entry for yatori week day 3: god of fortune

Midnight had come and gone, obscured in a kaleidoscopic fog of cheap alcohol and throbbing synth. The dance floor pulsed with noise and color, and Hiyori knew that somewhere in the crowd of people, Ami was at her wit's end trying to collect the drunk remains of what had started the evening as Yama.

In the meantime, she sat alone at the table they had left her to occupy and finished her solitary drink. It was probably her fifth.

A few more people shimmied onto the dance floor, gyrating hip-to-hip under the wild lights. As she sat alone at her table Hiyori had already attracted more than a few interested glances, which she ignored with dignity. It wasn't that she minded the attention, but she really had nothing to gain by it.

She finished the rest of her drink a bit too quickly, and her head swam for a moment. When her eyes focused again, someone stood in front of her.

"I can replace that for you," a voice said, a notch above the deafening dance rhythm. Hiyori's eyes slowly, slowly focused on the face hovering above her table.

It belonged to a man, probably in his mid-twenties. He wasn't tall, but he exuded a magnetic charisma that reminded her of nothing more than when Touno defeated an opponent in the ring.

She had already forgotten what he said to her.

"Uh?" she replied.

The man smiled broadly and reached out to tap her empty glass with one finger.

"This. Would you like another?"

Hiyori instinctively reached to protect her drink before realizing it was empty.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "I…I guess so. Thank you. Um—here, if you—?"

She reached into her purse, rummaging through it for her wallet, but the man's laughter stopped her.

"I was thinking you could let me pay for it," he clarified, grinning.

It took Hiyori several more seconds to process that he was offering to buy her a drink. She blushed all the way up to the roots of her hair.

"Uhh," was all she could say. Her brain, bogged down in alcohol and embarrassment, was operating at the speed of a particularly leisurely iceberg.

"Only if you want to," he said, as she continued to hesitate.

Hiyori glanced out at the dance floor, hoping to find an answer in the crowd. Yama would certainly know what to do: she was an expert at wrangling free drinks from men without yielding a millimeter of ground in return. However, there was no sign of either her or Ami, and Hiyori felt a twinge of frustration that they would leave her alone like this.

In the end, her annoyance took the initiative.

"You know what?" Hiyori said loudly. "Yes. Yes, thank you, I would like another drink."

The man smiled again and slid her empty glass off the table.

"In that case, I'll be right back."

He walked away, leaving Hiyori to settle back in her chair and contemplate her decision.

Two minutes passed, and there was no sign of his return. Hiyori checked her phone idly. Once five minutes had gone by she began craning her neck to see if he was on his way back. After eight minutes she was starting to feel more than a little irked, and rose from her seat faster than was wise. The floor tilted underneath her like the deck of a ship in storm, but before she could reach out for something to right herself, someone caught her around her waist and steadied her back on her untrustworthy feet.

Hiyori shook her head, hoping to clear it. "I'm sorry!" she blurted out. "I'm so sorry about…that…"

She trailed off, looking up into the face of the person whose arm was still around her.

"Hi," he said.

Hiyori knew she was staring, but she also knew she couldn't look away.

"Sorry about your friend back there," he said, sounding as far from sorry as possible. "He's taking a little break outside for the moment."

Hiyori looked at him blankly. Friend…? Oh. Her blush returned full force.

"Who—?" she sputtered indignantly. "Why do you—"

"Usually," he interrupted. "You want the bartender to be the only one pouring things into your drink."

She blinked again. Then as she made sense of his words, all the blood seemed to rush out of her head.

"I need to sit down," she said in a strangled voice.

He quickly lowered her into one of the chairs at the table, then sat down across from her. He produced a glass of cold water from absolutely nowhere, and shoved it across the tabletop toward her shaking hands. Hiyori put both elbows on the table, pressing her forehead against her fists. Suddenly, she felt like crying.

"I was just going to…" she began, but left the sentence unfinished. Instead she shut her eyes, breathing deeply.

She didn't see him reach across the table. His fingers came within an inch of her sleeve before he pulled back again.

"I don't want to sound like I'm bragging," he said in a joking tone, though the look on his face was awful. "But I can be pretty persuasive sometimes. He won't be trying anything like that soon."

He barked a humorless laugh. "Or ever, with any luck."

Hiyori raked her hair viciously through her fingers and raised her head from her fists. Without preamble, she picked up the glass of water and drained it.

"Thank you," she said, once the glass was empty. Her chest still trembled with humiliation, but the water helped.

The boy across the table didn't acknowledge her thanks, but the tightness around his mouth softened somewhat. Hiyori wondered how it was possible she had bumped into him before even noticing him. He had such beautiful eyes.

After a moment of quiet between them, he smiled crookedly at her. The mood at the table perceptibly shifted.

"Name's Yato," he said, giving her an awkward wave from across the table.

"Hiyori," she murmured in response. The introduction somehow felt both ineffectual and unnecessary. Hiyori traced her finger around the ring of moisture her glass had left on the table.

"Yato," she repeated. "That's a nice name."

Her voice was too quiet to be heard over the thump of the bass, but Yato raised his eyebrows.

"It's not bad," he admitted.

There was another pause between them, but this one wasn't awkward.

"Are you a good dancer?" Hiyori asked.

The sudden question, though it surprised both of them, simply felt like the next part of a conversation they had just left off.

"I think so," Yato said confidently. "But it depends who you ask."

"Really?"

He shrugged. "I organized a flash mob once."

Hiyori choked.

"You what?"

Yato broke into laughter at the incredulous look she leveled at him.

"I wouldn't lie about something as important as a flash mob!"

Hiyori couldn't argue with that, so she instead she laughed.

She laughed along with the stranger named Yato, and it felt like a sad, lost part of her had found its way home again.

"Aren't you going to show me?" she asked, when she could speak again. Yato's eyebrows furrowed.

"Your moves," she clarified.

"I don't think this place could hold my moves," he shot back.

"Is that so?"

Yato stood up, a grin splitting his narrow face nearly in half.

"Is that a challenge?" he asked, sounding utterly delighted. Hiyori stood up as well, happy to discover that she was significantly more steady on her feet than before.

"I didn't say I was participating."

"You can't have a flash mob with just one!" Yato countered. He held his hand out to Hiyori, and after a moment, she took it.

As it turned out, the dance floor was too full of other moving bodies to accommodate anyone's legendary moves. The most either of them could accomplish was a sort of innocuous hopping that fell well short of Hiyori's idea of a successful flash mob.

"Are all your ideas this bad?" she shouted in Yato's ear. Her lungs ached with laughter and her face was flushed bright with exertion.

"Again, that really depends who you ask," he shouted back.

Although they were on the outskirts of the dance floor, someone shoved Hiyori hard from behind. She tumbled straight into Yato's chest, and he caught her without hesitation.

Both of them stiffened. Hiyori found herself with her head tucked beneath Yato's chin, nose nearly pressed to his chest. She sucked in a shocked breath, and the smell hit her like a bus.

She couldn't move. Frozen in place, she inhaled in again—much more slowly this time. A scalding tear rushed down the side of her cheek and off the tip of her chin.

"Oh," she whimpered.

Yato let out a soft exhale of resignation. Then he wrapped his arms around her, his sharp chin digging into the top of her head.

"I know you from somewhere, don't I?" Hiyori whispered. More tears squeezed between her tightly shut eyelids and she dug her face into his shirt, rubbing her cheek on the fabric to wipe them off.

He didn't answer, but crushed her close enough to make her ribs ache. She dug her fingers into the back of his shirt in response. The two of them stood there, for a very long time that was no time at all.

"You're happy like this," Yato said at last into her hair.

Hiyori sniffled, and nodded vigorously against his sternum. His body shook a bit with laughter.

"Not—not like this," he amended, with some effort. "I mean—without remembering me. You're happy."

"I don't know," Hiyori said. "I don't know."

His nose pressed against the top of her head. They inhabited a soft silver bubble, as fragile as spidersilk, and inside it her head was spinning with his lovely, lovely smell.

"Isn't this better?" she asked. "Isn't it best to hurt with wanting something—even if you can't have it?"

Yato's breath caught in his throat. He held her harder.

"Again," he said hoarsely. "It depends who you ask."

"I won't forget," Hiyori said. "Not this."

She was telling him, but she was mostly demanding it of herself, and so she held him even tighter. Every selfish muscle craved the nearness and warmth of him, even as her shaking voice betrayed the lie.

"You will," Yato whispered. "I promise, you will."

She swallowed a sob. Unfair. Unfair.

He kissed the top of her head. And then he let go.

For a few moments, her skin remembered the pressure of his lips.

Then she was alone on the outskirts of the dance floor, and she saw Ami dragging Yama over to their old table.

For some reason, Hiyori didn't think this was the first time she had been left with a wetness under her eyes that she couldn't explain, and a hunger in her bones that couldn't be met.

[ ] [ ] [ ]

She woke up with an apocalyptic headache.

"Christ," she muttered, rummaging through the bathroom for aspirin. Ami stuck her head inside the doorway.

"I think you put it in your purse," she said. "Just in case Yama ended up doing…exactly what she ended up doing." She gave a heartfelt eye roll.

Hiyori mumbled her thanks as she began walking down the bright hallway, each step hammering railroad spikes further into her her temples.

"Dining room table," Ami called after her.

Hiyori found her purse on the table and stuck her hand in, blindly searching for the little bottle of aspirin she had thought to bring along last night.

Her hand closed around a piece of paper. She pulled it out, expecting to see an old receipt. Instead, she withdrew a napkin with uneven writing on it.

Hiyori read it.

She read it twice. Then three times.

Before she realized she was crying, two tears raced down her cheeks and splashed onto the few brief lines written on the paper napkin.

Ami came into the kitchen in search of yogurt. "Did you find it?" she asked. Hiyori nodded without looking up. As her friend puttered in the refrigerator, Hiyori left the room, slipping the note into her pocket with a soft, watery smile.

On the napkin was scrawled a phone number, and below it the words:

For the next time you might need a god of fortune.