Vacation is over before I know it. Tsuzuki bids farewell to the restaurant. In addition to his suitcase, he’s now carrying a grocery bag full of desserts. Thank God for takeout. Hopefully he can manage to keep everyone else from eating all of it.

“Did you have fun?” Tsuzuki asks me as I help him carry his stuff up to his house.

“Yeah,” I say, realizing that I did. “It was great.”

We stop by the office briefly, to reassure everyone that we got back safely. It’s pretty late in the evening, so only Tatsumi-san and Konoe-kachou are left. Tatsumi-san greets us cordially. “Did you have a good time?”

Tsuzuki nods enthusiastically and starts giving Tatsumi-san an account of everything that happened, everything we did, and everything he ate. Tatsumi-san listens patiently, with a tiny, amused smile on his face.

“And there was no trouble?” he asks, gently interrupting Tsuzuki’s description of Death by Chocolate.

“Nope,” Tsuzuki says, and launches right back into his description.

“Well, I’m going home,” Konoe-kachou says. “Kurosaki-kun, I’d like to see you in my office first thing tomorrow morning. Tsuzuki, you’ll need to see me after I’m finished with him.”

Somehow that makes me nervous, but both Tsuzuki and I reply with a nod and a ‘hai’.

“Come on, Tsuzuki,” I say. “I’ll walk you home.” I can’t resist needling a little, so I grin. “You’ll see Tatsumi-san in the morning.”

“Hi-so-kaaaa . . .”

Tatsumi-san blushes a tiny bit, which from him is rather satisfying, so I latch onto Tsuzuki and pull him out of the office, exchanging a smile with Tatsumi-san before I go.

Most of us live within walking distance of the office -- there are no cars in this world, and teleporting long distances is a skill refined to a few of us and difficult even to those few. (Naturally, moving between this world and Chijou is a somewhat different story.) Tsuzuki lives about a fifteen minute walk away; I’m about twenty minutes in the other direction.

“Well.” We stop on Tsuzuki’s doorstop. I’m suddenly facing the very unpleasant prospect of a thirty-five minute walk to an empty house and a night by myself. It’s not that I need Tsuzuki there at night, it’s just that I . . .

Need Tsuzuki there at night.

We look at each other for a minute.

I can tell, from the look on Tsuzuki’s face and the subtle emotions drifting off him, that he’s no more pleased with the situation than I am. I can sense a small amount of fear, unease, lingering pain.

“Yeah, I’m not thrilled with the prospect either,” I say dryly.

He laughs. “Come on in. You can stay the night.”

There’s no reason for Tsuzuki to have an extra bed, but he does have a couch. One floor below him is certainly more appealing than thirty-five minutes at a fast walk, so I gratefully curl up with a blanket. Tsuzuki stays up for a little while. “What do you think Kachou wants to see us about?” he asks.

“Probably about our new assignment,” I say. I don’t know where he’s planning on putting us. Tsuzuki just isn’t up to field work yet.

“I wonder what it’s going to be . . .” Tsuzuki looks pleased with the thought of switching jobs, however temporarily. It’s enough to make me wonder how he lasted seventy years.

“No point in speculating; we’ll find out in ten hours,” I say sleepily.

“Oh yeah . . . ne, let’s have some dessert before bed!”

I can’t help but laugh. Tsuzuki heats up two pieces of the apple pie he brought home and puts one in my lap. We toast each other solemnly with forkfuls of pie.

~~~~

“You don’t need to look so nervous, Kurosaki-kun,” Konoe-kachou says. “I don’t have bad news. I just need to talk to you about your new assignment.”

“You’ll have to forgive me for being nervous,” I say. “If this was just about our new assignment, we’d be seeing you at the same time.”

He laughs. “All right, you’ve seen through me. I’m not sure you and Tsuzuki will be completely pleased with your assignment.”

“Well, don’t leave me hanging.”

Konoe-kachou clears his throat. “I’ve been discussing it some with Tatsumi, and we both agreed we probably shouldn’t put Tsuzuki back on field duty for now. Maybe not for a long time. He’s a little . . .” He trails off, obviously trying not to offend me.

“Unstable?” I suggest.

“I wasn’t going to phrase it quite like that,” he says, then sighs. “But yes. The first thing goes wrong, first innocent person to get hurt, and I imagine there would be rather catastrophic results.”

I nod. “We expected that. Or at least I did. So where are you putting us?”

“Watari has been asking for an assisstant in the lab for a long-term experiment he’s planning on running,” Konoe-kachou says. “It won’t be permanent, but it’s somewhere he can work until I’ve found a longer office position for him.”

I blink at him, waiting.

“I assume that’s okay with you,” Konoe-kachou says.

“Sure. What am I missing?”

Konoe-kachou shifts, looking uncomortable. His unease is rolling off him in waves. “Well, you won’t be working with him.”

Pause. Silence. “Oh?”

“You’re too valuable a field agent to lose, Kurosaki-kun,” he says. “Even if it’s just to an office job.”

I relax a little. Field work is something I know, something I’m good at. “That’s fine.”

I’m assuming, rather foolishly, that he’s going to let one of the Gushoshin accompany me until Tsuzuki is ready to go out on assignment again. Then he bursts that pleasant little bubble by saying, “Since it’s likely to be quite a while before Tsuzuki will be going back to field work, we have a new partner for you.”

My eyebrows practically climb off my forehead. “Oh?”

He nods. “He arrived while you were on your vacation, and went ahead with Gushoshin. Tatsumi-san will give you the details on the case. All set?”

There’s not much I can do except nod.

“Go ahead, then, and send Tsuzuki in.”

I nod again and leave the office. Tsuzuki is hovering outside. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Is it okay?”

“Yeah,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. “It’s fine. Go ahead.”

Tsuzuki gives me a nervous look but goes into the office.

“Kurosaki-kun?”

I turn, startle. “Ohayo, Tatsumi-san.”

“I take it you got your assignment?” Tatsumi-san asks me.

I nod. “Kachou told me to see you.”

“Well, come on.” Tatsumi-san leads me into his office. “Have a seat. I’m glad you’re taking this so well. We were worried that the impending separation would . . . distress you.”

“Well, I’m not going to say I like it,” I say flatly. “But if you need me in the field, I’d rather this than make Tsuzuki go with me.”

Tatsumi-san nods briefly and describes the case. It’s a pretty simple one, a rash of disappearances in a small town.

“And my partner will meet me there?” I ask.

He nods.

“How about a description so I don’t try to shoot this one?” I suggest dryly.

Tatsumi-san smiles. “His name is Sakamoto Akimiya. He’s a few inches taller than you, twenty-three years old. He has light blonde hair and blue eyes, and he’s thin. That good enough?”

I want to remark that they should just give me a Polaroid, but subside. “Yeah. Thanks. He’s already there?”

He nods. “He and Gushoshin.” Pause. “The younger, that is. He set up a meeting time and place, too . . . let me dig that out.” It takes him approximately three seconds. Tatsumi-san is very organized. “Here you are.”

I glance at it. It’s for tonight, at a restaurant. “So I don’t need to leave right away?”

He nods.

“That’s good, because I don’t think Tsuzuki is very happy with the arrangement.”

He raises an eyebrow at me, but my empathy has yet to be proven wrong, so we leave his office and go back out into the main room. Konoe-Kachou’s office door is still shut, but I can just barely hear Tsuzuki, which means he’s speaking in a slightly raised voice.

Watari wanders in, sipping his coffee. He blinks at our serious faces. “Naa, have a good trip, Hisoka?”

“Yeah,” I answer.

“What’s wrong?”

“Tsuzuki is getting the new assignment,” Tatsumi-san tells him.

Watari frowns. “Uh oh.”

The door opens and Tsuzuki stalks out, looking displeased. His eyes immediately land on me. “And this is okay with you?” he asks angrily.

“Tsuzuki,” I say calmly, “You can’t do field work. I can. This isn’t something to get upset about.”

“But they’re giving you a new partner -- ”

I take him by the wrist and drag him into Tatsumi-san’s office, then close the door, ignoring the impropriety of it. “To begin with, calm down.”

Tsuzuki takes a few deep breaths.

“Now tell me -- honestly -- when you think you’d be ready for field work again.”

Tsuzuki opens his mouth, then shuts it, looking away.

“Tsuzuki, it could be months, it could be years. I can’t just abandon everyone else and sit around doing a meaningless office job.”

“Like me?” Tsuzuki asks bitterly.

“Konoe-kachou can find a way to make you useful. But two of us wandering around? It’s stupid, Tsuzuki. I can go back out on the field, no problem, I have a new partner so I’ll be safe. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“I just . . .” Tsuzuki stares at the floor. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

I put a hand on his arm. “I’ll be fine. Kachou wouldn’t have picked this person if they weren’t competent. And besides, if I’m ever in trouble, I doubt anyone will stop you from swooping to my rescue. Okay?”

He manages a smile. “Okay.”

“And I’m not replacing you.”

He flinches. I picked that one right out of his head and he knows it. “I didn’t think -- ”

“You’re not fooling me, Tsuzuki.”

He sighs, giving me a wounded look. Then he reaches out and draws me into a hug, deciding to avoid the replacement comment rather than try to answer it. “Just be careful, okay?”

“I always am,” I reply.

He gives a disbelieving laugh.

“Except when it comes to you,” I add.

He laughs again.

“Come on, I don’t have to leave until this afternoon. Let’s get out of Tatsumi-san’s office before he decides we’re looking through our records or something.”

~~~~

I can’t stand late people. It’s always struck me as a sign of disrespect, leaving someone sitting in a restaurant. Even Tsuzuki, as scatter-brained as he sometimes is, manages not to be late if he’s going somewhere with me. Of course, it took a few stern lectures, but he got the picture.

So now I’m sitting in a small restaurant in a small town and sipping my tea. It’s half past seven; thirty minutes later than it ought to be. I’m beginning to wonder how long I should wait. I doubt Konoe-kachou would be pleased if I popped back up in the office and said “he never showed up.”

Seven thirty-five. Tsuzuki will be home by now. Probably eating. No, wait. Tatsumi-san said he was going to take Tsuzuki out to dinner. Good. That’ll keep him from moping too much. I wonder if he’ll be okay tonight, on his own. It’ll be his first night alone in months. Maybe Tatsumi-san will stay with him. But I don’t want Tatsumi-san to stay with him, I want to be there myself.

Seven forty. I’m getting more displeased by the minute. The waitress is hovering near the table and I wave her off for the third time. I’m just going to order in a minute. I’m hungry. Where on earth is he? I hope nothing’s gone wrong; on a first job, that would not be good. But he wasn’t alone; Gushoshin was with him.

Seven forty-five. I wonder if Tsuzuki is thinking of me? Or maybe Tatsumi-san is distracting him effectively. Do I want Tatsumi-san to be distracting him? I want Tsuzuki to be thinking about me, but I don’t want him to be worrying. Maybe they’re talking about me but Tatsumi-san is keeping him from worrying. Eh, now I’m just getting ridiculous.

Seven fifty, speaking of ridiculous. What do I do if he isn’t here by eight? If anything was really wrong, I’d be able to sense a general disturbance in the area, but I don’t. I check the restaurant for the eightieth time for anything remotely resembling Tatsumi-san’s description, but there’s nothing. And Gushoshin is supposed to be with him -- I’d be able to spot him.

Seven fifty-five. The door opens.

Tall, blonde, looks in his early twenties, with a chicken hovering over his shoulder that no one else can see. Gushoshin gestures to me and the man gives me a friendly smile and walks over. “Konban wa,” he says cheerfully.

“You’re late,” I reply. There’s something strange . . . something that puts me immediately on edge . . . but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.

Gushoshin gives me a look, rather reminiscent of the look he gave me when I first met Tsuzuki and wouldn’t give him the time of day. A ‘will you just give him a chance?’ look.

He determinedly ignores my statement. “My name’s Sakamoto Akimiya -- you can call me Akimiya.”

Gushoshin gives me a glare of death that only a two-foot tall floating chicken in blue clothes could muster. I bite back a grin. “Kurosaki Hisoka. Nice to meet you.”

Akimiya sits down and we finally get to order our food. I hope it comes quickly, because my stomach has wrapped itself around my spine in search of nutrients. “What kept you?” I can’t help asking.

“We were tracking down a lead,” Akimiya says, and I’m glad he at least has an intelligent answer. “Interviewing the sister of one of the missing people, and man, could she ever talk!” He grins at me, as if he expects me to be amused. “And then she offered cookies and tea, so I’m actually not that hungry, but . . .”

Gushoshin is giving me a nervous look. The kind of look that means, “I know you’re annoyed, but he’s not all that bad, really . . .”

“You were late because you were flirting?” I ask. My voice is that tone which usually makes Tsuzuki turn into a puppy and hide under the table.

Akimiya blinks at me, the picture of innocence. “Well, not flirting exactly, just talking. Umm . . .” His voice trails off. I think he can tell that I’m not amused.

The food comes then, which, luckily for him, improves my mood a great deal. It also keeps me from having to reply. When I’ve finished inhaling my food, I ask him for a summary of the case.

It isn’t terribly difficult. He and Gushoshin have already put most of the pieces together; all that remains is apprehending the person behind it. (Fortunately not Muraki -- he would be leaving silver hairs lying around trying to tempt us by now. Or something like that.)

“If you had all this information already,” I ask, swirling my tea around in its cup, “why were you so long at this lady’s house?”

Gushoshin keeps giving me looks. I think that one was a ‘you didn’t really want to ask that question’ look.

“Just being friendly,” Akimiya mutters. “She was really upset about her brother and everything.”

“I give up,” I announce, and beckon the waitress. “May I have the check, please?”

The waitress nods and bustles off.

“W-wait a minute, Hisoka-san!” Gushoshin blusters. “What do you mean, you give up?”

I turn to him. “I am not,” I say firmly, “working with this idiot. Konoe-kachou will have to come up with some sort of better solution.”

Gushoshin folds his arms over his chest and says, “That’s what you said about Tsuzuki-san, too.”

I pause. He has a point there. In fact, I probably would’ve walked out of the restaurant if he hadn’t stolen my dumpling at that moment. “But Tsuzuki proved himself,” I say stiffly. “The very next day.”

“Then you should give Akimiya-san at least a day,” Gushoshin says.

I’m being ordered around by a chicken. That’s kind of sad. “Fine,” I finally say, and turn to the blonde-haired idiot. “You have one day,” I tell him, “to convince me that you’re not as vapid as you seem. Now where are we staying?”

Gushoshin is giving me another one of his action-packed looks. This one is “can’t you be a little nicer?”

I glare back.

“Uh . . .” Akimiya manages to stammer out the name of the hotel as I pay the check. “I’m not vapid,” he finally says as we walk out of the restaurant.

“Uh huh.” I’m not convinced. “How long have you been dead?”

Gushoshin and Akimiya both flinch. But I’ve never really been one for tact.

“Uh, t-two weeks,” he says.

“Accident?” I ask.

His eyes harden and he looks serious for the first time all night. “No.”

I meet his eyes for a long second, then nod. “That’s what I thought.” I stretch my consciousness towards him a little, curious, then pull back as I encounter nothing. Frowning, I reach towards Gushoshin, but there’s nothing there either.

“What’s wrong, Hisoka-san?” Gushoshin asks me, seeing the half-panicked look on my face. I don’t like being empathic most of the time, but to have it suddenly be gone is alarming. I realize suddenly that this is what was bothering me in the restaurant. The ‘white noise’ of all the people around me had dimmed and faded out. Since I hadn’t particularly been paying attention, I hadn’t really realized.

“I can’t . . .” I frown more, trying to phrase carefully. “My empathy is . . .”

“Not working?” Akimiya interrupts.

I stare at him.

“Uh, that’d be my fault, I’m afraid,” he says, looking at the ground. “Konoe-kachou said I’m a natural dampening field. A lot of Shinigami’s powers don’t work around me. It made Tatsumi-san pretty uneasy, too, actually.”

“How far does it stretch?” I ask, fascinated in spite of myself.

He blinks. “Well, we’ve never really tested it.”

“Then let’s test it.” Both Gushoshin and I start to take steps (well, small floating bounds, in his case) away from Akimiya. Once I’m about twenty feet away, I can feel Gushoshin’s presence again -- but still not Akimiya. That makes me uneasy. As if I needed another reason to dislike the guy. Not to even mention that my empathy is next-to-useless when he’s my partner. Whose brilliant idea was this?

We walk back to the hotel in almost dead silence. “Do you have any powers?” I ask. I know the answer is yes -- we all do, if only onmyoujitsu -- but I figure I may as well be polite.

He nods slightly. “I’m a yumemi.”

The word is familiar, but I can’t quite place it, so I look at him questioningly.

“I can see the future in dreams,” he clarifies. “And I can enter other people’s dreams and talk to them, sometimes gain information because they think I’m just a figment of their imagination.”

I nod. Useful. Dangerous, but useful. And not just dangerous to other people -- I’ve learned firsthand how risky it is to enter other people’s dreams. “It must be hard,” I finally say.

Gushoshin gives me a “good, you’re being nice” look.

Akimiya just shrugs. Okay, maybe he’s not as vapid as his first impression gives off. But still . . . I’m not impressed.

Then again, as Tsuzuki reminds me constantly, I’m very difficult to impress.

~~~~

I don’t usually think of myself as the kind of person that comes to hasty judgments. I really don’t.

I found, over the course of the next day, that I had made two rather large mistakes.

The first: never assume that a case will be easy just because all the puzzling has been done for you already.

The second: never, never, never underestimate a yumemi.

Tsuzuki will probably think this is hilarious when I get back. Hopefully Gushoshin won’t have already told everyone my less than stellar opinion of Akimiya. Because then I’d have some real explaining to do.

As usual, I’m ahead of myself.

Gushoshin left this morning with his usual request for souvenirs. I can never figure out whether or not he’s joking about that. Akimiya and I figured it would be an easy job -- we knew who we were apprehending, we knew where he was, and we knew what kind of resistance to expect from him.

“Ne, Kurosaki-kun,” Akimiya said as we walked down the street towards our destination.

“Call me Hisoka,” I say. “It’s shorter when you’re in trouble.”

Akimiya laughs nervously, obviously not sure whether or not I’m joking. I’m not. I hope he doesn’t take it as some misguided offer of friendship.

“Hisoka, then,” he says finally. “Do you really dislike me that much?”

I give him a glance. “I don’t dislike you. I just don’t think we would make very good partners.”

Akimiya looks away. “This Tsuzuki . . . was he your last partner?”

I nod warily.

“Is he . . .” Akimiya’s voice trails off.

I force a laugh. “No. He’s not dead. He’s just been taken off field duty for an indefinite amount of time. The stress got to him.” There’s the understatement of the century.

“Oh.” Akimiya’s feet scuff. “That’s probably part of why you don’t like me, ne?”

I blink.

“Because you don’t really want a new partner.”

I’d really like to argue with him, but I have a suspicion that, somewhere deep down, he’s right. I was determined to not like whoever Konoe-kachou paired me with so I could get Tsuzuki back. Great, now I feel guilty. After telling Tsuzuki that this was for the best, too. “It’s not that,” I say anyway.

“Then what is it?” he asks.

I don’t know. I have no idea what’s bothering me so much about him. “Look, forget it,” I say. “We have to work together, we may as well get used to the idea.”

Silence. We trudge through the leaves.

“You care for him very much, don’t you.”

I stop.

Akimiya says nothing, doesn’t defend himself, just looks at me.

“Yeah,” I finally say. “Why do you ask?”

He shrugs. We start walking again. “I just wanted you to know,” he finally says, “that I’m not trying to take Tsuzuki’s place. I mean, I want to do my best. I want to be a good partner for you. But I don’t want to take away someone who’s obviously so important to you.”

I just nod, accepting that as if it were what I expected. When in truth it’s just about the last thing I expected. “Thanks,” I finally say. “But how did you know? That he was so important to me, I mean.”

Akimiya hesitates a second, then says, “You have very powerful dreams, Hisoka. It’s hard . . . for a yumemi like myself . . . to avoid getting sucked into them. And I managed to stay out most of the time, but . . .” He looks up, his blue eyes suddenly very earnest. “I could help with that, you know.”

I’m feeling annoyed again. I know it’s not his fault that he saw my dreams, but it certainly wasn’t anything I wanted him seeing. “No. That’s okay. I need to get through it myself.”

He nods a little. “I just asked, because . . . I figured it was hard for you to admit that you care about people. But I wanted you to know that I wasn’t going to try to take Tsuzuki away.”

I roll my eyes. “Tell him that. He’s far more concerned about it than I am.”

“Well, when I see him, I will,” Akimiya says.

I have a feeling he’s serious about that, which worries me a little, but before I can comment on that, we’re there. I’m a little nervous; it’s my first combat situation without Tsuzuki. While I’ve gotten better at onmyoujitsu lately, I’m certainly no champion at it, and Akimiya doesn’t know any.

Still, it’s just one slightly possessed human to deal with. That shouldn’t take much. Then we just return all the people he’s kidnapped, and go home. Easy as . . . as . . . I can’t feel a damned thing. “Akimiya, stay there for a minute,” I say, gesturing him to back away. I creep up next to the house, free of Akimiya’s stupid dampening field, and stretch my senses towards the house.

Fear . . . pain . . . and an underlying sense of desperation.

We definitely have the right house, and he definitely knows we’re coming.

Ofuda in hand, I beckon for Akimiya to join me and we go inside.

It’s over fairly quickly; a few simple spells take care of him, though there’s trouble when he runs at Akimiya with a knife and my new partner freezes. Demon is banished; the man who was possessed wakes up with, fortunately, little to no memory of the past week. We tell him he was one of the missing victims. No harm in lying.

The other victims are fairly quickly rescued and brought home. Akimiya is unhappy about something. I can tell.

“We should get back, I guess,” he says.

I nod. “What are you so upset about?”

He shrugs. “Just have a vague feeling I didn’t convince you that I wasn’t vapid.”

I pause. “Why, because you froze up?”

For a long second, he doesn’t answer. Then he nods.

“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “You should have seen me on my first mission. Muraki summoned up a dragon-spirit of some sort and it lunged right at me. And what did I do? I stood there and stared at it. Tsuzuki had to knock me out of the way.”

“Big difference between a dragon spirit and a ugly guy with a knife,” Akimiya says.

I shrug. “Mortal danger is mortal danger. Though, for the record, you have to get used to the fact that taking a knife wound isn’t going to kill you.”

Pause. “Have you ever almost been . . . uhm, killed a second time, so to speak?”

I have to smile a little at the way he phrases it. “A few times, yes.”

He sighs. “I guess it will take some getting used to.”

“A lot of getting used to.” I want to ask how he died, and why he became a Shinigami, but that’s simple bad manners. We don’t ask these questions of each other. Tsuzuki asked me how I died, and I saw the horrified look Gushoshin gave him; that was a rather major faux pas on Tsuzuki’s part. Sometimes his curiosity gets the better of him. But he never asked me why I became a Shinigami -- telling him that was my own choice.

For the same reason, I know very little about Tatsumi-san’s past and next to nothing about Watari’s. Most of what I know about Tsuzuki never would have been discovered if it hadn’t been for Muraki. We all have our reasons, and that’s all we need to know about each other.

All we want to know about each other is a different story.

“Come on,” I finally say. “We need to get back.”

“Did I pass?” he asks.

“What?”

“Did I pass your test?”

I laugh. “Akimiya, you passed it before we ever got to the house. Now let’s go. I want dinner.”

And I miss Tsuzuki.

~~~~

Ah, Akimiya -- the unavoidable OC. ::grins:: For the record, he's straight. And he's really not as obnoxious as he seems at first.