Chapter Text
Onoda was having a strange dream.
In it, he was a little boy again—five perhaps, no more than six, running around with scraped knees and a pair of crooked glasses that were perpetually falling off his face and needing fixing. He was living at the shrine his grandmother looked after, way out in the countryside. Perfect for any growing child who wanted to do nothing more than play by himself, having adventures with his toys and his imaginary friends. Onoda especially loved the enormous flower garden his grandmother took care of, with its lilies and sakura trees.
He loved everything about the shrine: its tinkling bells; the clear, still pools that worshipers threw coins into; the good luck charms for sale that he helped his grandmother make with his small, clumsy hands; the singing of the birds. Onoda liked to leave food out for the wild animals that lived in the woods and fields around the shrine; the nearest village was a twenty-minute walk along the dirt path that led up to the shrine’s front steps, and animals abounded, especially at this time of year. Onoda had seen badgers, squirrels, tanuki, wild cats, and once or twice even a beautiful orange fox that darted in and out of the woods when it thought no one was watching. (Onoda had left extra treats out, hoping to get a chance of seeing the fox again, and had been rewarded for his vigilance—the fox had come and taken every one of the treats while Onoda peeked from behind the shrine’s back door, which delighted him to no end.)
In reality, that summer had been a terrible one. Onoda’s mother had fought through three months of virulent pneumonia before finally starting on the slow road to full recovery; fearful that their small child would catch the same disease or be traumatized by the sight of his sick mother, Onoda had been sent to his grandmother’s for the summer. But that hadn’t saved Onoda from catching something different, faster, and much more dangerous for a small child far from the nearest hospital. The unknown virus had burned through him for two days and nights, wracking him with chills and fever and stomach cramps, leaving him crying into his pillow until falling into restless slumber.
Michiko, his grandmother, had made him some kind of folk medicine that had cured him overnight. It had been twenty years, but he still remembered the taste: bitter, making him cough and whine in protest when she made him drink the whole thing. But it had left a strangely sweet aftertaste, like clear water from a mountain stream.
In the dream, though, he wasn’t sick at all. He was out running along one of the paths in the wooded hills behind his grandmother’s shrine, chasing a butterfly. It fluttered before him, glowing softly just out of reach—baby blue, like April’s first flowers. The butterfly drifted off the path, deeper into the woods, and Onoda hesitated only a moment (don’t leave the paths, Sakamichi, it’s not safe) before following. It was so pretty, and he wouldn’t go very far…
Around him, the landscape changed. The woods grew darker, more forbidding; even as Onoda paused and turned to look back at the way he came, the very trees around him seemed to loom and lean in close, whispering ominously as their branches rubbed together in the wind. Onoda whimpered, casting about for the butterfly, desperate for a safe way out. After a moment he could hear its soft whispering—
(this way, little one)
There it was, fluttering just a little ways ahead of him, waiting for him. Onoda let out a glad cry and hurried after it, trying not to look too closely at the shadows melting just behind the trees all around him. He was running now, the butterfly moving faster, urging him in its faint sweet voice to not fall behind. It fluttered just out of sight, disappearing around a large pine tree up ahead. Onoda dashed around the corner—
—and crashed head-first into a looming figure standing stock-still in the middle of the trees. Onoda yelped and tried to stop, but too late, and collided with the person’s legs. He would have stumbled backwards and fallen over if a pair of hands hadn’t shot out and grabbed his shoulders, keeping him upright.
“Found you,” said the stranger, in a cruel, sibilant voice. Onoda knew he should be afraid of that voice, but underneath the menace he thought he caught the soft, sweet whisper of the butterfly, and understood (in the logic of children, and dreamers of all ages) that this person was also the butterfly that had lead him here. That thought might have scared someone else, but all Onoda could think was that anyone who could be such a small, beautiful creature couldn’t actually be that terrible.
This gave him the courage to lift his head, peering up at the person who still had his hands on Onoda’s shoulders. The stranger was tall, his height accentuated by his elegant purple-and-white kimono. Blue fire burned burned along its hem, where his feet should have been. But even if Onoda hadn’t already understood that this stranger, this man who could turn into a butterfly, wasn’t human, the pair of pointed ears and five tails twitching behind the kimono would have told him. Huge dark eyes burned in the stranger’s pale face, surrounded by a sheet of black hair, and he was watching Onoda intently.
As Onoda peered up at him, the stranger crouched, hands still on Onoda’s shoulders, so that they were at eye level. “I’ve been looking for you,” the spirit said, which made no sense, really—what could Onoda possibly have that this kitsune could want? “You hid from me for a long time, little one.”
Onoda bit his lip, looking curiously back at the fox-spirit. “I wasn’t hiding,” he said, because it seemed like the kitsune was expecting him to say something.
The kitsune cocked his head, those huge eyes narrowing. “Then you were hidden,” said the fox-spirit. Onoda wanted to protest again, but before he could, the kitsune frowned and said, “Why aren’t you afraid?”
“I don’t know,” Onoda admitted, and gave the kitsune a shy smile. The kitsune continued to frown at him. “Um… Well, you aren’t scary.”
“Yes, I am!” said the kitsune, and clacked sharp teeth at him. Onoda winced and put his hands over his mouth and nose, muffling a small noise of alarm. This seemed to satisfy the kitsune, because his smile came back then, calmer than before. “It doesn’t matter, anyway,” he said. “I found you, and you won’t disappear again.”
“Why were you looking for me?” Onoda asked—or started to, but was cut off as a shrill, rhythmic noise interrupted him. It was quiet, as though heard from a distance, but was getting steadily louder. The kitsune blanched, pulling his hands back and standing up quickly.
“Wait!” Onoda reacted without thinking, reaching out and grabbing the kitsune’s kimono to stop him from leaving. The kitsune paused, glancing down at him with that same unreadable expression.
“Don’t go yet,” Onoda said. He bunched his hands in the folds of the kimono, caught between shyness and desperation. The kitsune was so beautiful and strange, even if he was scary; the idea of him leaving was somehow awful.
The kitsune did nothing for several long moments, simply staring at him. Then he reached out a hand again, settling it on top of Onoda’s head, sharp-clawed fingers sliding through Onoda’s hair. The shrill noise was getting louder, making it harder to think. Onoda concentrated as hard as he could on that hand in his hair, supernaturally warm.
“Wake up,” said the kitsune.
“What?”
* * * * *
Onoda sat up.
For a moment, his head swam; he was foggy, disoriented. An alarm was going off—not an alarm, his alarm. He groped at his bedside table, and managed to turn the phone alarm off instead of sending the phone flying. Blessed silence returned. Onoda took a deep breath and shut his eyes.
He’d been having such a vivid dream… but he could hardly remember it now, the images already slipping away. There was a woods, and a path ...it had been behind his grandmother’s shrine, Onoda thought groggily. It was hard to think when it was still so early the sun hadn’t yet come up.
Onoda shook his head. There was no use dwelling on it. He rarely dreamed, and almost never remembered it when he did. Besides, he had too much to do today to spend his morning dwelling on strange dreams of the past.
He sat up, hopping out of bed on legs that wobbled a bit—he always got light-headed when he got up too fast, a trait he was hoping he would grow out of, but hadn’t yet—and then hurried to the bathroom to shower. Onoda opened the store today, and Makishima was one of the nicer supervisors Onoda had had, but he didn’t approve of lateness.
…In other people, at least. Fifteen minutes later, a significantly cleaner and more alert Onoda was busily pulling on his pants and shirt when his phone went off with a text message. The message was from Makishima: I’ll be a few minutes late today, it said. Don’t worry if you’re the first person there.
Onoda smiled. He knew why Makishima was going to be late: it was Tuesday morning, and Tuesday mornings meant the pastry delivery truck was driven by the son of the bakery their bookstore bought from. On Tuesdays, Makishima was actually early, but always wasted more time than he should taking delivery of their baked goods, and more than once Onoda had seen his supervisor coming in from the back room flushed across the face as though he’d just biked a mile uphill. Onoda thought it was pretty cute, actually, although of course he’d never say so.
Onoda set the phone down and went back to dressing himself. As he pulled the button-down over his head, he glanced at the suspended shelf against the far wall, and the small collection of figurines and memorabilia arranged there. It was a much smaller collection than used to feature in Onoda’s room, having been pared down when Onoda moved out of his mother’s house to this apartment, but still managed to contain most of Onoda’s most favorite things in the apartment. In amongst the nendoroids, phone charms, die-cast figurines, tsum tsums, and mechas, a broken wooden charm lay on its side in a collecting box.
As his eyes fell on it, Onoda’s mind cast back to the dream he’d had this morning, and his heart sank a little bit. He’d knocked the charm from its place of pride above his bedroom door last week, in the process of hanging a new print on the wall, and the carved wooden body had broken in two, freeing the white gem from its central place in the charm. His grandmother had made him the charm the summer he spent at her shrine, when he got so sick—to ward off evil, she had told him—and it was one of his only mementos of her. Michiko had died just a few years later, before Onoda’s tenth birthday. He’d wanted to fix the charm, but hadn’t yet figured out how. If it were made of stone, he’d have it mended in kintsugi style, but as it was, he wasn’t sure what to do.
Behind him, his phone chirped, the message from Makishima still marked as “unread.” It was enough to jar him out of his temporary distraction; Onoda snatched up the phone and his keys from the nightstand and hurried out of the room.
Forty minutes later, he got off the bus a block from his work, still humming the anime theme song he’d been listening to on his earbuds as he walked up the sidewalk towards the bookstore. Shibuya Booksellers was a chain bookstore that managed to have a more independent feel to it, probably due to its relatively flexible franchise rules and the fact that its flagship bookstore was eclectic to start with. In addition to its impressive selection of books, movies, and music, this location also had a small cafe; Onoda was very proud of its collection of manga and art books, in particular.
Sure, the job wasn’t what he’d planned, but he liked his coworkers and hadn’t yet found anything better in the months since graduation. And it was kind of nice to just work a full-time job and not have to worry about homework, or studying on the weekends, even if it only barely paid enough for him to afford an apartment in a slightly rundown part of Tokyo. He had enough space for his things, and the freedom to work on his art, so Onoda was satisfied.
Today, Onoda was going to be circulating on the floor—he and most of the other more senior crew members generally all had shifts they preferred, but it was Makishima’s policy that everyone rotated through all positions. He did this not only in the interest of fairness, but also in case someone ever called out sick, to make it easier to cover the absent employee. It was a good policy, Onoda thought, and really there wasn’t any shift that he disliked too much. He sometimes got flustered behind the cash register, especially on busy days, but today he didn’t have to worry about that.
He’d gotten most of the way through the morning, staying mostly towards the back doing shelving and helping people find what they were looking for, a task he always enjoyed. Onoda was actually preparing to go on his fifteen-minute break when he heard the jingle of the front door bell. “Good morning!” Onoda called, poking his head out from behind the Vintage Automobile bookstack and waving cheerily.
The man in the doorway looked like he hadn’t had a good morning, or any other time of day, in approximately five years. He wore a sour expression, and had dark bruises under his huge, lantern eyes. His jacket was torn and patched in many places, and his bleach-blond mohawk stuck up an inch or so from his otherwise-shaven scalp. He was tall, lanky, and slouched aggressively, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his grungy jeans. He glanced over at Onoda as Onoda called out to him, and as soon as their eyes met Onoda had to fight the urge to dive back behind the bookcase he’d just emerged out from.
But he couldn’t. He felt like he was frozen in place.
“You work here?” The man had a low, sibilant voice that slithered over Onoda’s skin like a phantom hand; Onoda had to suppress a shiver.
“Y-Yes! Yes, I do.” Onoda found his smile and beamed, coming forward and bowing slightly to the man. “Can I help you, sir?”
“Yeah.” Onoda waited a moment for the man to say what it was that he was looking for, but instead of continuing the man fell silent, still staring steadily at Onoda. For a man so aggressively unappealing, his eyes were so beautiful as to be captivating. Onoda felt a bit like a vole or a mouse caught in a snake’s gaze, too hypnotized and terrified to move.
Finally, the stranger stirred. “I need some books on photography,” he said.
“Ah,” said Onoda. He hurried to grab on to the new topic, eager to focus on something other than his weird fixation. “Yes, of course! Right this way sir, we have a very nice photography section…” Onoda turned and led the man back through the stacks, weaving past the rows of bookcases and end caps, trying to ignore the way his heart had sped up a little in his chest. The stranger walked behind him, and if Onoda hadn’t glanced over his shoulder to check and see if the man was still there, he would never have known; the stranger made not a sound as he followed in Onoda’s wake.
Onoda perked up a little as they got to the section on photography. He curated this section himself; he liked to arrange the books on the shelves, carefully facing some books and artfully tilting others, and he knew their selection inside and out. “This is one of our best-sellers,” he began, reaching for a glossy full-color photobook by Annie Leibovitz.
“Gross,” announced the stranger. “I’ve looked at that one, it’s boring.” His nose wrinkled in distaste, lips drawn back from his teeth in a sneer. Onoda couldn’t help but notice how alarmingly large his mouth was; he stared for a moment, and then snapped out of it.
Onoda took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said, and smiled. “It sounds like you’re pretty familiar with this topic, then. Let’s see here…” Onoda’s hand hovered over the shelves before reaching out, digging for a moment. “This one is—”
“I’ve read that one,” the stranger said curtly. “You’re not very good at this, are you?”
Onoda’s smile widened. A challenge. He didn’t get those very often. “Alright,” he said. “Give me one second.” Onoda crouched, paging through some of the books, looking for two in particular. He felt, rather than saw, the impatience on the stranger’s face, felt the way he crossed his arms across his chest as Onoda dug through the volumes of glossy-paged books, until he emerged with the ones he was looking for.
The stranger peered at their covers doubtfully. One of them was On Photography, the Sonntag book of essays, and the other was a photo journal by Rehahn. “I’m not here to read anyone’s stupid, gross feelings about photography,” he said, but Onoda saw his eyes lingering on the cover.
“It’s really good,” Onoda said earnestly. “It’s kind of dated now, but she has a lot of interesting thoughts on the topic, and it really changed the way I thought about pictures and the messages they give.”
At this, the stranger glanced up at him. Something in his face had changed; he was looking at Onoda now, his eyes very keen. “You like photography?”
“Yes! Well—” Onoda’s smile turned a little shy. “I’m an artist,” he said. “Manga, mostly, illustration some. But photography and references are really important, and a good photograph uses all the same elements that a good piece of art does, so I’ve tried to educate myself.”
The stranger grunted but did not otherwise respond. After a moment, he reached out and took both the books from Onoda. Their hands brushed for just the barest of moments, and Onoda caught his breath at how warm the other man’s hand was, like he was burning up from fever. If the stranger noticed, he didn’t react. Instead he opened the photo journal Onoda had found and started paging through it. The photo book was a series of portraits, most of which were from Vietnam, and almost every single photo was arresting.
“I love his work,” Onoda said softly. “The photos he takes are really haunting.”
“Gross,” muttered the stranger, but did not stop paging through the book in his hands. After another moment, he snapped the book shut, glancing once more up at Onoda. “These might do,” he said, and tucked the books against his chest. “You’re not totally useless.”
Onoda responded to this with another small smile. “I hope you like them,” he said sincerely. “That one by Rehahn is one of my favorites. If it weren’t so expensive, I’d own it too.”
“Being an artist doesn’t pay that well, does it.” The stranger continued gazing at him, whether with irritation or curiosity or disgust, Onoda couldn’t have said. “What’s your name?”
Onoda blinked. Somehow, he hadn’t been expecting that particular question. “Onoda,” he said, and gave a small bow. “Please let me know if you have any other questions, sir!”
“It’s Midousuji,” said the stranger. “And maybe I will.” With this less-than-thrilling endorsement, he turned away, heading towards the cafe area with the two new books Onoda had shown him tucked under his arm. Onoda thought he was probably going to look through them a bit before buying, which always annoyed Makishima but Onoda understood perfectly well. With so many wonderful books available, it was only natural to want to get a glimpse of what was inside before you bought something new, to make extra-sure that you really wanted this one.
Onoda put the other books back, and then headed to the back of the store to take his fifteen-minute break, which he was already a bit overdue for. He put the stranger out of his mind, or tried to, chatting amiably with another of his coworkers who was on the last five minutes of his own break when Onoda came back.
By the time he came back out to the floor, almost thirty minutes later (Makishima had asked him to step around back to the employee-only area and unpack some boxes from a shipment they’d gotten mid-morning), he’d forgotten all about the rude stranger. Which was why the sight of Midousuji skulking by the manga section took Onoda by such surprise that he stopped in his tracks, staring at the tall, lanky figure two bookshelves away.
Midousuji was glowering at the manga section like he’d just stepped in something foul—which was to say, the same expression he’d been wearing when he came into the store, so for all Onoda knew, his face just looked like that. But almost as soon as Onoda noticed him, Midousuji looked up. “There you are,” he said. “What’s the point of telling me I can ask you questions if you disappear right after?”
“Uh—” Onoda felt himself turning red. “I—I’m sorry, sir! I went on my break, I should have told you I’d be stepping away from the floor.”
Midousuji scowled. “Gross,” he said. “I just wanted to ask if your store had the counterpart to this book. The jacket says there’s two.”
“Oh, I can check on that for you!” said Onoda, relief flooding him. He started to turn away, intent on going to a computer to check Midousuji’s request, but as he did so he saw Midousuji reach out and put a manga back on the shelf he’d been staring at. “Ah! You like Kobayashi Maru’s stuff?”
Midousuji jerked his hand back from the shelf as if it burned him. “I was just looking at it,” he said flatly.
“That series is really good, it just takes a while to get going,” Onoda said earnestly. “I love his work, but he always breaks your heart at the end of the series. Oh, have you read his other series, ‘A Murder of Crows’?”
Midousuji glanced at him, his upper lip curling back slightly from his teeth to expose one overly-sharp canine. “I did,” he said after a moment, like a man admitting to shoplifting something painfully banal, a pack of gum or some other tchotchke. “But I stopped after they killed Ishibashi. Waste of time.”
“I knooooooow!” Onoda wrung his hands a little, forgetting himself. “I was really sad, too—”
“I didn’t say anything about being s—”
“—but it gets better again after that, I promise! I wish I knew how to write stories like Kobayashi, they really pull you in. He does a whole bunch of really interesting backstory about Shimizu, and then they introduce another character who’s really cool, you would like him a lot if you liked Ishibashi—”
“O-no-da,” Midousuji cut in, enunciating each syllable to its fullest. “Weren’t you going to check on my other book?”
“Oh, right! Sorry!” Onoda laughed and rubbed the back of his head. “I got excited. Here, I’ll go look it up right now.” He turned away, heading for one of the computer banks, but continued to talk over his shoulder at Midousuji, who trailed after him like a grumpy scarecrow. “Anyway, if you wanted to read the rest of that series, I think they have almost all the volumes at the library now! Or actually, ah, you could borrow it from me if you wanted!”
Midousuji stared at him. “Do you make a habit of offering to loan things to strangers? Or did you hit your head this morning?”
Onoda grinned at him, his expression turning slightly sheepish even as he logged into the computer and opened its search directory. “My boss would probably agree with you,” he said ruefully. “But it’s fine! Honestly, I… was thinking of selling that series—not because I don’t like it, but because I’m almost out of room again. But if you want to borrow it, I don’t mind at all.”
Midousuji curled his lip again. “You’re a weird kid, Onoda,” was all he said. “Do you have the photography book?”
“Ah…” Onoda peered at the screen, scrolling through the list of titles. “Well—not in the building, no. But I could get it shipped over here from our store on the other side of town. Or, I could call them and have them pull it for you, if you like?”
Midousuji said nothing for a moment. Anyone else, Onoda would have thought they looked pissed, but since Midousuji hadn’t once done anything but sneer or glower since coming into the store, Onoda thought he was just thinking about it. “Where is the store?”
“It’s by Nisha-Funabashi station,” Onoda told him. Midousuji made a face. “We could also ship it to your home, if you wanted—”
“No, have it sent here,” Midousuji cut in. “How long?”
“Store-to-store shipments usually take two to three business days,” Onoda said. “So probably day after tomorrow, Friday at the latest.”
Midousuji nodded, frowning at the back of the computer Onoda was using. “Will you be here?” he asked after a moment.
“I have Thursday off, but I’ll be here on Friday,” said Onoda. “But any of my coworkers would be happy to help you—”
“Ugh,” said Midousuji, and let out an exasperated sigh. “Fine. Order it, I’ll come pick it up when it’s in. Do I pay for it now, or when it comes in?”
“You don’t have to pay for it till you have it and have had a chance to look at it and be certain it’s what you want,” Onoda said. “Can I have a name and phone number for the order?”
Midousuji’s eyes narrowed. “No phone number. I’ll call on Friday to see if it’s here,” he said. “And I’ll only tell you my name if you tell me your first name.”
Onoda blinked. “Ah… it’s just for the computer,” he said awkwardly. “But, um, my name is Onoda Sakamichi!”
Midousuji tilted his head, as if considering this new and curious piece of information. “Sakamichi,” he repeated. “Alright. Midousuji Akira.” Onoda dutifully entered this into the computer, getting past the section for phone number by entering his own before hitting send.
“Okay! It should be here on Friday, Mr. Midousuji. Was there anything else you needed help with today?”
Midousuji set the books on the counter by Onoda’s computer. “Just paying for these,” he said. “And don’t call me mister.”
Onoda opened his mouth to tell Midousuji that the cash registers were by the front of the store, but the other man was already getting his wallet out. It was a beat-up looking thing, like the rest of his ensemble; Onoda found himself wondering what other things Midousuji did, to go with being the kind of man who apparently had an interest in both photography and manga while simultaneously looking like he ran a motorcycle gang. Someone coughed. Onoda snapped back to attention to realize Midousuji was staring at him expectantly, his cash in one hand. “Ah! S-Sorry, just let me get the cash drawer unlocked…”
“Useless fanboy,” Midousuji grumbled. But it didn’t have much heat to it, and after a few more moments Onoda was able to scan both of the books and take Midousuji’s payment, tucking the books neatly into a bag and handing it over to him with a warm smile.
“Thank you so much! Please enjoy your books, sir!”
“Ugh,” said Midousuji, and slouched out of the store.
* * * * *
Onoda locked up the register he’d been using—he’d have to count the cash drawer later, before his shift was over, since they only used this computer as an extra register on sale days or when it was really busy—and then went to take over for one of his other coworkers, a fast-talking redhead named Naruko that Onoda was particularly fond of. Naruko was supposed to go help Makishima with the afternoon shipment, because he was fast and full of energy and got everything done in half the time most other employees took (while simultaneously driving Makishima nearly insane with his chattering). Meanwhile, Onoda would work the rest of his shift in the cafe.
“There you are! I was thinking I might need to come rescue you from that punk guy, jeez.” Naruko bounced on his heels, lingering as Onoda counted out the cash drawer he would now be responsible for. “What the heck was his problem, anyway?”
Naruko was actually the same age as Onoda, but due to a cycling accident when he was in high school that had required surgery followed by nearly three months of bed rest and rehab, he’d been kept behind a year, and was thus still finishing up his final year of college. Onoda had no trouble at all imagining Naruko getting into some kind of accident; really, the greater miracle was that he seemed no worse off for it—he was on the cycling team at his college, and he certainly had plenty of energy.
“What? Oh, Midousuji? Ah, he just wanted some help with his photography books,” said Onoda, and shrugged.
“When Taki went over to see if he wanted some help, he seriously snarled at her,” Naruko said. “Guy’s a freak. Is he fixated on you now or something?”
Onoda rubbed the back of his head, unsure how to answer this question. “I don’t think he’s really that bad, Naruko,” he said after a moment. “He just wanted some help with his books, and maybe that’s just—how he is, you know?”
Naruko rolled his eyes. “You would say that,” he said, and it would have sounded disgusted if he hadn’t ruined it by reaching out and ruffling Onoda’s hair. “A Yakuza boss could come in here with a loaded gun to hold up the store, and you’d compliment him on his nice suit.”
Onoda let out a squeak of alarm at this idea. “Naruko—!”
Naruko laughed. “Whatever,” he said. “Just let me or Imaizumi know if that freak comes back in and bothers you, though, okay? We’ll hide you in the back and tell him you’re not here.” Imaizumi was one of the shift leaders of the store. He and Naruko were on the same cycling team—co-captains and inseparable best friends, though you’d never know from how they argued incessantly—and he was almost more protective of Onoda than Naruko was. He’d gone directly into his Master’s program at the same university Naruko was finishing his bachelor’s at, and thus was still working at the bookstore for the time being.
“Makishima is waiting for you,” Onoda told him. Naruko made a rude noise and headed towards the back, leaving Onoda to think about the stranger in question.
It was true, Midousuji was—rude, and a little scary-looking, but despite how initially intimidating Onoda had found him, Onoda had meant what he’d said to Naruko: he hadn’t minded Midousuji at all. In fact, there was something about him that Onoda felt drawn to, though he couldn’t have said what it was for the life of him. He found himself thinking about the fragment of the dream he’d had, when his alarm went off this morning and interrupted him. He hadn’t thought about that summer in literally years, but for some reason the dream fragment stuck in his mind, more real and mesmerizing than any dream had a right to be.
For some reason, he found himself thinking of fluttering wings, like the feather-brush of something against his cheek, or the quick flick of a fox’s tail. Then a customer came up to order a drink from him, and it was gone.