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.