The only sound in the bathroom was water running off the side of the tub and dripping onto the tile floor.
Kai looked down. The water was disturbed by ripples from his landing, but it wasn't disturbed enough to obscure much. He registered what he saw in the same instant he registered that he should not be seeing it, and looked away.
Note for the future: add a warning to the flyer. Do not activate summoning magic while in the bath.
He said this last part aloud, to no one in particular, at a perfectly conversational volume.
The bathroom was small and quiet enough that it carried.
Mai Sakurajima came back to herself in a single sharp moment. Color flooded her face—an involuntary reaction, and from the tightness that followed it, not a welcome one. She recognized him: the boy from the street yesterday, the one who had been able to see her, the one with the too-polished smile and the purple flyer. She pulled her knees up against herself and fixed him with a look that was cold and even, with considerable effort, steady.
"Get out."
"My sincerest apologies. This was not intentional."
Kai turned his head, stepped out of the tub, walked to the door, and closed it behind him.
He stood in the hallway, soaking wet, and took stock of the situation.
First summons. Already a disaster.
More pressingly: Mai Sakurajima was not, by any reading of her, a person who forgot things quickly or forgave inconveniences easily. If she had decided he was a problem before the conversation even started, the contract was likely already in jeopardy.
He waited.
The door opened. Mai Sakurajima stepped out, dressed, composed, studying him with the careful attention of someone who had decided to withhold judgment until she had more information.
Kai was still standing in the same spot, still soaked, still waiting—as though the last several minutes had simply not happened.
"I should introduce myself properly," he said, without preamble. "My name is Kai. I've come in response to your summons. I'm a Devil."
The word landed visibly. Her attention sharpened.
"A Devil."
"Yes. In approximately the sense you're imagining."
As he spoke, he walked toward the sofa and let his demonic power surface—just enough. His hair lifted slightly in a current that had no wind behind it, and the soaked fabric of his clothes dried from the inside out, warm and immediate. Within seconds, he was as he'd arrived—minus the bathtub situation.
Mai watched this happen. She said nothing for a moment, because there wasn't much to say when someone had just demonstrated, quietly and without flourish, that the laws of physics were suggestions to them.
"The world keeps getting stranger," she said quietly. It sounded less like a complaint than an observation.
"It was always like this," Kai said, settling onto the sofa. "You're only now seeing it clearly."
He looked at her directly. "You want to be visible again. That's why you summoned me."
She'd been about to sit. She paused. "You knew already?"
"The summoning circle reads intent. When you activated it, it transmitted what you wanted. That's the mechanism."
He said it evenly, without trying to make it more impressive than it was. She seemed like the kind of person who would find that more reassuring than embellishment.
She sat down across from him, and he noticed, not for the first time, that she had an unusual quality of stillness about her. The initial shock had passed through her and left nothing visibly behind. For someone dealing with what was, by any reasonable measure, an extraordinarily alarming situation—being invisible to everyone around her—she had arrived at composure with remarkable speed.
"If you're here to grant my wish," she said, "what do you want in return?"
"A contract."
He didn't dress it up. There was no point—she would see through it anyway, and she would respect him more for not trying.
"What does that mean, practically?"
"Once the contract is established, the emotional energy you generate in the course of living—the daily spectrum of feeling, joy, frustration, hope, whatever it happens to be—provides me with a source of power to draw from. Energy that would otherwise simply dissipate. In return, I work to fulfill your wishes, to the best of my ability."
Mai was quiet for a moment, processing. "So the old stories about Devils bargaining with humans are real."
"The broad strokes, yes. The details depend on the Devil." He leaned back slightly. "This isn't coercion. You sign because you choose to, or you don't sign at all. And once the contract is in place, your daily life is completely unaffected. You wouldn't even notice it."
She looked at him with something that might, on a more expressive face, have been surprise. "Devils are more reasonable than the stories suggest."
"What were you expecting? Fire and manipulation? Chaos and cruelty?"
…Fairly much, yes, she thought.
She studied him instead of answering. He was, objectively, quite handsome. He was also the most unperformative person she had encountered in some time—there was none of the managed pleasantness he'd worn on the street yesterday. What was here now was simply how he was: level, contained, speaking only when he had something to say, waiting without filling the space when he didn't.
She was accustomed to being able to read people quickly. With him, she found herself taking longer.
He clearly wanted the contract—the patience with which he was explaining everything, the care he was taking, made that obvious. But he wasn't performing warmth to get it. He wasn't trying to charm her into yes. He was just being honest and letting her make up her own mind.
That counted for something.
"I need to think about it," she said.
"Take your time."
She nodded, and something in her posture eased—not much, but slightly. Since the invisibility had started, the world had become a profoundly isolating place. She had been moving through it without being able to speak to anyone, being seen by no one, spending her time in her own company with no exit in sight.
This was the first real conversation she'd had in what felt like a long time.
Even if the person on the other end of it was, by his own account, a Devil.
"Can I get you something to drink while you wait?" she asked. A small formality, offered in good faith.
"I'm alright. I've still got water from the bathtub."
Mai Sakurajima: "…"
Both of them sat in the silence that followed.
"I was attempting humor," Kai said, after a beat.
"You succeeded in making this more uncomfortable than it already was," she replied, without inflection.
The corner of his mouth moved—not quite a smile, but the direction of one. He didn't seem particularly bothered.
The incident in the bathroom had been set aside by mutual, unspoken agreement. That suited him fine. The contract was the priority. Everything else could be quietly filed under things that did not happen.