A treat for bubbly (Part 3 of 3)
Back to Part 2
It wasn’t just that Aiba didn't return for the night without telling Nino beforehand. Or that he didn't appear at his work, as Nino checked, concerned.
Or that he didn't answer his cell phone.
It was Aiba, and with Aiba, it just could happen.
But it wasn't as simple as that. Everything had disappeared along with him; his belongings, his nameplate, even his weird strawberry juice from the fridge. But it wasn't just that, either. He hadn’t just moved out without leaving any notice. His bed had disappeared from their flat as well and Nino found he couldn't access the hidden room. Ohno didn’t answer any of his calls and summons either.
He couldn't just sleep through it while they took out the other bed, right?! The bed had to be there last night.
Nino certainly didn't like it. Even if Aiba had gotten mad at him for not telling him anything, or just decided on one of his crazy ideas (because Nino never believed he would stay here with him forever anyway), why would he do such a thing all of a sudden?
Something was very wrong.
***
At 8am, Sho called him. It had all been only worse and worse, so he expected to hear no good news from Sho either. It was the third day and he still knew nothing.
"Nino, it's over," he heard Sho saying.
"What?" Nino asked, his brain refusing to think at the moment.
"It's over. I just received the order. They want to hush up the whole thing. Since the body doesn't decay." he heard Sakurai making a heavy sigh, and knew it was the hardest on him.
"So you can't do the case anymore?" he asked, feeling suddenly very weak.
"Yes, I'm sorry. This means you won't receive your pay, too…"
The world definitely liked to make it all difficult on Nino. But he knew it wasn't Sho's fault.
"It's ok, I understand. What are you going to write in the report?"
"Accidental suicide. He took some drugs, froze to death." he said. “Even though there were no drugs found in his body” Sho added, irritated. He hated making up false stories with fake cover up.
So this was really the end. Definitely not in the way Nino had expected it to come.
"Did you find out something? Anything?" he still heard Sho's curiosity through the line. It was miracle in itself it wasn't dead yet.
"No... no."
“You know, I actually did find something…” Sho said. It was a Maxwell equation, found at the scene, few meters away from the body. The weird thing was, it was written on the surface of a leaf. Sho thought it might be connected but he couldn’t really prove it. He claimed it had been written in the supposed victim’s handwriting.
Nino was suddenly feeling too tired to even think about it. And just his luck, the line decided to cut him off at that particular moment in Sho’s elaborations.
***
He checked by Burger King around 10 AM again, only growing more concerned with every passing hour. No one heard from Aiba.
Nino damned the money and his quite nonexistent investigation at this moment. He was afraid of the worst case scenario; that it had finally happened; someone had targeted Aiba while trying to threaten Nino. Or, just from the closeness they shared, that he had gotten into the range of a spell directed at Nino.
Who could have wanted Nino to disappear though?
His guts told him it had to be the person behind the recent case. Had he already unknowingly approached the culprit? Pushed him into a pinch? Who could it be?
His best bet was MatsuJun. Nino still suspected him. Hell, Jun had haunted him in his own flat, and what for? Just to disturb his evening with some ridiculous teasing and laugh at making him freak out? He had even seen Ohno, the other bed and possible other traces of Aiba’s presence... and Jun was simply the most logical guess. Not only because he had looked into Nino’s eyes and Nino was scared of what he could have seen there.
But he knew that was all too simple. And this case was anything but simple.
By strange coincidence, at the time Nino came asking about Aiba, one of their fellow workers said that this one person was asking about Nino and pointed to one of the tables. Nino probably should have ignored it since he was in a slightly panicked hurry, but right now he would go for anything.
"Hello, were you searching for me? I'm Ninomiya Kazunari," he said to the lady sitting at the table with a single pack of french fries before her and an empty shake on the side.
"The mage?" she asked taking a look at him above her book.
"Well, yes, kind of."
Then she smiled cutely, flawlessly unmoving like some kind of stoic beauty.
"We need your help," she said, in a weird mix of dreamlike and hurried cuteness.
"We?" he asked, eyebrows furrowing.
She nodded. "Melon-chan and I" she said, petting the place beside her. Nino actually had to lean a little to see. It was a small dog, some breed he didn't remember name of, in cute dog clothes.
"Right, Melon-chan," he nodded and turned to her again. "And you are?"
"Fukada Kyoko" she said with the same smile she had before. It was hard not to return it at this point. She was a potential client, and already a lot nicer than the ones he normally had.
"Right, Fukada-san. What kind of services do you expect of me?" he asked, keeping his distance. It could be a false call, people just sometimes turned to him, perplexed about his job. Since seeing a mage offering his services by hourly pay wasn't really common stuff.
He had heard there was another one like him, somewhere in Chicago, but those could be only rumors. But once Nino had actually allowed himself to believe that story a little, he had sometimes wondered if he had to deal with similar stuff. What kind of youkai did they have in Chicago? Did they have werewolves or skin walkers, too? He was sure they had vampires, simply because they were everywhere and could travel for centuries. And they for sure had demons. Those creeps could be summoned anywhere, probably even on Mars.
Anyway, back to his possible client.
"I want you to take care of my grandmother for an hour or two."
"Excuse me?" Nino asked, suddenly returning to the reality before him which had again turned a little bit irrational.
"Can you do it? Starting from now?"
"But..." Nino thought it over, weighing his options. "You do realize, I'm a mage? Not a caretaker?"
"Yes, that's right.”
He looked at her unfaltering, cheerful smile for few seconds and decided.
"Okay, where should I go?" he asked. "Ah, but I can only spare one hour, is that fine? You know the price?"
"Of course,” she said confidently and took out a cute, little envelope. "Here."
So what if he wasn't a caretaker, Nino thought after he looked at the envelope. This was money, more than his daily amount from his work at Burger King. Besides, he had done weirder things. As long as he received his pay, he didn't care how much “magic” use his work required. And it was better to not overuse magic anyway, Toma was constantly reminding him of that. Besides, it was a very ready money, unlike the whole thing with that case he couldn't solve for Sho. Aiba's disappearance won't get solved in an hour and he needed to eat to live, unfortunately. And he still had no clue what was going on.
So he accepted the offer and moved on.
***
The place he arrived at was nothing Nino had expected to see. It was fancy but the word didn't truly do it justice. It was cute, pinkishly so, and sort of princessy, but it wasn't just that; there were some elegant touches here and there. But he basically felt like he entered some fairytale. He even expected to see some fairies. He hadn't met any of their kind before. He was looking around, thinking he may spot one by chance, when a voice asked him.
"Are you looking for something?" his companion asked as he probably felt a sudden lack of interest in their ongoing conversation.
"Ah, no, I just thought I might see some fairies."
The grandma smiled at this and asked him for a shoulder massage. He did it immediately.
Thinking back on it, Nino decided it was actually a good job. The grandma was friendly and mostly just wanted someone to chat with, and Nino wasn't bad at giving massages. So okay, they were sitting on some weird pink, fluffy chairs, but at least she seemed to like him as most of elders did.
"So, Ninomiya-kun" he had told her to call him that. "You're a mage?"
"Yes, actually." he admitted, working on her shoulders.
"What can you do?" she asked, visibly interested.
"Hm, it depends on what would you want me to do. I can do some potions that could improve your memory, but I think it would be too expensive to brew you a youth potion," he explained, pausing to look around the place. "Ah, but maybe you could afford it." All of it, though ridiculous, did look pretty expensive.
The grandma laughed shortly.
"Maybe I will consider it and let you know," she most likely joked. "But can you use spells?"
"Yes, a little", he admitted, his voice shattering only a little at the beginning. He could never expect what people would ask of him.
"What kind of spells? Can you for example, ensure a safe trip? Or calm down a bear flaring with anger at you?"
Ah, she meant ancient magic, he realized at that point. Charming people or objects, swears and oaths. The folk magic that granted wishes in exchange for some symbolical, magical goods.
"I know a little of it, but I'm not good at that kind. I'm better at lighting up cigarettes, or candles."
"Oh, you're too modest. I can tell you're good at it. I can feel it in your touch. You for sure know, that touch has the biggest magical power. It can change your mood, soothe you after a long day, or offer support. It brings two people closer together as well. There can't be bigger magic than that."
Nino listened with a smile still present on his lips, but not anymore in his heart. He knew the importance of touch. He remembered his uncle's lessons well. He wondered when was the last time he touched Aiba...
The last time, it had been Aiba's initiative again. Nino only pushed him away more and more, instead.
"That's why, Ninomiya-kun, you should always give gentle touch to your dear people and to your family. Don't forget it, even if I think your other magic abilities are very useful too," she said, touching his hand on her shoulder.
He nodded, a bit lost.
"Sometimes, a friendly pat or a squeeze like that means more than words. Share your talent."
He smiled a little, now.
"Although Ninomiya-kun, I can actually see you're troubled. So let me say it to you, too. Words holds a lot of magic as well.", she smiled, turning to him.
"But they can't actually make anything true", Nino said, thinking sadly about his best friend.
"Oh they can. You know how they say it? Light up one candle and pray to curse someone. Many people did that back in my days. But only the good curses worked, if someone tried to curse an innocent person, it turned back on him. That's what I call a real magic" she continued, but then stopped, and put her hand to her face, like she done a faux pas. "But I don't need to tell you this, I'm sure you know more on that than me."
"No, not at all. My parents weren't around so I don't know those things from experience," he shared a piece of himself with her.
"You're a very kind boy," she said, and Nino made note of the “boy” - he was again mistaken for someone younger. Well, he had gotten used to it.
"Here, let me give you something for your kind touch," she said, placing her hand in his. "Shall the good health be with you." she said in an official and celebratory voice.
"Thank you." he said, with equally magical words.
"Blessings are the oldest magic. Please don't forget to ask for your parents blessing, even if it is on their grave. It's really crucial, even today."
He smiled a little and promised her to do that, though he clarified he's not going to need it as he’s not going to marry any time soon. Nino remembered that parent’s blessing meant a permission for marriage.
"Just in case," she said, before she accompanied him on his way to the door.
If he could just do it the way this nice Grandma was telling him to. Say "Aiba Masaki, come back here!" light a candle with this intention and wait for God to make him return. Had he done something wrong?
***
Nino walked off to the streets of Tokyo again. He didn't see any fairies, he thought with an bleaked smile. He looked up at the sky, suddenly not knowing where to go and what to do.
Some clouds hung up there, dark ones, and he had noticed earlier that the pavement was wet. The sun began to lighten through the clouds. Apparently, it had just rained.
He looked around the sky, searching for rainbow. He didn't find any trace of it, despite the perfect sun angles and the misty cloud hanging around.
He moved a little, remembering he might be at one of the ends of the rainbow, and so, wouldn't be able to see the rainbow from this position at all. Every kid knew that. And he knew even more about it than should be considered common knowledge thanks to his friendship with Aiba.
His friendship with Aiba...
If he could just damn everything and be braver, maybe he wouldn't have to face today... the way it was. “Unfortunate” was not enough to describe the way he was feeling now. “Tragic” sounded too dramatic. “Sad” was not strong enough.
Nino tried other ones.
Bad.
Awful.
End of the world.
Now he did it, the big, pathetic and exaggerated expression for his state of mind.
He hadn’t always lived with Aiba, so he should be used to it. It should be fine to be back on his own.
He actually couldn’t say he never discouraged Aiba to leave him. He knew it would be easier this way for the both of them.
Maybe he didn’t go away. And maybe nothing bad happened to him. Maybe, for a chance, he found the hidden door, got into his laboratory, put his hands on invisibility spell, didn't know how to undo it, and now was playing around somewhere laughing at Nino.
He wished so much it could be something like that.
He took another route to the right, trying to be more to the side of the possible rainbow. He really needed to see it. To see it, and tell Aiba it was all his silly imagination and that the rainbow was there, like usual. Maybe then, all could turn back to normal again.
He flinched as something wet splashed a little on his face and soon, he felt some cold sensation on his leg.
A puddle?
Indeed, he confirmed, he just took a step into a really big puddle. He looked at it, distracted, wiping the drops from his face with the sleeve of his jacket, seeing the distorted image of himself reflected in the water, along with some darker and whiter clouds and splash of blue of the sky. He tried to smile, knowing he failed, and even more the puddle's image crooked his face for him.
Yes, that was exactly how he felt right now.
His world was falling in pieces, broken, just like this image, which just didn't want to return to normal. Maybe he was wrong all the time, just like this grandma said. He was perhaps worrying about all the wrong things, and so, his attention didn't focus where is should be, even if it was his intention from the start.
It was the same with the candle. Maybe it didn't have to be lit to work. Maybe exactly what the person needed to do with it, was to break it. You can light up the candle to curse someone or to bless him with good wishes. You can light it up for dead people and living ones as well. But maybe, if you're on the spot, you don't need to go through all that troublesome procedure. Folk’s magic was much more flexible. You can break the candle, as a symbol of someone. Just like you break a voodoo doll when you wish for someone's death.
If God finds it justice, he can even take the life of that person or bring some misfortune over him.
Nino had been focusing on the wrong things, running around like a silly kid. So untypical of him. But since Jun’s visit, he had been constantly feeling weird. It all somehow came down back to his suspicions of Jun. Or no, no. Not anymore. He couldn’t let Jun posses his thoughts like that. Wasn’t he focused on the wrong people and wrong places, while all the important stuff played behind his back?
It was possibly the same with that case. It wasn't solved yet. His perception was just a broken as the image he was seeing in the puddle. Nino had all the necessary shards of this mirror, so why couldn't he see it yet? Broken perception, he thought as he patiently waited for the image to clear up beneath him. It didn't clear perfectly, his reflection was still resembling a Picasso painting, but he did spot something he hadn't seen a moment before.
An arc of seven colors. Right there on the blue. He frowned, and looked up.
Nothing.
He looked back inside the puddle. It was there. Definitely a rainbow. Nino carefully moved further, following the image of the sky in the puddles and other possible surfaces, checking it up against the sky. The rainbow really had vanished, but for some reason it was present in all the water he found near the ground.
The end. He needed to find it's end, the second end of the rainbow. He was sure there was someone there he was looking for. It wasn't all solved yet, but he knew he would get his answers now; at least, some of them. At last.
It was clearing up.
He needed to hurry before the bridge disappeared.
***
Nino arrived there just before the last drops of the rain ceased, following the cloud's direction with the clue that he was sure only two people knew in this part of Tokyo. And there he was, standing there, looking at the sky. A familiar, tall profile.
“Aiba!”
The person turned around, his eyes growing big, like he was caught in the act.
"Nino!" he cheered back, the usual smile quickly came back to his face.
Nino stopped in mid-step, not daring to come closer.
He was worried. He was scared. The whole thing still was wrong. But... he could see him. He had found him.
"It was you, Aiba?" he asked instead. "It was you?"
Aiba looked at him, still smiling, before he looked down on the ground, his posture carefree but with a touch of apologetic.
"Yes. I'm sorry." then he took out his hand, holding a small bottle. With a splash of colors trapped inside, flowing in liquid. "I DID IT, Nino!" he cheered all of a sudden. "I stole the rainbow! Just like I always wanted... like we always wanted," he added, still with a sure smile. "Though you searched for it only because I wanted it, back then, right? But I thought you could maybe be happy for my success."
"That body..." Nino remembered now, trying to put the puzzles together. "Those leaves, and that equation, it was all for creating a rainbow?" he remembered all the colors used; blue, violet, and green on the clothes of the person, the red, yellow and orange leaves. And water. Probably lots of water.
He imagined Aiba telling that random guy to lay down, then climbing on the ladder, throwing some leaves in the air and pouring some tiny rain from a watering can. The image was actually funny, and his lips quirked upwards.
And now the presence of the equation made sense. Maxwell equations, the latest scientific explanation for the phenomenon of rainbow’s arc shape. They had tried to use it once, many years ago… It all matched Aiba’s ideas.
And the candle... the candle breaking in Aiba’s hands in his dream...
What was it for exactly?
"I kind of failed there... and I thought it had been a good arrangement... is he... really dead?" Aiba asked remorsefully, stealing a glance at Nino.
"Technically, yes, even if he doesn't look like it," Nino answered with dimmed expression. "Maybe... maybe I can undo it. If you will tell me exactly everything you had done". Hell, if he knew a case like that before. But maybe with Ohno's help... "It will be fine again", he said, going closer to Aiba, who once noticing it, took a step back; but Nino didn't let him go away. Not now. He reached for him...
..only to catch nothing.
He tried again, thinking he simply missed his hand by millimeters, only to come up with the same result. His hand fell over Aiba's like he was made of air. Aiba looked startled and sad. A silence fell between them. Nino tried to think. Aiba turned into a ghost?... but why, how...?
"How did this happen?"
"I... made a deal..." Nino heard a small whisper.
A deal. To became a ghost? It didn't make sense. He needed a ghost to turn into a ghost and... was Nino just going insane now?
Switching places wasn't entirely impossible, even if he didn't know the exact charm for that, but with ancient magic it was probably possible to achieve. As long as an immortal worked as external power executer it could maybe work. With some blood, candles and words of an enchantment...
But Aiba didn't have any ghost close by to...
…or actually, he did.
Couldn't Nino enter his laboratory this morning? Maybe Aiba finally found the passage, met Ohno, just like he had originally thought. But instead of using some potions, they had talked.
Maybe Aiba had a sudden silly idea...
"You... exchanged places with Ohno?"
A nod.
“Aiba... you...” he said, disbelieving.
“Am I dead?” he asked, almost shyly.
“No... no…” he said, though truth was, he was completely unsure of that. If it was ancient magic… once said curse can’t get undone.
“Then what? Have I gained some superpowers?” he asked, a little more bravely.
“...kind of... but...”
“Then it's cool.” he declared with a bit more of energy.
“Aiba,” the short, reprimanding sentence was all Nino could do not to scream at him. How he wished he could just simply punch him. But he won’t be able to. Not anymore.
“Look, Nino. I can go through walls! I can write letters in the air! Maybe I can even fly!” his friend cheered, but he could sense false happiness in him.
“No, I don't think so...”, Nino said just to say anything.
“Then I can at least teleport?” came another hopeful question.
“Well… almost.”
“Yaay! Aren't I awesome? People can be envious!”
“AIBA” he growled, just because he didn’t want to give in to the wet sensation behind his eyelids.
“There is... just one thing I will miss, Nino.” Aiba suddenly confessed, resigning his joyful tone from earlier.
Nino looked at him instead of asking, not trusting his own voice anymore.
“I can't touch anything” Aiba smiled and he tried to hold Nino's hand, but it passed through again, meeting no resistance.
“Yes... you can't...” Nino whispered, looking at their hands trying to link and constantly missing each other. “And not just that, you won't be able to sleep in usual way either... and...”
“Oh crap I won't be able to eat either!” Aiba said in shock. Nino looked him in the eyes, no longer afraid of looking at him so intimately, swallowing the tears that didn’t make it outside yet. Burying them.
“Fast, aren't you” he joked.
“Nino,” Aiba said, relieved seeing the familiar look on his friend’s face. “Since now I can be by your side constantly, I'm happy.”
Nino looked back at him, surprised, his smile dying. What was Aiba talking about?
“But you always were at my side” he tried to say as gently as he could.
“But never like this, knowing your secret.”
Nino stared at him, running out of words.
Did it really have to happen this way? And wasn’t it all Nino’s fault alone in the end? He knew how much Aiba found it important, he would accompany him silently on his worse days, not knowing what caused him to feel pain like that, despite being always so close. Maybe… it was all because Aiba wanted to be even closer, because Nino refused his requests more and more often.
“And I can be actually helpful! Won't be a bother!” Aiba chirped out, growing scared of Nino’s silence.
This reaction, Nino noted. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Weren’t they best friends? Hadn’t he known Aiba since he was five years old?
“So?” he teased him a bit. “Then how about for starters you will stop doing things like stealing rainbows?”
“I won't do it again! Besides I will put it back wherever I can!” Aiba declared enthusiastically, this time reading perfectly between Nino’s words.
And just like he said, so he did, starting from the minute he had declared it. He put rainbows everywhere. On buildings, on zebra's on the roads, windows, t-shirts, fountains and every other water spot he could find, including wash-basins in public toilets. He only skipped the toilet's spray, because Nino once said it was gross to piss on rainbow - or with rainbows, and he didn’t know which was worse.
Aiba did his task whenever he remembered it. And Nino make sure that no one had seen the rainbow-maker in action. Well, at least usually. It couldn’t hurt anyone to skip two or three times.
“But you know, you still can't put it back on the sky.” Nino pointed out.
“Uh.” Aiba looked up, measuring the distance… if he could fly… “I will try to change it.”
“How?” Nino asked him, amused.
“I will do many experiments so one of them would have to work.”
Nino decided he shouldn't have asked. He just hoped these so-called experiments wouldn't include any mabo tofu, since it would have to be Nino from now on using his own two hands for Aiba.
The case remained unsolved.
Ohno disappeared without a trace, leaving them with questions.
Nino still suspected that Jun probably knew something but the vampire was too powerful and unapproachable to get anything out of him, and his tries could result in war, if Nino played it wrong. This needed a better strategy first.
But Nino knew he would still try everything, for Aiba, even if the latter didn't say he wanted any of it.
He found another broken candle on the table in his laboratory. An exchange from the curse, he supposed. Murder for murder. One candle symbolizing a curse done by accident and this second candle probably symbolized the other curse of Ohno, from when he was originally trapped in the skull. He knew sometimes exchanges were possible, because you can’t undo once said words. And magic worked without compromises as well. You needed to be careful with it, both with words and magic.
But how did they actually succeed with that exchange, exactly? The candle couldn't tell him the whole story. And he didn't have Ohno anymore to go to and ask for help.
He tried the tracking down spell, but it led him to Aiba again.
Aiba still didn't want to tell him any details, an unknown look on his face whenever he refused, and Nino had no means to get it out of him. He could just wait and try to figure it out on his own. And he for sure had a lot to figure out. He had no idea why exactly Aiba did what he did, for example.
But something had changed.
Maybe this was his second chance to try to make it right, this time. They had a lot to learn a new about themselves and their bond, it seemed.
Nino still wanted to be able to touch him again... but for now, he was just happy enough that Aiba was there with him again.
***
-Some time later-
Nino had just served his fifth customer of the morning when a familiar face appeared before him at the beginning of his line.
“Yo, Nino.” said the tired, but much less sleepy eyes.
“Hey, Sho-chan.” he greeted him back. “So, how’s my pay doing?”
Sho still worked and asked for help once a month.
“Uh, still in progress it seems” Sho said and then looked around. “Where’s Aiba-chan? I haven’t seen him around lately… did he quit?”
“Ah, yes… sort of,” Nino quickly came up with his answer on the spot.
“Why? Did he find a better job?” he asked him again, and Nino wondered for a moment if he hadn’t seen through him.
“He’s doing fine, don’t worry. We’re managing.”
Sho frowned at the distant answer, but Nino couldn’t help it. He couldn’t actually tell him that his best friend had turned into a ghost.
“So, what is it today, Sho-chan?”
“Ah, just my usual burger order” he said, giving the topic up for now, ending it with his usual “Remember, if you have any trouble, you can always tell me, I might be able to help”.
“Yes, mom,” Nino said when handing over his extra large burger. Sho took it with a smile and was intending to leave, when he heard someone ordering after him.
“One Whopper, please.”
“Whopper?” he asked, perplexed, and Nino pointed up to the big menu above them.
“Hamburgers are called Whoppers at Burger King, Sho-chan. It’s not McDonalds.” Nino said, not without a smile. Well, at least the ones Sho was constantly ordering were called that way.
“Eh…” the police officer stared surprised up.
“So, you see, just because it’s Burger King, it doesn’t mean everything is called exactly ‘burger’ here. Your earlier jokes now all miss their main point. And if it’s even possible, that makes your jokes less funny”
“Oh, damn” Sho said, imitating The Scream by Munch in the background. “Why have you never told me that burgers in Burger King are called Whoppers?!”
“Well, another thing you probably didn’t know about… it’s because of this motto,” he pointed towards the table behind him, reading it out loud “Have it your way. Why should I destroy your jokes if you try so hard to make them funny?” Nino grinned seeing how Sho’s mouth shaped a devastated ‘o’. “By the way, It’s such a good slogan, don’t you think so? Maybe I should think of one as well, right?” Nino asked no one in particular, rubbing his chin to this amused thought, leaving Sho to his own torments. Then he suddenly realized his question was meant to reach Aiba.
But Aiba wasn’t working with him here anymore, he remarked as his smile froze on his lips.
***
After a while, when they got used to it, Aiba insisted for Nino to open up his own office.
Since they weren't the richest people around, they turned their apartment into it. It even sort of worked.
Though the nameplate was very handmade and the escape route from demons wasn't the safest, they at least added their new address to telephone book, along with his cellphone number this time.
Nino didn't have to worry too much about Aiba now. He was stronger than him and now, closer to immortal than Nino. Even if he was still a very questionable help.
***
Aiba regarded their actual state of things positively. It bonded him with Nino, tied them together. Like some kind of promise, as he once told Sho when he visited, though Sho couldn't really understand his way of thinking back then, but it was okay.
Aiba knew that promises could be broken as well and weren’t proven to always come true.
But it was a promise at least.
Now he could be by Nino's side for real, as ironic as it may sound with him being kind of transparent.
Even if all they could share now were words only. But he didn’t mind it, because Nino had once said.
“A word is always a magic as well.” And they were now sharing a lot of them. Which meant, they shared a lot of magic.
It wasn’t just that Aiba didn't return for the night without telling Nino beforehand. Or that he didn't appear at his work, as Nino checked, concerned.
Or that he didn't answer his cell phone.
It was Aiba, and with Aiba, it just could happen.
But it wasn't as simple as that. Everything had disappeared along with him; his belongings, his nameplate, even his weird strawberry juice from the fridge. But it wasn't just that, either. He hadn’t just moved out without leaving any notice. His bed had disappeared from their flat as well and Nino found he couldn't access the hidden room. Ohno didn’t answer any of his calls and summons either.
He couldn't just sleep through it while they took out the other bed, right?! The bed had to be there last night.
Nino certainly didn't like it. Even if Aiba had gotten mad at him for not telling him anything, or just decided on one of his crazy ideas (because Nino never believed he would stay here with him forever anyway), why would he do such a thing all of a sudden?
Something was very wrong.
***
At 8am, Sho called him. It had all been only worse and worse, so he expected to hear no good news from Sho either. It was the third day and he still knew nothing.
"Nino, it's over," he heard Sho saying.
"What?" Nino asked, his brain refusing to think at the moment.
"It's over. I just received the order. They want to hush up the whole thing. Since the body doesn't decay." he heard Sakurai making a heavy sigh, and knew it was the hardest on him.
"So you can't do the case anymore?" he asked, feeling suddenly very weak.
"Yes, I'm sorry. This means you won't receive your pay, too…"
The world definitely liked to make it all difficult on Nino. But he knew it wasn't Sho's fault.
"It's ok, I understand. What are you going to write in the report?"
"Accidental suicide. He took some drugs, froze to death." he said. “Even though there were no drugs found in his body” Sho added, irritated. He hated making up false stories with fake cover up.
So this was really the end. Definitely not in the way Nino had expected it to come.
"Did you find out something? Anything?" he still heard Sho's curiosity through the line. It was miracle in itself it wasn't dead yet.
"No... no."
“You know, I actually did find something…” Sho said. It was a Maxwell equation, found at the scene, few meters away from the body. The weird thing was, it was written on the surface of a leaf. Sho thought it might be connected but he couldn’t really prove it. He claimed it had been written in the supposed victim’s handwriting.
Nino was suddenly feeling too tired to even think about it. And just his luck, the line decided to cut him off at that particular moment in Sho’s elaborations.
***
He checked by Burger King around 10 AM again, only growing more concerned with every passing hour. No one heard from Aiba.
Nino damned the money and his quite nonexistent investigation at this moment. He was afraid of the worst case scenario; that it had finally happened; someone had targeted Aiba while trying to threaten Nino. Or, just from the closeness they shared, that he had gotten into the range of a spell directed at Nino.
Who could have wanted Nino to disappear though?
His guts told him it had to be the person behind the recent case. Had he already unknowingly approached the culprit? Pushed him into a pinch? Who could it be?
His best bet was MatsuJun. Nino still suspected him. Hell, Jun had haunted him in his own flat, and what for? Just to disturb his evening with some ridiculous teasing and laugh at making him freak out? He had even seen Ohno, the other bed and possible other traces of Aiba’s presence... and Jun was simply the most logical guess. Not only because he had looked into Nino’s eyes and Nino was scared of what he could have seen there.
But he knew that was all too simple. And this case was anything but simple.
By strange coincidence, at the time Nino came asking about Aiba, one of their fellow workers said that this one person was asking about Nino and pointed to one of the tables. Nino probably should have ignored it since he was in a slightly panicked hurry, but right now he would go for anything.
"Hello, were you searching for me? I'm Ninomiya Kazunari," he said to the lady sitting at the table with a single pack of french fries before her and an empty shake on the side.
"The mage?" she asked taking a look at him above her book.
"Well, yes, kind of."
Then she smiled cutely, flawlessly unmoving like some kind of stoic beauty.
"We need your help," she said, in a weird mix of dreamlike and hurried cuteness.
"We?" he asked, eyebrows furrowing.
She nodded. "Melon-chan and I" she said, petting the place beside her. Nino actually had to lean a little to see. It was a small dog, some breed he didn't remember name of, in cute dog clothes.
"Right, Melon-chan," he nodded and turned to her again. "And you are?"
"Fukada Kyoko" she said with the same smile she had before. It was hard not to return it at this point. She was a potential client, and already a lot nicer than the ones he normally had.
"Right, Fukada-san. What kind of services do you expect of me?" he asked, keeping his distance. It could be a false call, people just sometimes turned to him, perplexed about his job. Since seeing a mage offering his services by hourly pay wasn't really common stuff.
He had heard there was another one like him, somewhere in Chicago, but those could be only rumors. But once Nino had actually allowed himself to believe that story a little, he had sometimes wondered if he had to deal with similar stuff. What kind of youkai did they have in Chicago? Did they have werewolves or skin walkers, too? He was sure they had vampires, simply because they were everywhere and could travel for centuries. And they for sure had demons. Those creeps could be summoned anywhere, probably even on Mars.
Anyway, back to his possible client.
"I want you to take care of my grandmother for an hour or two."
"Excuse me?" Nino asked, suddenly returning to the reality before him which had again turned a little bit irrational.
"Can you do it? Starting from now?"
"But..." Nino thought it over, weighing his options. "You do realize, I'm a mage? Not a caretaker?"
"Yes, that's right.”
He looked at her unfaltering, cheerful smile for few seconds and decided.
"Okay, where should I go?" he asked. "Ah, but I can only spare one hour, is that fine? You know the price?"
"Of course,” she said confidently and took out a cute, little envelope. "Here."
So what if he wasn't a caretaker, Nino thought after he looked at the envelope. This was money, more than his daily amount from his work at Burger King. Besides, he had done weirder things. As long as he received his pay, he didn't care how much “magic” use his work required. And it was better to not overuse magic anyway, Toma was constantly reminding him of that. Besides, it was a very ready money, unlike the whole thing with that case he couldn't solve for Sho. Aiba's disappearance won't get solved in an hour and he needed to eat to live, unfortunately. And he still had no clue what was going on.
So he accepted the offer and moved on.
***
The place he arrived at was nothing Nino had expected to see. It was fancy but the word didn't truly do it justice. It was cute, pinkishly so, and sort of princessy, but it wasn't just that; there were some elegant touches here and there. But he basically felt like he entered some fairytale. He even expected to see some fairies. He hadn't met any of their kind before. He was looking around, thinking he may spot one by chance, when a voice asked him.
"Are you looking for something?" his companion asked as he probably felt a sudden lack of interest in their ongoing conversation.
"Ah, no, I just thought I might see some fairies."
The grandma smiled at this and asked him for a shoulder massage. He did it immediately.
Thinking back on it, Nino decided it was actually a good job. The grandma was friendly and mostly just wanted someone to chat with, and Nino wasn't bad at giving massages. So okay, they were sitting on some weird pink, fluffy chairs, but at least she seemed to like him as most of elders did.
"So, Ninomiya-kun" he had told her to call him that. "You're a mage?"
"Yes, actually." he admitted, working on her shoulders.
"What can you do?" she asked, visibly interested.
"Hm, it depends on what would you want me to do. I can do some potions that could improve your memory, but I think it would be too expensive to brew you a youth potion," he explained, pausing to look around the place. "Ah, but maybe you could afford it." All of it, though ridiculous, did look pretty expensive.
The grandma laughed shortly.
"Maybe I will consider it and let you know," she most likely joked. "But can you use spells?"
"Yes, a little", he admitted, his voice shattering only a little at the beginning. He could never expect what people would ask of him.
"What kind of spells? Can you for example, ensure a safe trip? Or calm down a bear flaring with anger at you?"
Ah, she meant ancient magic, he realized at that point. Charming people or objects, swears and oaths. The folk magic that granted wishes in exchange for some symbolical, magical goods.
"I know a little of it, but I'm not good at that kind. I'm better at lighting up cigarettes, or candles."
"Oh, you're too modest. I can tell you're good at it. I can feel it in your touch. You for sure know, that touch has the biggest magical power. It can change your mood, soothe you after a long day, or offer support. It brings two people closer together as well. There can't be bigger magic than that."
Nino listened with a smile still present on his lips, but not anymore in his heart. He knew the importance of touch. He remembered his uncle's lessons well. He wondered when was the last time he touched Aiba...
The last time, it had been Aiba's initiative again. Nino only pushed him away more and more, instead.
"That's why, Ninomiya-kun, you should always give gentle touch to your dear people and to your family. Don't forget it, even if I think your other magic abilities are very useful too," she said, touching his hand on her shoulder.
He nodded, a bit lost.
"Sometimes, a friendly pat or a squeeze like that means more than words. Share your talent."
He smiled a little, now.
"Although Ninomiya-kun, I can actually see you're troubled. So let me say it to you, too. Words holds a lot of magic as well.", she smiled, turning to him.
"But they can't actually make anything true", Nino said, thinking sadly about his best friend.
"Oh they can. You know how they say it? Light up one candle and pray to curse someone. Many people did that back in my days. But only the good curses worked, if someone tried to curse an innocent person, it turned back on him. That's what I call a real magic" she continued, but then stopped, and put her hand to her face, like she done a faux pas. "But I don't need to tell you this, I'm sure you know more on that than me."
"No, not at all. My parents weren't around so I don't know those things from experience," he shared a piece of himself with her.
"You're a very kind boy," she said, and Nino made note of the “boy” - he was again mistaken for someone younger. Well, he had gotten used to it.
"Here, let me give you something for your kind touch," she said, placing her hand in his. "Shall the good health be with you." she said in an official and celebratory voice.
"Thank you." he said, with equally magical words.
"Blessings are the oldest magic. Please don't forget to ask for your parents blessing, even if it is on their grave. It's really crucial, even today."
He smiled a little and promised her to do that, though he clarified he's not going to need it as he’s not going to marry any time soon. Nino remembered that parent’s blessing meant a permission for marriage.
"Just in case," she said, before she accompanied him on his way to the door.
If he could just do it the way this nice Grandma was telling him to. Say "Aiba Masaki, come back here!" light a candle with this intention and wait for God to make him return. Had he done something wrong?
***
Nino walked off to the streets of Tokyo again. He didn't see any fairies, he thought with an bleaked smile. He looked up at the sky, suddenly not knowing where to go and what to do.
Some clouds hung up there, dark ones, and he had noticed earlier that the pavement was wet. The sun began to lighten through the clouds. Apparently, it had just rained.
He looked around the sky, searching for rainbow. He didn't find any trace of it, despite the perfect sun angles and the misty cloud hanging around.
He moved a little, remembering he might be at one of the ends of the rainbow, and so, wouldn't be able to see the rainbow from this position at all. Every kid knew that. And he knew even more about it than should be considered common knowledge thanks to his friendship with Aiba.
His friendship with Aiba...
If he could just damn everything and be braver, maybe he wouldn't have to face today... the way it was. “Unfortunate” was not enough to describe the way he was feeling now. “Tragic” sounded too dramatic. “Sad” was not strong enough.
Nino tried other ones.
Bad.
Awful.
End of the world.
Now he did it, the big, pathetic and exaggerated expression for his state of mind.
He hadn’t always lived with Aiba, so he should be used to it. It should be fine to be back on his own.
He actually couldn’t say he never discouraged Aiba to leave him. He knew it would be easier this way for the both of them.
Maybe he didn’t go away. And maybe nothing bad happened to him. Maybe, for a chance, he found the hidden door, got into his laboratory, put his hands on invisibility spell, didn't know how to undo it, and now was playing around somewhere laughing at Nino.
He wished so much it could be something like that.
He took another route to the right, trying to be more to the side of the possible rainbow. He really needed to see it. To see it, and tell Aiba it was all his silly imagination and that the rainbow was there, like usual. Maybe then, all could turn back to normal again.
He flinched as something wet splashed a little on his face and soon, he felt some cold sensation on his leg.
A puddle?
Indeed, he confirmed, he just took a step into a really big puddle. He looked at it, distracted, wiping the drops from his face with the sleeve of his jacket, seeing the distorted image of himself reflected in the water, along with some darker and whiter clouds and splash of blue of the sky. He tried to smile, knowing he failed, and even more the puddle's image crooked his face for him.
Yes, that was exactly how he felt right now.
His world was falling in pieces, broken, just like this image, which just didn't want to return to normal. Maybe he was wrong all the time, just like this grandma said. He was perhaps worrying about all the wrong things, and so, his attention didn't focus where is should be, even if it was his intention from the start.
It was the same with the candle. Maybe it didn't have to be lit to work. Maybe exactly what the person needed to do with it, was to break it. You can light up the candle to curse someone or to bless him with good wishes. You can light it up for dead people and living ones as well. But maybe, if you're on the spot, you don't need to go through all that troublesome procedure. Folk’s magic was much more flexible. You can break the candle, as a symbol of someone. Just like you break a voodoo doll when you wish for someone's death.
If God finds it justice, he can even take the life of that person or bring some misfortune over him.
Nino had been focusing on the wrong things, running around like a silly kid. So untypical of him. But since Jun’s visit, he had been constantly feeling weird. It all somehow came down back to his suspicions of Jun. Or no, no. Not anymore. He couldn’t let Jun posses his thoughts like that. Wasn’t he focused on the wrong people and wrong places, while all the important stuff played behind his back?
It was possibly the same with that case. It wasn't solved yet. His perception was just a broken as the image he was seeing in the puddle. Nino had all the necessary shards of this mirror, so why couldn't he see it yet? Broken perception, he thought as he patiently waited for the image to clear up beneath him. It didn't clear perfectly, his reflection was still resembling a Picasso painting, but he did spot something he hadn't seen a moment before.
An arc of seven colors. Right there on the blue. He frowned, and looked up.
Nothing.
He looked back inside the puddle. It was there. Definitely a rainbow. Nino carefully moved further, following the image of the sky in the puddles and other possible surfaces, checking it up against the sky. The rainbow really had vanished, but for some reason it was present in all the water he found near the ground.
The end. He needed to find it's end, the second end of the rainbow. He was sure there was someone there he was looking for. It wasn't all solved yet, but he knew he would get his answers now; at least, some of them. At last.
It was clearing up.
He needed to hurry before the bridge disappeared.
***
Nino arrived there just before the last drops of the rain ceased, following the cloud's direction with the clue that he was sure only two people knew in this part of Tokyo. And there he was, standing there, looking at the sky. A familiar, tall profile.
“Aiba!”
The person turned around, his eyes growing big, like he was caught in the act.
"Nino!" he cheered back, the usual smile quickly came back to his face.
Nino stopped in mid-step, not daring to come closer.
He was worried. He was scared. The whole thing still was wrong. But... he could see him. He had found him.
"It was you, Aiba?" he asked instead. "It was you?"
Aiba looked at him, still smiling, before he looked down on the ground, his posture carefree but with a touch of apologetic.
"Yes. I'm sorry." then he took out his hand, holding a small bottle. With a splash of colors trapped inside, flowing in liquid. "I DID IT, Nino!" he cheered all of a sudden. "I stole the rainbow! Just like I always wanted... like we always wanted," he added, still with a sure smile. "Though you searched for it only because I wanted it, back then, right? But I thought you could maybe be happy for my success."
"That body..." Nino remembered now, trying to put the puzzles together. "Those leaves, and that equation, it was all for creating a rainbow?" he remembered all the colors used; blue, violet, and green on the clothes of the person, the red, yellow and orange leaves. And water. Probably lots of water.
He imagined Aiba telling that random guy to lay down, then climbing on the ladder, throwing some leaves in the air and pouring some tiny rain from a watering can. The image was actually funny, and his lips quirked upwards.
And now the presence of the equation made sense. Maxwell equations, the latest scientific explanation for the phenomenon of rainbow’s arc shape. They had tried to use it once, many years ago… It all matched Aiba’s ideas.
And the candle... the candle breaking in Aiba’s hands in his dream...
What was it for exactly?
"I kind of failed there... and I thought it had been a good arrangement... is he... really dead?" Aiba asked remorsefully, stealing a glance at Nino.
"Technically, yes, even if he doesn't look like it," Nino answered with dimmed expression. "Maybe... maybe I can undo it. If you will tell me exactly everything you had done". Hell, if he knew a case like that before. But maybe with Ohno's help... "It will be fine again", he said, going closer to Aiba, who once noticing it, took a step back; but Nino didn't let him go away. Not now. He reached for him...
..only to catch nothing.
He tried again, thinking he simply missed his hand by millimeters, only to come up with the same result. His hand fell over Aiba's like he was made of air. Aiba looked startled and sad. A silence fell between them. Nino tried to think. Aiba turned into a ghost?... but why, how...?
"How did this happen?"
"I... made a deal..." Nino heard a small whisper.
A deal. To became a ghost? It didn't make sense. He needed a ghost to turn into a ghost and... was Nino just going insane now?
Switching places wasn't entirely impossible, even if he didn't know the exact charm for that, but with ancient magic it was probably possible to achieve. As long as an immortal worked as external power executer it could maybe work. With some blood, candles and words of an enchantment...
But Aiba didn't have any ghost close by to...
…or actually, he did.
Couldn't Nino enter his laboratory this morning? Maybe Aiba finally found the passage, met Ohno, just like he had originally thought. But instead of using some potions, they had talked.
Maybe Aiba had a sudden silly idea...
"You... exchanged places with Ohno?"
A nod.
“Aiba... you...” he said, disbelieving.
“Am I dead?” he asked, almost shyly.
“No... no…” he said, though truth was, he was completely unsure of that. If it was ancient magic… once said curse can’t get undone.
“Then what? Have I gained some superpowers?” he asked, a little more bravely.
“...kind of... but...”
“Then it's cool.” he declared with a bit more of energy.
“Aiba,” the short, reprimanding sentence was all Nino could do not to scream at him. How he wished he could just simply punch him. But he won’t be able to. Not anymore.
“Look, Nino. I can go through walls! I can write letters in the air! Maybe I can even fly!” his friend cheered, but he could sense false happiness in him.
“No, I don't think so...”, Nino said just to say anything.
“Then I can at least teleport?” came another hopeful question.
“Well… almost.”
“Yaay! Aren't I awesome? People can be envious!”
“AIBA” he growled, just because he didn’t want to give in to the wet sensation behind his eyelids.
“There is... just one thing I will miss, Nino.” Aiba suddenly confessed, resigning his joyful tone from earlier.
Nino looked at him instead of asking, not trusting his own voice anymore.
“I can't touch anything” Aiba smiled and he tried to hold Nino's hand, but it passed through again, meeting no resistance.
“Yes... you can't...” Nino whispered, looking at their hands trying to link and constantly missing each other. “And not just that, you won't be able to sleep in usual way either... and...”
“Oh crap I won't be able to eat either!” Aiba said in shock. Nino looked him in the eyes, no longer afraid of looking at him so intimately, swallowing the tears that didn’t make it outside yet. Burying them.
“Fast, aren't you” he joked.
“Nino,” Aiba said, relieved seeing the familiar look on his friend’s face. “Since now I can be by your side constantly, I'm happy.”
Nino looked back at him, surprised, his smile dying. What was Aiba talking about?
“But you always were at my side” he tried to say as gently as he could.
“But never like this, knowing your secret.”
Nino stared at him, running out of words.
Did it really have to happen this way? And wasn’t it all Nino’s fault alone in the end? He knew how much Aiba found it important, he would accompany him silently on his worse days, not knowing what caused him to feel pain like that, despite being always so close. Maybe… it was all because Aiba wanted to be even closer, because Nino refused his requests more and more often.
“And I can be actually helpful! Won't be a bother!” Aiba chirped out, growing scared of Nino’s silence.
This reaction, Nino noted. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Weren’t they best friends? Hadn’t he known Aiba since he was five years old?
“So?” he teased him a bit. “Then how about for starters you will stop doing things like stealing rainbows?”
“I won't do it again! Besides I will put it back wherever I can!” Aiba declared enthusiastically, this time reading perfectly between Nino’s words.
And just like he said, so he did, starting from the minute he had declared it. He put rainbows everywhere. On buildings, on zebra's on the roads, windows, t-shirts, fountains and every other water spot he could find, including wash-basins in public toilets. He only skipped the toilet's spray, because Nino once said it was gross to piss on rainbow - or with rainbows, and he didn’t know which was worse.
Aiba did his task whenever he remembered it. And Nino make sure that no one had seen the rainbow-maker in action. Well, at least usually. It couldn’t hurt anyone to skip two or three times.
“But you know, you still can't put it back on the sky.” Nino pointed out.
“Uh.” Aiba looked up, measuring the distance… if he could fly… “I will try to change it.”
“How?” Nino asked him, amused.
“I will do many experiments so one of them would have to work.”
Nino decided he shouldn't have asked. He just hoped these so-called experiments wouldn't include any mabo tofu, since it would have to be Nino from now on using his own two hands for Aiba.
The case remained unsolved.
Ohno disappeared without a trace, leaving them with questions.
Nino still suspected that Jun probably knew something but the vampire was too powerful and unapproachable to get anything out of him, and his tries could result in war, if Nino played it wrong. This needed a better strategy first.
But Nino knew he would still try everything, for Aiba, even if the latter didn't say he wanted any of it.
He found another broken candle on the table in his laboratory. An exchange from the curse, he supposed. Murder for murder. One candle symbolizing a curse done by accident and this second candle probably symbolized the other curse of Ohno, from when he was originally trapped in the skull. He knew sometimes exchanges were possible, because you can’t undo once said words. And magic worked without compromises as well. You needed to be careful with it, both with words and magic.
But how did they actually succeed with that exchange, exactly? The candle couldn't tell him the whole story. And he didn't have Ohno anymore to go to and ask for help.
He tried the tracking down spell, but it led him to Aiba again.
Aiba still didn't want to tell him any details, an unknown look on his face whenever he refused, and Nino had no means to get it out of him. He could just wait and try to figure it out on his own. And he for sure had a lot to figure out. He had no idea why exactly Aiba did what he did, for example.
But something had changed.
Maybe this was his second chance to try to make it right, this time. They had a lot to learn a new about themselves and their bond, it seemed.
Nino still wanted to be able to touch him again... but for now, he was just happy enough that Aiba was there with him again.
***
-Some time later-
Nino had just served his fifth customer of the morning when a familiar face appeared before him at the beginning of his line.
“Yo, Nino.” said the tired, but much less sleepy eyes.
“Hey, Sho-chan.” he greeted him back. “So, how’s my pay doing?”
Sho still worked and asked for help once a month.
“Uh, still in progress it seems” Sho said and then looked around. “Where’s Aiba-chan? I haven’t seen him around lately… did he quit?”
“Ah, yes… sort of,” Nino quickly came up with his answer on the spot.
“Why? Did he find a better job?” he asked him again, and Nino wondered for a moment if he hadn’t seen through him.
“He’s doing fine, don’t worry. We’re managing.”
Sho frowned at the distant answer, but Nino couldn’t help it. He couldn’t actually tell him that his best friend had turned into a ghost.
“So, what is it today, Sho-chan?”
“Ah, just my usual burger order” he said, giving the topic up for now, ending it with his usual “Remember, if you have any trouble, you can always tell me, I might be able to help”.
“Yes, mom,” Nino said when handing over his extra large burger. Sho took it with a smile and was intending to leave, when he heard someone ordering after him.
“One Whopper, please.”
“Whopper?” he asked, perplexed, and Nino pointed up to the big menu above them.
“Hamburgers are called Whoppers at Burger King, Sho-chan. It’s not McDonalds.” Nino said, not without a smile. Well, at least the ones Sho was constantly ordering were called that way.
“Eh…” the police officer stared surprised up.
“So, you see, just because it’s Burger King, it doesn’t mean everything is called exactly ‘burger’ here. Your earlier jokes now all miss their main point. And if it’s even possible, that makes your jokes less funny”
“Oh, damn” Sho said, imitating The Scream by Munch in the background. “Why have you never told me that burgers in Burger King are called Whoppers?!”
“Well, another thing you probably didn’t know about… it’s because of this motto,” he pointed towards the table behind him, reading it out loud “Have it your way. Why should I destroy your jokes if you try so hard to make them funny?” Nino grinned seeing how Sho’s mouth shaped a devastated ‘o’. “By the way, It’s such a good slogan, don’t you think so? Maybe I should think of one as well, right?” Nino asked no one in particular, rubbing his chin to this amused thought, leaving Sho to his own torments. Then he suddenly realized his question was meant to reach Aiba.
But Aiba wasn’t working with him here anymore, he remarked as his smile froze on his lips.
***
After a while, when they got used to it, Aiba insisted for Nino to open up his own office.
Since they weren't the richest people around, they turned their apartment into it. It even sort of worked.
Though the nameplate was very handmade and the escape route from demons wasn't the safest, they at least added their new address to telephone book, along with his cellphone number this time.
Nino didn't have to worry too much about Aiba now. He was stronger than him and now, closer to immortal than Nino. Even if he was still a very questionable help.
***
Aiba regarded their actual state of things positively. It bonded him with Nino, tied them together. Like some kind of promise, as he once told Sho when he visited, though Sho couldn't really understand his way of thinking back then, but it was okay.
Aiba knew that promises could be broken as well and weren’t proven to always come true.
But it was a promise at least.
Now he could be by Nino's side for real, as ironic as it may sound with him being kind of transparent.
Even if all they could share now were words only. But he didn’t mind it, because Nino had once said.
“A word is always a magic as well.” And they were now sharing a lot of them. Which meant, they shared a lot of magic.