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Doumeki was not prone to jealousy.
Growing up, his parents had instilled in him the value of gratitude, of appreciating what one had instead of desiring the possessions of others for oneself. Gratitude came easily to Doumeki—why wouldn’t it? He was a smart, popular, good-looking student at a good school, who lived a comfortable, even idyllic home life in the care of a family that loved him immeasurably. He was hardly spoiled, but he didn’t need anything, and he knew it.
He did not begrudge his competitors on the rare occasion one outshot him in an archery tournament. He did not desire more friends—the ones he had were enough trouble as it was, thank you very much. He did not want better grades, or clothes, or stuff, or skills.
No. Doumeki was not prone to jealousy.
Which was, perhaps, why he found the feeling so hard to identify in himself when it did strike. That, and the fact that his subconscious had chosen the most absurd person to become jealous of—and over the most pathetic thing—in the long and arduous history of jealousy.
“You should have seen him, it was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” Watanuki gushed, color high on his pale cheeks. “There were, like, twenty spirits. Or would they be dream monsters? Dream spirits? Whatever. Anyway, they swarmed me, and I tried to make a run for it, but they had me surrounded!”
Kunogi gasped. “You must have been so frightened!”
It was lunch. The three of them were sitting out in the schoolyard, enjoying the last of the warm, early-autumn weather. Doumeki and Kunogi feasted on quiche Lorraine and roasted potatoes—Watanuki was on a French kick—and listened to their chef regale them animatedly with the events of the previous night.
From what Doumeki could gather amid the exclamations and gestures, Watanuki had accidentally traversed into the dream world and promptly encountered trouble, as was his habit. For once, though, Watanuki’s disregard for his own personal wellbeing was not precisely what bothered Doumeki.
Watanuki’s narration continued:
“I was terrified, Himawari, terrified! But just at the moment I thought I was about to be eaten by this giant saber-toothed toad thing, Haruka came out of absolutely nowhere—on his horse again!—and shot it with an arrow, and it exploded with golden light!”
Watanuki wriggled his fingers, presumably his rendition of an explosion.
“That’s amazing!” Kunogi said, awed.
“Right? And then he did this thing where he shot two arrows at once”—this was pantomimed as well—“and both of them hit two different monsters, dead on. From a moving horse! At that point the monsters were fleeing in every direction, and he rode over to me and helped me up. I thanked him, obviously, but he just smiled and said he was happy to help!” At that, Watanuki’s gaze snapped to Doumeki. “You hear that? Happy to help!”
Doumeki grunted noncommittally through a mouthful of quiche. Its deliciousness was not quite managing to sweeten Doumeki’s rapidly souring mood.
Watanuki rolled his eyes. “You could stand to take a leaf out of your grandfather’s book. You’ve never been happy about a damn thing in your life. And I bet you can’t even ride a horse!”
“I know how to ride a horse,” Doumeki found himself saying, unaccountably defensive. He did happen to know, but why should it matter? In this day and age, horsemanship was a hardly relevant to most people’s lives—even bizarre, spirit-infested lives like theirs.
Kunogi giggled. “You two are so funny,” she said. Then she sobered. “But seriously, Watanuki, I’m glad you’re alright! You’re always getting into dangerous situations like that—you’re so brave.”
“So stupid,” Doumeki countered.
Ignoring him, Watanuki inflated with pride as he always did whenever Kunogi praised him.
“That’s so very sweet of you to say, Himawari!” He trilled with unrestrained delight. “But really it was Haruka that was the brave one this time, for saving me.”
Doumeki bit down too hard on a bit of potato and his teeth sank painfully into his lower lip.
“He can be a real knight in shining armor! Minus the shining armor.” Watanuki waved his hands in front of him, backtracking. “Not that I need saving all the time, or anything, but it’s just nice to know he’s got my back—in the dream world, anyway.”
It’s just nice to know he’s got my back.
Watanuki’s words reverberated in Doumeki’s skull. He’d grown increasingly tense while his friend spoke, and now his whole body felt as though it’d been pulled taught as a bow string. His lip smarted where he’d bitten it, compounding his irritation.
“Maybe if you weren’t always endangering yourself in completely avoidable ways, like a moron, you wouldn’t need a babysitter,” Doumeki said.
There must have been something especially treacherous in his tone, because both of his companions turned to look at him, similarly owl-eyed.
Watanuki recovered quickly and bared his teeth.
“I don’t need babysitter, you absolute—“
Doumeki stood.
“Excuse me,” he said. He hastily gathered up his things, pausing only to snatch three of Watanuki’s meticulously crafted petit fours—one of each flavor, raspberry, white chocolate, and lemon curd—from their container for later, because emotions made him hungry. Then he marched across the schoolyard in the direction of his civics classroom.
His friends stared after his retreating back in stunned silence.
To the average onlooker, Doumeki would have appeared to be merely another bored student in his afternoon classes, slumped halfway over his desk with his head resting in his palms and wearing an utterly vacant expression.
Inside, however, he was fuming. And the worst of it was, Doumeki wasn’t entirely sure what he was fuming about.
Sure, Watanuki could be bothersome. But all things considered, lunch had been par for the course—Watanuki had yelled and insulted and flailed much more severely on countless occasions, and it never got to Doumeki. Indeed, he often went out of his way to rile up the other boy; it was a remarkably easy and rewarding pastime.
And it wasn’t like Doumeki minded that Watanuki didn’t outwardly appreciate the lengths Doumeki went to protect him on their adventures. He didn’t do it for credit. If he wanted to be fawned over, he’d hang out with the girls in their class who were constantly passing him little heart-shaped notes or the boys looking to learn how to get girls to pass them little heart-shaped notes.
No, he’d chosen Watanuki, and he was satisfied with that choice. Watanuki came with his own set of problems, to be sure, but Doumeki was devoted to him—he would freely admit that to himself, if not aloud.
“It’s just nice to know he’s got my back,” Watanuki had said with admiration, of that dream version of Doumeki’s grandfather; the one that according to him, looked and sounded so much like his grandson.
Doumeki prodded at the sore spot where he’d bit his lip with his tongue.
Would it truly be such a blow to Watanuki’s precious pride to admit that Doumeki had his back as well? And in the waking hours, at that?
He stared into space as he stewed. He stewed so intently, in fact, that he did not notice when his final class of the day had ended. He would have continued to not notice if Kunogi hadn’t appeared in front of his desk, directly in the middle of his staring-into-space zone, while the other students were filing out.
Kunogi regarded him with mild concern.
“Doumeki,” she said gently, “are you alright?”
“Yeah. Just a headache.” Doumeki lied blandly.
“Are you sure? It seemed like you might be upset about something to do with Watanuki at lunch. But as long as you’re sure…” Kunogi blinked expectantly at him.
When Doumeki only nodded stiffly in response, she added: “If there is something you don’t want to talk about, I know you and Watanuki will work it out—you two always do. But I know it can be tough to be upset with someone you care for.”
She smiled beatifically at him, then bid him farewell.
When Doumeki finally left school, he was surprised to see Watanuki standing just outside the gates. Usually the other boy would walk home with Kunogi alone if Doumeki took too long to collect himself at the end of the day, or had club activities, or if Watanuki simply thought he could get away with it—unless there was a particularly clingy spirit that he wanted Doumeki to ward off.
Watanuki would never say when that was the issue—heaven forbid he ask for Doumeki’s assistance directly—but there were always signs. That haunted look in his mismatched eyes would worsen, or he’d develop some new weird movement to dodge whatever was plaguing him. Sometimes it was as subtle as repeated glances at a specific area, or an aura of nervousness, but Doumeki always noticed.
Today, though, Watanuki seemed as tranquil as he ever did. He was looking over what appeared to be class notes, a thoughtful frown curling his mouth downwards and his hair falling forward into his face. He was due for a haircut.
“Oi.”
Watanuki looked up, frown sharpening into a scowl. “That’s still not my name!”
“What are you still doing here?”
“What do you think? Waiting for your slow ass! You think I hang around vacant schools for fun, like a total freak?”
“You are a total freak,” Doumeki reminded him, matter-of-fact.
Fingers in his ears, Doumeki calmly strode straight past Watanuki as the latter threw his standard tantrum. Fortunately for Doumeki’s eardrums, it petered out quickly, and and a much more reasonable Watanuki jogged down the block to catch up with him.
“Since you’re suddenly so interested, I waited for you because Yuuko has an errand she’d like us to run. Well,” Watanuki paused to sigh theatrically, “she called it an errand, I bet it’ll be more of a quest—as usual.”
“Mm. You haven’t made hot pot in a while.”
Watanuki tsked. “That’s because it’s been summer, idiot. It’s hot enough outside. And who said I’d be feeding you?”
Their easy, familiar script soothed Doumeki as they strode together along the quiet neighborhood streets, until his earlier melancholy fell away.
The witch was waiting for them at the temple, looking incongruous with her surroundings in black leather pants and a cropped blouse the color of an oil slick. She smiled that imperious smile of hers when she saw them, as though the courtyard of the temple were actually part of her home, not Doumeki’s, and she was graciously permitting their entrance.
Doumeki offered tea; Yuuko accepted. Before Doumeki could take a step in that direction, however, Watanuki had commandeered the task. He stormed off towards the temple’s residence, grousing about how he always had to do all the work, and how he never got a word of thanks in return.
Hopefully whoever was home—most likely only his mother, at this hour—wouldn’t mind Watanuki’s intrusion. They all knew him and his quirks well enough by now not to be alarmed by Watanuki’s assumption that every kitchen ever constructed was intended for his sole use, and his tendency to substitute complaints for small talk, particularly wherever Doumeki was involved.
In the meantime, Doumeki was left alone with the witch.
“He does love to be useful,” Yuuko mused fondly, gazing lazily after Watanuki. “He’ll make a fine housewife, one day.”
Doumeki almost laughed; it came out as a sort of muffled snort. Yuuko raised a narrow eyebrow.
“I’m serious. It’s a rare gift,” she said.
“Don’t let him hear you say that.”
“Oh, Watanuki knows how much I appreciate his domestic nature—almost as much as you do, I expect.”
Doumeki had no response to that. The witch didn’t seem to need one.
Watanuki returned in short order, expertly balancing three cups and a teapot on a tray. He served Yuuko’s tea first, then Doumeki’s; he noted with satisfaction that Watanuki had brewed Doumeki’s favorite of the brands his family kept on hand. For such a fidgety person, his pale hands were remarkably steady as he poured.
Watanuki set the tray aside, then looked to Yuuko expectantly. Yuuko sipped her tea in silence for a while before speaking, observing the pair of them through her lashes; Doumeki had long suspected she lived off of holding others in suspense.
“Some months back I received an overpayment for the granting of a wish,” the witch finally began. “Usually I try not to allow for lines of credit at the shop, for lack of a better term, but in this circumstance it was…unavoidable. It’s past time for the debt to be repaid, and the two of you will help me do it.”
“How?” Watanuki asked warily.
“You must enter the dream world and retrieve this.”
Yuuko reached into her blood red handbag and produced a piece of paper torn from a notebook. On it, there was a detailed ink drawing of what appeared to be a tin of small fish.
Watanuki plucked the paper from Yuuko’s hand and peered at it.
“…Aren’t those anchovies? You know they sell those at the supermarket,” Watanuki said.
Yuuko rolled her eyes. “Not these anchovies—these are special.”
“Special how?” Watanuki pressed, his curiosity obviously winning out against his irritation at being asked to do something he’d deemed inconvenient. “Why would you want a dream of anchovies instead of…normal anchovies? Can you even eat dream anchovies?”
Knowing she’d caught Watanuki’s interest, Yuuko smiled. “It will become clear,” she said enigmatically. Watanuki bristled.
“How exactly do we do that?” Doumeki asked the witch quickly, heading off the other boy’s impending tirade. Often, when dealing with the witch and her attendant, Doumeki found it best to stick to the practical details. “I don’t know about the two of you, but I can’t voluntarily go shopping in my dreams.”
Yuuko clapped her hands together, her smile slanting into something more mischievous.
“Well, now—that’s the fun part!”
Without further ado, she reached into her bag again, whipped a large glass jar, uncorked it, grabbed a handful of the shimmery blue powder inside, and threw it directly into Doumeki’s face.
Doumeki shut his eyes instinctively, sealing them tight against the powder. He hoped it wasn’t corrosive—he’d had more than enough eyeball-related trauma this year already.
He didn’t have much time for hoping, though, because he was already growing so very, very drowsy…
When Doumeki opened his eyes, he found himself standing just outside the front gates of his family’s temple at sunset, looking into a full-length mirror.
He blinked. The mirror image of himself did not blink. Doumeki was also reasonably sure he’d have noticed if he had a cigarette in his mouth, as his reflection did. He couldn’t recall changing into a green kimono either.
“Grandfather,” Doumeki said.
The young man who was Doumeki’s grandfather smiled warmly. “Please, Shizuka, think of me as Haruka in this place. While I do possess all my life’s memories, I admit it feels a little wrong to be called ‘grandfather’ while I’m in this youthful form.”
Doumeki nodded his assent dazedly, struck dumb. It was one thing to hear about Watanuki’s encounters with him, or see the hazy memory of the old man in his normal dreams. It was an entirely different thing to see him here, substantial, nearly alive.
“Are you real?” Doumeki asked bluntly.
“Of course he’s real, idiot,” Watanuki interjected, handily notifying Doumeki of his presence. He was standing in the road a few feet away, attempting to rub that blue powder out of his eyes and only managing to spread it around more in the process.
“Damn it, Yuuko, why couldn’t you just—ugh, never mind—Doumeki, you can’t just go around asking people if they’re real! It’s rude! Who the hell taught you manners? They obviously didn’t do a good job.”
“I suppose that would have been me, but I don’t mind the question,” Haruka said, laughter in his voice. “To answer it, I would say: more real than your average dream, less real than one of the spirits the pair of you often encounter. An echo, if you will, of a life lived half in one world, and half in another.”
“See? Told you,” Watanuki said. Then he cocked his head inquisitively at Haruka. “What are you doing here, Haruka? Did you know we’d be coming?”
“There aren’t many humans who cross the barrier between our worlds voluntarily, and few who do so as frequently as you. I figured you were the most likely visitor,” Haruka said. “But I admit, it is a surprise to see Shizuka here as well.”
There was a gentle familiarity in the way Haruka spoke to Watanuki. Doumeki thought back to all Watanuki’s stories about meeting the man in dreams, all the way to that first night, when Haruka had shown Watanuki that photo of Doumeki dressed as a girl that sent his friend into hysterics for a week—first due to the mere fact of its existence, and then because Doumeki wasn’t embarrassed by it. It was strange to consider, but Watanuki had more of a rapport with this iteration of his grandfather than Doumeki did.
“It was a surprise to me as well—you’d think Yuuko would trust me to handle such a simple mission on my own,” Watanuki said, glowering at Doumeki as though he’d invited himself along. “Anyway, maybe you can help us—we’re looking for this?”
Watanuki held out the piece of paper he’d taken from Yuuko. Haruka took a long drag on his cigarette as he examined it with interest.
“You’ll need to go to the supermarket for that.” Haruka said.
“That’s what I told her!” Watanuki cried out in exasperation.
Haruka smiled indulgently at him. “Ah, but I think you and I may be referring to slightly different supermarkets…”
The three of them walked along the empty streets of the neighborhood surrounding the temple. The dream world version of it appeared much the same as the waking one, only a little bit off, like coming home to find someone had moved all your furniture six inches to the left. By far the eeriest part was the lack of people or any evidence of their presence, but there were other discrepancies too: dark alleys where there should have been sunlit sidewalks, stillness where there should have been movement.
“Where is everyone?” Doumeki asked, idly wishing he’d been permitted to set down his school bag before the witch had knocked him out, or better yet, grab his bow. He felt far more vulnerable here than he ever did when she set them tasks in the waking world. He warded off spirits, yes, but what about nightmares?
“Awake, obviously,” Watanuki said, seeming less on edge than usual by contrast. “It’s barely dusk for the other people who dream of this place.” He grimaced. “Damn—I’d just managed to fix my sleep schedule, and now it’s going to be all messed up again.”
Soon enough, they arrived at the neighborhood supermarket. Doumeki had been inside it dozens of times in the waking world throughout his life, and twice as often in the past couple of years, since he’d taken up shadowing Watanuki on errands as a hobby.
(Doumeki only ever bought soda and chips for himself, but he’d carry whatever Watanuki gave him to carry and pick between ingredients when prompted, if Watanuki was shopping for both of them or feeling indecisive. Watanuki invariably scoffed at Doumeki’s choices, but nonetheless selected whichever item Doumeki wanted. All in all, it was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, and always heralded a good meal.)
“Well, here goes,” Watanuki said, looking apprehensively at the sliding glass doors.
Doumeki and Haruka followed Watanuki inside. The store was bright to the point of being disorienting, and like the neighborhood surrounding it, completely deserted.
“Why would there even be supermarket for dreams?” Watanuki asked.
“Every place that has ever been dreamed of exists somewhere in this world, in some capacity.” Haruka replied. “Haven’t you ever had a dream about being lost in a store?”
“No.” Doumeki said, at the same time Watanuki said, “Constantly!”
Doumeki looked at him questioningly.
“You know!” Watanuki gestured vaguely at the disturbingly pristine aisles surrounding them. “Those dreams where you’re looking for miso paste, or whatever, but it’s in the wrong section and then you go pick up a tomato and they all start screaming and the cereal boxes are chasing you with kitchen shears—“
“Here’s hoping we’re not in one of your dreams,” Doumeki said, thinking about the sole dream he’d ever had that took place in a supermarket—one which he’d never admit to having, because its contents would likely send Watanuki into shock, and then where would Doumeki be?
There were no malicious breakfast foods around, but there were a lot of other interesting things. Doumeki picked up a large bag of spicy shrimp chips with familiar packaging, but illegible text. When he tilted the bag, the beady eyes of the pink cartoon shrimp followed Doumeki intently. He put the bag down.
“I would not recommend consuming anything you come across here,” Haruka advised. “At least, not until it has been moved into the waking world.”
“Look at these gorgeous radishes!” Watanuki exclaimed joyfully. He’d only been out of Doumeki’s line of sight for a moment, and his arms were full of fruits and vegetables, all vibrant and unblemished. “And the melons, they’re huge! And the plums—oh, why can’t produce be this fresh when I’m awake?”
“Don’t eat those.” Doumeki said with mock gravity—indistinguishable from sincere gravity—even though he knew Watanuki had heard what Haruka said. It was fun to nag Watanuki back now and then.
Watanuki scowled, taking the bait, as he always did. “I know that, I’m not stupid! And who are you to tell anybody not to eat anything, you hypocritical human-shaped vacuum cleaner!”
“I don’t eat just anything,” Doumeki said. “Only very good things.”
“Could’ve fooled me, you hollow-legged glutton—“
A laugh interrupted the rest of Watanuki’s insult. The daikon Watanuki was brandishing at Doumeki froze in the air as the two of them turned to look at Haruka.
“I apologize,” Haruka said, still chuckling. “It makes me happy to see the two of you getting along so well. You remind me of myself and—well, it makes me happy, I’ll leave it at that.”
In a show of remarkable restraint, only one of Watanuki’s eyebrows twitched, betraying his indignation at the idea that he and Doumeki could possibly be considered friends.
“Fish will be this way,” Watanuki grumbled, carefully replacing the daikon on its display with an air of wistfulness.
When both his companions had their backs turned, Doumeki swiped two of the closest plums and stashed them in his school bag. The daikon wouldn’t have fit.
The store seemed to stretch on for miles. Some of the sections repeated, others were missing. Some contained things that generally could not be found in a supermarket—mannequins, birdhouses, live mice—all meticulously organized in the fluorescent silence. Doumeki counted them off at first, then stopped when the number of aisles surpassed that of any store Doumeki had ever seen.
“I think I see fish!” Watanuki announced at last, suddenly jogging ahead of them to the next row of shelves. “Yes! Okay, there’s sardines, tuna, mussels…are those toes? Ew. Anchovies, anchovies, anchovies… Ah-ha! Ack, why do they have to be all the way up there?”
The tins of anchovies that most resembled the drawing Yuuko had given them—inconveniently located on the top shelf—were packaged in bright green, with a calligraphic drawing of an anchovy printed on its side. They looked decidedly average. Not for the first time, Doumeki weighed the possibility that the witch was playing an elaborate prank on her employee—it was hard to tell the difference, with her.
Watanuki leapt up, trying to swat down a tin, but didn’t come close to hitting one. Doumeki tried as well, despite Watanuki’s protests (“You’re not that much taller than me, what made you think you could reach when I couldn’t!”) but was also unsuccessful.
“Bet this place sells ladders.” Doumeki said.
“No, I’m gonna climb up there.”
“Be careful,” Haruka said.
Doumeki wasn’t all that concerned, watching Watanuki step up on to the first shelf, then find his footing on the next, pulling himself up and he went. He’d seen Watanuki scale trees with the agility of a squirrel, when the mood struck him—or, more accurately, when whatever was chasing him was sufficiently terrifying to serve as motivation.
His complacency nearly resulted in disaster.
At the moment Watanuki’s groping hand closed on one of the tins, the shelf supporting his weight collapsed, sending a cascade of preserved fish tumbling in every direction, and Watanuki along with them.
“Watanuki!” Doumeki shouted, springing forward, but Haruka got there first. He caught Watanuki quite gracefully, with one arm under the backs of Watanuki’s knees and the other at his back—a feat impressive more for the reflexes required than strength, as Doumeki knew firsthand the wiry teen weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, if that.
“Thanks,” said Watanuki breathlessly. “Who knew dream shelves had weight limits? Seems a little unfair.”
“Are you alright?” Haruka asked mildly.
“I’m fine—it just startled me more than anything else.”
Haruka hadn’t put Watanuki down yet, and Doumeki wished he would. He couldn’t help but remember how Watanuki had writhed like an eel caught in a net the last time Doumeki had to carry him somewhere because he’d hurt himself. But here, when Haruka caught him and held him in the exact same way, he seemed completely unperturbed—maybe even a bit pleased.
Doumeki felt himself frown. What, precisely, was the difference?
“What’s wrong with your face?” Watanuki asked Doumeki once his feet were planted firmly back on the ground at last. “I said I’m fine.”
“Hmph.” Doumeki grunted.
Watanuki huffed. “Let’s get the hell out of here before I break an arm or something.”
Doumeki wished he wouldn’t joke about things like that.
Getting the hell out of there, as Watanuki put it, turned out to be easier said than done.
First there was the walk back. It must have been night in the waking world, because they did run across some other shoppers, staggering dazedly through the aisles like zombies and talking to themselves, not noticing the three of them at all but making obstacles of themselves nonetheless.
Then, once they finally reached the cash registers and the exit, Doumeki saw something…nightmarish.
Back when Doumeki was a first year, a teacher had fallen ill and his class had been made to watch a documentary about the ocean to keep them out of trouble while they scrounged up a substitute. The subject had bored him, so Doumeki retained very little of the documentary’s content, but he did remember quite vividly the grainy videos of fish and jellies from the depths of the Pacific, glowing and alien and dangerous. He found himself thinking of that documentary whenever Watanuki attempted to describe a spirit that Doumeki wasn’t able to see.
The thing towering over them looked like one of those abyssal creatures, but dry, and—somehow—worse.
“Gah! What the hell is that?” Watanuki shrieked, summarizing Doumeki’s thoughts succinctly.
“I believe that is the cashier,” said Haruka.
Watanuki’s shriek rose an octave higher. “That thing works here?!”
Now that Haruka mentioned it, Doumeki noticed that the monster was indeed wearing a shirt—or a shirt-like a garment—around its armless torso with the supermarket’s logo printed on it. But the monster’s chosen vocation was the least of their concerns at that moment—it was inching forward, slug-like, out from behind the cash register towards them, its huge, bulging black eyes burning with malice.
The cashier open its mouth. “You. Will. Pay now.” It thundered haltingly, revealing teeth the size of Doumeki’s forearm. Teeth shouldn’t be that big.
“Pay!” It demanded again. Doumeki got the distinct impression that the payment it desired had nothing to do with money. “Pay! Pay!”
Abruptly, the cashier lunged in their general direction—faster than its bulk should have allowed, but imprecise. Its jaws slammed shut about five feet to Doumeki’s left, away from the others, instead knocking over a display of boxed pancake mixes. Perhaps, much like a deep sea fish, it couldn’t see well.
Doumeki reflexively reached for the bow he knew he hadn’t brought. But by some fluke of this strange world, his hand closed around a narrow column of bamboo. He lifted it; it wasn’t the usual longbow that he used at school, but instead one of his grandfather’s many antique ones that they kept in storage at the temple. A mystery for later.
He knocked an arrow and leveled it at the cashier. To his right, Haruka knocked an arrow as well, but he did not raised his bow to shoot.
“Wait!”
Watanuki jumped up and down frantically in front of Doumeki’s arrow.
“Get out of the way.” Doumeki said.
“You get out of the way! I have an idea!”
Doumeki’s brow furrowed with consternation, but he did as he was bidden.
Watanuki reached into his school bag and dug around for what felt like ages, finally extracting a small, familiar container. He popped its lid. Inside lay a single raspberry petit four, leftover from their lunch. Slowly and deliberately, Watanuki picked up the cake and held it out towards the cashier.
“I apologize for startling you in your place of business,” he said courteously. “We didn’t mean to cause you trouble, or steal from you. Would you consider accepting this cake, in exchange for this package of anchovies? We’d be very grateful.”
The cashier turned one large eye towards the petit four. Then it leaned forward and opened its mouth very, very wide, exposing even more rows of glistening teeth.
Doumeki automatically moved to stand in front of Watanuki, who was just a little too close to the aforementioned teeth for Doumeki’s liking, but Haruka held him back, smiling and shaking his head calmly.
The creature settled into stillness, mouth agape.
“Er…” Watanuki hesitated. “You want me to throw it in?”
The cashier produced a low, rumbling growl that made the linoleum under their feet quiver. A small amount of goo from the cashier’s lips dripped onto its store-branded uniform. Doumeki’s hand tightened on his bow.
“Alright, here goes…” Watanuki tossed the petit four underhanded into the massive jaws. As soon as the treat landed, the jaws closed around it.
A long moment passed as the cashier chewed and swallowed. Then:
“Would. You like. A receipt?” The cashier asked.
“Oh! Um, no thank you,” Watanuki said.
“Thank you for. Shopping. With us. Have a. Nice. Day.”
With that, the cashier slunk back behind the register and promptly began to snore.
“Guess it liked it.” Doumeki said, still holding his bow and feeling rather useless.
Watanuki turned up his nose haughtily. “Of course it liked it, my cakes are exquisite.”
“Why did you have exactly one of those left over?” Doumeki asked.
They were crossing the parking lot in front of the supermarket, heading by unspoken agreement back towards the temple. Watanuki was busy inspecting their purchase with suspicion, as though it might start glowing or bite him or something, but pocketed it when Doumeki spoke.
“No reason!” Watanuki said quickly, eyes shifty. “It’s not like I would save food for you, if you were upset, or anything. I don’t care, really. You eat too much as it is. But Himawari said you seemed kinda off at lunch, and she made me promise to save one for you. It was all her idea! I wouldn’t even have noticed, because I pay a completely normal amount of attention to you and your emotional state!” Watanuki’s blush increased exponentially along with his volume as he spoke, until his face was almost crimson. “How dare you suggest otherwise!”
Doumeki figured it wasn’t worth pointing out that he had suggested nothing whatsoever.
“That was some excellent quick thinking, Watanuki,” Haruka said serenely from Watanuki’s other side. “You would know better than most that all things carry a price, but it was astute of you to recognize that you had something to offer in exchange. Food prepared by skilled hands carries a high value in this world. If anything, you might have overpaid.”
Haruka’s gaze drifted to Doumeki’s school bag. “Or perhaps it was exactly right,” he amended, with a wink at Doumeki.
Watanuki looked like he might swoon. “Th-thanks, Haruka—I mean, I—anybody could’ve—“
“Just take the compliment.” Doumeki said sharply, irrationally irritated by Watanuki’s flustered stuttering. “Idiot.” He added, for good measure.
“Don’t tell me what to do! Jerk! You didn’t even help, you just stood there, looking—” he waved his arms around furiously, as though the word he was searching for were a mosquito flying around his head “—hungry!”
“I am hungry.” Doumeki conceded. They’d tragically skipped Doumeki’s afternoon snack time and dinner and dessert. It was a wonder he wasn’t wasting away as they spoke.
When they arrived back where they’d started, outside the gates of Doumeki’s temple, Haruka addressed them both.
“You will wake soon—but before you go, might I have a word with Shizuka?”
“Of course,” Watanuki said. “It was nice to see you again, Haruka! Thank you for your help.”
Haruka beamed at him. “Any time, Watanuki. Take care.”
Watanuki walked through the temple gates and out of earshot.
It was a rare thing to have an opportunity to speak to a deceased relative, but Doumeki found that he couldn’t think of anything to say to the man that would be of value to either of them. Haruka’s spirit surely knew he was missed by the family he’d left behind; anyway, Doumeki wasn’t one for heartfelt goodbyes or poignant declarations.
Embarrassingly, foolishly, all Doumeki could think of was Watanuki’s obvious fondness for the man, and that dull ache in his chest when Watanuki smiled at him. He’d spent most of the walk back to the temple listening to the two of them chat like old friends, it has struck him as surely as one of his own arrows how correct they looked together.
He knew full well that it was ridiculous to be jealous of his own grandfather for earning Watanuki’s adoration, but there it was, undeniable.
Haruka lit another cigarette—his fourth of their brief trip. “One nice thing about being a dream is that I don’t have to worry about poisoning my lungs any more. I’m sure you remember how your grandmother used to scold me for the habit—though I always suspected she took pleasure in being angry,” he said. Then he fixed Doumeki with that look that had always made him feel like he was being x-rayed, just as penetrating on a youthful face as it had been on the aged one Doumeki remembered.
“I can tell something has been troubling you, Shizuka.”
“It’s not important.”
“If it’s troubling you, then it is important.”
Over Haruka’s shoulder, he watched Watanuki gently poke at the blue petals of a flowering bush in the temple’s garden. That ache throbbed, refusing to be ignored, no matter how hard Doumeki pushed back on it.
“You’re so like me, and yet you…” Doumeki faltered. He tore his eyes away from Watanuki. “He’s so comfortable around you. He’s never like that with me.”
“No? Never?”
Doumeki thought about it. He thought about all their adventures, lunches, and meandering walks to and from school. He thought about Watanuki coming to rant to him about the rising cost of fresh produce and laughing riotously at Doumeki’s one and only disastrous attempt to make an omelette in his presence. He thought about Watanuki invading his house to study because Doumeki’s “stupid ugly face” was less distracting than whatever spirit was presently occupying his apartment, and proceeding to pass out on the floor of Doumeki’s room, his head pillowed on his math textbook.
“It’s different,” Doumeki said lamely.
“People—especially those who have suffered as much loss as our Watanuki—often find it easier to express their love for things that are unavailable to them. It’s safer than wearing your heart on your sleeve, when it would be so easy for the one you care for to unravel it…even if they’d rather tear their own heart out than do so.” He gave Doumeki another pointed look. “In any case, I think you’ve been looking at this backwards. Did it ever occur to you that Watanuki might be so comfortable with me because I remind him of you?”
It hadn’t.
Haruka seemed to figure as much, because he smiled and placed a broad, oddly chilly hand on Doumeki’s shoulder.
“Just something to chew on,” he said lightly. He and the rest of the dream world began to dissolve. “Best of luck to you, Shizuka…”
Doumeki had to blink several times before he was able to parse his surroundings. It was the early hours of the morning, judging by where the moon hung in the sky, and he was lying on concrete. A warm, black shape was pressed along his side.
The shape stirred. It was Watanuki. Doumeki held himself as still as possible, waiting for the other boy to freak out over their proximity, but it didn’t happen. Watanuki lay there, breathing steadily, for nearly a minute before rolling slowly away from Doumeki and onto all fours with a soft groan of pain.
“Ow, my back…” Watanuki whined as he painstakingly clambered the rest of the way to his feet, brushing gravel from his uniform.
When Doumeki sat up, a piece of paper that had been resting on his chest fluttered to the ground. It was another page torn out of a notebook, like the one that had borne the drawing earlier. He squinted in the darkness to make out the words scrawled on it in bold, well-formed characters.
“Do not disturb: not dead, only sleeping,” he read aloud for Watanuki’s benefit.
“I can’t believe she left us here like that all night!” Watanuki said, aghast.
“I can,” Doumeki said. His face still felt gritty from the blue dust, and the smell of cigarettes clung to nostrils. “Do you have the thing?”
“What thing?” Watanuki echoed blankly. “Oh! The thing!”
Watanuki’s shadowy figure contorted as he rummaged around in his pockets.
“Ah-ha!” He said at last, producing the tin with a flourish. “Seems like a lot of trouble to go through for some fish. They better be valuable, since I slept all night on the cold, hard ground with you to get them. Man—she could’ve at least brought us a blanket.”
Doumeki thought a lot of Yuuko’s tasks were rather more trouble than they were worth, but he kept that opinion to himself. Instead, he yawned and stretched extravagantly—unlike Watanuki, he didn’t seem to have any back pain, but he felt stiff and strangely hungover.
“I need tea.”
“Make it yourself!”
“Shh.”
They sat together in exhausted yet mostly companionable silence on the steps of the temple’s main building, drinking tea and watching the sun rise across the courtyard, lighting the trees in amber. Normally he would have insisted that Watanuki make him breakfast—as a payment for dragging him along on one of his witch errands, he’d claim—but he didn’t want to wake up the rest of his household prematurely. He’d make Watanuki cook later. In the meantime…
Doumeki reached for his school bag and pulled out the two plums he’d taken from the produce section of the dream supermarket. By some miracle, they hadn’t gotten squished between his textbooks.
“Huh?” Watanuki said when Doumeki mutely held one one of the plums under the other boy’s nose. “No way, is that from the supermarket? Did you steal it?”
“I think technically you paid for both of us.”
“Hm—well, I guess that’s alright then.” He took the plum out of Doumeki’s hand and admired the rich purplish-red color of its skin. “Haruka said we could eat stuff once it left the dream world, right?”
Doumeki watched him bite down, half expecting something weird to happen, but nothing did. Watanuki chewed thoughtfully.
“It’s a pretty good plum,” he said, with a nod of approval.
Doumeki took a bite of his. It was indeed a pretty good plum, its flavor landing right in the middle of the plum sweetness-to-tartness spectrum, with a soft, consistent texture. Definitely better quality than anything they could pick up at a normal supermarket, but on par with a fresh one from a farm.
“You call my grandfather by his given name,” Doumeki said, a while later.
Watanuki looked askance at him. “So? He asked me to, same as he asked you. I couldn’t call you both Doumeki, that’d just be confusing.”
Doumeki didn’t respond immediately, instead focusing on liberating the last of the fruit from its hard central pit. He wasn’t quite sure what he was hoping to get out of this line of conversation, but he was in it now, and Doumeki didn’t like to do things halfway.
“Since he’s your senior, you should call him by his surname and me by my first name.” Doumeki reasoned.
Watanuki’s eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed. Doumeki was reminded of a performer with a mask, flipping through caricatures. “Unlike Haruka”—he drew out the syllables, as if to mock him—“you never invited me to call you anything else!”
“Fine. Call me Shizuka.”
“Fine!” Watanuki exclaimed shrilly, thrusting both arms in the air. “Then I guess I’m Kimihiro!”
“I know.”
“Don’t be a smartass—I’m telling you to use it, moron!”
“Okay.”
“Okay!”
They stared at each other for a moment: Watanuki scowling, Doumeki expressionless. Then Watanuki lurched forward without warning, crossing over into Doumeki’s personal space.
Doumeki mirrored the movement, which was apparently the wrong thing to do. As soon as he began to lean in, Watanuki flinched violently away from him with a bird-like squawk of terror, as though he’d suddenly realized Doumeki was made of burning coals. He stumbled up off the stairs and darted off across the courtyard to the temple’s gate, all in the span of one chaotic second.
Bemused, Doumeki watched Watanuki vanish around the corner in a flurry, towards neither Yuuko’s shop nor his apartment.
He’d left his school bag on the step next to Doumeki’s. No matter—he’d see him again at school in a couple hours.
“What a weirdo,” Doumeki said aloud to the empty courtyard, his heart still hammering from the residual thrill of that blissful interval where Watanuki had been close enough for Doumeki to feel the other boy’s breath against his cheek, close enough to touch him without having to reach out.
He sipped his cooling tea and smiled.