#scarfwrites

He had seen Gon and Killua today, which was nice. They came for a visit, along with Mito and Alluka. Leorio was so glad to see them he could have cried. As far as birthdays went, it had been one of his best.

Isn’t this enough? came the gentle, reasonable thought, originating in the shrinking fraction of his brain that still cared about being reasonable.

Leorio was aware of how dysfunctional his desires were. He knew, and he hated himself, and he pitied himself. He also distracted himself with school, and work, and the occasional bad date, and the slightly-more-than-occasional evening of drunken wallowing.

Leorio shook his head in his hands. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough, and that was his own problem.

He would have asked Gon or Killua if either of them had heard from…anyone. But that would have been dismally transparent, and there was no reason for Leorio to burden them with his wretchedness. They were such good kids. They had seen enough already.

He looked at the clock again. 2:58.

“Fuck,” he said.

He was sad, and he was exhausted, and he felt guilty about being so sad and exhausted. His joy at seeing his friends had been genuine, but that on its own couldn’t reach the nasty little wound in him.

Leorio knew what that feeling was called, but he couldn’t let himself even think the word. He wanted to call it despair—but that wasn’t right. Someday, perhaps, he would be smart enough to despair.

But not today. Not yet.

Leorio’s phone rang.

He snatched it off the nightstand like it burned him, smashing the “answer” button before glancing at the caller ID.

“Leorio!”

He deflated.

“Zepile. Hi.”

“Happy birthday, man! Sorry I called so late. Auction ran into the wee hours, you know?”

“It’s fine. I wasn’t asleep.”

“Oh?”

Leorio winced at the bald innuendo in Zepile’s tone.

“You’re not interrupting anything, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at.”

“Shame. A man should celebrate on his birthday.”

“I’d settle for some fucking sleep.”

“Still with the insomnia, huh?”

Leorio didn’t want to talk about this. Not even with Zepile, who had been a good friend to him when he hadn’t been one in return. Who had witnessed every agonizing stage of his heartbreak and still tried to lift his spirits. Talking to him made Leorio feel even worse, because if he wanted to holler or cry, Zepile would listen. Another person who was unreasonably kind to him. Another friend he didn’t deserve.

“Hey, I’m, uh…”

Leorio cast around for a quick lie.

“I think I’m comin’ down with something.” He coughed twice, unconvincingly.

“Damn! That’s bad timing.”

“Yeah,” Leorio agreed, feigning a yawn.

“Well…” Zepile held his breath, like he was about to ask something. Then he thought better of it.

“Hope you feel better, man. Get some rest and fight it off.”

Leorio exhaled, his limbs heavy with relief.

“Hey, thanks for calling,” he mumbled.

“See ya.”

Leorio tapped the “end call” button, rolled back onto the bare mattress, and tried to sleep.

Hardly two minutes passed before the phone rang again. Leorio didn’t even open his eyes when he answered it.

“What, did you forget to say: ‘good night sweetie, I love you’?” he said acidly.

There was absolute silence on the other end of the line. Leorio’s throat went dry.

“…Zepile?”

“No. But now I have questions.”

Leorio sat up so fast his head spun.

“Kurapika.”

He hated how throaty and desperate his voice sounded. It was goddamn embarrassing.

“I apologize for calling so late.”

Kurapika cleared his throat, which he only did when he was hesitant. This was still true about him. Leorio knew this.

“No, no. It’s fine.”

He felt like a madman. He thought he could taste the air on the other side of the phone. He could see the shape of Kurapika’s mouth.

“I suppose I missed it after all.”

The world was still rearranging itself, so Leorio said:

“Missed what?”

Then, a second later:

“Oh! Oh, it wasn’t—um—”

He was fucking up everything. He was going to fuck up everything, and Kurapika was going to end the call.

So Leorio did what he always did when he was panicking, and told the truth.

“Yeah,” he blurted out. “You missed it.”

Kurapika made a soft sound, so close to a laugh that Leorio’s chest squeezed painfully tight. That noise was a fist around his heart, because it didn’t sound happy at all.

“I should have let you sleep.”

“I wasn’t asleep.”

“Oh.”

Kurapika did not ask for clarification, because, Leorio thought, he wouldn’t care anyway. What business of it was his who Leorio took to bed?

“How are you doing?” Leorio asked, forcing a light tone.

“Let’s not do this.”

Leorio’s brain flipped the switch from elation to concern. It occurred to him, belatedly, that Kurapika might not be sober.

“Do what?” he asked, guardedly.

“Waste time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t play dumb, Leorio. I know it comes naturally, but it isn’t a good look for you.”

Kurapika was definitely not sober. He was either drunk or dying. And it pissed Leorio off.

“What the hell are you calling for, then?” he demanded.

The silence lasted for so long Leorio began to think Kurapika had hung up or fallen asleep. His head felt numb.

“I’m not sure.”

Leorio snorted bitterly.

“Yeah. That tracks.”

“I shouldn’t have called.”

It was humiliating how such a statement could reduce Leorio to frantic desperation. He gripped his phone, white-knuckled, as though that alone could keep Kurapika talking.

“Wait,” he rasped. “Hold on.”

He hung there for a few seconds, waiting for a click. It didn’t come.

“I saw the kids today.”

“How are they?”

“They’re fine…good. Great, even.”

A burst of static. Kurapika’s small huff of amusement.

“Your descriptive capabilities. It’s like I was there.”

“Shut up.”

“Gon is well?”

Leorio’s eyes stung. God dammit. God fucking dammit.

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

“Kurapika—”

“Wait.”

Leorio dug his knuckles into his eyes, savagely. He waited, cradling the phone between his ear and shoulder.

“Is it fun?”

“Huh?”

“Your day with them. Your life now. Do you enjoy it?”

Leorio knew he was crying, and he knew Kurapika knew.

“Why did you call?” he asked plaintively. “Why now? Where are you?”

“Leorio.”

“Why should I tell you anything? What’s the point? You’re not here. You don’t communicate. You could die and no one would tell me. Every day like this. No, I don’t enjoy it, Kurapika. I don’t fucking enjoy it.”

Leorio bit his tongue, horrified and furious at the both of them. It was always like this. Why was it always like this.

“You would know if I died,” Kurapika said quietly. “I’ve secured that.”

“Great,” he spat. “Fucking…super cool. Wonderful. Happy fucking birthday to me.”

“Please.”

Kurapika sounded small, scared. He sounded his own age, which, Leorio remembered suddenly, was very, very young. They both were.

“I’m trying.”

“I know. That’s what sucks.”

Kurapika inhaled, deep, and a little shuddery. Almost like it hurt.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Liar.

“Liar.”

“I’m in no immediate danger.”

“Guess that’s all I can ask for.”

Kurapika didn’t respond. Their conversation felt over. Leorio wished he could end it.

“I need to go.”

“Yeah.”

“Get some sleep.”

“You too.”

He could say all of it before Kurapika hung up. He could give voice to the thing inside him, which wasn’t despair but tasted like it. Leorio opened his mouth. He would do it. This might be the only time he could.

“Happy birthday, Leorio.”

The line clicked dead.

2.

“Alone, alone, alone…alone again!!”

There is a guttering spark of hope still in his heart that Tomone will hear him and turn back, offer herself as his shinki, apologize for abandoning him so cruelly—just so he could laugh in her face, and maybe kick some dirt on her clothes as well.

But he wouldn’t do that.

If Tomone turned around—which didn’t seem likely, since she had in fact vanished a good ten minutes previously without a glance backward—Yato would take her again. He’s familiar with the feeling of being weaponless, but that doesn’t make it particularly nice.

He grabs a can of spray paint as though it could serve as a divine blade, and begins busily defacing the nearest bridge with his phone number.

He lifts his voice in a misery-laden crescendo:

“Aloooooone…AGAAAAAAAIN!!!”

“Shut up!” shouts the red-faced, wild-haired wino camping under the bridge. He chases Yato down the street, brandishing a half-empty bottle.

Yato loses his pursuer quickly–it’s nice to be able to fade into the background in such moments. He slinks into the shadows of a shrine, fingers tight around the neck of his own glass bottle. The heavy clink of the coins is comforting. Now that Tomone is gone, it is also his main weapon.

He lies down under one of the benches, trying to trick his mind into spinning a dream of his own lavish shrine. Covered in gold, studded with gems, absolutely lousy with shrine-maidens…it will be the best shrine, certainly for any god in the country, perhaps even the world.

Yato goes to sleep, smiling, hugging his bottle, the grandiose architecture of his imagination wrapping him as soundly as any blanket.

He won’t fade forever.

3.

As Yato watches his new shinki sleep the dreamless sleep of the dead, he considers his options.

He just wanted a weapon. What he got was…this.

Responsibility.

He hasn’t had much to do with that concept for a number of years. Perhaps, in fact, he never has had a single responsibility, which is what makes this situation so damn uncomfortable.

Now he has two charges: a foul-mouthed, broken-hearted child ghost, and the human girl who guilted him into keeping that ghost around.

“He’s your responsibility,” she had said, ad nauseam. What she hadn’t said was: So am I.

It should be so easy to be rid of them both. And they are both truly massive problems for him.

The kid would be easy enough to get rid of, as long as he doesn’t think about it too hard. That girl though…she might be more complicated. But his cuts have always been clean. For now, she’s not the problem.

Yato knows, even before he spends the rest of the night convincing himself how bad an idea it is, that he won’t revoke Yukine’s name.

It will be the hardest thing he’s ever done.

4.

The work takes less time than he thought.

He makes sure the hole is deep enough, and digs an extra two feet for good measure. He takes up his light burden and lays it within the earth. He entrusts it to the living soil that will make new things, growing things, out of something that should have been new and growing itself.

Because it takes less time than he thought, and also because he cannot yet make himself leave the little mound alone there on the hill, he sits there for a time. He wanders off after a while, comes back with a pack of cheesy buns, and eats all but one. The last he sets, carefully, on the overturned dirt.

Then he walks away.

5.

In the end, the decision is his.

A soft, helpless voice deep inside him—a voice that sounds like Hiiro’s—asks:

Will it be worth it? Will they be happier without you? Really, truly happier?

Then growing to a shriek inside him, nearly physical in its desperation: Is this the only way?

And it is. The only way he can go, after all, is toward the thing that made him, and toward the thing that will unmake him. He doesn’t mind that. He’s already been lucky enough to find happiness twice, which is two times more than he deserved.

He closes his eyes, feeling Kazuma’s impatience growing with every second of delay. His newest shinki’s willingness to toss both their existences on the fire without a second thought is something Yato never thought he would value, but it certainly serves his ends now.

The image of the little shrine flashes through his mind, hooking his heart like a struggling fish. The scarred fingers that built it—how long can their owner keep waiting for him? How hard can she possibly believe in him? How much does he deserve that faith?

After all, he tried so hard to chase her off. Her first prayers to him were in the form of ghosted texts and screened calls. She had been his first, his only, his most relentless worshiper, and he had spurned her for it.

Here, at the start of the day and at the end of the world, Yato only knows that he owes her a debt.

You’ve been my god of fortune for a long time.

He opens his eyes, and across the dark and silent space between them, he senses Kazuma sit up. The dawn is gray and still, holding its breath, until Yato says:

: : :

Great and terrible he was, and not in the way things today are “great” or “terrible.” It was easier to become a god back then, and easier to strike at them from this shore. He benefited from that. He can admit that now. He was not one prone to admitting much. He still isn’t.

: : :

See how he presides? See how peaceful and untroubled his brow? His worshipers cannot say the same; their worries leave cheeks thin and eyes hollow.

His most frequent request is one of immediate practicality. Before the schools hold their exams, the shrine floods with pale, nervous students, eager to offer up this last—to most of them futile—bit of hope.

: : :

He was a man of letters, a high person in politics, a scholar in days when scholars could be as savage as warlords. He was subtle, quick, and ruthless. He read a great deal of literature that improved his mind, and some that did not. He had enemies, because men of letters, high people in politics, and true scholar-lords always do.

He advised, he schemed, he bribed, and, yes, he wrote poetry. Many great men did. Hitherto, his magnificence had been measured only by human metrics, and praised by human mouths.

Gods care nothing for fame.

Fear, however. They care a great deal about fear.

: : :

He waits for you to approach. Your hesitation is natural, even wise, but you must cast it off. You have been honored with his attention and time, and to waste a second of it would be a blasphemy.

“What is your request, child?”

The calm of his voice settles over you like a silk scarf. You look at his face, into an expression of such sanctified silence that for a moment, all words are lost.

: : :

The stories are, I must admit to you, conflicted. But trust me, gentle supplicant, when I say that the gods care less for cause than for effect. The cause of a scholar-lord’s death is much less interesting to them than the effects of that death, which were cataclysmic.

Storms. Not spring storms that bring rain and sweetness, but merciless, dry, rolling tempests, full of blue lightning and the wardrum of thunder. It was, they believed, the vengeance of Sugawara no Michizane, who had died in exile and had put down his poems forever to chase the men who caused his end.

Impressive, don’t you think? The gods thought so, too.

: : :

You hear yourself address him, your request murmured in a voice that doesn’t shake or stumble. The anxiety you felt at the entrance to the shrine has melted off you like early spring snow.

“Your prayer has been heard,” he tells you, which is more than you expected to hear.

There is an utter calm in his voice that makes you think of deep, silent water. His expression is so intense–an intense quietude, but in its savage focus revealing his other extremes.

You see the heavens scarred with blue lightning. You hear the echo of the wardrum.

What you feel in response is not quite fear—for a moment you are the sole passenger in a small boat, on the surface of that depth of water. No imminent sign of danger, but something could still emerge.

“Thank you, revered teacher,” you say in a panic, blurting it out as you take one step back, and then another. At a respectful distance you bow once more, unable to meet his ancient gray gaze, and turn your back on the peaceful grounds of the shrine.

As you hurry away, you may have resolved not to return. Many who meet the master of this shrine do. But they do return—each of them returns, whether it be in weeks, months, or years.

This final twist of the knife went too far. Yato collapsed beneath the table and commenced a long, whimpering wail of insurmountable heartbreak.

“Who’s strangling a possum in here?” Daikoku poked his head in the door. “Quit caterwauling. Dinner’s ready.”

: : :

The garden gnome situation had begun a month previous when Hiyori mentioned that she was learning from Daikoku how to grow flowers and a few kitchen herbs in a corner of the yard at her own house. Her mistake had been to mention, quite offhandedly, that a little statue or sculpture, perhaps a fountain, might be a nice touch.

“Or a gnome!”

Yato had developed a recent, apparently irreversible fascination with garden gnomes. Yukine wondered what the appeal was, a dark internal voice whispering to him that Yato would reveal that he suffered under the same delusion with the gnomes that he did with the capypers, thinking they were just very small, heavy little men who like to stand silently outside people’s homes.

Hiyori wrinkled her nose at the suggestion.

“I’m leaning more toward a fountain,” she had said feebly, but it was too late.

Three of them arrived within the next week. Hiyori, not wanting to entirely crush his soul, put one in a discreet corner of her little garden, three-quarters-hidden by a clump of thyme. The other two went under her bed, where they stayed for the next day as she thought about how to dispose of them. She didn’t entirely like to put them straight into the trash, but they were so hideous, and she hated them so much, and they simply couldn’t stay under her bed where they would cause night terrors.

She took them to school, depositing one in a dusty, ancient little upstairs closet and the other deep in the shadows underneath the stairs leading down to the boiler room. She felt ridiculous doing this, and nearly took them both straight to the dumpster beforehand, but the thought of Yato finding them there and feeling betrayed…

She rolled the second gnome so deep beneath the bottom step of the boiler room that it wedged there solidly. Better to hide them around the school—to catalyze a future custodian’s heart attack upon discovery—than that.

As it turned out, she had no reason to worry. By the time the eleventh gnome made it to her house, she was piling them happily into the dumpster en masse.

“Can you get him to stop?” she begged Yukine. “This must be absolutely burning through your savings.”

“I think he’s stealing them,” Yukine confessed. “He was cleaning dirt off the bottom of one yesterday before he went to leave it at your doorstep. I tried to stop him…” He trailed off in defeat.

Hiyori shook her head sympathetically. She had already told him outright via several communication channels that the gnomes were unwelcome, but all had fallen on deaf ears. Yato seemed to think this was her cute and coquettish way of requesting more gnomes—because that was what arrived.

By the middle of December, Hiyori had hidden, thrown out, or otherwise disappeared eighteen ugly little statues that had vanished from gardens around the neighborhood. She had been forced to lie to her parents, who had seen a few before she could dispose of them and wondered aloud and at length at their daughter’s new propensity for garden statuary.

“As long as you keep them to your corner, darling,” her mother had said, her uneasy glance resting on the grinning, green-hatted little ceramic man Hiyori had tried to tuck behind her back before the door opened.

“They don’t complement the wisteria.”

: : :

Yukine found Yato outside after dinner, nursing a beer and staring disconsolately at the cloud-choked December sky. Something Yato had said amidst Hiyori’s litany of threats had settled in the back of his brain; it bothered him, and prompted him to speak gently when he might otherwise have scolded.

“You’re leaving breadcrumbs.”

Yato didn’t look at him, which gave Yukine the sinking feeling that he was correct.

“Nope,” said Yato, in a light and throwaway voice. “Breadcrumbs are meant to leave a trail. She doesn’t need to be following me.”

Yukine continued, merciless.

“All right, not breadcrumbs. But you do hope to jog her memory sometimes. Even if she doesn’t remember you, she’ll still be dealing with the traces of your existence. Whenever she sees one of those things, she’ll think ‘Hm…where did that ugly little statue come from? It looks like garbage, so that’s where I’ll put it.’ And eventually they will all be in the trash, forgotten, along with everything she remembers about you. Was that your plan?”

Yato had turned around, keeping both hands flat on the railing. His eyes had flickered with something that wasn’t quite anger, nor sorrow, but had qualities of both. By the time Yukine finished speaking, his face was very quiet.

“You’re a good kid.”

Then he pushed away from the railing and wrapped Yukine in a crushing hug.

Yukine blinked. His arms were pinned to his sides at the elbow; all he could do was bat feebly against Yato’s ribs and squawk with humiliation. As the hug went on, he wondered if he had eaten something off at dinner and was experiencing the most vivid hallucination of anyone in the world, perhaps of all time.

At some point approximately eight million years after it started, Yukine was released. He felt his lungs expand properly again and took a grateful breath.

But he had to admit: the hug had not been, overall, bad.

“I’m glad she’s got you to look out for her,” Yato added. It was said with weight, an enormity of meaning that left Yukine without a response. He was only recently familiar with the concept of “looking out for” someone, or of someone “looking out for” him. The responsibility was great, and strange, and terrible.

When they walked back inside, Kofuku and Hiyori had their heads close together and were watching something on Hiyori’s phone, at which they would occasionally gasp or wince. Daikoku was still in the kitchen, putting away the very last of the dishes. Hiyori was not permitted to help with this as a consequence of being technically a guest, and Kofuku was actively barred from doing as a consequence of having broken not one hundred, not two hundred, but exactly three hundred and sixteen pieces of kitchenware since Daikoku was named.

“What’s so interesting?” Yukine asked, craning his neck to glimpse the small screen. Hiyori and Kofuku each had one earphone in, and they looked up as he approached.

“I’m watching Hiyorin’s future husband crush another man’s head under his armpit,” Kofuku said. “He’s very good at this move, and also the one where he hugs the other man very tight and makes him go to sleep. I’m not sure how that one works,” she said, enormously interested in the brutality taking place on the phone screen.

“Ah.” Yukine was familiar with this subject. “A Touno highlight reel?”

Hiyori blushed to the roots of her hair. “I just wanted to show her some of his best—”

“Muscles?” Daikoku called out from the kitchen.

“—moves, before he comes to the city next month for the championship matchups. I really thought about getting a ticket but they were going so fast, and I can’t exactly afford it—”

She cut herself off at this point, looking ashamed at having said so much already.

“Good thing you have those gnomes,” Yato sagely offered, taking what Yukine thought to be the hugely unnecessary risk of souring her mood for the second time that day.

After several seconds, Hiyori took in a fortifying breath and said with sainted patience:

“Oh? And why is that, Yato?”

“Because one of them has tickets to Touno’s match hidden in the base.”

This response, delivered to a thunderstruck room, didn’t seem to have the effect Yato was expecting.

“I wanted to put something inside each one, but I’m not allowed to spend that much money anymore, so I ended up just with the tickets.”

Yukine thought back to when he saw Yato “cleaning” the bottom of the gnome. Logic began to click into place.

“H-how…” Hiyori’s voice was breathy, her face a frozen mask of tragedy.

“How many gnomes ago—I mean days—was this?”

Yato tapped his cheek thoughtfully. “Not actually sure about that. I think it had a yellow hat, though.”

Her stricken face lost a few more degrees of color.

“Metro station restroom,” she whispered inexplicably.

Springing up from beside Kofuku, she reeled in the earphones and shoved her back in her pocket. By the time anyone else could think of moving, she was already at the doorway and shoving her feet into her shoes.

“Thanks for the meal, Daikoku!” she called over her shoulder.

Before throwing herself out the door, she stopped, one of her shoes still dangling from a hand. Then she whirled back into the room, grabbed the front of Yato’s shirt, and pressed her lips very quickly, very gently, to his cheek.

Seconds later she had darted from the house, and Yukine saw her moving down the street at nearly a sprint.

When he turned back to the others, he saw that Kofuku was so incapacitated at Yato’s expression that she could no longer move, and was rolling around clutching her sides in paroxysms of hilarity.

“He’s broken!” she crowed. “She broke him!!”