"Let me see if I understand you right, Okazaki. You wish to be assigned a different partner, and you want your current partner transferred to a different division?"

"No, sir. When I said 'move on,' I didn't mean within the system. I want him to be released from his sentence. I want his soul to find peace. In Heaven, or rebirth, or oblivion—whatever. Anywhere but here."

Izuru could not see the Count's eyes let alone any of his person behind his jagged half mask, but he could feel the man's gaze on him—boring holes into him, trying to read his true intentions. As if Izuru needed to explain them any plainer than he already had.

He kept himself in close check beneath that gaze, determined to give nothing more away than he had intended when he came here. He had already made his decision. In fact, it had lain like a dark presence in the back of his mind since the day he woke to find himself here, in this world, but until now he had been too afraid to allow himself to consider the possibility seriously for any length of time. Afraid that he might lose Mitani as soon as he won him back. That he would be alone in his place, in this existence, and everything that he had died for would have been in vain.

None of that mattered now. He was still terrified, sure, but that wasn't what was important.

"I can't stand to see him punished like this for my sins," Izuru told the Count, staring into the empty space where he knew the man's eyes to be. "He's good at what he does, but it's painful for him—having to take other people's lives, watch them suffer. I can see that. And I know I deserve to feel that way for what I did, but it isn't fair to him. So, I'm prepared to strike a deal if it will have Sensei's sentence reduced."

"Strike a deal? With whom? Surely you know the decision to make your partner a shinigami came from Enma, not me."

"Then I'll bargain with Enma. He can keep me here as long as he likes," Izuru said quickly when the other sighed his exasperation. "He can use me however he wants. I'll do anything. I don't care anymore."

"You'd sacrifice your own autonomy for your partner—your own shot at paradise, your eternal soul?"

When the Count phrased it that way, Izuru wavered momentarily in doubt. But he had to remain strong in his conviction, "This isn't about my happiness. It's about Mitani-sensei's."

"But you do understand what you're offering to give up. And you really don't care? Enma could make your existence miserable. If you think being a shinigami is already a living hell, then you really have no idea to what you're opening yourself."

"But I could be of great use to him, if he would agree to my terms. I have a power he never intended me to have when he made me shinigami. It's his choice, whether I use it to pursue his interests or . . . Well, I've learned there are other parties who would be all too happy to have me on their side."

If Izuru had been expecting the Count to be at all intimidated by his threat, he was to be disappointed. The man shook his head slowly, with a weariness and a patience that were years, eons beyond Izuru's experience.

"Dear boy," he said lowly, "I'll write off what you've just said as a product of youth's recklessness and inexperience, because you really have no idea what you're talking about."

Izuru felt his face flush at that. "Of course I do! They didn't know when they assigned me to this job—"

"About your powers? The ones the devil left behind on your soul when he possessed you?"

Izuru started despite his best efforts, and took half a step back before he remembered his promise to himself to remain unmoved. "Then, you knew." But the Count couldn't have read his mind. Nor did it seem likely he had been tailed on his and Mitani's last assignment. . . .

His surprise did not go unnoticed.

"We've been preparing ourselves for this development since your arrival in Juuohcho," said the Count. "Lord Enma has always been aware of the possibility some of Focalor's essence had been transferred to you. We couldn't be sure how long it would take for it to develop, or if it ever would, and I do admit I started to have my doubts when Chief Konoe informed me of your lack of progress over these past few years. From what I knew from your file, however, I began to suspect the only reason you would allow yourself to remain at such an elementary level was that you were doing your utmost to deny something you knew, if only even subconsciously, to be inside yourself—something unpleasant, something you were afraid to face head-on—even to the point of going against your own pride and squeaking by with the bare minimum amount of effort—"

"I'm an excellent shinigami," Izuru snapped, out of that same pride the Count spoke of. "My track record should speak to that."

"Your measly three-year track record?" the Count said, not without a twinge of sarcasm Izuru resented even as he knew he deserved it. "You do know how long Tsuzuki has been working for us, and have you ever heard him boast about his powers, his unparalleled accomplishments? At least he understands that they're nothing to take pride in—that the only reason he has been allowed to reap the benefits of his talents is because of the severity of his transgressions in life. And he recognizes that King Enma could and will undo it all on a whim if he takes so much as a step outside his boundaries, while you, whose time here has been like a drop in the bucket compared to his service, have the audacity to think you can threaten this establishment with powers you don't even understand yet?"

The Count's words struck Izuru speechless, but his fists tightened at his sides. Not for the first time he cursed how weak he was, that he was unable to affect anything around him that really mattered. In this realm of demons and immortals, he hadn't nearly the strength nor the reckless courage to back up his threats with serious action, and his arguments, no matter how well he tried to express what he felt with all his person deep inside, were nothing more than intangible words, and clumsy ones at that. How simple things had been when he was alive in comparison, and how inconsequential everything he had accomplished.

"I told you," he said, lowering his eyes and gritting his teeth. "I'm only doing this for Sensei."

"Which is a very selfless gesture of you, Okazaki," the Count said, his tone also softening. "If, in fact, it's true. However, I can't help thinking it is also incredibly selfish."

"How do you mean? You think I'm lying?"

"What I mean is, is it really Mitani's happiness you're after, Okazaki, or your own?"

His accusation awakened something deep inside Izuru, something even he wanted to shut away forever, and he felt his anger rise instinctively. "How can you say that after everything I've just told you? His happiness, of course! Do you really think I would willingly put myself through losing him if I were only thinking of myself? You think I would ask you to take him away from me when he's the only thing I have left that brings any meaning to this existence? How in God's name would that make me happy?"

"Because you know how much easier your life would be if you did not have to face him every morning—if you did not have to be afraid that when you looked him in the eye or chose your words you would be reminded of your past sins all over again." Everything he said cut Izuru to the core, even if the young man refused to show it, as though he knew precisely where each of Izuru's insecurities lay, and just how hard to twist the knife. And still he continued. "You've convinced yourself that if Mitani were no longer there, this existence of yours would at least be bearable, because even if your happiness went away with him, so would the pain. But you're sorely deluded if you think that pain will ever go away, Okazaki."

"So what if it doesn't? I can face it. You're right: I'm terrified to think of losing him. It frightens me more than anything I could dream of, but I'm prepared to face that. I'll face anything—devils, these powers—Enma himself, even—if it means an end to Sensei's pain."

Akamine had spoken to him of saints, and now Izuru felt he understood what she meant. I'd stay here a hundred years if I had to, a thousand even, if I knew it would guarantee Sensei's happiness. If it meant he would no longer have to suffer this existence on account of me—all because of what I did to him, and the stupid mistakes I made, and because of what I am. . . .

"Please." It pained Izuru to beg, as it had always felt like the gesture was so far beneath him, but he had nothing left on which to fall back. No secrets to hang over the Count's head, not even his own pride. All his cards were on the table, and for all he had dressed his best for this occasion, he might as well have stood naked under the Count's invisible gaze for all he had left to hide. "If only to protect him from me. You've got to understand I would do anything. There's really nothing else I can say."

"Then there's nothing I can tell you either but the plain and simple truth. And that is that what you ask will never happen."

Like the proverbial ton of bricks, the Count's words fell upon Izuru. Although, if he were honest with himself, had he really come here expecting to get what he asked for?

"I'll be frank with you, Okazaki. I understand how you feel. Trust me when I say I know the feeling exactly. But you think you'd be helping your partner by sacrificing yourself, by giving him a free pass from his penance, when in fact you are not helping him at all. Take that attitude too far, and it will take both of you down with it. And you'd do well to remember how selfish it is of you, this notion you seem to have that Mitani was put here for no other reason than to make your existence hell.

"He was made a shinigami," the Count reminded Izuru, "not to torture you, but because there are sins he committed that Enma feels he should have to pay for with his service. I don't have to remind you what those are. I know you know them, even if you choose to forget. But Mitani will not. Just like you, he'll wake up each day having to face the monsters inside himself, and no one can do that for him but himself. There are no shortcuts anyone else can give him. It is up to Mitani to decide when he has paid his debt, not you. No matter how easy you may find it to forgive him."

"No one can judge another's soul but God," Izuru heard himself say to no one in particular, more out of force of habit than anything else.

"In a manner of speaking. Mitani will know when he has served his time, and Enma will decide if he is fit to receive his reward."

If that were the case, Izuru thought, then they would be in for a great many more years to come, because his old professor was not one to easily let go of his own guilt. He only wondered how much more of their shared company the two of them could survive—how long it would be before their respective guilt forced them apart like it had some of their coworkers, and made what semblance of lives they had here more painful than they already were.

But only if they let it come to that, a small but strong voice within Izuru reminded him.

The Count was right about one thing: Izuru had had years to come to terms with his own sins—long enough to understand what his purpose was here, to loathe himself for it, and to perfect it. But of Mitani's sins, he had not given more than a passing thought. The only person I killed was myself—unless I count my complicity in what the devil did to Sensei. But I made him a murderer—

The reality of that was still something Izuru could not fathom, though it was a part of Mitani's history known at least vaguely to more than a few of their coworkers. Izuru knew about the priest, about Fujisawa—about the relationship between his former teacher and Fujisawa—and still he could not grasp that the Mitani he knew was responsible. That that person had somehow betrayed Izuru and the God in which he professed such stubborn belief.

It recalled for Izuru a conversation he had had with Kurosaki not long ago, that he had been eager to put behind him, if not forget completely, when Kurosaki had confided in him that he did not understand what Izuru saw in Mitani worth such devotion, let alone killing himself over.

"When I met him at Saint Michel," the other boy had said, "he just made me uneasy, the way he looked at me—or rather, tried not to—like he was hiding something twisted inside. Something he was afraid he was going to lose his control over. You know, something predatory."

Then, however, he had sighed, and shrugged his shoulders, and said, "Then again, maybe it's not my place to judge. Tsuzuki likes him, and you obviously think highly of him, but I guess maybe I've just never been able to get over that initial impression enough to want to see it. I've already seen into the psyches of enough of those types to last me several lifetimes."

He was wrong, Izuru had wanted to say then. What Mitani felt about himself, what Kurosaki had picked up from him—it had been nothing but a human reaction to and a healthy fear of the darkness that lies inside all men.

Now, however, he was beginning to understand that the likes of himself and his old professor, and the characters who surrounded them in this world, were much more the exception than the rule. Otherwise, their souls would have found some other resting place when they passed.

We're all monsters, he thought. Me, Sensei, Tsuzuki and Kurosaki. . . . That's why we ended up here. That's how we got this sentence—why we're being punished for the sins we committed, willingly or unwittingly, by taking the lives of others as shinigami. This is no penance, no purgatory. We're not shaving off karma. We're piling it on in leaps and bounds, with the blessing of God or whatever it is that's actually out there, until we finally cave so pathetically under the weight Enma finally takes pity on us. Or we simply run out of usefulness to him.

In a place like this, there can be no forgiveness.

And that truth was the hardest of all of them to accept.

"At least Sensei's still human," Izuru mused aloud. It was one thing he could take consolation in at this point. "But what will happen to me now? I mean, if what you say is true, and Enma's known about me all along. Now that I've confirmed his suspicions, now that he knows something of Focalor is still alive in me. . . ." Will he take Sensei away from me regardless? "Am I going to be punished?"

The Count regarded him curiously. "Do you think you deserve to be punished for what happened between you and the devil, Okazaki?"

"Well, for making that pact in the first place, yes. Of course. But other than that . . ."

Izuru trailed off as he found he did not have a ready answer.

"In my mind's eye," he confessed to the Count after several moments had passed in awkward silence, "I saw the girl, Yuuko's, soul. It was like I was floating between planes, and I saw her essence just hanging there in space, so small but at the same time so strong, I wanted to swallow it up. I felt the devil then—like I hadn't since that night I died, I felt his influence like he was still in my mind. I don't know how else to describe it. Like . . . I just knew if I did that, if I . . ." The word made him shiver. "Consumed her, it would satisfy this terrible hunger I didn't even know I had."

"But you resisted that urge."

Izuru swallowed. Ashamed and unable to meet the Count's gaze, he looked down.

"Yes. But only just. That's what it feels like. I could have—I wanted to—but for some reason—and maybe I don't want to know the reason—but I didn't do it."

"Because you knew it was wrong, Okazaki. Don't you see? That means you're still in control! The devil can't have authority over you if you do not let him."

Izuru snapped his head up. "But what if I did! I can't stop thinking about how easy it would have been to give in."

"Then you'll never be free of his influence." The Count's voice sounded almost pitying to Izuru, and his ears burned in shame again that the other had to tell him what he already knew—just was too stubborn to believe. "You expect us to fix what's wrong with you here, Okazaki, when the only one who can do that is yourself. You can't expect Enma to take action until you pose a threat to his authority, and that is inviting trouble that likes of which I would wish on no one. Take control of this—don't run from it but learn to master it rather than letting it master you, and use it for what you as a shinigami—as a human being know is right. Really, boy, you're quick enough you don't need me to tell you what should be obvious."

Not for the first time that day, the Count's words stung with their accuracy. What had Izuru honestly been expecting to gain in coming to him? Condemnation? Not hope, surely.

Or had he been foolish enough to believe he might find something in the Count's words to antagonize him to action? Because if he needed something to set himself against in order to find a reason to be, a justification for everything he was and all he had done wrong, and every reason why he and Mitani should be separated when everything in his person cried out for anything but that . . .

Then he had fallen a lot farther than he thought.

The Count's voice shook him physically back from that dark place within himself.

"You want my advice, Okazaki," he said, "it's this: Hold on to what you have, while you still have that luxury. Treasure every day you have with the one you sacrificed your life for."

"Even though every one of those days brings both of us nothing but pain?"

"Yes," the Count said firmly. "Because if you do not have that, you have nothing left."

—o—

It was just as she was wrapping up her speech that Mrs Itosu spotted the two young men at the back of crowd, just inside the shade of the tent. The host of the ceasefire commemoration event called for a short break so that those gathered might stretch their limbs and mingle, and she used the opportunity to weave through the attendees pressing her with thankful words and handshakes toward the two.

Mitani found her before she found them.

"Quite a turnout," he said, materializing before her from out of the crowd.

She nodded. "I only wish the rest of our little club could be here to see it. What happened to them, no one should have to experience, and I still regret I couldn't do anything about it."

"There was nothing you could do."

"No. And maybe that's just as bad, but I suppose I'll learn to accept it. I pray for their souls every day, Mr Mitani. But I take it you're not here to bring more bad news."

Mitani allowed himself a bashful smile as they made their way to the fringes of the event, so that no one else might hear what he had to say. "You probably know by now the missing eight-year-old girl from last week was returned safely to her family."

"Yes, I heard about that. Very good news, that. Though they said they weren't sure how she ended up back at her hotel room without anyone seeing her come in. Needless to say, I was more worried when you and your young friend didn't show again—"

"Yeah, I wanted to apologize for that. But as you can see, we're just fine now."

Her piercing gaze seemed to see right through him, but he would not give her the benefit of an answer to the question that was so clear in it.

"Mr Mitani," she said, putting a hand on her hip, though her smile remained cordial, "you and your friend aren't freelance investigators, are you? Just like you're not reporters." She narrowed her eyes. "What are you really?"

He matched her smile.

"I'm sorry I can't answer that question, ma'am. But if I may, let me just say you can rest easy knowing the person responsible for the deaths of your associates has been brought to justice. I think their souls will find peace, just like you wanted. Maybe it doesn't mean much, but please accept my apology—on Okazaki's behalf as well—that they had to lose their lives before justice could be done. For what it's worth."

Mrs Itosu opened her mouth to respond—to wave off his apology, to thank him, to ask him what he meant—but thought better of it. It was not as though she would receive an honest response from him anyway.

Instead, she extended her hand between them, which Mitani shook gently. She had only a moment to wonder at the strange coolness of his flesh around hers before he faded back into the crowd.

She continued to scan the gathered faces for his or the boy's throughout the remainder of the event, but saw neither of them again.

—o—

The students carried their jackets over their shoulders as they walked up the seemingly endless flight of stairs to class under the summer sun. The breeze off the water carried their laughter up to where Izuru sat high above them on the balcony wall, like the cry of seagulls floating on the updrafts. They walked on, blissfully unaware of his presence there—blind to his form perched precariously on the very edge of the wall.

He might as well have been watching a scene out of his own past. The boy at the front of the pack that held himself so straight might have been Izuru himself in another life. And even though his shadow of a body had not aged in the three years since his death, these second-years still seemed so much younger to him now. And as for the school. . . .

Everything about it was different, and yet it was as if nothing had changed.

The chapel had been rebuilt: the replicas of medieval stained-glass windows that were broken in the fire had been replaced with something less expensive and more modern, and only if one looked closely would he see the charred marks on the part of the foundation they had been able to salvage. The fire that gutted the chapel—the fire in which Focalor, having taken full possession of Izuru's body, had been soundly eliminated—and all the tragedy that preceded it had not forced the school to close as Izuru once thought it might have. On top of the scars of that night a new class of students bustled about just like Izuru and his classmates had, if not entirely oblivious to the horrors of his year, then at least finding in those stories a sort of morbid amusement. Tales to tell gullible freshmen, about dismembered ghosts and illicit relations.

Strangely, the idea that Izuru's life had become someone else's urban legend left him feeling . . . numb. He wasn't sure how he should feel. Like there was a disconnect between how he had once gloomily expected to find this place and the lively living reality. He had expected to find reminders of his transgressions everywhere he turned, and instead. . . .

Instead he found himself staring at classrooms or ocean views or faux-Romanesque details that he once knew like the back of his hand, feeling like those days he had spent living among them had been just some vivid dream. They aroused in him none of the fear or pain or guilt he had come prepared for, and simply left him feeling so inexplicably, unimpressively hollow.

"I thought you never wanted to see this place again."

Izuru turned to see Mitani walking toward the edge of the balcony, gazing out at the bay even as he came to stop beside the boy. His hands in his pockets, the ocean breeze ruffling his tie and coattails and the hair that hung down into his eyes, for a moment Izuru was all but convinced they were alive again, professor and student at this school, and it was the last few years that had been some bad dream.

He wasn't sure anymore if he really missed it.

"It's like we've never left." The words just slipped from Izuru's lips, seeing Mitani like that. He looked around them. "Hell, like we were never here to begin with. They all go around with smiles on their faces and . . . Do you think anyone, any of the staff, would even remembers us—think they'd recognize us if we let them see us?"

Mitani chuckled bitterly. "Oh, I'm sure they'd remember, all right. Hard to forget. We disgraced the school—nearly burned it down—"

"And yet it's still standing, Sensei."

Izuru had said that easily enough—just like always—but perhaps it was their environment that made Mitani's already brittle smile fall. "You shouldn't call me that. You know I don't deserve it. After what I did . . . You should be ashamed to still call me 'sensei'."

The boy turned back to the vista of the bay at that. Gone was the self-loathing, the twinge of resentment such observations of Mitani's usually roused in him—gone was his impatience with his former teacher's own guilt. He could not help what Mitani thought of himself. But did Izuru feel ashamed?

"Never," he said simply.

And meant it. No more, no less.

He rose nimbly to his feet, digging his heels into the edge of the battlement and unfolding himself upright. The arms he stretched out like wings before hoping down to the cobblestones beside Mitani were less to steady him now than to feel the contours of the ocean breeze as it caught in the loose folds of his shirt, and nudged him away from the long drop to the stone steps below.

"Let's go, Sensei," he said, as though he had already decided.

Mitani hesitated. "Are you sure? We just got here. I mean, I understand, of course, if it's still too much—"

But there was a smile on Izuru's face as he turned.

"It's not that. It's just that there's nothing left for me here anymore."

This place can't hurt me anymore. Not unless I let it, and I won't. I refuse to be undone like that.

"I don't know what I was expecting to find, but whatever it was, it isn't here."

"And that's why you're smiling."

Mitani knitted his brows, perplexed, and it just made Izuru's smile even wider. It had been so long. That must have been the reason for his old professor's confusion. But Izuru could not say what had brought on this smile, only that in his numbness he felt strangely giddy, like he were somehow full of helium. Somehow lighter.

Yes, that must have been it precisely. When they left here, he could finally leave this school and all the heavy stone bricks that made up its memory behind him, one less burden to weigh him down. He could not say he was going to miss it, either. Even if it was only one cross he no longer had to carry out of several more he did, already he was finding it that much easier to breathe.

"Come on, Sensei. Let's go home."