By the time they were done, the sky had gone fully darkk.
Hikaru straightened up and rolled his shoulders back, listening to the satisfying series of cracks that ran up his spine.
He looked at the two bags sitting between them on the ground, twelve cores, twelve heads, then looked at Nameless, who was standing the way he alwas stood, which was perfectly still and completely unbothered by the several hours they had just spent.
"We can leave," Hikaru said.
"Okay," said Nameless.
He reached down and picked up both bags without bein asked, one in each hand, and that was the end of that.
They made their way out through the gate as the last of the evening light disappeared entirely, the cily settling into the quieter, dimmer version of itself that came with full dark.
Hikaru had already spotted the pawn shop on the way in, its signn hanging above a counter cluttered with the evidence of many previous transactions.
He led them toward it now, Nameless falling into step behind him with both bags like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The man behind the counter looked up when they approached.
His eyes went to the bags first, then to the contents as Hikaru set the first one open on the counter and something shifted in his expression. a quick involuntary recalibration.
"This all from tonight?" he asked.
"Yes," Hikaru said.
The man looked between them. "You two a team?"
Hikaru felt the cringe arrive before he could stop it.
He kept his face neutral with some effort. "He's my summon."
The man looked at Nameless. Nameless looked back at him with the same expression he used for everything, which was no expression at all.
The pawnbroker kept his composure. He was a professional and professionals didn't react to things.
But somewhere behind his eyes, in the part of him that was still just a person encountering an unexpected situation, he was forming a very specific opinion about the young man standing across his counter.
He began sorting through the loot without further comment.
The cores came out at two silver each. The heads, twelve wolfhound skulls in various states of dignity, came out at one silver apiece.
Hikaru did the arithmetic in his head while the man counted, running the numbers twice because the first time felt too good to trust.
Thirty-six silver.
Three times what he had been carrying before today.
Three times the careful. scraped together, quietly anxious amount he had been managing on before all of this.
He pocketed the coins and felt the weight of them settle against his leg and had to physically stop himself from reacting in a way that would have been embarrassing.
Being an ethereal, he thought as they walked away from the stall, was genuinely, objectively cool.
He dismissed Nameless as they stepped further into the street, sending him back to rest.
The weight of both bags disappeared with him.
Hikaru walked alone, hands in pockets, coins solid and real against his fingers.
He was thinking, almost idly, that he should buy something nice for Gina, she deserved it and now he could actually manage it, when three men stepped out of the dark and arranged themselves around him with the practised ease of people who had done this before.
"Hear that?" one of them said to the others, nodding at Hikaru's pocket. "Jingling."
The one in the centre looked him over with the slow appraising confidence of someone who had already decided how this endede.
"Don't know how a shabby little brat like you ended up with coin like that," he said. "But we'll be collecting it."
Hikaru stopped walking.
He looked down at himself.
His clothes, honestly assessed, had seen significant use.
The jacket was fine, structurally sound, but the overall impression was perhaps not one of prosperity. He turned this over in his mind for a moment.
"Being called shabby isn't particularly kind," he said. He glanced at his sleeve. "Although. New clothes. I should get some after this."
One of them made a sound that was almost a laugh. "After this?" He stepped closer, closing the circle slightly. "You won't have any money after this." A pause, for effect. "Might not even have a life."
Hikaru looked at him.
Then he looked at all three of them, taking his time, moving his gaze from face to face with a patience that didn't belong in this kind of conversation.
"I'm giving you one last chance to leave," he said.
They laughed.
A genuine, amused laugh. the kind that came from complete confidence.
The one on the left moved first.
Hikaru's sword was already in his hand.
He moved through them efficiently, the way Nameless had moved through the wolves, not cruelly, not with any particular feeling attached to it, and in a short amount of time all three men were on the ground, wounded in ways that hurt considerably but would heal.
He hadn't killed them.
He couldn't quite bring himself to do that, not when it came to people, there was something in him that refused the step, drew a line he wasn't ready to cross.
so he hadn't. They were unconscious and would stay that way for a while and that was enough.
Even the weakest ethereal, he was beginning to understand, was something categorically different from a person who wasn't one.
The gap wasn't just in strength, it was in the way the body moved, the way it responded.
He had barely exerted himself.
He looked down at them for a moment, put his sword away, and walked on.
The clothes shop was still open, warm light spilling into the street.
He spent more time in it than he expected to, not because he was indecisive but because once he started looking he found he actually wanted to do this properly.
He bought for himself first, things that fit and were clean and didn't announce their age to everyone nearby.
Then he bought for Gina, which took longer, because he kept second guessing himself and then deciding he wasn't going to second guess himself and then doing it anyway.
He left with two bundles and went to the fragrance store next.
This he was less confident about.
He stood in front of the options for longer than was strictly necessary, smelled several things, made a decision, changed it, made it again.
He left with something the shopkeeper had assured him was popular, which was either meaningful or completely irrelevant depending on the shopkeeper's motives.
Food came last.
He bought a lot of it, more than he usually would have, more than he had allowed himself in a long time, and loaded himself down with the comfortable weight of it.
He counted what was left.
Sixteen silver.
He walked home feeling, possibly for the first time in a long while, like someone who had things handled.
The house appeared at the end of the street the way it always did, slightly apologetically, leaning into its own impermanence as if aware it was one bad season away from a significant structural conversation.
He stopped in front of it and looked at it properly.
He was going to make more money. Enough to move.
Enough to put Gina somewhere that didn't make him feel quietly guilty every time he looked at it.
He filed the thought away and knocked.
Silence. Then soft movement inside.
Then the door opened, just a crack at first, cautious in the way doors in this part of the city had learned to be.
An eye appeared in the gap.
Then the crack widened and the door swung open and she was smiling, fully, immediately, the way she did when she wasn't trying to be composed about something, and she came through the doorway fast and wrapped her arms around him before he had quite finished processing that she'd moved.
"Hikaru."
His heart did something embarrassing.
She was genuinely beautiful.
Even caught off guard, even after what was clearly an evening at home, there was something about Gina that reorganised the immediate environment slightly in her favour.
Oval face, jade-black hair cut into a clean bob sitting perfectly against her jaw.
She was wearing a sleeveless dress and her arms, slightly muscular, the kind that came from actual use rather than intent, held him with a firmness that was warm and entirely unself-conscious.
Her boobs pressed against the bags between them and Hikaru…
He coughed.
"I enjoy this," he said, "but you're going to flatten the food."
She pulled back.
Her eyes dropped to the bags then came back up to his face and the smile shifted into something more searching. "How did you afford all of this?"
Her expression changed again before he could answer.
Her eyes went wide. "Did you… Hikaru, did you *awaken?*"
"Yes."
She made a sound somewhere between a word and pure noise and threw herself at him again, squeezing with an enthusiasm that was going to leave marks, and he let it happen because she was happy and that was worth a bruise or two.
Then she pulled back.
Her expression had reorganised into something considerably more serious.
The joy was still there but it had been filed neatly behind a frown he recognised very well.
"Why did you go hunt?" she said. "You awakened and just went hunting? You didn't come here first?"
"We needed the money," Hikaru said.
He shrugged, which he was aware was not the correct response to the look she was giving him but was the honest one.
Gina's frown deepened into something with real feeling behind it.
She reached out, grabbed his arm, and began pulling him through the doorway with a grip that left no room for negotiation.
"You're in trouble," she said.