Mika was silent for a moment as she gathered her thoughts. One word that the boss said kept coming back to her mind: demon. She assumed it was a reference or acronym, but she couldn’t fathom for what. “Was that boss a ‘demon’?”

The humor that had appeared in Kaito’s eyes vanished in an instant, and he seemed to struggle with how to answer before finally nodding. “Akuma, bakemono, yokai, oni… You Japanese have a lot of names for them.”

Mika stilled. “Wait, it’s not some sort of analogy for something?”

Kaito too went motionless as he stared up at her eyes. “You... thought it was…? Shoot.” He slapped his palm against his forehead.

“Supernatural things like that… you’re saying they exist?!” Mika was halfway to her feet when Kaito shot up with unnatural speed to grab her wrist, preventing her from leaping up.

“Shh. These walls aren’t that thick, if you start screaming…”

Mika’s eyes, now widened once again in fear, fell to her wrist where he restrained her. Kaito, seeing her glance, let go immediately.

“Just, stay quiet okay?”

She nodded once, and settled back down uneasily into a kneeling position. Meanwhile, Kaito got up to pace about in front of the table. “Analogy…” he murmured more to himself than to her. “Of course you’d think something like that… And I went and dug a splendid grave for myself there.” At last he stopped and turned to face Mika once more.

They watched each other for a long minute in complete silence.

“Honestly, I don’t even know what exactly I should say now,” he said, breaking the silence.

“That was a demon… and you killed it?”

Kaito nodded.

“Does that make you some sort of monster hunter?”

“I don’t really think you could call it that. Just… if there’s problems then I intervene.”

“In your ‘territory’?” Mika questioned. “Actually, come to think of it, it was this apartment building that you pointed to out the window right?”

“Yeah. But, it’s not something as strict as a territory. It’s just the general area I travel around so it’s the spot I can most easily watch after.”

Mika’s head dropped as she mulled over the information she’d received thus far. There was still one major question that needed to be answered before she left, but she wasn’t sure how to ask it, or if he’d answer.

“Are you… one of them? A demon?” If he had superhuman abilities but wasn’t genetically modified, and could kill the monsters without specifically being a hunter, it seemed like this was the next best guess, but it felt strange saying the words. No matter how hard she looked, he seemed human in every way. She didn’t want him to be a monster… She needed him not to be. He’d protected her when no one else had, saved her from the boss who would’ve done who knew what with her. If Kaito turned out to be the enemy as well, who could she turn to?

“Your heart’s racing a kilometer a minute,” Kaito said with a gentle smile, though there was a sadness in his eyes. “I’ve said it before. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You aren’t denying it,” she whispered. Please just say I’m wrong!

“I didn’t actually think the conversation would make it to this point. I played my cards really poorly, or you played them well. I’m not sure which.” He tossed another smile in her direction, but her eyes were steadily getting wider as her face filled with fear.

“Mika, please. You’re going to have to calm down.”

“Or what?” she shot back at him.

“I’m not going to sit here and threaten you. You came of your own free will. I’ve done nothing to force you, nothing to hurt you, but you have to understand that it’s a liability problem for me to let you leave here panicked and scared.”

She dropped her head and absentmindedly fiddled with a small tuft of carpet that was sticking out slightly more than the rest.

“It’s not like I’ve changed at all. I don’t know if it will make you feel better or worse, but demons like that one are what we call Dakhz. They’re usually driven by their own selfish desires and have little regard for humans. I’m quite a few levels above them.”

“Da… da-ku,” Mika’s tongue struggled with the strange word.

“In Japanese, it means something like ‘minor’ or ‘lesser.’”

“But doesn’t that make you more dangerous?”

“I’d rather you not interpret it that way, but… it’s not wrong.”

“I’m sorry,” Mika said after a long silence. “I do appreciate you protecting me, but this is kind of a lot to take in.”

“If you say it like that, then I have to apologize as well for getting you involved in the first place. To be honest, I could’ve taken care of the problem a bit sooner, but I wasn’t positive who was involved and where they were hiding out. It was easiest to track your scent after they took you and let them lead me to the right place.”

The realization of the last statement washed over her. She’d been used as demon bait. “You couldn't have used Hattori when you first noticed…?” Mika questioned.

“I tried that, but if you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly stealthy. It didn’t work when I tried to threaten him into telling me, and the couple of times I tried to follow him, he wandered all around the city and parked himself in an internet cafe for several hours at the end of it. I was frustrated, and then, they seemed to take a liking to you, but I’ll admit letting you get taken was something of a spur of the moment choice. For that, you have my deepest apologies, but I promise I wasn’t going to let you get hurt.”

Mika took a shaky breath. She wasn’t sure she appreciated his tactics by any stretch of the imagination, but… in the end she supposed it worked out. The man hadn’t hurt her at all; she just had to get over the scare. “What happened to Hattori in the end?”

“I knocked him out like the others. If it went as well as I hope it did, then he probably won’t remember much of what’s happened in the past few hours. Although I might still recommend keeping your distance from him as I don’t think his personality was all that great to start with.”

“You can erase memories?” She scrutinized his face.

“I’m not the best at it,” he admitted, “but, to a degree, yes. The lot of them will remember their boss for sure, but hopefully Hattori won’t remember much about his encounters with you.”

“You were trying to do that with me in the room while we were sitting on the couch weren’t you?” As she said it aloud, she became even more certain that that must’ve been the case.

“You got me.” Kaito swirled the tea around in his cup before he turned to face Mika again. “It wouldn’t have hurt, and it would’ve turned out much better than this current mess. You’d have woken up in your house tomorrow morning and gone about your normal day. Nothing would’ve changed.”

“Why didn’t you? You could’ve still grabbed me, right?”

“I don’t really want people scared of me, and I felt it was wrong to manhandle you in order to do it. It also requires a certain level of concentration. Holding you down and trying to achieve that concentration might’ve resulted in you getting hurt.”

“So you don’t actually hurt people right?”

“No more than knocking them out if they come at me ready to fight.”

It was still so strange to think of him as anything more than human, but she found herself finally settling down. Despite his multitude of chances, he hadn’t done anything but protect her, and she couldn’t find it in herself to distrust him, even though she was still a bit scared.

“Was it really just because I’m a new resident here and my looks that drove them to capture me?” she mused. This bothered her the more she thought about it. If that was all it took to get captured by the Yakuza in Tokyo, she was doomed.

“Mmm. If we’re being completely and totally honest, I think it’s your scent.”

“My... scent?”

Kaito gave a short nod. “Every living thing has their own smell, and some are naturally better than others. Dakhz and Knyu are particularly influenced by the scents of their prey. He could probably smell it on Hattori’s clothes when you were alone with him yesterday. That’s why Hattori came back to the school with the intent of capturing you.”

“‘Prey,’” Mika repeated the word before it’s full meaning sunk in. “It was going to eat me?!”

“That might have been a bit too candid...” Kaito chided himself softly.

“What am I going to do now? Just by existing more will come after me!” Again she was working up to a panicked frenzy.

“Calm down and listen. Every demon has their own scent preference. Just because you smelled good to one, doesn’t mean you’ll attract every one. You’ve lived your life thus far without any issues right? And this area stays fairly free of Dakhz.”

“What about you? What do I smell like to you?”

“That’s a double sided question. If I tell you you stink, then that’s rude, but if I say you smell good, you’ll think I’m going to eat you.”

“Just... answer it, please?”

Kaito exhaled. “You smell sweet. Kind of like a pastry and maybe a hint of something that’s a bit more.. floral?”

There was a new question plaguing Mika’s mind now, and she didn’t have to voice it for Kaito to elaborate further.

“It’s also important for you to know that we don’t have to eat humans to live. We aren’t some kind of vampire-like creature from your fictional stories. Our nutritional needs are roughly equivalent to those of a human.”

“I see.” Mika went quiet after that processing all of the new information. In summary, Kaito was a demon. She had a certain smell that may draw them to her, but Kaito seemed to kill other demons if they attacked humans. She had faith that he at least wasn’t going to make a meal out of her and he would probably not let another demon hurt her as long as she was in the area. That at least was something positive.

“Seems like you’re starting to calm down again,” Kaito remarked.

“H-how could you tell? Can you read my mind too?”

Kaito chuckled in response. “No, I can’t read minds. Your thoughts are actually quite plain on your face. But, I can hear your heart rate slowing, and your face is getting its color back again. You lost it again for a while there.”

“I see…” Her eyes did another thorough scan of the boy in front of her. Even with all of the knowledge she’d gained, he looked so human, perhaps save for his eyes. “This is really weird. Thinking that you’re…”

“Hm, well if you ask me, I think it’s you humans that are the weird ones.”

In spite of everything that had happened, or perhaps it was because of the stress brought on by everything, Mika found herself laughing so hard at his words that she doubled over. “Ah, you certainly are the same person for sure,” she managed when she’d recovered some of her breath.

A tension that Mika didn’t even know was present in her body, dissolved on the spot, and she felt a wave of exhaustion wash over her.

“Now that you know everything Mika, you have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone else. No one in class, not your family or your neighbors, not even Ayako and Kana. This has to remain strictly between the two of us.”

“But why?”

“Please use your tiny human brain for a moment,” he said, throwing her a playful smirk to which she gave a light ‘hmph’ in response. “What do you think would happen if people knew about the existence of beings far more powerful than themselves?”

It certainly took no stretch of the imagination to envision a manhunt and attempted extermination of everyone who was, or might be related to, supernatural beings. “Complete chaos probably,” she responded softly, assuming anyone else would actually believe it.

Kaito dipped his head in a nod. “More likely than not. Also, my group would have my head on a stake for revealing us to the world.”

“Definitely bad things,” Mika confirmed with a nod. “Is that why no one knows that demons exist?”

“It’s one of the reasons.”

Mika drew a breath to ask another question, but was interrupted with a large yawn.

“Why don’t you sit on the couch and rest for a while?” Kaito offered. “It’s been a long evening for you. We can continue the conversations later.”

She wanted to protest, but was cut off once again with a yawn. “Alright,” she agreed and walked behind Kaito as they moved to the couch. Kaito left her in charge of the TV remote and crashed on the opposite end from Mika.

It may have been a long day for her, but she suspected it had been equally long for him. She flipped the television on, and left it on a variety show. Though the show was interesting enough, Mika found it impossible to concentrate on it through her increasing exhaustion.

Mika shifted her position, crossing her arms over the arm of the couch and rested her head upon it. She closed her eyes, intending for the rest to only be momentary; however, in just a minute, she found herself falling into darkness.

From the other side of the couch, Kaito watched calmly as Mika’s breathing became deeper and she succumbed to sleep.