Let's go have some fun

"Knock, knock, knock."

Yan Si had only just come out of the bathroom. His hair was still half wet, and he leaned against the bed in a black pajama top, mentally working out how to use his newly purchased ability.

The sudden knock at the door interrupted his train of thought.

He was in no hurry. He rose leisurely, tossed the boning knife in his hand onto the bedside table, and shuffled to the door in his slippers.

When he opened it, light spilled in from the hallway, making him squint slightly.

Suguru Geto stood outside.

He stood perfectly straight, clearly the sort of well-behaved student who had been taught to stand properly since childhood.

He held a printed mission sheet, folded so neatly that every corner lined up exactly.

He wasn't wearing the dark Jujutsu High uniform. Those were still being made and weren't ready yet.

Instead, Suguru Geto wore a casual black-and-white jacket, zipped up to his chest with a light-colored shirt showing underneath. That odd lock of bangs still stubbornly occupied the exact center of his forehead.

He smiled when the door opened.

"A Grade 2 Cursed Spirit. Over in Minato City."

He held the mission sheet out toward Yan Si.

"Want to come?"

Come have some fun.

It sounded less like an invitation to a mission and more like a child asking a friend to go somewhere fun.

"In the direction of Koto City?"

Yan Si leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed. Water dripped from the ends of his undried hair onto the shoulders of his black pajamas, spreading into small, dark patches.

Fresh from the shower, he still smelled of body wash, a clean herbal fragrance utterly unlike the bloody stench he usually brought back from a fight.

He tilted his head, considered the geography, then suddenly asked, "Odaiba?"

Suguru Geto wore the same gentle expression, the curve of his smile unchanged as he nodded. "Very close to Odaiba."

That answer said everything it needed to.

Close meant they could stop by after the mission. A natural, perfectly reasonable detour that required no further discussion.

An unspoken understanding had already formed between them.

Suguru Geto couldn't quite say when it had started. Probably their third or fourth mission together.

The Cursed Spirit that time had been near Akihabara. After the fight, Yan Si had said, "We're already here," then dragged him around the electronics district for an entire afternoon, buying a pile of completely useless trinkets.

After that, it became a routine.

Locations on their mission sheets were no longer just coordinates for a fight. They came with an invisible "nearby attractions recommended" tag.

"Sure."

Yan Si turned back into his room, yawning as he walked.

"Give me a minute. I'll change."

He didn't close the door, so Suguru Geto didn't stand on ceremony. He stepped halfway inside and leaned against the inner side of the doorframe to wait. Yan Si's dorm room was pretty much what he'd expected.

Order amid chaos.

Or rather, Yan Si thought it was orderly, but any normal person would call it a mess.

The sort of mess your mother would call a pigsty.

The blanket lay unfolded in an irregular heap in the corner of the bed, the pillow sat crookedly against the headboard, and half the edge of the sheet had been pulled out from under the mattress. Who knew how he'd managed to sleep like that?

An empty pudding cup sat on the bedside table beside a knife, with what looked like something still stuck to its tip.

Several things were piled on the desk: a roll of breathable gauze, half a bottle of iodine antiseptic, a pair of scissors, and a Tokyo travel guide with a few pages turned.

That knife.

Suguru Geto's gaze lingered on it.

It was the boning knife he'd seen on the rooftop, the one that appeared and disappeared out of thin air.

He didn't understand how it appeared and disappeared like that, so he'd chalked it up to Yan Si's Cursed Technique.

He had no idea why it was now lying so casually on the bedside table, as though its owner thought nothing of it.

He didn't ask.

"Aren't you going to dry your hair?"

Suguru Geto watched Yan Si grab a black outdoor jacket. His long black hair was still dripping, soaking a dark patch into the back of the jacket.

"Too much trouble."

Yan Si pulled his hair out of his T-shirt collar and casually tossed it back. The ends traced an arc through the air, splashing a few drops of water onto Suguru Geto's clothes.

Like a cat shaking water off its fur.

Suguru Geto looked down at the little wet spots on his sleeve and silently brushed them away.

They left the dorm, and Suguru Geto released a flying Cursed Spirit to carry them there.

That Cursed Spirit wasn't too ugly.

Among Suguru Geto's collection, it was practically the pinnacle of good looks.

It still looked a little bizarre with its wings spread, but at least an ordinary person wouldn't have nightmares after seeing it.

The first time Yan Si saw it, he'd declared that it "looked like a burnt duck." Ever since, he'd called it the Duck Express whenever he rode on its back.

Suguru Geto had corrected him twice, explaining that it had its own designation: Flying Type No. 3. Yan Si had replied, "Got it, Duck No. 3."

Suguru Geto stopped correcting him after that.

Wind rushed past their ears. Tokyo's late-March air still carried a chill, but sunlight already stretched far and wide, and the streets and buildings of Minato City below slowly shrank and grew in their view.

Yan Si sat cross-legged on the Cursed Spirit's back, elbows on his knees and chin in his palm as he admired the scenery below. His hair streamed wildly behind him in the wind, but he paid it no mind. Now and then, he even reached out to fiddle with the featherlike structures sticking up along the edges of its wings, making the Cursed Spirit give a couple of disgruntled shudders.

"Geto, this damn duck of yours has a bad temper."

Hearing something off in that phrasing, Suguru Geto glanced at Yan Si and decided to ignore the other meaning.

"It'd be stranger if it stayed sweet-tempered while you plucked its feathers."

"Who's plucking its feathers? This is friendly physical contact. Right, duck?"

He patted the Cursed Spirit's back.

The Cursed Spirit made an odd noise. It was impossible to tell whether it was agreeing or tattling.

Suguru Geto offered no translation and pretended he hadn't heard a thing.

The Grade 2 Cursed Spirit wasn't hard to fight.

It was hiding in the underground parking garage of a construction site in Minato City. A rather large creature, it resembled a many-legged bug that had been squashed flat and then molded back into shape. A cloudy eye grew at the end of each leg, and looking at it for too long made one's stomach turn.

I really don't get why Cursed Spirits need so many eyes. So gross.

I want to gouge them out.

Yan Si and Suguru Geto worked together seamlessly.

Yan Si slashed away up front while Suguru Geto provided ranged attacks from the side, occasionally releasing a few Cursed Spirits to restrict their opponent's movements.

For them now, a Grade 2 Cursed Spirit amounted to only a few extra minutes of playtime.

The boning knife's ability to ignore cursed energy defenses was practically cheating in a fight like this. Every slash cut precisely into the Cursed Spirit's vital points, splattering black residue across the floor.

Once they were done, Yan Si flicked the black blood off his knife, stored it in the system space, and dusted off his clothes. Then he turned to Suguru Geto. "Come on, let's go have some fun in Odaiba~"

His tone was utterly certain, not remotely asking for an opinion. He sounded as though he were announcing an established fact.

Suguru Geto recalled the few low-level Cursed Spirits he'd released to assist in the fight, brushed his hands together, and nodded.

He didn't even say "sure." In this situation, that word was already unnecessary.

Odaiba was an artificial island in Tokyo Bay. In late March, the sea breeze still felt faintly chilly and carried a salty tang.

In the distance, the white span of the Rainbow Bridge stretched across the water. The view was so open it made one want to take a deep breath and savor all that space.

Odaiba wasn't crowded during a weekday afternoon. Small groups of tourists strolled along the promenade, and the occasional cyclist passed with a ring of their bell.

They walked along the promenade in the waterfront district, Yan Si ahead with his hands in his pockets, his steps as languid as a retired old man out for a stroll.

Suguru Geto walked half a step beside him at a steady pace, occasionally turning to admire the sea.

The sea breeze blew Yan Si's long hair backward, whipping Suguru Geto several times.

"Could you tie your hair up?"

Suguru Geto raised a hand to block it, but missed. The hair had already swept across the tip of his nose.

"I didn't bring a hair tie," Yan Si said without a trace of shame.

"You said that last time, too."

"That just proves I'm consistent."

Suguru Geto took a black hair tie from his own pocket and handed it over. Yan Si accepted it, studied it for a moment, then looked at Suguru Geto.

"You carry these around?"

"I have to tie my hair up, too." Suguru Geto pointed at his own bun.

Yan Si's eyes curved with a smile. He held the hair tie between his teeth, reached behind his head with both hands, and gathered his hair into a hasty low ponytail. Then he tilted his head toward Suguru Geto. "How's it look?"

"Crooked."

"Then straighten it for me."

Suguru Geto sighed and reached out to straighten his ponytail.

Like a mother looking at her troublesome child.

Yan Si's brows lifted slightly.

Mommy Geto's other, even more troublesome child would be coming to school in a few days.

That white-haired guy with his "Throughout heaven and earth, I alone am the honored one."

Just thinking about it was fun.

Suguru Geto's touch was light. His fingers passed through the black strands as he readjusted the crooked hair tie.

He noticed a faint red mark on the exposed skin at the back of Yan Si's neck. It was slowly fading and looked like a fresh injury.

His fingers paused, but he said nothing and withdrew his hand.

"Done."

"Thanks, Mommy Geto."

Suguru Geto selectively ignored the nickname.

Their first stop was a tour of the Fuji TV building.

The building itself was an attraction, with a giant silver sphere embedded in its center. From a distance, it looked like an enormous metal egg half swallowed by the structure.

Yan Si stood below and stared up for so long, with such a serious expression, that Suguru Geto thought he was about to deliver some profound insight into architectural aesthetics.

"Looks like a squashed takoyaki ball."

"...Are you serious?"

"Look at that ball." Yan Si drew a circle in the air with his finger, gesturing toward the building's iconic spherical observation deck.

"Doesn't it look like a takoyaki ball caught between two chopsticks? One above, one below, squeezing it so hard the filling's about to spill out. It's gonna burst, hey."

Suguru Geto looked up at the Fuji TV building and fell silent for three seconds. He would never be able to look at it the same way again.

"I think its designer would cry if they heard that."

"Why cry? Takoyaki is a great food. That was a compliment." Yan Si waved dismissively and headed toward the entrance. After two steps, he glanced back. "We're already here. Let's go up and look."

The observation level really did have a fine view. It wasn't particularly crowded when they went up, with only a handful of tourists scattered around the viewing hall.

Yan Si leaned against the floor-to-ceiling windows, Tokyo Bay reflected in his purple eyes. From this angle, he could see Odaiba's entire coastline and the distant Rainbow Bridge. A few sightseeing boats cruised leisurely across the sea, trailing pale wakes behind them.

"Geto, look at that boat." He pointed to a little moving dot on the water. "Doesn't it look like a water strider?"

"...Your choice of comparisons is always unexpected."

"Just tell me whether it does."

Suguru Geto looked at the boat, then pictured a water strider. He had to admit there was a resemblance.

He resisted the urge to nod, took his phone out of his pocket, and photographed the view through the window.

After they came down from the observation level, Yan Si lingered in the souvenir shop for quite a while.

He showed an unusual level of interest in the keychains, postcards, and mascot merchandise, picking them up one by one to examine, making a few comments, then putting them back.

Suguru Geto followed behind, feeling as though he were taking a child half Yan Si's actual age around a mall.

Haha, soon he'd have two to take around.

Yan Si picked up a mascot charm of the spherical building, squeezed its belly, then shoved it into Suguru Geto's hand. "This is for you."

"Why an octopus?"

"To commemorate your first time being awed by the takoyaki building."

Suguru Geto turned the tag over to check the price, then looked at the crudely made octopus plush in his hand. The corner of his mouth twitched, but in the end, he tucked it into his pocket.

"Hey, we haven't paid yet! Don't be so quick to pocket it. The shopkeeper'll beat you up!"