Chapter 11 Half-Ayakashi

A black ball, smooth to the touch, relaxing my throat to ease it down my esophagus. It paints my inside with its malodor and fills me with its presence, its noxious, repugnant energy waiting restlessly beneath my skin, yearning to be used.

Eventually, I let it out. It flies in the air, carrying me hundreds of feet above ground, our reflection whizzing by, too blurry for me to make out anything.

A girl plummeting to the ground. I caught her. Reached out and snatched her right out of the sky.

The same girl, on the ground, bleeding from the head.

Monkeys dressed in white, in a completely white room.

Clapping.

Clapping.

They keep on.

Fucking.

CLAPPING.

"Shut up."

The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could even force his eyes to open. The hand, the sweaty monkey hand that posed no danger but was aggravating nonetheless, halted by his bedside, too far to touch him, but close enough for its stench to reach his nose. It wasn't the ideal way to start his day, but Natsune only had himself to blame for oversleeping.

"I didn't say anything yet."

Sunlight assaulted his eyes when he forced them open and blearily glanced around before settling his gaze on his God's stupid face.

"What time is it?" Natsune rubbed his eyes as he stumbled over to turn off the fan. The desolate house had running water but no working electricity, so he had to rely on the battery-powered fan to get through the hot Summer night.

"It's three in the afternoon. When did you go to sleep last night? You were out like a log when I got back from my night shift, and I still woke up before you did. You pulled an all-nighter or what?" Yato glanced at the TV. "Don't tell me you found a way to make the TV work."

"Couldn't sleep last night. It was too hot. Battery ran out so I had to go buy some." It was an excuse Natsune had prepared ahead of time in case his practice with that backstabbing coward ever took too long. He'd even bought a pack of new batteries in case Yato asked to see them. To think it'd come in handy now because the dreams he was having were too personal to tell his God.

Dreams, nightmares, or maybe memories would be a better term for describing what he saw.

Dreams depicted wildest fantasies, and nightmares revealed deepest fears and regrets.

But memories didn't have to follow any rules. Memories could make no sense.

Only memories could show him people he'd never met but make him feel like he knew them. That bizarre sense of déjà vu when he saw the girl falling down the sky and the hatred brewing within him when the monkeys kept on clapping. They made no sense, which meant they couldn't be anything other than memories.

He didn't know why Shinki were amnesiac. Perhaps it was the same concept as Meng Po Soup. The dead had to sever all ties with the living to prevent them from obsessing over their death and everything they left behind. But if that was the case, how come he was still fine after catching a glimpse of his past? If witnessing the past bore no negative repercussions, why couldn't Yato just tell him the truth?

Yato thought he'd talked his way out of their confrontation with that lame excuse, but he should know that this standstill between them was only temporary. It was already an established fact that Natsune knew Satoru when he was alive, and Yato, being a God who'd not only lived for eons but also held a private conversation with Satoru, had to be aware of the connection between them two.

The only thing Yato would achieve by throwing excuses and playing dumb was a growing distrust between him and his Shinki. The dreams Natsune had been experiencing were clearly an abnormal occurrence, and perhaps the wise thing to do here was to let his God know, but he refused to make the first move. Unless Yato learned to treat his Shinki like a grown adult capable of making his own decisions, Natsune wasn't planning on telling him about the dreams any time soon.

Whether those dreams (or should he call them memories?) were a result of what Fujisaki did or something else, Natsune honestly didn't care. He just wanted to know who he was, who was Satoru to him, and who he was to Satoru.

What happened to them, what ended up killing him…

What…was the cause of his death?

As of now, it seemed that keeping quiet and letting his dreams play out was the way to find out.

So when Yato asked him "Did you have a nightmare? You were mumbling and tossing a lot in your sleep," he brushed it off as nothing important and moved on with his day.

Yato's part-time job wasn't enough to support the two of them. Unless they wanted to leech off of his girlfriend or borrow (aka rob) from that human girl again, they'd need to acquire more money. Gods and Shinki didn't need to eat, but they'd still feel hunger and need to satiate it to keep their spirits up, pun totally intended.

Yato thought of many "brilliant" ideas on how to earn money quickly, and they were all shot down before he could even finish explaining them.

Hiring a ghostwriter to write him an autobiography and selling it? Where did he even plan on getting the money to pay for that writer in the first place? And who would even buy such a sacred piece of trash?

Drawing fanarts of Gojo Satoru and selling them to all the fangirls out there? Did he plan on going to court with Satoru for an infringement of publicity rights? Wasn't he overestimating his artistic skills a little too much?

Publishing a doujinshi of—

"No. Don't even think about it."

His God pouted like an overgrown baby, which immediately reminded him of Satoru especially when those cat-like blue eyes welled up with tears. Natsune instinctively wanted to forgive him, but he stamped down that urge because this…this was something he just couldn't allow Yato to do. This was the one idea he hated more than any other crap that shat out of Yato's mouth.

"B-But! I already found someone willing to buy it! She said she'd pay anything to read a doujin of Gojo x Jo—"

"Like I said, don't even think about it. I don't care who you're shipping him with, but keep that shit to yourself."

There was this glint in Yato's eyes that Natsune really really didn't like when he said, "Are you perhaps…jealous?"

Jealous? Of course not. Satoru could get together with anyone he wanted. He said so himself that he had no interest in mingling with the dead. Natsune, in his current state, had no chance of be… Befriending? Was this what he wanted? Was this ache in his heart caused by his desire for them to go back to being friends? This thing they had going on between them… Was it even friendship to begin with?

"No, of course I'm not jealous."

"You're a bad liar, Natsune. Maybe even worse than Gojo."

Yato had no idea how much Natsune wanted to punch that smirk off his face right now.

"You can call me what you want. I'm not going to change my mind."

Natsune didn't change his mind no matter how much Yato rolled on the ground crying and hollering at him for being a "big meanie" (truly a mature reaction befitting a God), so in the end they decided to spend the day advertising the Delivery God business.

Yato had mostly been going around vandalizing the public infrastructure over the years, so he suggested picking an interior building for his graffiti this time. He chose Shiratori Academy, a joint middle and high school attended by that human girl. It contained a central three-story building and two peripheral wings, with a man-made pond in front of the main building's entrance.

The environment was gorgeous, too gorgeous for a typical government-funded public school. The path to the main building was lined up with well-maintained cherry blossoms, which weren't in bloom in the month of September but two organized columns of greens were still enriching to the overall ambience. Even Jujutsu High had some cracks in the walls and mold building up in neglected corners, but none of that could be found in Shiratori Academy. The mirrors in the restrooms and the windows in the hallways were spotless, and they didn't see a single trash littered on the school ground as they walked on campus. It was a pity that such a stunning environment was about to be sullied by Yato's chicken scrawls.

"What does that girl's parents do for a living?"

This was obviously a rich kid school. The average family with average income would struggle tremendously to send their kid off to a school like this.

"Just call her Hiyori already," Yato grumbled. "Her parents own a hospital. That's why she's so generous with her money."

"Need I remind you that most of her money was spent on buying you food?"

"Hey! Gods can feel hungry too okay!? I need to keep my tummy happy before I can fix her condition!"

"The total amount she'd paid for your meals had already far exceeded the 5 yen she paid you to accept her request. If you don't want her to be sick of your scams and leave you one day, then you should think about how to fix her soon."

Yato gaped, the possibility of losing that girl probably never crossed his obtuse mind.

Natsune couldn't understand his God's infatuation with her. It didn't seem to be love. Friendship, most likely, but was what they went through enough for them to feel so attached to each other? Were fighting a few curses together and saving each other's lives enough for friendship to sprout? As a God, Yato had surely experienced loss before. That girl—Hiyori—couldn't have been the first human he met. Why her, out of all people, did he feel attached to? What was so special about her?

Yato's sour mood didn't improve after he finished defacing the two peripheral wings. They planned on getting lunch at the cafeteria, but there were too many students, so they snuck into the kitchen and stole some food. Some good food lifted his spirits up, and he returned to his vandalism with renewed vigor.

The school was huge and Yato insisted on filling every crook and cranny with his chicken scrawl, so they barely even finished the middle school division by the time school was over. The pack of markers Yato brought only had two markers left when they suddenly received a phone call.

After their embarrassing landing in the restroom, Natsune's eyes were immediately drawn to the mask on the cursed spirit. It was the exact same mask worn by those wolves who protected him from Bishamon. Those wolves died protecting him right before Fujisaki showed up, and this masked cursed spirit appeared at the very school where…

Natsune glanced at the boy who was admiring Yato for all the nonexistent qualities he should've had as an estimable God.

Blue-collared short-sleeved shirt with dark blue tie and black pants.

The same uniform as Fujisaki.

Was it a coincidence that a cursed spirit wearing a mask appeared at the very school Fujisaki was attending?

Masked curses weren't normal occurrences; Natsune didn't know what their deal was but he knew this much at least. They were either man-made, or a new evolved species of curses Yato wasn't aware of or didn't feel the need to tell him.

Curses were the enemies, and anyone who had a correlation to them should be an enemy, too.

But Natsune couldn't get himself to harbor any ill will towards Fujisaki.

The answers he had been searching for for so long, all his questions regarding his past self, why Satoru made him feel the way he did… If not for Fujisaki using an unknown ability on him against his will (nothing else could explain why he was suddenly remembering bits of his past), he'd still be kept in the dark by his God who preferred him ignorant and gullible.

The intent and outcome of an action would affect his perception of it. Regardless of Fujisaki's intent, the outcome was in Natsune's favor. It didn't answer all his questions, but the curiosity it satisfied was enough to warrant his forgiveness. And on top of that, it also gave rise to more curiosity, a much stronger desire to know the person he used to be and the relationship he used to have with Satoru.

Curiosity killed the cat, they said, but it couldn't kill a cat that was already dead. Natsune had nothing to fear, nothing more to lose. He'd already lost his identity, his friends, his everything the moment he died. If giving up what little he still possessed—the only thing that remained was his existence—was the price to pay for finding out the entire truth, then he would hand it over on a silver platter at a moment's notice.

Natsune couldn't let Yato find out what he intended to do. They were here for a request, the cursed spirit in question was poising menacingly on the window right behind them, so now wasn't the time for him to wander off on his own expedition. Seeking out Fujisaki to awaken more of his memories would have to wait until this request was completed and he got Yato off his ass.

Yato never mentioned anything about curses wearing masks, so Natsune was waiting to see his reaction upon seeing the mask on the cursed spirit, and hopefully a long-awaited explanation was in order. But the cursed spirit, clearly not as dumb as it appeared to be, escaped as soon as Yato turned around, delaying the explanation Natsune wanted for just a moment longer.

The cursed spirit flew towards one of the peripheral wings, and on the way there, Hiyori dropped her physical body once again. She insisted on going with them, but Yato denied her firmly, saying her current state may be much stronger than her physical body, but it also exposed her weakness (her "tail") and made her an easier target. She'd only be a hindrance if he had to save her from close calls. So with her shoulder slumped, Hiyori went back to retrieve her body.

"How long can you reach?" Yato asked while he chased after the cursed spirit on foot.

The cursed spirit was flying at the height of the third floor, about thirty feet in the air. The bracelet form Natsune had transformed into could reach twenty feet in length at most. If he tried to stretch himself any further, it'd cause a spark of pain to flare up in his mind and induce a burning sensation in his midriff as if his upper and lower half were being pulled apart.

It was a strange feeling, since he had no physical body in his current state. He was essentially sharing his senses with Yato and could see what his God saw, as well as what went on around them, his thoughts could also be transmitted to his God directly without requiring him to speak (because he could not speak right now), so it boggled him how he could still feel a nonexistent midriff.

"Not long enough to capture that thing," Natsune "said", his words appearing as thoughts in Yato's head.

"Okay. I'm going to try and get close to it. Do your thing as soon as we're within reach."

Taking advantage of some of the opened windows, Yato jumped and used the window sills as stepping stones to reach a higher vantage point. Each flap of the cursed spirit's wings sent strong gales of wind towards Yato, making it difficult to get any closer without losing his footing.

"Get ready, Kakki."

When another gale came for him, Yato jumped off of a window sill to the lower level. The wind barely brushed against his hair as he planted his foot onto the second floor window and shot right back up onto the third floor, dodging the attack from underneath and closing in the distance in the blink of an eye.

"Now!"

Natsune multiplied the beads and Yato hurled the bracelet forward. They were still too far to wrap it around the cursed spirit fully, but they were within distance to make contact with it. And that single point of contact was all Natsune should have needed to absorb the cursed spirit.

But instead of turning into black mist and vanishing into the beads, the masked cursed spirit produced a high-pitched sizzling sound that debilitated Yato, rendering him vulnerable to the frothy substance it released from the sides of its head. Even in his weapon state, Natsune could feel his own ears ringing from that sonic attack as the pungent odor of that substance engulfed him whole. The substance itself didn't hit him; it hit Yato, its toxicity spreading a dark purple Blight over his face and slowly but steadily creeping down his neck. If not treated, it'd reach his whole body eventually.

Yato winced as he crashed onto the ground. He was halfway through the motion of bringing his right hand up to his face when he apparently decided against it and dropped the hand with the bracelet back down. Good thing that he still retained some sagacity because Natsune didn't want to be infected as well as a result of his God's idiocy.

"I'm gonna get closer this time, so get ready to wrap around it and exorcize it for good."

His God still hadn't commented on the mask worn by the cursed spirit. It obviously was irregular, and Natsune would bet the rest of the money he stole from Yato that that mask was the reason why his initial absorption failed. Yato couldn't have not known about it, which meant he was keeping Natsune in the dark, again. Just how long did his God intend to treat him like a child who had to be handheld every step of the way and couldn't be allowed to have the harsh reality exposed to him until he was older and ready?

The fury within him must have strengthened his power, for when Yato wrapped the bracelet around the Ayakashi and Natsune tightened it up, he was able to easily overpower the cursed spirit as it struggled fruitlessly against the binding. Like smothering a fire with a blanket, he doused the cursed spirit's rampaging energy with his own and watched as the mask with a single eye drawn on it cracked and then proceeded to shatter into pieces. The cursed spirit's energy dissipated the moment that mask detached from its face, allowing Natsune to easily absorb it into the black beads.

"Great job, Natsune!" Yato exclaimed after reverting Natsune back to his human form. He looked a bit roughed up with the Blight on his face and neck, but the fact that the fight was over and he could get rid of the Blight after a quick trip to a nearby shrine must have kept his spirits up. "You're getting much better at this! How many Ayakashi have there been? Fifteen? Twenty?"

"This is my twenty-fifth one," Natsune said as they began walking back to their client. He eyed the remains of the mask where they left it untouched on the spot it had fallen, and then he glanced at Yato. So this was how he wanted to do this, huh? Play dumb and hope his Shinki wouldn't ask, and everything would be all fine and dandy? Fine. Be that way. Two could play that game. The more Yato kept from him, the less Natsune would tell him about his own secrets.

"Nice! How does it feel?"

"Feel? You mean absorbing them?"

"No, I mean after you absorb them. How do you feel right now?"

Natsune swallowed the foul taste that suddenly manifested in his mouth. "I feel like my…power gets stronger with each one I absorb. They are restless. It's not anger, I don't think. I thought they'd be angry at me and want to revolt, but something else is making them agitated."

"Restless…huh." Yato rubbed his chin as he scrutinized Natsune closely. "Is it like the kind of feeling that keeps you awake at night no matter how tired you are?"

"Similar. That's a good way to describe it. It's like they have way too much energy at their disposal and they don't know what they want to do wi— Or maybe they do know, and they're trying to tell me but I'm not understanding them, and that's making them agitated."

Yato's face held an incomprehensible expression. His brows drawn together, his blue eyes narrowed like a cat ready to pounce on its target, and there was this not-quite frown he was doing with his lips as he lightly chewed on it while lost in his own thoughts.

As a God, he must have access to a whole world of knowledge that humans would never be able to comprehend. The essence of curses, for example, was probably something Yato understood much better than Natsune could. With time, maybe he could reach Yato's level, but now his knowledge of these creatures was limited to that of a humans'.

They were rounding the corner of the peripheral wing when they saw Hiyori's body lying unconscious on the ground. It had clearly been moved from its original location where Hiyori had first dropped it, and its current state revealed no signs of struggle, so something must have grabbed Hiyori's attention, something so much more important that she left her body right there and then.

"Natsune, go find her."

Natsune didn't need to be told twice. He was on the move before Yato even finished speaking. A glance back showed his God kneeling down to pick up her body with so much gentleness that it put a bitter taste in his mouth. He couldn't comprehend his bizarre reaction to that sight. Yato picking up that girl gently in a bridal carry should be nothing but heartwarming to see, so why did he feel so…pained…by the sight? When he saw Hiyori lying inertly on the ground, why was it that his first thought was that she was dead?

A sharp cry startled Natsune when he turned a corner and the main building came into view. The first thing he saw was Hiyori in her spirit form running towards something. Next came a small figure standing atop the building, swaying dangerously and on the verge of falling with a single wrong step. And lastly, he noticed an array of scattered items on the ground. The school bag lying not far away wasn't zipped all the way, so the miscellaneous items must have fallen out upon impact.

Natsune picked up one of the items before glancing at the boy who had taken a step as the rest of his body followed.

He would hit the ground within three seconds if the two of them did nothing to help.

Hiyori dashed up the wall and launched herself in the direction of the falling boy, positioning herself right below him to catch him.

But she forgot that she couldn't touch physical beings in her spirit form.

The boy fell through her as if she was an intangible ghost, and the horrified scream she let out expressed her frustration painfully well.

"Yoshino Junpei," Natsune said the name on the student ID card he found in the boy's wallet. "Fuyuu."

He didn't like the way his voice shook and so did his hand when he lifted it, palm open, to try to control the boy.

And perhaps it was due to the stress this dire situation put on him, a feeling of unease he didn't experience when he was practicing Float on that Backstabber in a safe and controlled environment, his control over the spell waned and it dissipated after only managing to slow down Yoshino's descend for a second or two.

He had failed.

"—again," a voice in the back of his mind whispered.

The boy was about to hit the ground, and Natsune could do nothing but stand and watch because he was so damn weak—

The memory of a girl plummeting towards the ground flashed through his mind. And all of a sudden, he could feel the wind grazing his cheeks and see himself soaring through the sky, reaching out, and snatching the girl, letting her lie in his lap as he carried her to safety.

The speed at which he was currently running made it easy to imagine himself soaring through the sky. The girl's falling body superimposed over Yoshino's, flashing over his form like a glitch in reality, and instinctively, Natsune knew what to do.

He reached out towards the boy nearing death, and the curses within him stirred in anticipation. He needed something long and fast, something that could grab, and would also cause minimal harm to the boy.

A slimy sound like sludge oozing out of a swamp emitted behind him and before he knew it, a long and dark cursed spirit had shot past him towards Yoshino, grabbing the boy with its human-like hand a millisecond before the impending impact.

Only when the curse stopped moving could he see its actual form.

It was the arm-like curse he exorcized after his first meeting with the Backstabber. The one on the train tracks beckoning a boy over to walk to his death.

"Oh my god!" Hiyori gasped with a hand on her chest, trying to control her breathing as she turned to him. "Thank god you're here!"

Natsune sighed as he willed his heartbeat to return to its normal pace. He didn't know why he saved the boy. Yoshino was just an ordinary monkey, a loser who was obviously the bullies' top pick for a target. Saving him wouldn't bring about any benefits.

Yet, Natsune moved before he could think, before he could carefully analyze the situation, and before he could decide whether the boy was worth saving based on his potential as a boon.

Had he always been like this? Or had he changed? His inherent disgust towards the monkeys were still present, but it was also somewhat abated now. Maybe watching Yato deigning himself to help the inconsequential humans below him had altered his view of the monkeys slightly.

And he wasn't so sure if this was a welcoming change or not.

Natsune instructed the cursed spirit to lay the boy onto the ground to examine him for injuries.

It was only then did the three of them, including Yato who had just arrived, realize that the Yoshino currently being held by the cursed spirit's hand was not the only Yoshino on the scene.

There was another Yoshino lying on the ground beneath the cursed spirit.

This one was also unconscious, but more transparent, and had a dark pink tail attached to his hip.

"Oh…shit," Yato said.