple.
Maybe it's not such a bad day, Atsushi thinks vaguely, not sure what to feel about the yokai bird in his bedroom.
"Isn't she great?" Nishimura gushes, eyes bright. "Natsume saw her before, when she was just a blob. But a few days ago she woke me up like this, and we've been buddies ever since!"
The bird turns its head sideways to look Atsushi up and down. Somehow, after hearing the grumpy old man voice emerge from Natsume's ugly cat nearly a week ago, he's almost expecting it when the magpie parts its beak and says, "you are?" but that doesn't stop him from staring at it dumbly.
"Kitamoto," he introduces himself by rote.
"acchan!" the bird says in reply, flapping its wings. "my favorite!"
"She mimics a lot," Nishimura explains, not in the least bit embarrassed. His free hand drifts over to stroke the magpie's glossy black and white feathers with a gentleness that most wouldn't associate with rowdy, reckless Nishimura. "So what do you think? Way better than that stupid cat, right?"
Not even knowing he'd meet Natori Shuuichi lit Nishimura up like this. He's delighted by the little bird. For as long as Atsushi's known him, Nishimura has wanted a pet. Something to greet him when he got home, that would spend time with him when his brother and his mother couldn't be bothered. And this is a feathered companion that can talk, that's intelligent enough to be a conversation partner, that can really keep him company all those hours that find him alone.
Atsushi wrestles with the knee-jerk reaction to be happy with him, and the skeptical voice in the back of his brain that calls him crazy for even thinking about letting another yokai near Nishimura after what the last one did.
"You said Natsume saw her before?" he hazards. "What did he think?"
"He said she's harmless. Sometimes things stick around after they die," Nishimura says, every bit as though it's not remarkable he could know something like that. "She's just a bird that stuck around, Kitamoto. She won't hurt anybody. Isn't that right, Fish?"
She looks up at him and squawks. Nishimura laughs in turn – something he hasn't done enough of recently by a lot – and with that, fondness far outweighs any misgivings Atsushi might still have.
"You dork," he says, "you named her Fish?"
It's absolutely the right decision when Nishimura laughs again and knocks their shoulders together. "Shut up! She likes it! And you should see her tear up some leftover mackerel. No one's ever enjoyed my mom's cooking before she came along."
They sit on the edge of Atsushi's bed, the notebook balanced open on Nishimura's knees, and talk until evening shadows stretch across his room and his mother calls him out for dinner.
Nishimura transfers Fish to his shoulder, where she vanishes from Atsushi's eyes. He looks a little out of place now, as though Atsushi's family is a reminder that he's taking up room in a home that isn't his.
"That's enough weirdness for one day, huh? I guess I should go."
Atsushi looks at him, loving him, and says, "Nah. Stay."