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The can of spraypaint clicks to itself as Neku finishes the last line. He tilts his head left, right, considers it, and abruptly someone runs into him so hard that he smashes face-first into the wall. Fuck. His face rips open; blood smears itself all over the rough concrete wall and all over the carefully-painted shadows that took him forever to figure out. Wet paint lodges itself firmly into his eyebrows.
“Oh no,” says a familiar voice from behind him.
“Nice going, Rindork,” says a second voice – snide, affectionate, a little wobbly. Kitty girl! says Beat, from the back of Neku’s brain, and the rest of Neku’s brain says Shoka and partner and the Other Game and oh, Rindo, and he’s pulled himself together a little bit by the time he turns around again.
“Hey,” he says, somehow managing to sound normal and casual and maybe even cool. He takes in Rindo and Shoka and the way they’re heaving for breath, holding onto their phones like lifelines.
“Whoa,” he says. “What’s going on. Are you okay?”
“I’m so sorr—” Rindo says, and then “I—” and then “Do you know any Reapers who can teleport?”
“Sorry, what?”
“There’s a Zolom—”
Shoka shoves her way into the conversation. “We’re trying to get my FanGO account back to—”
“—it spawned on top of 104—”
“—and before I could just teleport to it and get it! But I can’t do that anymore, not since—”
They both stop talking; their eyes go wide and hollow before their chattering stutters back to life again.
“The Shinjuku Reapers all bounced,” Shoka says. “And the Zolom’s gonna fly away before I can get it, and everybody was in love with you or whatever—”
(“Shoka,” Rindo hisses, but Shoka ignores him.)
“—can you just ask, so I can – I mean, it’s their fault I lost my account in the first place. You know?”
She stops talking. Waits expectantly. Rindo looks about two seconds from sinking into the sidewalk.
“Uh,” Neku says. “So you were…this is a mobile game, right?”
“It’s not just a mobile game,” Rindo and Shoka say in offended unison.
“Okay, sure. But I don’t really…I don’t really have any of the Reapers’ phone numbers. Sorry.”
“Shit.” Shoka pulls her hoodie down over her face.
“Uzuki already left me on read,” Rindo says mournfully.
“I mean…” Neku says. “There’ll be another Zolom eventually, right?”
“Not really,” Rindo says. “This one’s just here for an event.”
“And,” Shoka says. “It’s impossible to get.”
“Unless you’re a Reaper who can teleport,” Rindo says.
Shoka flips the hoodie back; her eyes narrow. “There’s no way Reapers made…”
“FanGO? It wasn’t Kaie, was it?”
“No, he wouldn’t – but I mean, I can text him—”
A new voice says: “Oh, you two super sleuths are going to crack this case wide open.”
Shoka freezes in place; Rindo’s hand grabs onto her wrist, white-knuckled with desperation. They’ve gone silent – eyes wide and terrified, staring at a point behind Neku like it’s the starting line for the apocalypse.
“Hi, Josh,” Neku says, and turns around.
Joshua is sitting on top of the wall, lounging with the sort of casual attitude that says he’s been there the whole time. (He hasn’t.) (Actually, maybe he has. Dick.) When he notices Neku’s attention, he lifts one hand and flips Neku a lazy salute.
“Hey there, Neku,” he says. “Now, why don’t you get so adorably tongue-tied in my presence?”
“Repeated exposure,” Neku says. “I’m immune.”
He isn’t immune. It’s still so utterly strange seeing Joshua in the RG – like bumping into a unicorn at Justice Burger, if the unicorn also started making pointed remarks about your outfit. Neku’s stomach keeps lifting and sinking and lifting and sinking. There’s a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, which is terrifying.
“I’ve been told repeated exposure only makes me more difficult to deal with,” Joshua says. “What do you think, Rindo?”
Rindo hasn’t let go of Shoka’s wrist. “Why are you here. I won your game – I won the Game and your second game, why—”
“My, my,” Joshua says. “And here you were, hunting down poor Neku, begging for a Reaper to get you to the top of 104. Why settle for a Reaper, I thought. Who wouldn’t want a personal escort from Shibuya’s Composer? But I see my generosity is wasted on you.”
Neku says: “Leave them alone, Joshua.”
Joshua is still looking at Rindo; his expression doesn’t change, it’s still placid and stupidly smug. But his hand twitches – just once – just a little bit – before he lifts it and waves dismissively and Rindo and Shoka vanish.
“There you go,” Joshua says. “Off to the top of 104, just like they wanted.”
“And still in the RG?”
“I’m hurt, Neku. What happened to trusting your partner?” He doesn’t give Neku time to answer, just rolls his eyes. “Yes, dear, they’re still in the RG. I even buckled their seatbelts before I sent them off to school.”
“Ass.”
Joshua shrugs. “I have a reputation to uphold. Did you know you’re bleeding, Neku?”
“Honestly?” Neku says. “I forgot.” He reaches up and touches his face, the gash on his cheek. He brings his hand down: his fingerprint is stained red. He should push the issue, make sure Rindo and Shoka are okay – but Joshua said it, invoked it. Trust your partner. The problem is that Neku does.
“You really have to take better care of yourself, dear,” Joshua says. Neku looks up at the exact moment Joshua is stepping forward, so he gets a full view of Joshua’s throat. He wishes Joshua wasn’t taller than him now, but it’s possible Joshua made himself slightly taller than Neku specifically to spite him. He smells like hot pavement and Pegaso and steam.
“Hold still,” Joshua says, and he pulls an honest-to-god handkerchief out from some space-time pocket and begins dabbing at the blood and paint on Neku’s face.
“Really?” Neku says, but he holds still. “You could definitely just heal my face, Josh.”
“But where’s the fun in that,” Joshua murmurs. “Besides, this is nostalgic. Remember when I used to patch you up after fights? Heehee.”
Mostly, Neku remembers patching Joshua up – crouching in the doorways of stores, huddled over bowls of ramen, Neku clutching a healing pin in a shaking deathgrip. Watching, waiting for Joshua to come back together again. The cool plastic of the pin digging into his palm, carving ridges from how hard he would squeeze it. He remembers Joshua as small and awfully breakable. Even at full health he always looked like a sneeze could knock him over.
“I remember you being shorter,” Neku says, which encompasses all and none of what he’s actually thinking.
“Having a bit of a Napoleon complex, are we?”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“It means you’re a ‘short king’, Neku. As the kids are saying.” Joshua steps back, folds up the handkerchief and puts it into his pocket. “There. All clean. You’ll have a dashing cut on your cheek for a few days, that’s all.”
“Makes me miss the healing pins.”
“You’re always welcome back for another round, you know.” Joshua has stopped looking at him; he’s considering the graffiti on the wall, head cocked slightly to the side. “It’s a bit of a threadbare Game right now, since most of my Reapers got erased or jumped ship or are, well, Minamimoto. But I’d roll out the red carpet for you, dear.”
“Or we could just get ramen or something.”
“Pedestrian.”
“It’s not pedestrian. It’s stuff that friends do.”
“Oh,” Joshua says. “Is that what we are?” His attention has come back to Neku now; his eyes bite at Neku’s face, at Neku’s throat. It’s like he can see it: the answer to that question, the huge tangled up mess of it. Sincere and terrible, straining at the walls of Neku’s dry throat.
Neku’s phone buzzes. “You’d better answer that,” Joshua says, and looks away again.
It’s Rindo.
hey
hey
you okay?
caught the zolom lol
stuck on the roof tho
is there another reaper who can help?
like kariya or something
i dont have his number
joshua is still here
yeah but hes insane so
“Let me guess,” Joshua says. “Neku Junior is caught up a tree.”
“No, he’s stuck on the roof you teleported him to.”
“That’s not my fault, is it? How was I supposed to know he would want to come down from the roof?”
Rindo texts again.
r u okay
did he play a game with u
his games suck
…followed by a sticker of a screaming hamster.
im good, Neku texts, hold on, and he slips his phone back into his pocket. “Can you bring them back down?”
“Haven’t I been benevolent enough?” Joshua says.
“Guess not,” Neku says. “Rindo thinks you’re going to kill him.”
“I would never touch a single hair on his adorable head,” Joshua says, and lifts a hand again – to pull Rindo out of the air or call down a pillar of light or do any of his stupid, impossible magic.
Then his hand stops, because Neku has grabbed his wrist.
“Oh,” Joshua says, and – in what might be a victory – he actually stops talking for a second. Then he pulls himself together. “So quick to change your mind,” he says. “Now you don’t want him back?”
“I meant it,” Neku says. “Before you disappear and go back to stalking me in the UG or whatever you’ve been doing. We should – hang out. Get ramen or curry or whatever. Go shopping.” He swallows. “I missed you, Joshua.”
Joshua looks the way he should have looked when Neku had a gun pointed at him.
“That’s all,” Neku says, and drops his wrist.
Joshua’s gaze flicks away, out into the city, and then back to Neku again. “I missed you too,” he says quietly. “Partner.” There’s a smile in that last word; the sound of that smile hangs in the air as Joshua disappears.
“—calling,” Rindo says, and “shit” as he unceremoniously hits the ground. Shoka does better – she drops on her feet, a perfect three-point landing. She clocks the alley, the wall, the graffiti, Neku. When she sees Rindo crumpled into a heap there’s a visible moment of relief before she scoffs and pulls him up to standing.
“You seriously still don’t know how to dodge roll?” she says.
“Forgot,” Rindo mutters. He dusts off his jacket. “Thanks. Neku, are you…okay?”
“Me? Yeah, I’m fine. Are you both okay?”
“Caught the Zolom,” Shoka says. “Which gets me…one percent closer to where my account was before. But it’s a good percent, I guess.” Her mouth twists around. “Thanks. For…calling in a favor, or whatever you did.”
“Something like that,” Neku says.
“Gotta say,” Rindo mutters, “I’m glad you’re still here and not…bumped to the UG or something. Is he always like this?”
“Yeah. He’s always like this.”
“That’s Shibuya though, right?” Rindo says. “Crazy and weird and confusing and scary and…amazing.”
“That’s Shibuya,” Shoka says quietly. Rindo and Shoka exchange a look that Neku doesn’t understand – only he does, he understands. Trust your partner. He looks at the graffiti on the wall, the energy of the curves and the depths of the shadows; Neku pouring himself into the city and the city pouring itself right back into him, wiping the blood from his face and holding still just long enough for Neku to reach out and grab on.
In the darkest part of the mural there’s a smear of Neku’s blood, fading slowly into the paint. He can hear Joshua’s voice in the back of his mind: It looks better like this.
That’s creepy, he tells Imaginary Joshua, but he actually likes the thought of it: that a little piece of him will live here – in his art, in his city – until the next wave of graffiti covers it up and it’s gone.