The stairs to Maki's third-floor University City apartment were marble – slanted, stained, badly lit, and covered in friable chips of peeling wallpaper, but marble all the same. The building was a callback to a time when higher education was reserved for the elites, adorned with Victorian bay windows, ornate gables, and even a tower for those on the top floor. It was a very Maki place for Maki to live, I thought. Although, ideally, she would have had the tower as her bedroom, but you couldn't have everything in life, could you?

The part-time priestess was opening the door when I crested the stairs to her floor, alerted by her spiritual senses of my approaching Qi. I had also emailed her to confirm I'd be stopping by today. Why hadn't I texted? Oh, no reason.

She was as regal and beautiful as always, wearing a floral blouse tucked into high-waisted jeans that emphasized her modest curves and long legs, and an expression of simmering fury for reasons I couldn't begin to guess. All I knew was that it surely couldn't have been anything I'd done. I mean, what could she have possibly been upset with me for?

Maki sucked in a breath of air, getting ready to tear into me. The inhale a woman does right before she's about to yell at you is marvelously sexy, which is an opinion that is universally held, of course, and not at all an indicator of any Freudian nonsense. However, as much as I enjoyed the preceding inhale, I could do without the rant that followed.

I levitated the coffees I'd brought out of my hand, willing them to hover behind me, and scooped Maki into a hug before she could say a word, picking her up and burying my face into the crook of her neck. Her long, straight black hair, smelling vaguely of cacao, covered my face, blinding me to the grim realities of my new Earth.

"Maki-chan!" I whined as I carried her inside her apartment, kicking my shoes off on the welcome mat. "I missed you! Comfort me, Maki-chan; the world has been so cruel. I had to fight two eldritch horrors in two days! And the Cranes still gave me shit information, even though I only fought that tentacle monster because I was their guest! Also, my ex is becoming a Lovecraft protagonist! And one of the Eight Immortals is trolling me! And some mercenaries tried to kill me for my million-dollar bounty! Can you believe it? Only a million dollars! What an insult!"

"James!" squeaked Maki, slapping my shoulder repeatedly. From behind her came the sound of poorly restrained laughter.

I pulled my face out from her hair and saw, one, an immensely embarrassed Maki, and two, a pale, freckled woman in a long sweater dress and tights with a wild mane of curly brown hair standing behind her. She had a hand slapped over her mouth and another over her stomach, trying to physically hold back the laughter bubbling out of her. Passive Insight on Maki's uncharacteristically shy reaction and basic intuition told me that this was an ex-girlfriend. From the way she didn't glance twice at the levitating coffees, I took it that this was the woman who'd helped Maki develop her unique mix of Western and Eastern magic.

"Ah." I put down Maki. She pouted at the loss of contact, then frowned and glared at me when she noticed that I'd caught the pout, as if daring me to call her out on it. "Why didn't you tell me you had company? I would have brought a third coffee."

Her jaw dropped, and her hands came up, clenching and unclenching in baffled anger as they contemplated strangling me. I floated an extra-large coffee into her hand, black just the way she liked it, earning an honest-to-God growl from the thin, demure witch. Ah, yes, I was familiar with what was happening here. There were so many different, frankly valid, reasons to yell at me that they were butting up against each other as they vied for Maki's attention.

"You!"

"The one and only." I pulled my own to-go cup from the air and took a sip. "I swear the coffee's stronger in University City."

"An email. An email, James! I've been texting you for three days! Why haven't you been checking your phone? Don't you dare tell me you broke your replacement already."

She was being dramatic; it had only been about a day and a half since my rooftop rendezvous with the girls.

"Alright, I won't tell you. I won't tell you about the replacement to the replacement either. Anyway, I thought I'd try a sort of mindfulness thing and go without a phone for the weekend. You know, be more present in the moment and all that."

She studied my beatific smile and narrowed her eyes. "Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. I cannot believe it. You've truly surpassed yourself."

"That's me, always striving for new heights."

"New lows! You decided to go without a phone for two days just to avoid my angry calls!? Are you insane? You have bounties on your head, you maniac. Do you have any idea how irresponsible that is? Even for you, James, even for you."

"Technically, it's only been one full day."

"A roof, James? What is wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with email? That's what I'm saying! Our parents got by with email, and they had people trying to kill them too, Maki."

"They had landlines! How did you even get my email anyway?"

"I sent Susy a message on Discord." She stared daggers at me. "It's a mindfulness thing," I added bashfully, hiding my chagrin behind a sip of coffee.

Motes of green, spiritual energy sparked into existence around Maki, swirling about her and making angry buzzing sounds as they disturbed the air. How lovely, she'd developed a new technique since the Exorcism.

I put my hands up. "Alright, alright. I'll drop the act, goddamn. I needed Saturday off, like, really off, okay? Every part of me was crying out for it. All I did was watch movies, order delivery, and play with my cat. Oh, I adopted a cat, by the way. His name is Smoothie. I would have texted you pics, but then I would have had to mention the Crane stuff, and I didn't want to stress you out."

"You didn't want to stress me out with cat pictures but were okay with fucking two virgins on a roof for all the world to see?"

There was a long pause while I searched for a rebuttal. "That's what I love about you, Maki, you're always keeping me humble." The motes doubled in number. I cleared my throat. "So, approximately how many people would you say noticed the, uh, ritual on the roof?"

"Everyone! Who didn't!? Extrasensory perception is the most common mystical ability among humans!"

Her guest lost her battle to keep it together, bursting out into laughter, the sound of which immediately stole all the thunder from Maki. The motes vanished, as did her anger, being replaced with only acute embarrassment.

"Don't worry," said the woman in a southern drawl. "She's exaggerating. I have about the average talent for ESP and only got flashes of the ritual itself, and they were mostly…" a blush crept up her neck to her cheeks, "physical sensations, nothing that could inherently identify you with that information alone. What I felt more than anything was that purification spell at the end, and that was all joy. You have no idea how nice it is to sense such a large burst of positive emotion through ESP; there's nothing I can compare it to. It was sublime."

Maki crossed her arms and glared at me. "Tell him about the dreamwalk. And for the record, I was able to see in far greater detail, as was, I'm sure, anyone of any relevance within the Underworld."

The woman cringed and averted eye contact, suddenly embarrassed and perhaps a bit insulted to be so casually dismissed as irrelevant by her ex. "Well, yes, I was later able to use a lucid dreaming potion that night to 'relive' the ritual from your partners' point of view, it's true, but I couldn't handle much before my body woke up. I was both girls in the dream and that was a lot for me; maybe an experienced dreamwalker could have stomached it for longer, but there can't be more than a double digit number of them in the city, if that. Regardless, the recipe for the potion and the charm I used to protect me in the Dreamworld were from a friend of mine. Not everyone would have easy access to either."

"Don't encourage this behavior. It was beyond reckless. If you were planning to cast a spell of that magnitude, you should have called me ahead of time. And since we both know you aren't as stupid as you present, that means you didn't plan to cast that spell at all, did you, James? What were you thinking? A coven of witches would have struggled to channel that sort of power, let alone on the fly."

I sighed and briefly turned on my new and improved Shining Resolve, a technique I'd first invented to fight the Hungry Ghost alongside the woman in front of me. Maki only raised an eyebrow in interest, but her ex shivered, nipples hardening to points beneath her sweater dress. She shot me a grateful look as I turned the technique off, and stepped slightly to the side to be more out of Maki's line of sight than she already was.

"Things got away from me. I cast a simple spell that converted desires into physical touch; I didn't realize how my aura would interact with it. The idea was to prevent any darker urges from taking hold of our audience, but the Hill is so infected by fear and trauma that they responded with an unexpected, almost religious, fervor to their sudden absence. I'm sorry, okay? I confess that I'm pretty out of sync with the average person's experience of living in a place like Harbor Hill, but my intentions were mostly wholesome."

Much of the anger left her at my explanation and apology, but Maki's face was still tight with annoyance. She'd probably been consumed with worry for me all of yesterday, and there were more complaints still simmering inside her, aching to be let loose from her lips. "Why were you even having a public threesome with Marianne's daughter? Did you—"

Maki's ex barked a loud laugh. "Oh, I know Captain Handsy and her wandering fingers didn't just ask that question, because that would be truly shameless. Need I remind you of Swan Lake? Don't let her fool you, James. You aren't the only one here with a fascination with ballet."

"Yes, well." Maki coughed, intently examining a floorboard. "Ah, forgive me, I should introduce you two. James, this is Zelda Potemkin. I asked her for help with the Pha Thet case. Zelda has witch blood in her matrilinear line and is better familiar with the world of online witchcraft than I am."

Zelda smiled and shook her head at the terrible segue. "Nice to meet you, though I wish it was under better circumstances. I don't think you're going to like what we found."

"You're going to hate this."

We sat down in Maki's living room, the three of us crowded onto a futon couch around a weary particle board coffee table that had seen better days. The one-bedroom apartment was sparsely appointed, barely decorated at all save for the single large globe on an out-of-place antique end table. Maki had texted me on Friday for decoration ideas; these must have been the result. They were a meager pair, but at least they kept the place from being outright 'depression living'.

Maki debriefed me on how Pha Thet's appointment at the Shrine had gone, though she hadn't actually been there for it herself. I'd sent the man and his nephew to the Ishida's to make sure there were no long-term effects from his possession, not having quite understood the nature of The Misery at the time.

The Burmese man had been reticent to get into the details of his life, but Maki assured me that her mother had managed to coax out the bulk of the context. He was working three jobs at the moment, splitting his wages between his family in Myanmar and his immigration lawyer. Pha had overstayed a seasonal work visa, having been hired last year to do six months on a deep-sea fishing vessel. It was brutal, dangerous work, rife with exploitation, and, in New Jersey at least, heavily associated with organized crime.

Pha hadn't wanted to say why he'd left his fishing job, but from his vocal and vehement anti-drug stance, Maki's mother believed he may have seen some smuggling. Life since then had been hard on the man – the cost of principles in this world, I suppose. I doubted he'd reported whatever crime he'd seen; there was no way he'd still be in the city if he had, but it was clear that he'd been living with one eye over his shoulder for a while now. He and his fiancé in Myanmar had broken up over his 'indecision', as he phrased it. Pha wasn't sure he wanted her to move to the States anymore but, at the same, didn't want to return to Myanmar, viewing it as spitting in the face of all the family and friends who'd helped him establish a life here. He worked as a bouncer at night in a small Thai jazz club and at a short-term loan firm during the day, helping Thai and Burmese speakers navigate the application process. Both were legal, but the immorality of the latter, which was essentially loan-sharking without the toughs with baseball bats, was wearing on him. He was routinely getting into fights with drunken regulars at the club, and his third job in emergency plumbing was cutting into what little sleep he did get.

If I had to guess, I would have assumed that Pha had fallen prey to The Misery from exhaustion, but it seemed there was more to the story than that, and I did, in fact, hate it.

Maki slid her phone in front of me. It was open to an Xpress channel, this world's Telegram, more or less. "He was scammed," she said, scrolling up to a long post from the channel's admin. "It was difficult to machine translate – as best we can tell it's in a mix of poorly written Burmese and Thai – but essentially—"

I threw 5 EXP towards a Die in Thai to fill in the parts I was struggling to understand. "It's a daily deal for a fucking pdf of magic love spells. Jesus Christ."

Zelda shot me a look of surprise. "You speak Burmese?"

Maki cut in. "James has a talent for languages." In her eyes was a nonverbal assurance that she hadn't let on any of my secrets to her ex, as well as a request that we keep her at an arm's length from anything more serious than internet research.

I gave her a microscopic nod. "This shit can't be what actually got him possessed, right? I mean, these can't be real spells. Please tell me that people can't become wizards off of daily deals on Xpress channels."

Maki looked to Zelda to answer. "It's called a 'Soul Harvesting' scam, and they're becoming a real problem in the Global South. Pha deleted the specific pdf he bought of 'money magic' out of terror a few weeks ago, but I had a friend buy me one of their manuals through a proxy to avoid any chance of a contract curse. It was what I expected. The good news is that there wasn't any contract magic at play, but the bad news is that there were real third-eye meditation techniques present. The rest of it read as theater, nothing you wouldn't see on WitchJin, but there was a kernel of legitimate mysticism at the start."

"The third-eye meditations are meant to hook customers," added Maki. "If you're diligent or desperate enough to stick through the techniques, you will, even as a total beginner, start to see past the Veil. It's a recipe for possession."

"And if you live somewhere as haunted as Harbor Hill?" I hazarded, seeing the broad picture.

"Precisely. With a strong body and unprotected soul, it was a matter of time before something tried to seize control."

Zelda continued, "Staring unprotected through the Veil means that something, inevitably, is going to stare back. It's a vicious scam, if you can even call it that; feels like there ought to be a worse word for it. You start seeing and hearing things that aren't there, getting weird dreams and awful thoughts and compulsions, and so you go back to the group that taught you magic. And, lo and behold," she tapped on the info for the Xpress channel, pulling up a paragraph advertising special 'Mentor' sessions at rates that would be expensive for anyone, let alone a poor immigrant like Pha. "They take you for everything you've got. We're lucky that Pha was strong-willed or stubborn enough not to fall for it completely."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

I rubbed my temple and asked a question I had a strong suspicion would only disappoint me. "Okay, so all I've got to do is find this mentor and…" My voice trailed off; Maki and Zelda's faces told me all I needed to know there.

"Unfortunately," said Zelda, "this is fast becoming a classic internet scam, especially in Southeast Asia. I found some small blogs about the Thai government trying to crack down on Soul Harvesting, but the problem was that most of the groups doing them were located in other countries. They're groups, too, not individuals, and very little is known about them. Different governments have gotten specific channels and servers shut down, but they're usually ready to go with their backups."

I leaned back and stared at the phone in blank horror. "So, what, you're saying I can't do anything about this? We just have to accept that there are assholes out there willing to compromise your soul for a dollar?"

Maki moved closer, rubbing my knee and running a hand through my hair. "It isn't a problem you can solve with a fist, James. We can try to educate communities but many of them already have a strong stigma against magic as is. These people feed on the desperate, those willing to dabble in taboo with the hopes of improving their lives. Usually, those who get scammed are too ashamed to do outreach – even Pha has asked that we keep the results of our investigation private."

Jesus. If this was becoming an internet 'classic', that meant thousands were falling prey to it around the world. Romance and employment scams could see you bankrupt and ostracized by your community; Soul Harvesting did both and left you plagued by literal demons.

"This is the most fucked up, evil shit I think I've seen yet, and I fought a Flesh Puppet on Thursday." Both women looked startled at that revelation, with Maki eyeing Zelda nervously. I knew she wanted to shelter the other woman from the worst of this world, but it felt too pressing to not mention. "Oh yeah, maybe put the word out. There's supposedly a mage from Keletsnya in town capable of creating Flesh Puppets."

Zelda reared back as if she'd been slapped. "Keletsnya?"

"You're familiar?"

"My mother fled there as a child. It's Hell on Earth from everything I've heard, a land without hope where the ruling class openly practice dark magic. What are they doing in Black Harbor? I thought they were strict isolationists."

"Real estate deals, or trying to at least. The Flesh Puppet was sent in retribution for a bid they lost to the new Crane club downtown."

She laughed bitterly. "Talk about the banality of evil. I wonder, though, you don't think they could be related, do you? The Traveler clans loyal to the oligarchs of Keletsnya are said to be spirit channelers, a bit like what Maki's family do but with a hell of a lot more blood magic."

I thought of Mars' motorcycle-riding shaman, who was almost assuredly stuck in the Eastern European country. I thought of the forensic accountant from Maria's story, possessed by a demon, crouched over his daughter's tutor, cannibalizing her flesh after having butchered his family, and I thought of the man that he'd worked for, Garret Evans, turning to look at me in the Kingfisher as if he could sense my gaze through the Empty-Headed God. I thought of Annie and her surprising connection to Victor, who I had assumed completely lost to me in the vast expanse of Middle America. Could it be related? How could it not be? All these disparate threads seemed to be weaving a grand tapestry around me, too large for one pair of human eyes to decipher. Or maybe tapestry was too optimistic – a net, more likely, and I the prey soon to be caught within.

Maki stood up, taking her phone with her. "Okay. I think that's enough for today. Zelda and I were making brownies before you got here, James. We should get them in the oven if you want one before we head over to my—our family's house."

Zelda frowned. "Maki, we talked about this. You don't have to protect me. I was overwhelmed two years ago; things are…different now. I want to help."

The miko seemed to be at a rare loss for words, her eyes flickering to mine for help.

"She's trying to protect me," I lied, "and she's right. I'm supposed to be taking today easy; it's been a long-ass week and a half, as you may have heard when I entered. If I'd known Pha's situation was so serious, I might have pushed this debrief to tomorrow. Let's switch to lighter fare. I'd love a brownie, Maki."

To me, the idea of Maki graciously changing a topic away from what she wanted to talk about just to spare my feelings was absurd. The woman was pathologically relentless and about as reasonable as a hurricane. I was a consummate professional and didn't let on the fact, but I couldn't imagine a world in which Maki let me off the hook for anything. If we were alone, she'd have been dissecting me for every relevant and irrelevant fact that I'd kept from her these past days. That was how Maki showed her love, by being extremely involved regardless of whether it was wanted or warranted.

But Zelda believed my lie instantly, and without me having to roll to deceive her either. She was mortified at her perceived selfishness. "I'm so sorry, of course. You're right. We're supposed to be celebrating!"

"Hence the brownies," agreed Maki. "That, and if I brought you on an empty stomach, you might eat us out of house and home."

"Hey! I only do that sort of thing to people I don't like."

She grinned and leaned down, giving me a kiss on the lips that lingered for too long to be considered just friendly. "No need to defend yourself, James. I find it charming the way you occasionally test mortals' dedication to hospitality customs like a gluttonous, wrathful God."

"Thanks?"

Maki patted my cheek condescendingly and turned around, swaying her hips as she walked to the kitchen. I surreptitiously watched Zelda's reaction from my periphery. My Harem Protagonist Feats ensured that the people I saved and those close to them thought it was justified for me to take additional lovers, but they did nothing to prevent jealousy or resentment.

I didn't have to worry. Wonderment dominated all other emotions on the Southerner's face, with a close second being intense relief. "Amazing," she whispered before suddenly asking, "Can I hug you?"

"Sure."

Zelda scooched closer on the futon couch and hesitated, eyes growing distant for a moment; whether from the proximity to my Qi or because they were flashing back to her dreamwalk, I couldn't say. Shaking it off, she practically threw herself into my arms, wrapping herself around me and squeezing with all her strength.

She didn't bawl, but she did cry, her breath hitching as tears began to dampen my shirt. I rubbed her back and pressed her head against my chest.

In general, I tried not to overly rely on Social rolls and the system, but this felt like an appropriate use for out-of-context powers. I rolled a Charisma + Empathy pool to try and comfort the woman. I was pretty certain of what was going through her head, but was glad to have the ability to verify.

"It's night and day, isn't it?" I said softly, following the guidance of eight Successes. "She was like a shell of a person when we first met, totally consumed by vengeance. I can't imagine what it was like to see her fall into that state; it had to be a daily agony for you."

That set off the waterworks proper, and she began trembling in my arms, two years of burdensome fears and anxieties being released all at once. I'd be lying if I said that comforting sobbing women was a strength of mine, but there was little I had to actually do except continue holding her and stroking her back and hair.

What did it say that Zelda was so quick to believe that Ishida Maki would relent on an investigation to spare someone's feelings? It reminded me that while on an emotional level, we felt as close as two people could be, I hadn't actually known the woman very long. Maki was the only person in this world to whom I'd trusted the secrets of the system, at least as best as I could without incurring the wrath of the Producers, and the night of the Exorcism had felt like a lifetime – many lifetimes. But still, a week ago, we'd been strangers or worse, honestly; I'd been a maniac threatening to get myself killed if she didn't include me in her crusade against the Hungry Ghost. What had Maki been like before Ken died? Who had been the woman, or rather, who had been the nineteen-year-old girl that Zelda had known?

It didn't matter, I suppose. That version of her was gone, replaced by my Maki, a hardened and devoted warrior.

Zelda pulled away, wiping her tears with a bittersweet smile. "Lord, look at me, I'm messier than a whole bachelorette party." Her drawl was thicker now. "Said we were celebrating and then started crying, ha."

"You're alright."

"Thank you. You don't know what it means to me. I watched her slowly die, day by day, until—" she shook her head. "I called her a living revenant the day we broke up – it's haunted me ever since."

I wobbled my head from side to side. "I mean…you weren't wrong."

"No, suppose not." She trailed off, shifting her position to more comfortably lean against my side. "It still felt like a betrayal to leave her like that."

"Don't beat yourself up too much. Not to be dramatic, but you'd have both died. That thing was strong enough to swallow a God-killing sword and was making a serious play at ascending to full divinity. Me and Maki are a strong duo, but we survived because of luck. Hell, I'd have drowned if a bunch of ghosts didn't cling to the mortal coil just long enough to pull me out of the canal."

"You're right, I know, but…"

"Yeah. Can't logic the guilt away. It's a bitch that way."

I swung an arm over her shoulder, almost immediately regretting it. There were at least two Special Feats on my Character Sheet that caused the system to roll Seduction attempts on my behalf, and those were just the ones that explicitly called that out.

I'd intended the gesture to be friendly, but my Feats ensured that it was misconstrued. Zelda pulled her legs under her, a move that just 'happened' to cause her to mold herself more fully against me, one of her knees resting on my thigh, arms hugging my bicep like a body pillow.

Goddamn it, at least let me know how many Successes I rolled, you dicks.

A lot, I was guessing. Zelda gave me a grateful, longing look through half-lidded eyes. "Gosh, you're warm," she said. "When I first got the vision of that thing silhouetted and wreathed in your flames, I thought, 'That had to be metaphorical. I'd have heard if there was someone capable of summoning a fire tornado in the city.' But there's no doubting it when you're this close."

I chuckled nervously, wracking my mind for a way to politely extricate myself. "You saw that, huh?"

"Now that everyone saw." Zelda took my hand and turned it over, running her nails gently along the lines of my palm. "Say, James, does it bother you that Maki doesn't consider you a man? It's very Maki to reject reevaluating her sexuality in favor of reclassifying someone else's sex and gender instead, but I did worry for you when she told me. It would be extraordinarily rude in any other scenario."

"She told you about that?"

"Sorry. I pressed her on the issue, if that makes it better. It was pretty clear that she was in love whenever she mentioned you, and I naturally had some questions. She told me her theory that you were more a 'currently male-presenting' Kami than a man, and that I, a bisexual woman, was ridiculous for asking if she might be bi now."

In love with me? That was a bit of a stretch, surely. Or an oversimplification, maybe? I don't know. Our relationship was complicated. "Uh, to be clear, we're just partners in heroics—"

"And spiritually siblings."

"Well, sure, but only because Ken named me his successor. That was mostly for mutual protection; I get to be included in the Ishida's existing agreements with Kami, and the Shrine adds a fighter to its roster."

Zelda laughed and mercifully shifted herself a few inches away into what could be plausibly considered a non-flirtatious seating arrangement. "It's very cute the way you both deny things in the same way. As far as I'm concerned, so long as it's all consensual and Maki's not hectoring you into rethinking your gender identity, then whatever you two get up to in private is fine with me."

I scratched my cheek, blushing as I remembered Maki's frankly insane conviction that it was only a matter of time before I transformed into a living Archetype from a mortal man. She made me promise that I'd let her fuck me as a woman whenever I inevitably learned to shapeshift, something she was completely, one hundred percent certain would happen.

"No, no, it's all good. That's just…Maki, you know? She wouldn't be Maki if she didn't routinely say the craziest shit I've ever heard."

"That's funny, she said the same thing about you in her own words." The same bittersweet smile returned to her face, her eyes focusing on the middle distance. "Sounds like it was meant to be. I'm glad you found each other." She clapped her hands on her knees and leaned down, picking up her purse from the ground. "So! Want a tarot reading? I'm feeling a bit self-conscious about my own magical abilities around you two."

I breathed a sigh of relief, beyond grateful to be out of the emotional woods. Today was supposed to be light work. "I'd love one, thanks. Don't think I've had a real fortune telling before. Should be fun."

"I'm going to die!" I said cheerily to Maki when we were outside and on the way to her parents'. "All Death cards every draw. Zelda said there's only one in the deck, too."

She rolled her eyes. "Don't be ridiculous; that's not even what the Death Tarot signifies. It's supposed to represent life changes and transformations, but I'd say it's much more likely an indicator that Funikugami-sama is preventing your Fate from being read through such pedestrian means. And there are as many Death cards in the deck as there need to be; Zelda is an actual witch, remember."

"I don't know, Maki. Looked pretty cooked to me. Might want to get that eulogy ready."

"Some would consider this form of teasing cruel." She side-eyed me, but I could see her lips quirking up slightly. If there was something wrong with me for finding this funny, then Maki had the same condition. Gallow's humor was a shared affliction amongst those who lived on the razor edge of life and death.

I sighed dramatically and put both hands on the back of my head. "Man, pretty freeing knowing I'm a dead man walking in a way, really puts you in the moment. Talk about mindfulness, am I right?"

"The more times I hear you say mindfulness, the less convinced I am that you know what it means."

"What does it mean? I never bothered to look it up."

She groaned and started angrily walking faster while muttering something about emails and believability. I whistled as I followed. It was always nice to spend time with Maki.