“Heihachi’s a tease,” Shiro says with a smile. “Nothing more.”
“How often did you come here?” I ask Shiro. I’ve never heard him mention this place before, and honestly? I suppose I don’t know very much about Shiro as a person, outside of shrine life. He’s not a stranger, but if I were asked to name any of his favorite things—colors, foods, et cetera—I know I couldn’t.
Shiro leans into the countertop, folding his arms in front of him. “Often enough. Ronin hated the company here, so it was the one place I could go and be sure he would leave me alone.”
“I didn’t know he was following you around,” I say, incredulous. “. . . Why bother?”
“Mother never trusted me the way she trusted Ronin,” Shiro says with a shrug.
I make a face. “That can’t be a bad thing.” After all, O-bei asked Ronin to give up his natural life to serve her as a shinigami. While I understand that kitsune, yokai, and shinigami operate on different moral planes than do humans, what Ronin did to the Fujikawa Shrine isn’t acceptable under any moral code.
Except O-bei’s, of course.
“I know you see her as a monster,” Shiro says, interrupting my thoughts. “But Mother . . . I know she’s not good, but she’s not all bad. . . . She just is what she is.”
“If you’re trying to be philosophical,” I say dryly, “you’re failing.”
“Okay, let me explain it this way,” he says, pausing for a second as a waitress brings us glasses of water. He smiles at her in thanks, and then continues, “My birth mother used to serve Lady Katayama in the Twilight Court.”
“Like Minami serves her now?” I ask.
Shiro nods. “My mother died when I was young, leaving Ronin and me orphaned. Lady Katayama could have sent us away; instead, she took us in. Gave us a home. Loved us, in her way.”
“And then she asked one of you to give up his life and become a shinigami,” I say under my breath.
“That too,” Shiro says, scratching himself behind the shell of one ear. “It’s harder for humans to accept the fact that we are all made of darkness and light—there’s not a lot of middle ground with your kind.”
“There you go again with the your kind business,” I say, flipping my menu over to look at some of the items on the back. “You sound like your mother when you talk like that, you know?”
Shiro opens his mouth to reply, but before he can get a word out, Heihachi bustles over. “So! Has your girlfriend decided what she wants?” he asks with a cheeky little bow.
My eyes widen, panic fluttering in my chest. “I-I’m not his—”
“We’ll both have the tonkotsu,” Shiro says.
“Shiro!” I cry.
“Good, good.” Heihachi looks at me, then back at Shiro, his grin so wide I hope it makes his cheeks ache. “Don’t worry, miss, we make a good one here! I’ll be right back,” he says, rapping on the bar with his knuckles.
As Heihachi turns away, I glare at Shiro. If we were alone, I might even hit him on the shoulder, but I don’t want to draw attention to us. Shiro has managed to embarrass me twice today, and I’m not keen on a round three.
“I can order for myself, thank you,” I say.
“Tonkotsu is your favorite kind of ramen,” he says. “Am I wrong?”
I don’t know how he knows I like tonkotsu, but it makes me feel like he has an advantage in our relationship. I tch, pulling my phone out of my bag. “I hate that you know all these things about me. I barely know anything about you.”
“You know my family’s crazy,” he says.
“True,” I reply. “But that doesn’t say much about you. I suppose you take a perverse delight in embarrassing me publicly?”
“You make it so easy,” he says with a laugh. “What do you want to know? My favorite color, or maybe my blood type?”
“I’m not interviewing you for an idol profile, silly,” I say, setting my phone down. “Hmm . . . tell me why you wanted to become a shrine guardian.”
“I respect O-bei, and maybe even love her in my own way,” Shiro says, leaning back in his chair, “but I didn’t want to spend my life in her service.”
“I can respect that,” I say softly.
Movement draws my attention to the kitchen. A tiny white moth flutters down and lands on Heihachi’s shoulder. He brushes it off, nonchalant, but it leaves behind a sprinkling of dust on his shirt. The tiny creature flies toward the pendant lamp overhead, dancing around the hand-blown glass bulb.
I look harder at the man. It’s just a coincidence, I tell myself. A shinigami wouldn’t hide in plain sight as a noodle chef.
. . . Right?
The white moth follows Heihachi all over the kitchen. He bats at the thing if it gets too close to the food, but it seems like Heihachi’s putting in the effort only for our sakes.
I lean close to Shiro. “Is your friend Heihachi a shinigami?”
“Maybe,” Shiro says, a grin tweaking one side of his lips.
“Why haven’t you tried talking to him before?” I whisper fiercely. “It’s not like he doesn’t know about what happened at the shrine.”
Shiro leans his forearms on the counter. “I haven’t asked him, because unlike other shinigami—”
A ball of fire explodes in the kitchen. Glass shatters, men shout. Heat billows toward us, searing my skin. I stumble away from the bar, nearly tripping over my own feet. One of the chefs rips a burning kerchief off his head. Hurling the fabric to the ground, he stamps the fire out. Heihachi grabs a fire extinguisher. A plume of white smoke billows from the extinguisher’s mouth.
A cat leaps through the extinguisher’s cloud with a yowl. He lands on one of the hot grills, not bothered by the heat, and snatches a piece of chicken in his jaws. Steam rises off his paws. When our eyes meet, I swear he’s grinning through the mask of white flame retardant he now wears.
I’d know that face anywhere. Those mismatched eyes. Those scars.
“Oni-chan!” I cry, racing up to the bar. “What are you doing here?”
“Catch that cat!” Shiro says, leaping over the counter. When Shiro dives for him, Oni-chan rockets off the grill, bounds off Shiro’s shoulder, and lands on the bar. The nekomata slips on the lacquered surface, knocking our chopsticks and condiments to the ground. Before he can leap away, I scoop him into my arms.
“Bad kitty,” I say, taking the chicken breast out of Oni-chan’s mouth. The cat makes a grab for the meat with his paws, flattening his ears against his skull, beating his tails against my abdomen with a growl. The sound makes his body wind up, tight as a coil. I set the pilfered chicken on the countertop, then cradle the cat against my chest. It keeps him from getting any purchase against my body.
Cursing, Shiro rights himself. He rubs a set of red welts on his forehead, left behind by Oni-chan’s claws. “For heaven’s sake,” he says, checking the tips of his fingers for blood. “You could have just asked!”
Oni-chan makes a sound that’s somewhere between a meow and a crow, as if he’s pleased with himself for causing so much trouble.
“Is that cat yours, Kira-chan?” Heihachi asks, setting the fire extinguisher down with a metallic thunk. The tiny, feather-headed moth now clings to the top of his bun, shaking.