Page 398 of Mercy Written in Blood

"Haruki."

"I already told you. No masks. That applies to you deciding what I can and cannot witness."

Renji closed his eyes.

"You are insufferable."

"You've said that before."

"It remains accurate."

Haruki huffed a quiet laugh against his shoulder.

"Happy birthday," he said. "For whatever that's worth to a man who spent centuries pretending the date didn't exist."

"It is worth more than it used to."

They rose an hour later. Renji dressed with more care than the occasion strictly required — dark trousers, a plain white shirt, nothing that would obscure whatever happened to his skin. Haruki watched him from the doorway, already dressed himself, a mug of tea in each hand.

"You made tea."

"I made an attempt at tea."

Renji accepted the cup and drank without commenting on the temperature. It was, as always, slightly too hot. He said nothing.

Downstairs, the kitchen held traces of the life they had built without deciding to build it. A pear cake recipe pinned beneath a magnet, half-followed and abandoned twice. Two sets of chopsticks that no longer required separate drawers. The restaurant guide from 1998, dried and warped from the coffee it had once survived, returned to its place on the shelf because Renji had refused to let Haruki throw it away.

Ken arrived shortly before nine, followed by Reina, then Akiko carrying a case of medical equipment she insisted would remain in the car unless required. Hiroshi arrived without invitation, as he did most Sundays now, carrying a bottle of sake he claimedwas appropriate for the occasion and which no one believed he had been saving for a thousand years.

"You look nervous," Hiroshi said, studying Renji across the kitchen.

"I am not nervous."

"You've refolded that towel three times."

Renji looked down. He had, in fact, refolded the towel three times.

"It was improperly folded."

"By whom? You?"

Reina intervened before the argument could develop further, steering Hiroshi towards the garden with instructions about chairs that did not strictly need moving. Ken remained by the door, arms folded, watching Renji with the particular stillness he reserved for moments he did not know how to phrase.

"You don't have to say anything," Renji told him.

"I wasn't going to."

"You were considering it."

Ken exhaled.

"I'm glad you're doing this somewhere we can reach you."

It was the closest thing to sentiment Ken permitted himself before an audience. Renji accepted it as such.

Mina arrived at half past nine with Ryota, both wearing the plain civilian clothes that had replaced the white bands months earlier. The Unveiled, in whatever fractured form it now existed, had asked to send a witness. Haruki had agreed, on the condition that witnessing meant nothing more than watching.

Riku and his mother arrived last. The boy had grown since the Casino, his face losing the roundness Renji remembered from that terrible night in the garage, though the wariness remained, folded somewhere beneath the ordinary excitement of an outing.He had asked, three separate times over the preceding weeks, whether he could watch. Renji had said yes before he had fully considered what it meant to let a child witness something that might still, despite every calculation, end badly.