"Anything, Kazuma?"

"No." Kazuma scanned the streets as they flew overhead on Kuraha's back. He detected no more phantoms lurking about the area, but they had already been patrolling the city and hunting ayakashi for most of the day anyway.

"Let's call it a day, then," Bishamon decided. "Good work, everyone."

Dusk was just starting to fall, and a light rain drizzled over the streets. Both good reasons to head home.

A flash of dark hair caught Kazuma's attention through the gray veil of rain, and he narrowed his focus on the slender figure down below.

"Is that Yato?"

"Hm?" Bishamon's gaze followed where he directed it, and her eyes narrowed. "What's he doing? Didn't Yukine say he was missing?"

"Yes."

They had stumbled across Yukine and Hiyori early in the morning, and Yukine had mentioned that Yato had been missing for a couple days and wasn't taking calls. He was still more at the stage of frustration and irritation than genuine worry or fear, but it did raise the question of what his missing master was doing.

"Kuraha, let's go down," Bishamon said.

He obeyed immediately, but Kinuha sighed and said, "Can't we just leave him? It's not our business, and I'm tired of the rain."

Bishamon's gaze slid to the side. "Kazuma?"

"We might as well see what he's up to," Kazuma decided.

Kuraha's paws hit the street with a soft thud, the impact jarring faintly through his body.

"Hey, you!" Bishamon called.

Yato had been leaning on a wooden railing on the side of the street, arms crossed loosely overtop as he stared out into the rain, but now he turned to regard them. Water dripped from the tips of his hair and slicked it down, there was a pinched look to his face and dark smudges beneath his eyes, and even his usual tracksuit was looking more bedraggled than usual.

But it was his eyes that gaze Kazuma pause. They weren't their normal carefree hue or even their more serious shade. They had a flat, empty sheen to them that Kazuma recognized from only a small handful of encounters in the entire time he had known Yato and watched those eyes change over the years. Not good.

"What do you want?" Yato asked. His voice was dull, uninterested, and his blank eyes seemed to stare right through them.

Bishamon's lips pulled into a frown. Even she could sense that something was off, and Kazuma knew she had never seen these eyes before. Very few people had.

"Yukine and Hiyori have been looking for you," she said instead of commenting. The lackluster response had even dulled her normal inclination to pick a fight. "Just thought I should pass on the message."

"Oh. Okay, then." Yato turned back to the rail and dropped his chin to rest on his arms.

Bishamon waited a few seconds, but he made no further comment. They had been dismissed.

"That's it?" she asked incredulously, her hot temper finally rearing its head again. "Why, you–!"

"Veena. Let me handle this."

She frowned, but something in Kazuma's tone caught her attention. "Revert, Kazuma."

The familiar sensation of change swirled about him, and he materialized by his master's side. He was walking through the drizzle toward Yato almost before his body solidified.

"What happened?" he asked. "You look awful. Did you stop eating again? Sleeping? You should take better care of yourself."

Yato didn't even look over. "Enough, Kazuma."

"You've been crying."

"It's raining."

"Your eyes are red."

"Enough, Kazuma."

"It's been a while since I've seen you like this. I thought it wouldn't be as much of an issue now that you've been happier. What are you running from this time?"

Kazuma had run across—and sought out—Yato many times over the centuries to repay his debt by helping his benefactor through hard times. He had known Yato when the latter was a cold and cruel god of calamity and when he had begun showing more emotion and become more positive. He had been there to experience the shock when one year Yato was a harsh and distant god and the next he had picked up a smile and carefree attitude. He had seen when both masks—both the hard, cold one and the happy, goofy one—wavered and cracked to reveal that neither was the whole truth.

And, once or twice, he had seen when Yato dropped the masks entirely and couldn't even summon up a harsh word or cheerful deflection to hide the aching sorrow underneath. Those rare moments where Yato lost hope so completely, was so tired and heartsick of it all, that he abandoned the world for a few days or months or years until he could work up the strength and willpower to pick up a mask again and get back to work.

But Yato was happier than he had been in centuries. He wasn't being hunted by Bishamon anymore, had finally found his perfect shinki, had even picked up a special human believer and been given a shrine—however small—of his own. What could ruin that and send him back into a hopeless spiral so deep that he couldn't even bring himself to pretend he was alright?

Yato lifted his head and blinked at Kazuma. For a moment, they stared at each other through the gently falling curtain of rain. Then Yato straightened up, turned on his heel, and walked away.

"Enough, Kazuma," he said again.

Kazuma huffed out a sigh, shoved back the wet hair plastered to his forehead and silently cursed the raindrops clouding his glasses, and started after the retreating god. He splashed through a puddle and picked up his pace as he shivered against the damp chill veiling his skin. He caught up to Yato on a wood-planked bridge overlooking a narrow river and a handful of peaceful shrines dotting the grass along the banks.

"You have people to rely on now," Kazuma said as he trailed along a couple steps behind, his feet squelching in shoes that were quickly becoming waterlogged and uncomfortable. He wondered if perhaps Yato had been alone so long that he still hadn't figured out how to really depend on someone else. "You don't have to run off and hide. Yukine needs you, and you can rely on him too. Why don't you go back?"

"I've been feeling so old," Yato mumbled under his breath. His voice was an unbearably tired rasp that almost disappeared beneath the rain's lullaby. He shook his head as if to clear it and said, "There are things I can't tell Yukine."

"You should trust him," Kazuma said gently.

"It's not that I don't trust him, just… He's just a kid." Yato turned his hands over and stared down at his palms. Water pooled in the hollows of his skin like an offering, and his fingers curled over to shield them. "I'm too old and sharp. I tend to break everything I touch. I'm not going to drag him into this, not any more than I have to. Neither of them." He shoved his hands into his pockets. "Anyway, he'll be upset if he finds out I'll be with Nora again."

"Nora…?" A small, black-haired girl with cruel eyes and a hollow smile flashed through Kazuma's mind, watching him with contempt and disregard as she taunted him: "You have your name, don't you?" "You aren't–you aren't still killing people, are you? I thought you stopped!"

Yato's feet dragged to a stop and he turned. His eyes, normally such a bright blue, were dull and bleak like a brittle layer of ice stretched thin across an empty black void. The rain whispered and sighed in a quiet lament as it kissed the air and beat a gentle rhythm against their skin like the tapping of small, insistent fingers.

"You can't tell them," he said, his voice hollow.

Kazuma stepped back automatically at the empty desolation written into each line of Yato's face. "But you went to such great lengths to leave that behind! You didn't want–"

"I don't have a choice!" A sharp, eerie glow cut through the dull hopelessness of Yato's eyes as a soul-deep rage Kazuma didn't understand finally bubbled to the surface. "It doesn't matter what I want. It never has." He blinked and the icy fire faded again. Weariness crept back over his features and clouded his eyes. "I'll follow orders, just like I always do," he said tiredly. "He's going to call me soon… I can feel it. He always does that… Lets me go just long enough to hope and pulls me back right when things finally start going right."

"Who's 'he'?" asked a voice from behind Kazuma.

He turned to see Bishamon standing just behind him, lavender eyes piercing through the hazy gray of the drizzle misting the air. She had left all the other shinki behind, either sent them home ahead or left them back where they'd first confronted Yato, in some semblance of privacy.

Perhaps luckily, it seemed that Yato was too far gone to much care one way or the other. Too far gone to guard his tongue as closely as he normally did, either.

"It doesn't matter," he said with a sigh.

He leaned back to grasp the railing of the bridge and hopped backward to sit on the thin wooden ledge with his legs dangling below. Pulling his phone out of his pocket despite the sprinkling rain, he held down the button to turn it back on and stared down at the screen blankly as it booted up.

"You're a god," Kazuma protested as he tugged at the damp collar rubbing the skin of his throat raw and squinted past the water droplets clouding his glasses. "Who could force you to do anything?"

"A weak, worthless, minor god," Yato reminded him without any heat. Kazuma slid forward to peer at the phone's screen: six missed calls. Yato brushed his thumb across the screen to flick away the raindrops before he opened the log and his eyes skimmed down the list. "Hiyori…Hiyori…Hiyori…Hiyori…Hiyori…Hiyori…" His breath escaped his lips in a sigh and his shoulders slumped forward as the tension drained out of them. "Not yet," he murmured to himself.

Bishamon shook her head fitfully, long tresses of damp blonde hair swaying. "But–"

"He's going to call me soon," Yato said again, still staring down at the phone. The screen went black. "If I don't come back…tell Yukine not to come looking for me."

"If you don't come back?" Bishamon repeated, her voice rising sharply in pitch. "Why wouldn't you come back?"

Kazuma couldn't imagine Yato just abandoning Yukine for good without a word, not by choice. "This…'he' isn't trying to kill you?"

Yato hummed absently. "Not as long as I'm still useful. But I've been thinking about telling them that I don't want to do this anymore…and I doubt it will go over well. Not for me, not for them. She's already taken too much of an interest in Yukine and Hiyori." One hand remained holding the phone in his lap, and the other raked through his rain-damp hair. His eyes stayed dead and locked on the phone. "I should have known better than to get attached."

Kazuma opened his mouth but found no words. A droplet of rain slid down the curve of his lip. He closed his mouth against water that wasn't salty but might as well be.

None of this made sense to him, and Yato had devolved into an unintelligible jumble of unidentified pronouns and cloaked, cryptic secrets.

"You…" Bishamon's voice hardened. "Point us the way and we'll take care of it. I doubt anyone would be foolish enough to stand up to me."

A raindrop hit the black screen of the phone and slid down, and Yato's eyes followed it. "You can't do anything."

"But–"

"You can't do anything."

Bishamon threw a puzzled, helpless look Kazuma's way, and he could only shake his head. He had seen Yato through some dark times before, but this fell well beyond the scope of his understanding. Still, it wasn't like he could just stand here and gape like a fish.

"Yato–"

A tinkling chime broke through the soft patter of the rain, and the phone's screen lit up. Yato tensed, every muscle in his body going rigid, but then let out his breath in a sigh and relaxed. Hiyori's name was scrawled across the screen, and the phone rang again. Yato held it loosely in both hands in his lap and stared down at it with those horrible empty eyes.

"You should probably answer that," Kazuma said, clearing his throat.

Yato didn't move. The phone chimed again. Just as Kazuma thought he was going to ignore the call entirely, Yato took a deep breath and brought the phone to his ear just as the last ring was about to fade.

"Hello!" he said brightly, his voice much too loud and cheerful. "Thank you for calling! Fast, affordable, and reliable! Delivery god Yato at your service!…Eh, Hiyoriii? That was you? You must have gotten deleted from my contacts. I thought that was a stalker!…Hiyoriii, don't be so mean! For all you know, I might!…Ehhh? That long already? I've been having so much fun that I must have lost track of time!…That's me, bakagami at your service."

He swung his legs up and toppled backwards over the rail without so much as another look in his companions' direction, falling halfway to the ground before disappearing into thin air. Bishamon hurried to peer over the railing.

"He teleported," Kazuma said unnecessarily.

Bishamon shook her head, a troubled look pinching her features. "It's uncanny how he can flip a switch like that."

"He's had a lot of practice, I suppose."

"Well… What do you make of all that?"

Kazuma pulled his glasses off his nose and wiped at them ineffectually with his sleeve, only managing to smear the water. When he put them back on, they were immediately assaulted by a new batch of raindrops that distorted his vision.

"I haven't the faintest idea. I've seen him totally fall apart once or twice, but it seems odd now that he's actually doing well."

"Do you think he's really following someone's orders? I always thought he was a loner and did things his own way. Who could have such a tight grip on him when he's so strong himself? Who would have enough power to leash a god like that?" The corners of Bishamon's mouth quirked downwards as if weighted down by the raindrops sliding across them. "I'd say it was ridiculous, but he wouldn't seem so broken if it was something silly…"

Kazuma could only shake his head helplessly. "In all the time I've known him, I've never heard of any mysterious 'he'. He must be really out of it to even mention it now, and I doubt he'll tell us anything more."

They stood in silence for a few moments, peering down at the spot where the troublesome god had disappeared with only the quiet weeping of the rain between them. Kazuma's wet suit jacket chafed at his skin, but it didn't compare to the sudden itch pervading his entire body.

"We should go," Bishamon said finally. "We can't do anything for him if he won't let us."

"I know, I just…"

"I know." Her eyes softened and she touched Kazuma's shoulder. "He's an obnoxious bastard, but if we find a way to help him later…"

Not so long ago, she would have rather killed Yato than entertained the idea of helping him. Kazuma was glad there was some kind of truce now, but it was starting to look like there was a bigger threat looming over the horizon that he didn't understand.

He nodded and followed his goddess back over the bridge. He paused only once to look back over his shoulder, but Yato was well and truly gone, leaving behind only a gray curtain of rain falling like tears.

Kofuku was a rare attendee at colloquies and the like since her very presence was considered disruptive, so her appearance immediately caught Kazuma's attention. She barely spared time for a greeting before asking if they'd seen Yato.

"Yato-chan hasn't come back," Kofuku explained with a smile that didn't look happy. "It's been a month already."

"A month?" Kazuma asked in surprise. Yukine hadn't even mentioned it during any of their lessons.

"He does sometimes disappear for long periods of time, but… He was looking forward to coming now that he finally can, so I thought maybe I'd be able to see him here today…"

Kazuma exchanged a look with Bishamon, whose brows had furrowed. He waited until Kofuku and Daikoku had wandered off before voicing his thoughts.

"I guess he was right…"

"But where could he have gone?" Bishamon asked.

Kazuma shook his head. "There's nothing we can do if it's like he fell off the face of the earth."

That turned out to be eerily prophetic when they later found him in the underworld. But even if there were still secrets thick between them, congealing like cold blood that the rain couldn't wash away, they would fight the odds to bring him home.

Note: To be honest, I don't remember why I wanted to write this anymore, but I liked the imagery so I kept it XD Also, I do still find the Yato-Kazuma and Yato-Bishamon dynamics pretty fascinating, if that counts as a reason lol Ah, in a world where Yato wasn't so frustratingly good at keeping his mouth stubbornly shut 24/7 XD