I bolted after Handa, catching up quickly.

For a moment, he didn’t acknowledge me, and I tried to make sense of his expression. Troubled storm clouds had rolled across his eyes as he gazed into space, mouth frowning relentlessly, and he still held my tie in one tight fist. For how calm he appeared, in his own head, I knew he wasn’t dealing with this well.

Who could blame him. He’d just been told that his life was over.

That couldn’t happen.

Chief wouldn’t have wasted our time coming to Yamada if he wasn’t an expert, and yet the doctor hadn’t known of a single lead. There had to be somewhere to go, someone to talk to. All I needed was a place to start.

Handa broke in on my thoughts. “Chief is pretty irresponsible, don’t you think? Letting me wander around like this.”

For now, he was a normal guy, so I understood why Chief Kobayashi would break protocol for now, but in a few days, unless I fixed this, either Handa would have to surrender himself, or I’d have to drag him back here.

Wincing hard, I husked, “I think he just trusts us.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, finally sounding sincere. “I know.”

When we reached the exit, I found that the rain had all but stopped, slowly dripping and making the alley sing with its soft patter.

Handa hesitated just inside, fumbling to light a cigarette.

I watched the small ripples in a puddle just beyond the threshold, thinking wildly for a solution. I just didn’t have enough information.

“I’m curious how you knew about all this,” Handa said. “Makes me wonder if I missed a briefing.”

I couldn’t trust that forcibly easy-going voice. Handa had staying calm under pressure down to an art form, but he didn’t need extra worries piled onto him just now.

While I tried to decide what to say, he joked, “Every now and then, I fall asleep during a briefing, but it’s only if Sergeant Hasegawa is talking. That guy has the personality of a stump. I’ll bet even if he was talking about vampires, I’d pass right out.”

“You didn’t miss anything,” I answered, finally. “Look, you remember the psyche aptitude evaluation in the academy? The one where we had to guess what image was on a card, and crap like that?”

“I completely failed it.” He shut one eye and stared at the sky with the other. “Come to think of it, I barely passed the normal psych screening.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” I murmured, automatically. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Handa. You’re just a regular guy.”

“More or less. You’re not, though, right?” Thoughtfully, he rubbed his neck, clearly thinking of how I’d healed it. “You passed that weird eval.”

“More like I had an in. My dad is a yokai hunter.”

Handa glanced up at me. “I see. You’ve known about all this for a long time.”

“I couldn’t say anything to you about it. Yokai hunters are carefully vetted, and they definitely need guys who won’t leak anything. There are a lot of prereqs for becoming a yokai detective, and you didn’t even pass the basic screening.”

“Sure. I understand why I’m not a yokai hunter. What about you, though? Your whole thing with the chi must make you pretty special. How did you learn to use chi, anyway? How did you even know using chi was a possibility?”

“Handa,” I sighed. “Is this really what you want to talk about right now?”

“What, were you just watching Yu Yu Hakusho one day and thought you’d try it out?”

“I don’t even know what Yu Yu Hakusho is.”

“It’s this dorky show. You might like it. My little brother used to make me watch it with him.” He leaned against the door, gazing into the dark, and he hadn’t had a single drag off his cigarette since he lit it. Several centimeters of ash hung precariously at the tip. “Back when I was a kid.”

No matter how annoying he was, I had to be patient. I had to try to be understanding of his coping mechanisms, even if they seemed absurd to me.

“Look, if you really have to know right now…” I glanced over my shoulder. Chief was obviously giving us space, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to arrive and interrupt or not. “My mother taught me how to use chi, and she learned from her mother. It’s a family thing.”

“Plus your dad is a yokai hunter.” He paused a second to process all that, but continued casually, “Then, you knew if you developed that power, you could be a yokai detective too.”

“I wasn’t positive.”

“You’re a bad liar, Sugita. Anyway, that answers that.” He gave a soft but bitter laugh. “When were you going to tell me you plan to transfer into this special forces unit?”

I should have known we’d come around to something like that.

Before I could reply, his eyes hardened, looking like stone. “Or were you going to leave without saying anything?”

“For fuck’s sake, Hideki,” I grumbled. “What makes you think I was ever going to transfer at all?”

“It sounds like that’s what you really wanted to do with the police. And it sounds like you’ve already been at least partially briefed. Obviously, not all the way, though, if you didn’t even realize vampires don’t have pulses.”

Unable to stand his callous tone, I snagged his arm and forced him to face me. This wasn’t the way I had wanted to have this conversation, but I had been trying to talk to him about this for weeks now. Months. “Look. You and I have had a lot going on ever since I got married.”

He opened his mouth, but I cut him off.

“You can deny it if you want, but you know as well as I do that things have been off since my bachelor party. Even if it occurred to me, I wouldn’t bring up the subject of a transfer right now.”

His glare sharpened as he jerked away. “Don’t let me hold you back, Ken—I mean it. If that’s something you really want, by all means. Take it.”

“It’s not something I really want,” I corrected. “It was something I had thought I wanted—once—before I knew any better. But it doesn’t matter anyway, because being yokai hunter isn’t necessarily full-time.”

Some realization flickered in his eyes. “You’re a yokai hunter already.”

“No. Well. I file some classified documents, sometimes. I haven’t worked any supernatural investigations, yet, exactly.”

“Because you’re partners with me, right?”

I threw my hands up, and, like always, no matter how determined I was to be patient and understanding, his attitude grated on me. “Okay, yeah. Basically.”

Immediately, he turned away.

“But I made that decision for my own reasons.”

“Did you know we were after a yokai tonight?”

Finally robbed of its flippancy, his voice had fallen, and I knew we’d come around to the real question on his mind.

“Not until I saw it,” I admitted, quietly.

He rubbed his neck. “So why did you chase it? You knew I wasn’t supposed to be involved.”

Stupidly, I remembered how sure I’d been that I’d be able to protect him, but knowing that would only make him more indignant, possibly angry.

“I thought it was my duty.”

Nothing but a flimsy excuse.

With a sigh, he leaned against the wall again, and I practically heard his thought. This is all your fault, Sugita.

I thought the guilt might crush me now. I’d done this. I’d done this to Hideki. I might as well have shot him in the back.

“I didn’t think you’d get hurt,” I croaked.

“Oh well,” he muttered at last. “Maybe being a kyuuketsuki won’t be so bad.”

“You’re not going to turn into a kyuuketsuki,” I growled. “I won’t let that happen.”

“I know,” he said, listlessly.

“Hideki.” Again, I grabbed his shoulders, turning him and looking earnestly into his eyes. “I won’t. I promise.”

A long time passed as he held my gaze, and then a ray of light touched his eyes, and a quiet smile curved his lips. For a rare moment, beyond his bullshit and posturing, I got a glimpse in his expression of how much he truly adored me. It gave me hope, and it made me feel like a piece of shit. I wanted to be the guy he thought I was, no matter how impossible that was. Most likely, it would hurt—just like all of this did—but I wished I could see myself through his eyes, if only for a moment.

Heart heavy, I tried to smile back. “We’ll find the answers. We’re a good team, right? Even now.”

“Sure,” he murmured. “We’re like an ogre with an iron club.”