"Are you up here? Hiyori?"

She started at the sound of her name. Yato's voice was close, but he hadn't yet seen her. She heard him moving around the room, checking the lumpy blankets for evidence. Maybe he would think she'd gone home. She could hope.

After several minutes during which it sounded like he was tearing the room apart, there was finally silence. Hiyori dared to exhale.

The closet door was flung open. Sunlight poured into the space, fracturing the dim closet with brilliance. She blinked at Yato, who stood in the closet doorway wearing an expression of mixed confusion and victory.

"Hi," she said sheepishly.

"You're in the closet?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

Hiyori had to make a fast decision. Which reason would sound the least crazy?

"I…wanted to think," she said, cautiously.

Yato nodded, and with a remarkable show of respect and self-restraint, did not push further into the "yes, but why in a closet," line of questioning.

"Is it something you want to talk about?" he asked.

She swallowed the instinctive no that bubbled at the back of her tongue. After all, it wasn't entirely fair that she knew, and he still didn't. By now, Hiyori was aware secrecy was a slow-acting poison—even if it was on another's behalf.

Yato saw the conflict on her face, and his brow furrowed.

"Would you rather talk to someone else?" he asked. "Yukine? Kofuku?"

Something crumpled in Hiyori's chest. Her heart was thundering, and she knew he could hear it. It was possible everyone in the world could.

"No," she admitted, miserably. "I want to talk to you."

Yato's eyes traveled around the small closet, which smelled faintly of mold and expired medicine.

"In here?"

Hiyori shook her head, brushing past him into the room. If she felt him too close, if any of his warmth clung to her, she wouldn't be able to do this. Her throat would dry up and crack and bleed and she would be mute forever, imprisoned behind the bars of her own cowardice.

She sat down on one of the bedrolls, and Yato sat next to her. Not too close, since he recognized and correctly interpreted her spooling discomfort.

"It's about Kamuhakari," she began.

Yato flinched. Nothing good had happened at Kamuhakari.

"Not that," she said quickly. "Not the fighting."

His shoulders relaxed ever so slightly. Hiyori's voice shook, and she looked away again.

"It was…before. When we were working on the matchmaking. Something…happened."

She hazarded a glance at Yato out of the corner of her eye and nearly fled the room. His fists were balled up tight on his knees and his whole body nearly vibrated with curiosity. He stared at her face, his eyes round and hungry for gossip. She would have to destroy that innocence.

"Our—our plaques—yours, and mine—"

Her voice broke on "plaques." She swallowed a sharp jab of fear.

"They were…connected."

Hiyori nearly melted with relief at having finally said it.

The worst was out. No longer her secret. No longer her burden. It was like she had expelled a toxic parasite that had been chewing at her insides, and she asked herself seriously why she hadn't done this sooner.

Yato said nothing.

Hiyori waited a few moments, expecting his reaction. When it didn't come, she looked up from her folded hands.

"Yato?"

Hiyori slid closer to him on the bedroll, suddenly worried. He looked like a puppet with its strings cut, his spine a drooping curve, head hanging heavy as a sandbag. His clenched fists had loosened on his knees.

"Yato, what is it?"

Her voice was inching closer to terror. Had she broken him? Was this like the god's greatest secret? Oh, if only she had just shut up, kept it locked it in forever. She felt the change between them, the tectonics of their transgressive, complicated relationship shifting irreversibly.

"I'm sorry," she gasped, horrified. "I shouldn't have told you. Forget it, I was kidding! It was just a joke! A really, really, really bad jo—"

She yelped as his arms shot out suddenly, pulling her toward him and crushing her close to his chest. Her ribs creaked in his embrace.

"Y…at…," she wheezed.

His arms were tight and solid around her, and although she couldn't breathe—and possibly had some internal bruising—it felt good. Very good.

After a few seconds his arms loosened, and she sucked in a gigantic breath. But as she scanned his face, gauging his reaction, the joy was already dimming from his eyes. His mouth drooped.

"Hiyori," he said, studying her. "Why didn't you want to tell me?"

"I—"

She stopped, biting the inside of her cheek.

She hesitated to give him the bad news: the name of the person who had tied them, whose luckless fingerprints covered their plaques. But before she could answer, he let her go completely and pushed himself to the opposite end of the bedroll.

"You know, Kamuhakari is mostly symbolic," he said tightly, his body turned away from her. It sounded like he was choking on something. The back of her neck prickled.

"It might not have meant anything," he continued, when she said nothing.

It felt like Hiyori had been punched. "What…?"

But Yato looked directly at his hands, his jaw solid and cold.

"Two people linked at Kamuhakari don't have to be together. Not always."

Someone was scooping out her heart with a blunt spoon. She clutched her chest, expecting to find a cavity there, and touched only skin. But she had cracked open—she felt it.

"What do you mean?" Hiyori asked, terribly calm and normal.

"I mean you don't have to worry. Even if we were linked, I wouldn't bother you if you wanted…someone else."

Hiyori's ears rang. She opened her mouth, not at all sure what was going to come out.

"It was Kofuku."

Yato slowly turned his head, blinking at her in confusion.

"She tied our plaques," she clarified. His face collapsed in total dismay.

"Shit," he said fervently.

Hiyori's face stretched in a grimace. She'd harbored some small hope it wouldn't really be that bad.

"That's really bad," Yato said, as soon as she thought it.

"Oh come on," Hiyori wailed. "Didn't you just say Kamuhakari was basically just symbolic?!"

"Of course I did!" he said in despair. "I didn't want you to feel bad about being my soulmate! But no, it's totally, one-hundred-percent literal, and now we're fuc—"

"I wouldn't."

Yato froze, his mouth still open. "Huh?"

Hiyori's cheeks started to burn.

"I wouldn't feel bad. If I were…you know. That."

She felt lightheaded as his eyes searched her.

"Really?" Yato asked. His voice was very soft.

Hiyori, speechless and tomato-red, nodded at the ground.

It had been some weeks now since she realized she was in love with him. And now that she could acknowledge it, she sometimes took stock of the moments when it became obvious why.

This was one of them.

Yato was a god, but he looked at her like she was the only thing in the world worth worshiping.

Hiyori felt it: warm, and sweet, and dripping through her like slow honey. This must be the effect of the divine bond. Surely it must. Love couldn't feel like this, not really. Not so heavy. Not so wonderful it hurt.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

There was fear in his eyes.

She ached for him. She couldn't erase the history of strife and suffering that made him think, even now, even here, that no one could love him.

But he was good. He had become so good. No one could have worked half so hard, struggled half so long, and not become something better.

Hiyori loved him for that, and for how he waited now for her answer. She trusted no god to make better use of their eternities.

"Yes, I'm sure," she said.

"I love you." He said it the instant she finished speaking, like the words had been waiting to burst out of him.

They looked at each other. Hiyori seemed to have lost control of her voice, though she felt it fluttering in her chest like a panicked bird.

Suddenly, Yukine poked his head into the room.

"Have either of you seen my favorite pencil? It's blue and it's got a flower eraser…on it…"

He took in the mood of the room, then began tiptoeing backwards into the hallway again.

"Never mind," they both heard him whisper.

Hiyori swallowed convulsively, the sound enormous and echoing. Her mouth opened. She would say something now. Something profound.

Her voice squeaked as she blurted out:

"Neat!"

She couldn't see how Yato reacted to that, because she immediately shrank into the blankets and pressed her forehead to her knees, willing herself invisible. Maybe that was a trick she could learn in her ayakashi form. Unfortunately, at the moment she was very much flesh-and-blood.

She heard his quiet exhale, and the rustle of fabric as he scooted closer. Felt the heat and presence of him next to her.

"It may be fine," he said, mercifully ignoring her blunder. "After all, we spend so much time around Kofuku already—if nothing horrible's happened yet, then…"

He trailed off, his optimism having reached its limit. Hiyori groaned softly into her knees. Neat…

"What do you mean, 'horrible'?" Her voice was muffled. Yato thought about it for a second.

"You know, the usual stuff. Famine, plague, drought, recession, et cetera."

She surfaced again, aghast.

"You think that if we're together then Japan's economy will collapse?"

Yato grinned at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

"Would that really be so terrible? I'm a good provider."

"You take jobs for five yen. Less, if they offer you lunch. Half the time you don't even charge people."

He withered. "Fine. I'm a…passable provider."

"You squat in your friends' attic. You spray paint your résumé on the sidewalk."

"A mediocre provider?"

Hiyori nodded. That was acceptable. The satisfied look on her face melted when Yato nudged her shoulder with his.

"'Neat', huh?"

She buried her face in her hands. "I'm sorry. I panicked."

He was sitting too close now. He smelled really, really good.

"So," he said, in a low voice. "I'm just curious. If Kofuku hadn't been the one to tie our plaques—if it had been anyone else—would you have told me?"

Hiyori wanted to look at him. She couldn't tell by his voice alone if he were joking or serious. But she couldn't lift her head.

"I don't know," she answered, because it was true. "Maybe not."

"Then I'm glad she did."

Her head snapped up, eyes meeting his. The honesty in them shocked her. She couldn't look away.

"But…economic meltdown…"

He waved a hand, as though the undoing of Japan's fiscal infrastructure were a fly he could swat away. His eyes never left hers.

"Probably nothing to worry about."

Hiyori was aware that her breathing was shallow, and that her head had started to spin.

"Probably," she repeated, a whisper.

"I'm glad you told me," he said.

There it was again, the pressure in her chest, the overfullness. She felt oceanic, pulled tide by tide toward the moon.

"You understood, then? I meant…"

She trailed off. Yato reached for her, drew her close, set his chin on the top of her head. Hiyori curled into him, inhaling deeply. His neck was pale and soft, the pulse of his godhood much lazier than her hurrying human heart.

"Yeah, I did."

He pressed his cheek to the top of her head.

"You can say it back the next time," he said. "Or not. I can wait."

He had waited long enough, she thought.

"I love you too."