Mine-san greeted us with a smile at the top of the stairs, but her kind expression melted, replaced by shock, and she clasped a frail hand over her mouth. “Hideki-kun,” she squeaked. “You don’t look well at all.”

The sunshine made his skin pale, and his eyes were definitely a shade washed out. It wasn’t a trick. In a single night, the transformation had taken hold.

He grinned brilliantly to spite it all. “I’m a little hung over.”

“Dear me.” She made a point to stare at me, like she always did when he got her worried. “Perhaps you should stay home and rest.”

All my plans suddenly seemed stupid. Yamada had warned Handa to minimize his stress level, yet here I was, waking him up early and pushing him to investigate with me.

“Yeah.” I nudged him. “It might be better if you went back to bed.”

Mildly, he frowned at me. “You’re the one who came down and woke me up.”

“I’ll stay with you. We’ll just take it easy.” Fuck knows I’d rather not waste an entire day playing video games, but what choice did I have?

Waving me off, he flashed Mine-san another reassuring smile. “I just need some coffee.”

“In that case.” She held out a paper sack. “This isn’t much, but please accept it.”

“Crepes?” Taking the bag, he peeked inside, following up with his most charming grin and a debonair bow. “These will help a lot. “Thanks, Obaa-chan.”

“Please do your best today.” She returned the bow, and then she looked thoughtful. “It’s terribly rude of me to ask anything of you, but…”

Handa fixed such an intent look on her, you’d think she was his own grandmother.

“I have an appointment next week. I’m sure you have plans for your birthday, and I don’t want to be a bother. I suppose I could take the bus.”

My partner clicked his tongue. “In this weather? That won’t do. What time is your appointment?”

“Around nine, I believe. I know you have work.”

“I’ll drive you,” he agreed, cheerfully. “No problem at all.”

I gave him an incredulous look. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d left work to give her a ride to an appointment or even the store, but planning anything with anyone right now was irresponsible.

“As long as you’re sure,” she persisted, cautiously.

“I’m sure, Obaa-chan. Please make sure to remind me a few days in advance.” He finished with another one of his signature, winning smiles.

Eyes misting over with tenderness, Mine-san reached up to cup his cheek. She withdrew immediately. “Hideki-kun, you’re freezing!”

“Am I?” He laughed. “I feel fine.” With that, he ducked for the door, just a touch faster than normal. “I’m off. Have a nice day!”

Shrilly, she ordered, “You take care of yourself. Please.”

He stepped out without answering, and she followed him onto the engawa, arms folded against the cold. She looked after him with such compassion, I couldn’t help touching her shoulder and saying, “Don’t worry, Obaa-san, I’ll look after him.”

Dumb ass had made it abundantly clear he wasn’t thinking past the moment directly in front of him, and he wouldn’t sacrifice ego over risk.

When I met him at the car, he was struggling to light a cigarette, shirt collar popped up over his blazer. Squinting at the sky, he cursed under his breath.

“Are you really cold?” I pressed a hand against his brow. It felt surprisingly cool.

Handa pushed me away and then shielded his eyes from the partially risen sun.

“Is the light bothering you?” It was getting difficult to keep the alarm out of my tone.

He answered glibly, “I’ve got a hangover, that’s all. Where are we going?”

“We won’t go anywhere if you don’t convince me you’re up to it.”

“Jesus Christ, Kaa-san.”

“I’m serious.”

My partner stared me down, deciding what to tell me, before giving, “Okay, I’m cold, and I probably don’t look very good. What do you expect? I’m turning into a kyuuketsuki.”

The words intensified the sick feeling in my stomach. I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “In that case, it’s dumb, isn’t it? Promising your landlady a ride next week.”

“We don’t know what’s going to happen. I might be able to.”

“Maybe not, though. Who will take her if you can’t?” I shot him a stern look.

“You, I think, Aikata. Seems like something you’d do.”

I huffed, “You should have told her no.”

“I can’t say no to Mine-san. She’s too good to me.” He held up the paper bag she’d given him. “And she doesn’t have anyone to take care of her. Buses aren’t fit for young people, let alone an old lady—”

“I’ll do it. If I have to.” I threw my hands up. “But I expect you to be honest with me from now on.”

A stream of smoke shot from his nose as he leaned back against the car with his eyes shut.

“We’re in a crisis. We don’t have time for bickering, and I can’t help you if you won’t be open with me.”

“Honestly, I don’t feel good, but I’m okay to work. Plus, I have an idea.”

It stalled me, as it was obviously meant to, forcing me to decide what mattered more: his immediate health or his long term survival.

Maybe if his idea was good, it wouldn’t matter for long that he looked like shit.

“Don’t push yourself,” I muttered at last.

He threw open the door to his Subaru WRX, rummaging through the crowded glove box. “I’ll drive.”

The hope I’d experienced got dashed right away. “Spare me the emotional roller coaster. I’m sure we can both agree you shouldn’t be driving right now.”

“I want to.” He slipped on the Ray Bans I’d brought him from my honeymoon.

I pinched my nose, hard. “If you get caught driving like this, we’ll both be fucked.” I shouldn’t have to remind him about the fine and the jail time we might both serve.

I almost wished I had, though, since he came back with, “That’s the least of my problems, and I want to enjoy my car while I can. Besides, I’m supposed to keep calm, and your driving gives me a heart attack.”

“So, stay home!”

“Can’t,” he replied, instantly. “I need to check something out.”

“You’re being really unreasonable,” I scolded. “And you’re putting me in an impossible position.”

“It’ll be fine. If this doesn’t work, I’ll come home and relax.” He drew a cross over his heart. “Promise.”

The absolute bastard. That promise didn’t mean anything; he’d find a way to go back on it if he wanted to.

“Have you ever thought about being a lawyer, Hideki?”

“Hey, hey, I’m already turning into a blood sucker.” He smirked. “Don’t ask me to do it for money.”

“Good to know your sense of humor is intact.” I rolled my eyes. “At least give me your gun, for fuck’s sake.”

He handed that over without a thought, so he wasn’t completely out of his mind, and I climbed, resignedly, into the passenger’s seat. “Don’t get me in trouble, Hideki.”

“It’ll be fine.” He slid behind the wheel and started the Subaru with a roar. “Yeah, she sounds sweet today. I missed her yesterday.” His free hand caressed the leather wheel cover.

I made myself stay quiet. His attachment to his car was silly, but it was one of his little pleasures in life. Instead of ridiculing that, I lit a cigarette and waited until he’d zipped onto the road before asking, “Is there some reason I can’t run this errand without you?”

He mashed his cigarette into the ash tray and immediately got another going. “No, I just don’t think you’d want to.”

“What is it?”

“First, promise not to laugh.”

“Okay. I won’t laugh.”

“Easy for you. Promise not to shoot it down.”

I puffed my cigarette. “Sounds like you’re not very confident in your own idea.”

“No. It’s not a bad idea, but you might think it’s a waste of time.”

That wasn’t what we needed right now.

Thoughtlessly, he breezed through a stop sign. I had no room to criticize, but I noticed he was driving erratically, swerving back and forth in his lane. I looked nervously into the mirror, sure I’d see a patrol unit zooming up behind us. “How hungover are you?”

“Wasting time isn’t ideal,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “But we don’t have anything else to do right now.”

“That’s not true.” We flew around a corner, and I clenched my cigarette between my teeth so I could hang onto the door. “I want to see the chief.”

Skepticism curled Handa’s brow, and I practically heard him sneering that the chief couldn’t fix everything. “He told us what he could last night.”

“It’s important to be on the same page as him anyway.” I realized he’d misdirected me, probably on purpose, keeping me distracted until we could arrive at his undisclosed location. “Tell me your idea. I won’t shoot it down.”

He sighed and paused. “Listen. Chief doesn’t have the answer, and neither did the doctor. There might not be an answer to this problem here in the human dimension. I’m thinking that, if there’s a whole world full of yokai, they could know a solution.”

“Right. Let’s stop by the Y Dimension real quick and ask a passing kyuuketsuki how to counteract their venom.”

A bit cynically, he laughed. “Funny. But in all seriousness, have you ever talked to a yokai? Have you ever even seen one?”

“No.” I glanced around. So far, it looked like we were on his normal route to work.

“We have to think outside the box, then.”

“You’re good at that, but circumstances aren’t an excuse to do whatever you want. Like driving drunk. You’ll spend the next two weeks in jail; you can’t convince me that’s all right with you—not if you’re going to make promises to people—and if it is, you should check back into Yamada-sensei’s clinic. Someone who knows what to expect should be monitoring you.”

“My drunk driving is safer than your sober driving.” He cranked his radio a few decibels, letting crappy metal music flood the cab.

Annoyed, I sank back in my seat to smoke. I’d have to shout to be heard, and it wasn’t worth it. Handa wasn’t in a compliant mood, which meant I’d have to abandon my carefully crafted plans and sink my energy into keeping him out of trouble.

That was a familiar feeling,especially around his birthday.

Except that, normally, it was because Handa got excited, made several weeks worth of wild plans, and then went bouncing from concert to concert, club crawling, looking for strange, getting into fights, and drinking too much.

His birthday being next week, we were already supposed to be steeped in loud, obnoxious activities, starting as early as tonight.

This year, he wasn’t going to do any of that. Unless I found a solution, he’d never get to do any of that again.

He knew damn well. Calm as he acted, he wasn’t quite himself. Rather than singing along to his awful music and drumming on his steering wheel, he sucked, relentlessly, on the cigarette between his lips, frowning overtly.

Shit, I wanted to give his life back to him so he could keep being around, keep being Hideki.

That meant so much to me. After five years, I was so used to the feeling of having him beside me all the time, so used to the security of having someone I could always rely on when things went wrong, a person who prioritized me, a person who made me laugh to spite my problems. I couldn’t imagine a life devoid of that bond.

I had my wife. Even my friendship with Hideki didn’t compare to the ties of marriage.

But that didn’t undercut his value. It didn’t change how much I wanted him in my life.

I should tell him while I could. How important all of it really was. Even the things I didn’t always enjoy, like his taste in music or some of his irresponsible, birthday antics. Even with the pain of knowing he’d fallen in love with me undermining some of our closeness. All of it was part of being friends with him, and I wanted him to know that all of it mattered.

Faintly, I muttered, “Hideki...”

Handa whipped off onto a narrow side road and parked, abruptly, along the curb, singing out, “Here we are.”

Little shit. I’d known what he was up to, but he’d still brought me somewhere against my will, without my input. Now I had no idea what to expect.

“Where’s here?” I looked up at the shoddy row of buildings. They’d stood forever, grungy now, occupied by a handful of small-time shops evidently still recovering from the recession. Across the sidewalk, my reflection scowled back at me from a huge window eclipsed by a gaudy decal of a crystal ball. The characters, partially chipped away, proclaimed Madame Budu’s Psychic Boutique: Seances, Tarot, and Palm Readings. “Are you kidding?” I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Like always, the headache I’d started with was getting worse instead of better. “You can’t be serious.”

“Open up your mind, Sugita.” Already, he was climbing out, steadying himself against the car. “If this person converses with spirits, she might know something about yokai.”

I jammed my cigarette into the overfull ash try and got out too. “I can’t believe you drove here drunk, all so we can grasp at straws. We should be touching base with our boss, trying to get on with a team—they’re the ones who will solve this, not some hack hiding out in a metaphysical gift shop.”

He came around to join me on the sidewalk. “I’ve seen how the system works. I’ll die waiting for Chief to cut through red tape.”

With a shake of my head, I laid a hand on his shoulder. “Look. It’s fine if you don’t trust the system—you never really have—but distracting me from doing something productive makes it look like you don’t want to find an answer.”

Unexpectedly, his thin eyebrows dove beneath the frame of his sunglasses, and his brow wrinkled. His mouth twisted into a hostile snarl I’d only ever seen in moments of real anger. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Just that you seem a little resigned,” I answered, carefully. “If you want to hang out at home and wait for the inevitable, okay, but don’t ask me to stand by and do nothing.”

“You couldn’t do nothing if you tried, Ken.” He shoved my hand away. “Everything has to be your way, all the time, and just because you doubt my will to live doesn’t give you the right to dictate how I handle my problems.”

Speechless, I stared at him. It wasn’t like him to react with that level of aggression. Not when I was just trying to help him.

Anger simmered in my stomach. I had to bite my tongue.

“Fine, Hideki.”

Immediately, he lightened up, like he knew he’d done the wrong thing. Reverting back to his easygoing tone, he shrugged. “Like I said, if this is a dud, I’ll go home. Deal?”

“Be prepared for me to hold you to that.”

This place wasn’t worth the pavement it had been built on. In fact, it was annoying to know the recession had devastated so many useful businesses while this one had survived.

“You know how this goes,” he chatted, amicable again, as we approached the door. “Sometimes, you have to grasp at straws, but you never know when one might lead somewhere.”

“I guess.” I hated grasping at straws.

“Not to mention, I followed you from one dumpster to another all day yesterday. It’s my turn to listen to my gut.” With a pleasant smile, he opened the door for me, and I figured he was trying to sweep his outburst under the rug.

“You don’t listen to your gut,” I corrected, peevishly. “You calculate.”