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Rin Okumura is well-acquainted with being observed.
Hard not to be when there have been eyes on him his entire life. Disapproving sneers, resentful glares, and even the occasional frightened, teary-eyed simper have been cast over him for as long as he can remember. Barely four-years old and already labelled with all manner of nasty words. Undisciplined, feral child. Dangerous. Monster. Worst of all, demon, if only because he has never quite been able to purge the tortured, gut-punched expression on his father’s face when he first heard it said from his memory.
Now fast approaching seventeen and a high school dropout struggling to avoid the slippery slope into delinquency when no one seems to expect anything more of him, he knows when he is being watched.
Behind the tide of housewives and hunched elderly women eagerly lining up for samples of the noodles he’s frying on the grill, a man is watching him with an intense gaze. Perhaps close to his old man’s age, he is clean shaven with thin wrinkles creasing the corners of his sharp, hawk-like eyes, and a few stray grey hairs colouring his temples. His chin is buried in the loop of a thick grey scarf, and his simple black coat is buttoned up to his throat. A plastic shopping basket hangs off one of his arms, piled high with fresh vegetables and a selection of the finer, more expensive cuts of meat this small store has to offer. He makes no move to venture closer or attempt to squeeze past the queue of hungry shoppers between him and the other counter. Only when the hoard has started to disperse does he make his approach.
“You’ve got a knack for pairing flavours there, son. What’s your name?”
He narrows his eyes at the man, wary, and busies himself needlessly scraping the spatulas in his hands clean. There is still a couple of hours left of his shift and considering how successful this batch was, the scowly manager who reluctantly handed him a store uniform earlier this afternoon is bound to demand he make more. They’ll only get dirty again.
“Rin.”
“Well, Rin. You got some of those noodles left? This old man would like to try your cookin’.”
There’s just enough for one more sample. Maybe two at a stretch. With a nod, he scoops the last portion into a styrofoam cup and hands it over to the man with a pair of disposable chopsticks.
The man chews thoughtfully.
“Perhaps a little heavy on the sesame oil, but not by much. You’ve certainly got some talent there. Enough that you’re wasted cookin’ in a place like this.” Grinning, he holds out his hand to shake. The foreign gesture takes the wind right out of Rin’s sails, nullifying his temper before it has the chance to flare. He’s too surprised to do anything more than shake the man’s hand, much less argue that he did well to get this job. “The name's Akīchirō. Now, I’ve got a restaurant a few blocks east of here and a spot’s just opened up in my kitchen. It’s yours if you want it, kid. I could use someone with a fresh passion for food. Seems to me like you’ve got that passion.”
“You’re serious?”
“‘Course, I am. I wouldn’t be offerin’ it to you if I wasn’t serious.”
He stares expectantly, awash with disbelief and waiting for the punchline. There must be one. There always is. Opportunities like this don’t just land in the laps of people like him. Not genuinely anyway, and he’s not about to be the butt of some cruel joke.
“Think on it anyway,” the man carries on, either not noticing his doubt or kindly ignoring it. Digging a hand into the pocket of his coat, he pulls out an old, folded receipt and a pen, and scrawls down an address. Rin recognises it at once. How many times has he walked past the Amaranth and wished not for the first time that his family had the money to splurge on a reservation there? Even just once would be more than enough. Just the chance to sample the mix of deeply traditional Japanese cuisine and exotic, foreign dishes the place is known for. To get an idea of some new flavours to experiment with himself in the tiny kitchen at the back of the monastery.
“If you’re keen, ditch this joint and come on down tomorrow sometime before noon. You can show me what else you can do by helpin’ me with the prep for tomorrow’s dinner service.”
The monastery is empty when he returns home for the night. Of course, it is. His father was called away to handle an exorcism of some sort out of the city, and decided to visit Yukio at his fancy academy for the weekend on the return trip. He won’t be back until Monday, another three days' time. There is no one home to convince him not to trust strangers or take the opportunity he’s been presented with. No one to celebrate it with either.
He brushes his teeth in the dark, the only light on being the one in his bedroom. Leaning against the bathroom vanity, he keeps his back to the mirror so he doesn’t have to face the reminder that his own reflection is the only company he has tonight.
“I got offered a job today,” he murmurs aloud once he’s slid into bed for the night. “A good one. I’d be working in a real kitchen with real chefs.”
Across the room, Yukio’s bed is empty too. Silence is his only answer, weighing heavily in the dark like a stone.
Akīchirō welcomes him into his restaurant with a pleased grin and little fanfare. He’s handed a white button up shirt, an apron and a plain bandana to wrangle his tangled hair out of his face on his way in through the front door.
The kitchen is something else entirely. Following Akīchirō through the swing doors, he might as well be stepping into a whole other world. It’s huge. So much so it makes the cramped kitchen nestled in the back of the monastery look like the inside of a broom closet. Sweeping stainless steel benches line most of the walls, with surfaces so shiny he can see his own reflection warp in them as they pass. Stacked on spacious shelves above them are heavy duty cast iron pots and pans of all sizes, all arranged in neat piles. There are instruments and utensils he’s only ever seen in the catalogues sometimes stowed away inside the newspaper his father gets each week.
It’s unmooring to be standing amongst it all. Abruptly, he’s aware of his shoes. A hand-me-down pair half a size too big, a smear of mud drying over the toe of the left one. Shoes that really have no place in a kitchen this professional.
Akīchirō laughs, hoarse but genuine, when he sees the look on his face. “She’s somethin’, ain’t she? Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”
“I don’t know that I will.”
Akīchirō just grins and claps an encouraging hand down over his shoulder.
“That’s what they all say. C’mon, then. I’ll show you what we do to get started.”
He didn't think he could love cooking any more than he already did but, watching the start of exquisite dishes come to life from scratch in his own two hands while under Akīchirō’s direction, he does. He really does.
“You’re good, kid. Have you ever thought about goin’ to culinary school?”
He shrugs, determinedly not looking up from the bowl and whisk in his hands. Of course, he’s thought about it. He’s never been passionate about anything else the way he is about food. Wouldn’t have the same focus or drive to even attempt to try his hand at studying anything else. But he has to be realistic. There is no hope of securing a scholarship of any kind with his academic record, and what little money they have for that sort of thing goes solely to the few smaller, mundane fees Yukio’s scholarships don’t cover. Groceries, new clothes and textbooks don’t pay for themselves.
“I could never afford it.”
Akīchirō doesn’t even blink before pointing out, “That’s not what I asked.”
“Then yeah, I’ve thought about it. A lot. My brother is off studying at some fancy ass school to be a doctor. I don’t want to be the one hanging around at home, keeping my old man at the end of his tether. I just never had the head for school, is all.”
He doesn’t ever want to hear another, “you should take a cue from your brother, Rin”, again if he can help it.
“Well, you’ve certainly got the head for this.”
“This doesn’t exactly feel like studying.”
“No,” Akīchirō murmurs. “Maybe not, but you’re learning all the same, kid. That’s all that matters in the end.”
Two weeks in and he still hasn’t said anything to his family about his new job.
Yukio’s texts are all placid and uneventful details about his new life at True Cross, each one more succinct than the last. He doesn’t inquire about what Rin’s doing with his life, other than to make sure that he’s not causing any undue trouble for their father’s sake. He’s not, of course. He’s not about to mess up this new gig when it’s a chance to do something he loves—something for himself—and chances like that generally don’t fall into the hands of people like him once, let alone twice. Their father remains blissfully unaware, still under the impression he’s pushing trolleys and restocking shelves at the supermarket he was scouted from.
Maybe he’ll be proud. But what’s a line cook in comparison to a doctor?
Akīchirō’s gruff praise is plenty enough. He may have a severe demeanour while working and demand exact precision and efficiency in his kitchen at all times, but he is generous with his approval. Being scouted by him, recognised by him, to begin with is more than enough.
These days, Rin talks more with him than he does his own father.
“Your brother’s a doctor, you said?” Akīchirō asks nonchalantly one afternoon as they’re working steadily through prep for the evening service, side-by-side.
Rin's body seizes, locking up from the elbows to his knees. An instinctive reaction he hopes isn’t too obvious (it is, he knows it is), tension unspooling from a tired reel in his chest; the lifelong sense of reaching out and always coming up short. The rhythmic drumming of the cleaver in his hand falters, the snap of the wide blade against the wooden chopping board slowing to an unenthused drone. The onions he’s dicing will be of uneven sizes now. The larger bits will be slower to soften when he adds them to the pan.
No part of him wants to talk about Yukio here. Not here, the one place where his own achievements have any merit. Are worth something.
“He’s studying to be, yeah. In another five years or so, I’m sure he will be.”
Probably sooner than that, really. Yukio was the valedictorian of his high school and that’s after making graduation a whole year and a half ahead of their age group. He’s ridiculously glad he didn’t stick around for a high school education—and that the old man didn’t try to make him. He can’t imagine anything worse than having to watch his younger brother leave him so far behind in real time. Middle school was bad enough. Now at university level, with Yukio advancing further and further ahead with every passing year, it would be so much harder to hide the war waging between his pride in his brother’s success and his shame at having never amounted to anything close in comparison.
Ducking his head, he adjusts his grip on the onion half in his grasp and focuses on cutting the damn thing. Each slice, neat and precise, the blade cool against his fingernails as he brings it down again and again. Again and again.
“I bet he can’t cut an onion as quick as that,” Akīchirō laughs, the sound like the hot oil bubbling in the deep fryer. Reedy and scraped thin from thirty odd years of cigarette breaks taken in between shifts. He gives his shoulder a firm squeeze before disappearing into the big chiller to pull out the meat for tonight’s dinner service.
—Beef bones for the following day’s soup stock. Chicken thighs and duck breasts in need of braising. Scallops in want of tender care and lots of full-fat butter. Fillets of fresh salmon and tuna to be flayed and portioned—
Rin’s helpless to resist a laugh of his own. He’s seen Yukio in the kitchen before. Academic genius and child prodigy he may be, but culinary talent he is not. His brother couldn’t cook to save himself.
Amaranth’s kitchen is a steaming flurry of heat, noise and movement. Dinner service, especially, invites a particular sort of chaos behind the swing doors. He is one of seven warm bodies twisting between benchtops, reaching for ingredients and utensils scattered on shelves all around, weaving between travelling hot pans and coworkers wielding hot trays like weapons pulled straight from a furnace. With three stoves lit at all times, two huge pots of broth broiling consistently throughout each day, the place is sweltering. Between the clang of metal, clinking porcelain, and constant whir of every extractor fan in the building, it’s too loud to think about anything but the task at hand. To listen out for anything other than the instructions Akīchirō barks out between every other breath and the cacophony of “yes, chef!” that rings out in response.
There is no time to think about the monastery he calls home or the financial problems he knows they’ve been trying hard to keep him unaware of. No time to think about Yukio and his empty bed across the room from his own. Not even the frightened and furious voices clawing through the past just to hiss the word demon in his ears like a curse. There is not a moment of quiet, of stillness, for life beyond Akīchirō’s kitchen to take effect.
Rin chops vegetables, ladles soup into bowls, stirs sauces and reduces stocks as asked. Rolls noodles from dough prepared earlier in the day, and tenderises meat before it’s thrown in flaming pans to be seared. He keeps his head down and does as he’s told.
On the twenty minute break he shares with the only other line cook in training, Akira offers him a cigarette. They sit on plastic wine crates in the narrow back alley behind the restaurant, passing a smoke between them in the dark. Chowing down on whatever food didn’t make the cut to be served on the restaurant floor.
“Chef’s spoilin’ us tonight,” Akira exclaims, inhaling the plate of overcooked egg noodles they were handed with little ceremony on their way out the door. Whoever made the mistake at least had the decency to splash a little beef broth and soy sauce over them. He’s been given plain, soggy noodles before. Even, most memorably, an entire sheet of shortbread, the bottom just a fraction too brown to meet Akīchirō’s approval.
“He sure is!” Taking his own chopsticks to the plate, he shovels them into his mouth with gusto. Twenty minutes is just enough time to wolf down a meal, take a piss behind the bins, and share a smoke, before diving back into the mania of feeding a full restaurant three times over in a night. That is, of course, if they don’t get hollered at to come back in before their time is up to lend a hand.
“You reckon we’ll finish before ten tonight?”
Rin snorts, exchanging their plate for the cigarette once again. Drawing a long inhale through it, he holds the smoke in his lungs till the blazing warmth burns through his chest, chasing back the evening chill. The heat swelling beneath his ribs feels right. Like it should be there always, as natural as his thrumming heart, and has been missing from him his entire life.
What’s he to make of that?
“Not a chance. It’s a Saturday night. There’s no way we’ll be out of here before twelve at earliest.”
Akira sighs, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. The eyeliner he insists on wearing at Akīchirō’s dismay smudges, deepening the heavy shadows under his eyes even further.
“I hate that you’re right. It could be even later if that table Eriko was complainin’ about earlier gets their way. They have a running tab open on the bar.”
“I doubt they’ll be eating that late. Akīchirō won’t keep the kitchen open after hours for one table anyway. I’m hopin’ we’ll get outta here by midnight.”
A twelve o’clock finish isn’t so bad. Baring maybe his father, the rest of the priests at the monastery will have gone home or retired for the night. The old man has developed a bad habit of passing out on one of the back pews, waiting up for him on the nights he works really late. Wanting to make sure he’s not gotten into any more trouble, probably. Or check that he’s still managing to hold down a job.
They finish at quarter to twelve. His palms are pink and raw from scrubbing saucepans clean for the last half hour, and the acrid scent of citrus from the industrial grade cleaner they use to wipe down the benches has taken up a seemingly permanent residence in his nostrils. Akīchirō sends them away with more leftovers—fluffy white rice and a mix of different roast vegetables drizzled with some kind of rich reduction—and a firm pat on the back, calling over his shoulder that he’ll see them tomorrow before disappearing back into the kitchen.
Akira doesn’t even bother trying to cover up his jaw-splitting yawn as he pushes through the restaurant’s main door. Hasn’t been bothering to hide them since the kitchen closed at eleven p.m. and they lurched urgently into cleaning the place up to Akīchirō’s professional standards.
“Fuck, man. What a night!” he exclaims, spinning on the heels of his sneakers as he opens his arms wide in a stretch.
Brisk night air slams into Rin’s face, sharp against his cheeks, as he follows Akira out into the street.
“You can say that again.”
“You doin’ anything tonight? Want to go hit up that old cinema around the block? They’ve got a good line up of classics rerunning for the next couple of nights.”
He barely hears a word Akira says. Cottonwool plugs his ears as his focus is drawn elsewhere. In the light of the street lamp behind Akira there are strange, floating black silhouettes. Surely too large to be moths, and it’s far too cold and too late at night for hornets to be out of their nests, but he can’t think of what else they could be. Buzzing through the air like insects, there is a small swarm gathering. Locusts, maybe? He squints into the dark. If they are locusts, they’re not a species he’s ever heard of before. The shape isn’t quite right, even if it’s hard to properly make out just what they look like in this light.
“What is it? Is something there?” Akira asks, curious. He twists around, following his gaze, and peers into the night with narrowed dark eyes.
The lamp flickers and at once, they’re gone. Every single one of them. Bizarre.
“I thought I saw some–” He blinks and rubs at his temples with a shrug. “Nevermind. I must be seeing things. What films are we talking about?”
At once, Akira launches into an animated description of the films due to play. He’s a huge cinematography nerd, rambling on about movies almost as much as Yukio used to ramble about whatever book he was reading on the rare occasion Rin would deign to listen (back before his disastrous final year at middle school, and before Yukio decided he was better off chasing his dreams alone than sharing them with his lousy excuse of a twin brother). He doesn’t mind so much now, though. Working in Akīchirō’s kitchen means their lives centre around odd hours, and while he’s not about to complain, it doesn’t leave much in the way of time to make friends outside of the restaurant staff. Akira is pretty much all he’s got and vice versa.
“Okay, I’m keen. I’ll watch one, but then I should probably head home.”
“Alright!” Akira whoops and slaps him enthusiastically across the back. “Let’s go then. If we hurry, we’ll catch the start of Godzilla.”
Rin lets himself be steered down the street. Pulling his phone from his pocket, he thumbs open his texts to the old man. There are no new messages. No inquiries as to where he is so late or when he’s planning on coming home. Why he thought to expect anything, he doesn't know. Slipping his phone back into his pocket, he doesn’t bother to send any sort of assurance that he is alright and will be home late.
The insects—or whatever those things were—beneath the street lamp are not the last strange things he sees.
Walking home at night, he sometimes passes through unusual cold spots in the streets. Cold in the sense that all good things have been leached from the world and replaced by icy dread, creeping like hoar frost over his bones. The feeling lingers right up until he steps behind the monastery gates. A week ago, there was even a bulbous, monkey-looking creature tearing through the grocery store carpark with a pink scarf clutched tightly in its grip. A young girl was chasing after it in tears, her mother hot on her heels calling for her to stop such silly behaviour when she could get hurt. If he hadn’t been in such a hurry to grab the ingredients Akīchirō had sent him off to buy and make it back in time for service, maybe he would have stopped to investigate.
But what else could it have been if not the wind? A hallucination? As it is, between not catching a wink of sleep between shifts and the distinct feeling of being watched whenever he’s not at home or busy at work in Akīchirō’s kitchen, he already feels like he’s going crazy.
“Whatever it is that’s hauntin’ you, kid, you leave it out of this kitchen, you hear me?” Akīchirō instructs one night, firmly but not unkindly, squeezing his shoulder with one calloused hand. “This space is for you to let go of everything out there. Don’t let it get to you here. You just focus on doin’ what I tell you, focus on the food, and you’ll get through this night alright.”
“Okay,” he murmurs, swallowing around his doubt. Being in Akīchirō’s kitchen puts his mind at ease—or as much at ease as he can be on the verge of a breakdown. What a relief it is to melt into routine and let simply someone else, someone with his best interests at heart, take the reins of his life for a few hours. Fatigue has nothing on the methodical chaos at hand during service. Here, he has a purpose to devote his entire self to.
Akīchirō pats his back, pleased. “Good man.”
Akira notices the change in him, too.
“You alright, mate?” he asks in a low voice, rich with concern. The upturned wine crates they sit on to eat during every shift are positioned plenty close enough for him to nudge his shoulder with his own.
Rin’s next inhale drags heavily on the cigarette poised between his teeth. The smoke slithers into his lungs, a tongue of heat to beat back the sinking feeling of dread gathering in his chest. The nicotine, too, addles his brain, a chemical relief to mitigate his ever growing sense of unease.
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. I’m seeing all kinds of crazy things and I can’t sleep because of it. You must think I’m losing my mind.”
Akira snorts and shakes his head.
“You’re not a kook, Rin. If you were, Akīchirō would never have hired you. Can’t have too much crazy in the kitchen or things start going to shit, and that man’s plenty crazy enough.”
“Maybe not, but I can’t think of what else would cause this.”
“A bad trip?”
Rin snorts, exasperated. “I’m not on any drugs, Akira.”
“I know that. Akīchirō would have your head.” Akira’s slim smile doesn’t last. Headlights splash over them, blindingly bright as a car slinks past the alley. In the sudden burst of sharp light, Akira’s expression is shockingly sober—sombre even. Afraid. “More to the point, do your folks know? It could be something serious. My ma saw all kinds of strange things when she was in hospital, and she was hallucinating because she had a brain tumour.”
“No. What would I even tell them? I’m seeing demons in the dark? My old man’s a priest. Next thing you know, he’ll be telling me I need to be exorcised.”
“As opposed to taking you to hospital to see if you have a brain tumour?”
“Akira, I don’t have a brain tumor.”
Akira slumps, leaning his whole body weight against him, and knocks his head against the side of his own. “You better not. Who else is going to sob with me while watching Grave of the Fireflies in the back of the theatre?”
“That doesn’t count. Everybody cries during that movie.”
“Okay, that’s fair. But my point still stands.” He’s quiet for a moment before moving to pluck the cigarette right out of Rin’s mouth. “Mind if I walk you home when we finish up here tonight?”
“Whatever makes you feel better.”
It’s not only his father waiting up for him when he returns home this particular night. There are voices bickering, young and boisterous, inside the monastery, loud enough he can make out there are at least several different people inside as he waves Akira off and closes the gate behind him. A school field trip, maybe? Although, they haven’t had any overnight stays in years now. Perhaps, not even since his father first took him and Yukio in.
Kicking stones from the pavers, he scowls down at his sneakers. No one said anything in the morning about visitors. The last thing he needs tonight is a bunch of school children gawking at him and prodding him with a bunch of questions as he makes his way through the church pews to his room out the back. They always stare like he’s some new undiscovered species, pointing in silence until one of them either finds the courage or is bullied into asking what it was like to grow up being raised by God.
Like he would know anything about that. Even Yukio, with his unparalleled interest in the science of medicine, has grown up to be a skeptic. Much to their father’s dismay.
Pinching the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb, he sighs. So long as they’re not too loud and don’t disturb what little sleep he’s bound to get tonight, he can deal with a few kids whispering about him in the dark. If he’s lucky, they might even be gone by the time he’s due to start making his way back out to the Amaranth tomorrow.
He’s just reaching for the front door when another voice rings out, clear above all of the rest.
“Konohamaru, you’re paired with Izumo on this one. Bon, you’re with Shima—”
Yukio.
Cold plunges through his skin and bone alike. No one told him he was coming home. In his chest, his heart stammers, a malcontented creature of its own, as he throws all caution to the wind and wretches the door open as wide as it will go.
“Yukio?”
“Rin!” Yukio exclaims upon seeing him, face going doughy with surprise. He’s in a uniform with a fancy tie and some kind of odd pin attached to the left lapel of his dark blazer. Strange, considering he didn’t think the university he’s attending had a uniform. Or that they let first year undergrads be responsible for gaggles of high school students in the evenings under the pretence that they’re doing some kind of extracurricular activities. If that is what’s happening right now. He can’t think of any reason why there would be a bunch of kids, perhaps barely a year or two younger than them, in uniform gathering around his brother like they’re waiting for instruction. “I didn’t think you would be home. Dad said you’ve been out late most nights.”
Rin stops in his tracks. Well, isn’t that something? Was he really just waiting for him to be away, out of his hair, before finally coming home?
“Does Dad know you’re here?”
“Of course, he does. We’ve been planning this excursion for weeks.”
Of course, he does. Of course. Why wouldn’t I tell my dad when I’m coming home? Why would I tell my brother?
“And neither of you planned to say anything about it to me?”
Yukio’s eyes go wide and glassy like a doll's. It’s all false—his shock, all of it. He’s lying, as if Rin can’t read the subtle twitch of his top lip that always gives him away when he does so.
“You didn’t kno–”
“Oi, Teach,” one of the schoolboys mutters, shoving his hands in his pockets. With his hair bleached and styled into a thick mullet, the sides of his skull shaved close to his scalp, he looks more like a dropout like him than a high school student. Surely, they have rules regarding piercings and respectable appearances similar to the ones he had to follow in middle school. “Who the hell is this? We’ve got a mission to finish.”
Rin raises an eyebrow at him. The boy scowls back until he turns his judgement on Yukio once again.
“A mission? Really? What is this? Aren’t you still studying to be a doctor, Yuki?”
A different boy, this one with pink hair, laughs incredulously. “A doctor? Where’d ya hear that? Okumura-sensei’s an exorci–”
“Bon. Shima. That’s enough.” Yukio winces, refusing to look at him, the way he always does when he’s afraid he’s been caught out in a lie. “This is Rin. My twin brother.”
“No way! You have a twin?”
A girl with long purple pig tails looks him up and down with an unimpressed scowl. “I can see a little resemblance. You got all the brains though, huh.”
“Izumo.”
He ignores her, even as Yukio snaps her name. What does he care? He doesn’t know her. Yukio, however, he does. He thought he did, anyway.
“An exorcist like Dad? Really? And here I thought you didn’t believe in any of that whack either.”
“Rin, that’s not–” Yukio cuts himself off, frustration robbing him of the words he wants to spit out. He hasn’t had a stutter for years now, but he used to. Back when they still shared a class and it was Rin who was always running ahead. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No, you’re right! I don’t! Since, apparently, you and Dad have been keeping me out of the loop for God knows how long!” He shouts, hands curling into fists at his sides. “You know what? Nevermind. I’m outta here. Clearly, you’re busy with whatever you call all of this, and I’ve got work in the morning.”
“Rin, wait–”
“Leave it, Yukio. Just leave it.”
It’s not a simple matter of closing the door and walking away. Of course, it isn’t. Outside, their father is at the gate, whistling as he pulls the latch shut behind him. Rin stares at the beads and crosses hanging from his glasses and tries to pretend the surprise on his face when he turns to find him storming up the path towards him doesn’t kick his chest in.
They really did plan to keep him in the dark.
“Rin!” he exclaims. Rin watches him cast an uncertain glance over his shoulder at the monastery, before laying a warm hand on his shoulder. It hurts less when Akīchirō does it, the contact not nearly half as heavy with secrets. “What are you doin’ here? It’s a Saturday night; I wasn’t expecting you home until late.”
“Funny, Yukio said the same thing,” he bites out. His head hurts, and the soft skin under his eyes pinches when he blinks, tight with overexhaustion. Maybe Akira will let him crash on his couch for the night. They can catch a movie before clocking in for their shift tomorrow and he can forget all of this long enough to dredge up some forgiveness for the next time he comes home. “Did you know that, apparently, he’s not actually studying to be a doctor?”
Their father grimaces. “Rin, whatever you heard–”
Shrugging the hand off of his shoulder, he makes for the gate. “Don’t worry about it. I was just leaving.”
“Rin–”
“Just don’t, okay? I’ve got enough going on without you and Yukio pulling this kind of shit. Work’s been busy, and I haven’t been sleeping. I’m seeing things that aren’t there, and–”
He grits his teeth. He didn’t mean to let that slip. For whatever reason, though, it catches his father’s attention. His gaze sharpens at once as he jumps straight to interrogation.
“You’ve been seeing things? What kind of things?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it now anyway. I’m not in the mood.”
“Rin, I need you to listen to me. What you’re seeing could be demons.”
“Demons? Are you kidding?” He knew it. Knew this is what they’d say if he so much as mentioned anything to anyone at the monastery, his father especially. Ridiculous. He’s had enough of this. Enough. “Do you even hear yourself right now?”
“Damn it, Rin, listen to me! You’re seeing things now because you’re a demon. The seal I place on your powers when you were born must be coming loose now that you’re nearly of age, and it’s causing you to see—”
A what—
“You don’t get to say that! You don’t. I’ve heard that enough for everyone else. I don’t need to hear it from you too. You’re my dad!”
Something inside of him snaps. Something vital. He used to wonder where his rage came from. Why it’s always been so immense and so eager to catch, to go up in flames. It has always felt too big for his body, somehow. Like it once belonged to someone else and he only inherited it because it had nowhere else to go. He and Yukio never met their mother. He wonders if that’s any reason why.
He whirls around, unable to face his father for a second longer, only to find Yukio standing there, on the front steps of the monastery, his wide eyes wary behind his glasses. The expression on his face is tense, but he isn’t surprised by what’s being said. As if this is something he’s known for a long, long, time now. Grass is green. The sky is blue. And his twin brother is a demon.
“And you! You’re my brother.”
“Rin, please,” Yukio says, begs, taking another hesitant step closer. “Just listen to us. This is important.”
“No.”
He throws himself into a run. Behind him, his father shouts something indecipherable, but the words are lost to the clang of steel as he clambers over the top of the front gate. He doesn’t hear anything but the thundering of his heart in his chest. Streets pass him by, a matrix of concrete and flickering lights in the dark. His lungs burn with every ragged breath he draws. The heat in them still feels right—inevitable. He can’t make sense of it. Still, he doesn’t stop until the monastery is long out of sight.
Maybe his father made an attempt to follow him. Maybe Yukio did, too. Maybe they didn’t. Either way, with their heads in the clouds, they’re not likely to find him where he plans to go.
Akira takes one look at the sorry state of him darkening his front doorstep and throws his door wide open.
“Shit, Rin. Get in here. I’ll pour us a drink.”
“I’m not old enough to drink. You’re not old enough to drink.” He doesn’t even know what he’s saying. The words all come out disjointed, like there is someone else speaking from his mouth. It’s a lot easier to let Akira wave away his half-hearted protest and usher him inside than it is to think too hard about it. About anything.
Akira shrugs, slinging his lanky body down onto a well-worn tan leather couch. There are two mismatching glasses held precariously by the lips in one of his hands, a tall bottle of something tinted amber grasped firmly by the neck in his other. He didn’t even notice him pick them up.
“Maybe not, but my sister is. She drinks like a fish. Who’s to say these glasses aren’t hers come morning?”
“You’re a terrible influence.”
Akira just laughs and pats the spot beside him.
“Just don’t tell Akīchirō,” he jests, twisting the top off of the bottle and pouring a small portion into each of the glasses. Distracted, the top slips from his grip and drops to the floor. Rin watches idly as it disappears beneath the ratty, black, faux-leather armchair in the corner. “Seriously, though, you look like you could use one. What happened?”
“My brother’s home.”
“Yukio, right?” Akira asks, handing him one of the glasses.
“Mmh.” Rin nods, swirling the liquid around absently in his cup. He’s pinched the odd can of the cheap beer his father stockpiles in their fridge when no one else was around to tell him not to, but this seems more serious, somehow. The smell is sharp—acrid, rising up from the glass to greet him. “No one told me he was coming home. The way he and Dad both reacted when they saw me—it was like they had planned for me to not know he was even home. That he’d even stopped by.”
Akira hisses a reedy breath through his teeth. “You’re kidding?”
“I wish.”
He tips the alcohol in his glass down his throat, coughing as it burns the whole way down. It tastes as bitter as it smells, but the warmth it stokes in his stomach when it settles is a welcome distraction.
“My father called me a demon.”
Akira doesn’t know that used to be a common occurrence. That all throughout his childhood, his father and brother were the only two who made any effort to defend him from the cruel word and the accusations behind it. Despite all of the things he destroyed, all the fights and the people he hurt. He can’t know what it means then to have them, of all people, throw it in his face like this. To say it with such certainty.
It doesn’t stop him from cursing and coming to his defense.
“He did what!” He slams his glass down on the coffee table hard enough for it to splinter, a crack opening up along the side for the last dregs of liquor to seep through. “You know what? Fuck them. Fuck all of them. We don’t need them, and they don’t deserve us. We’ll always have a place at the Amaranth. You know that, right? If Akīchirō gets his way, we’ll be there for a long time yet. So long as there is work to be done.”
In spite of everything, Rin can’t help the relief that flares through him at the thought. He leans his weight against Akira’s shoulder and tilts his head back against the couch to stare at the ceiling. Things won’t go back to normal tomorrow, maybe not ever, but as soon as they step through the doors of the Amaranth, there will be routine to guide him. To keep him together for another day.
“I know. So long as there is work to be done.”