I had always known that dating Akira would involve a certain amount of theater.
He was a visual kei enthusiast, a Sagittarius, and the sort of man who could make a trip to the pharmacy feel like the final act of a tragic anime in which everyone had died except the protagonist, who was now required to avenge them in eyeliner.
He owned more jewelry than I did kitchen utensils. His wardrobe consisted primarily of black lace, elaborate buckles, silver chains, and garments that appeared to have been designed by someone who had recently discovered both Victorian mourning customs and the concept of a distressed boyfriend.
I loved him.
I also believed, until that particular Tuesday afternoon, that I was dating a reasonably functional adult.
This was my first mistake.
The second was asking how his conversation with Cassian had gone.
Akira was sitting on the edge of our bed, still wearing his platform boots. Mochi, our cat, occupied the center of the duvet with the proprietary confidence of a landlord who had discovered that the tenants were behind on rent. Akira was staring at his phone.
I asked whether Cassian had finally returned the borrowed money.
Akira slowly lowered his phone.
“Daniel,” he said, “I have suffered a severe disturbance to my spiritual cultivation.”
I looked at him.
He looked at me.
Mochi licked his own backside.
“Right,” I said. “So that's a no on the money.”
“My soul is shivering.”
I assumed this was a metaphor. Akira had a particularly rich vocabulary for ordinary emotional experiences. Sadness was an abyss. Annoyance was an energetic blockage. A mildly inconvenient train delay could leave him feeling as though the universe had personally repudiated his existence.
“Are you cold?”
“No.”
“Do you have a fever?”
“No.”
“Then why is your soul shivering?”
Akira gave me the expression he usually reserved for people who pronounced Versailles incorrectly.
“Because Cassian's energy is deeply compromised.”
“Okay. Well, block him.”
His expression became one of genuine horror.
“Block him?”
“Yes. On your phone. There's a little button.”
“You think this can be resolved through a primitive digital boundary?”
“I was thinking we could start with a primitive digital boundary and work our way up to exorcism if necessary.”
“You don't understand.”
This was true. I would eventually learn that understanding was not a prerequisite for participation in Akira's spiritual emergencies. In fact, I suspected it was actively discouraged.
He explained that Cassian had sent him a message about an acquaintance's upcoming birthday dinner. Nothing controversial. Nothing insulting. Nothing that would have caused a normal person to experience anything beyond the mild irritation of having to attend another birthday dinner.
Apparently, Cassian had used a period where Akira believed an exclamation mark would have been appropriate.
A period.
A small, circular punctuation mark had precipitated a metaphysical catastrophe.
“He has either been hijacked by a malevolent entity,” Akira explained, “or he is the malevolent entity.”
“Those are your two working theories?”
“Yes.”
“Have you considered that he might simply be boring?”
Akira closed his eyes.
“I need to meditate.”
And so began the longest thirty-five and a half hours of my life.
The diagnosis becomes expensive
By six o'clock, Akira had determined that the situation constituted a very serious spiritual emergency.
He had spent forty minutes meditating, seventeen minutes consulting an astrological chart, and another eleven minutes staring into the bathroom mirror while assessing whether the left side of his eyeliner had become spiritually asymmetrical.
He emerged wearing a long black cardigan and announced that his cultivation had regressed.
“By how much?” I asked.
“Significantly.”
“Can we quantify that?”
“No.”
“Is there a scale?”
“Daniel.”
“I'm asking because if you're going to regress, I'd like to know whether we're talking about a minor setback or whether we need to notify the spiritual equivalent of the Department of Motor Vehicles.”
“My cultivation is not a bureaucratic matter.”
I looked at the notebook in which he had begun recording his symptoms.
It had three sections, color-coded tabs, and a small handwritten label on the front: SOUL SHIVERING: PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.
I decided not to point out the irony.
Akira's first instinct was to contact Master Nishihama, a soothsayer who specialized in visual kei twink spiritual emergencies.
I had not known such a specialization existed. I had assumed that soothsayers worked across the entire supernatural sector, like general practitioners. Apparently, this was an unreasonable assumption. Master Nishihama dealt specifically with cultivation regression, astrological contamination, soul shivering, and what his website described as ornamentally induced energetic imbalance.
His consultation fee was two hundred and eighty dollars.
His emergency consultation fee was four hundred and twenty dollars.
His website offered a discount for clients who could provide a recent photograph of their spiritual aura, although it did not explain how one was supposed to obtain such a photograph.
Akira had already booked the emergency appointment.
“Is this covered by insurance?” I asked.
“This isn't a medical issue.”
“Then why is there an emergency fee?”
“Because it's an emergency.”
I went to the kitchen and made coffee.
Mochi followed me, screamed at his empty bowl, and then stared at me with the contempt of a creature who had watched an entire household collapse into madness and found the feeding schedule to be the only remaining institution worth preserving.
I fed him.
At least one of us was capable of resolving a crisis.