Something big

Jesse’s fingers fumbled with the tab of the can he was holding, nails not hooking under like he wanted them to. It wasn’t even what he had wanted to drink, often preferring bottles of imported Belgian-style wheat ale his dad favored, but Shintaro had sworn this time that this one guy in his chemistry class’s best friend’s buddy’s girlfriend’s father said this beer was superior to all other alcohols on the market. And that guy never lied according to Shintaro. 

Jesse was on his third can of five Shintaro had thrown into Jesse’s convenience store basket, if he could get the tab open, and he already wanted to water the bushes with the remaining cans. The first can had tasted like cat piss, and the second had done nothing to change his mind about the flavor. Maybe the third would?

“I got it,” Shintaro said. There was a crooked smile across his face, the kind Shintaro often had when he was enjoying Jesse drunk and suffering but had enough mercy to put him out of his misery. He reached over and flicked the tab like an expert, the can cracking open with a satisfying snap.

“How long were you watching me struggle?” Jesse asked, taking a sip. Yeah. Still cat piss.

“The whole time,” Shintaro shrugged. He crushed his fourth can in his hand before going for the last he had purchased.

“Asshole,” Jesse muttered, but it only elicited a grin from Shintaro and Jesse found himself grinning in return.

Jesse had known Shintaro for forever. The two of them had been paired together for an activity in elementary school on the first day, and they had just clicked. It was like a match made in heaven as their humor complimented each other. No matter what their teacher did, it was impossible to separate them. Jesse and Shintaro came together as a packaged deal, and their teachers had struggled to find ways to keep them apart even when they were placed in different homeroom classes over the years. 

Hell, even when they were applying to high schools, they had strategized the best ways to stay together. Shintaro had even given up on his dream school in order to stick closer to Jesse, a fact that Jesse still found astounding to this day. The choice only reinforced their bond in his mind when they walked through the front gate together on their first day of high school. Then again, they were like two halves of the same coin, even if Shintaro was often influenced by other outside sources to consume mediocre alcohol as the clock drifted closer and closer to midnight. Being apart didn’t suit them.

Though they were together more often than separate, it wasn’t every Sunday evening they went drinking in a random neighborhood park. Jesse wasn’t the kind of university student. His parents had instilled good values in him from a young age and to always put his education first. Even with all of his laughter and jokes, often driving his teachers and professors insane, he would always buckle down and study to pass his exams. He had grown up wanting to make his parents proud of him, and he felt that warmth each time he scored well on tests and exams he had been expecting to fail.

Though he was enjoying himself, sitting on a park bench and drinking the worst beer of his life, there was still something clawing at Jesse’s stomach as he crushed his third can.

“Hey.” Shintaro nudged Jesse’s side. “It’s gonna be fine. Your mom isn’t gonna hate you for missing one dinner.”

It was family tradition at this point. Every autumn, especially since Jesse had moved out to attend university, he had come home for a special family dinner. His mom cooked all of her family’s traditional Japanese recipes, and she would tell him and his father stories from her childhood of her brother and grandparents. Jesse oddly looked forward to it even though he had heard the story of how Uncle Hiiro stole his mother’s glasses for the twentieth time. It made his mom happy, so it made him happy as well. 

Jesse had always thought it was strange, only hearing stories of these people but never meeting them. Hell, his father’s family lived in the U.S., and he had still met them a handful of times over his life. He had no idea if he had any Japanese cousins from his mother’s side of the family or not. He had tried pressing her to meet them a few years ago, but his mother’s lips had only been drawn into a straight line the more he asked. In the end, her only response being they were now “unreachable,” and Jesse had never pressed the issue further. He didn’t want to cause her any pain from whatever had happened.

The dinner was supposed to be that evening. He would have been sitting at home, hearing the same stories then spending the night and commuting to classes the next morning, but Shintaro had reached out to him in a panic as Jesse had been gathering an overnight bag. Jesse hadn’t quite understood every word out of Shintaro’s mouth. Something about how his older brother had been arrested, and his parents were at the station trying to convince the police officers to let his brother out on bail. Shintaro hadn’t wanted to wait for more news alone and had begged Jesse to drink with him to take away the nerves. And, well, Jesse was nothing but a good friend. 

Jesse hadn’t checked his phone since he sent off a text to his mother letting her know he had to be there for his friend. He already knew how she would have responded, a subtle disappointment hidden behind her kind words, but reading the exact phrasing was something Jesse wanted to avoid. He would handle apologizing in the morning.

Shintaro’s phone buzzed, and Jesse heard him scramble to check it. There was a small shout, Jesse hushing him as he managed to crack open his fourth can, and the sounds of Shintaro’s iPhone hitting the dirt beneath him. Jesse just waited, trying to enjoy what some people deemed as “beer,” until a sigh of relief came from his friend. 

“Ryutaro is fine,” Shintaro said, sinking further down on the bench in relief. “They found the guy who actually set fire to that preschool.”

What Shintaro said took a moment to connect with Jesse’s alcohol clouded brain. “Wait. Your brother was accused of arson?” Jesse’s words came out a little too loud. “Shouldn’t you have led with that when you asked me to hang out?” 

“Jesse. My buddy. My man. My dude. My half-American bro. What have I always told you, my dearest darlingest popsicle?” Shintaro said, slinging an arm around Jesse’s shoulder. His eyebrows were wiggling in a way that Jesse knew what he was about to say was incredibly stupid. “You never tell your drinking buddy your sibling is an alleged arsonist when asking them out, my dude. Mi amigo, you wait until you’re drunk off your ass to do that.” 

Jesse just stared at Shintaro until the other man awkwardly laughed, picking up that his joke had not been in good taste. “Uh, you drinking your last can?” Shintaro asked.

“Take it,” Jesse said, passing it over the unopened can. After a beat he spoke again. “I should have known it would be something dumb your brother got arrested for.”

He still remembered back when Ryutaro was a high school student. He had gotten in with a questionable crowd and had been caught smoking underage. His school had a strict no drug policy, and he had gotten himself swiftly kicked out of the establishment within hours of the news dropping. Ryutaro had managed to find his way into a new school the next year, but strings of bad luck had followed him ever since. 

A bar across the street from the park caught Jesse’s attention at that moment, and it took all of his drunken power to not snort with laughter at the name of it. rocks? Who in their right mind would name their bar rocks? It felt like the biggest joke on the planet, and he knew instantly Shintaro would love it. 

“At least Ryu didn’t open a bar and name it something dumb like that one,” Jesse said, motioning in the direction of said establishment before downing the last of his fourth and now final can of shitty beer. 

“…Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?” Shintaro said once Jesse was done, can crushed in his hand. “There’s no bar there.”

But it was there. Jesse confirmed it with a second glance. The same all black exterior, frosted windows, and crisscrossing metal bars over the windows like Jesse had seen over apartment windows in New York City. The sign of the bar was classy, done in a cursive font that he was surprised that most Japanese people could read, but perhaps it was meant to be stylish instead of legible. There was a soft glow coming from the windows that hinted the bar was still open despite it being close to or even past midnight at this point. 

“But it's right there,” Jesse said, confusion spreading into every word he spoke.

Shintaro squinted, his eyes focusing hard on the street across from them before his gaze shifted back to Jesse. “I think you might have had a bit too much to drink,” he said. Shintaro started gathering the empty cans and stuffing them back into the plastic convenience store bag. “Come on. Let’s get back to my place, so you can sleep all of this off before school tomorrow.” 

An anger flared up in Jesse’s stomach, boiling its way up his throat and into his nose. There had been plenty of jokes between the two of them that had gone on for too long, even too long for Jesse himself, but Shintaro always knew when to cut him off before it became too much. Jesse had expected his friend to stop, to laugh and agree that rocks was a silly name. The fact that he hadn’t was becoming more infuriating by the second.

“Dude, stop pretending,” Jesse said. He grabbed onto Shintaro’s shoulder and used his free hand to point in the direction of the bar. “I’m telling you it’s right-”

“HOW DID YOU DO THAT?”

Jesse blinked. “What?”

“Jesse, what kind of weirdo psychic magic did you just do?” Shintaro said. His gaze kept flicking back between the bar and Jesse.

“What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything.”

“Stop playing with me.” Jesse could feel the fear seeping into Shintaro’s words. “I swear on my bro’s life that bar wasn’t there a second ago.”

He let go of Shintaro’s shoulder, taking a few steps back. What in the world was going on. He knew Shintaro, knew him better than the back of his own hand, and Shintaro didn’t play act like this. There was always this charm, this knowing smirk when he was pretending. This kind of fear wasn’t something Jesse experienced too often. His friend was legitimately frightened.

Shintaro blinked a few more times before he shot across the small distance between them, clinging to Jesse like a tree. “NOW IT'S GONE. WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?”

“I didn’t do anything, you idiot. Get off of me,” Jesse growled. He tried to pry Shintaro’s arms and leg from around his midsection, but it only made Shintaro cling harder to him.

“I don’t wanna die,” Shintaro all but shrieked. “I’m too young! Ghost people, let me ask out that girl from sociology before you murder me. I need to know if she likes meeeeeeee.”

“Shin, calm down,” Jesse hissed. He cupped Shintaro’s face, forcing the other man to look him in the eyes and not in the direction of the bar. “You’re gonna wake up the neighborhood at this point and get the police called on us.” 

All at once, it was like the gears started working once more in Shintaro’s head, and he freed Jesse from his clutches. “Oh yeah. That wouldn’t be good.”

It felt like Jesse could breathe again, but with the alcohol clouding his system, his brain couldn’t keep up with all of the thoughts racing through it. There was a mystery floating around them that needed solving. There was a bar in a random Tokyo neighborhood that he could see but Shintaro could only sometimes see. As far as he was aware, they were both completely and utterly normal human beings. There was no logical difference that explained it at all.

Jesse was surprised that he noticed it, his thoughts distracting him to even Shintaro’s panicking circling around him, but it was a small flash of light that drew his attention. The door to the bar had opened, flooding a bit of the street with light as a figure stepped out and closed the door swiftly behind them. They didn’t move to go home or do whatever patrons of strange bars did after leaving its establishment. Just whipped out a phone and started texting.

“Shin,” Jesse hissed before smacking his friend’s arm to get his attention. “Shin, there’s someone there.”

“Huh?” 

“Someone’s there,” Jesse hissed once more. “They just came out of the weird bar.”

They had been friends for too long. Shintaro already knew how the wheels in Jesse’s brain were turning before he even spoke his plans. “Jesse, no. It’s a weird bar in a weird park in a weird part of Tokyo. You don’t know them. You’re gonna get yourself killed.”

“I’m gonna go and talk to them.”

“Jesse, no!” Shintaro shouted in response, but Jesse was already halfway across the park. He heard Shintaro scrambling behind him, trying to gather all of their trash, before rushing after him.

The closer Jesse got to the strange figure, the more he realized how young they were. They couldn’t have been older than fourteen and hardly came up to Jesse’s chest. Not to mention it had to be after midnight at this point. Wasn’t there a curfew in place for middle school students? Where were this kid’s parents? So many questions were floating through Jesse’s brain, but his mind chose another to ask instead. 

“Aren’t you a little young to be going to a bar?” 

The kid jumped, and it was the first time Jesse got a good look at the kid’s face. He had a round face and big round honest eyes. He watched as fear consumed them before they quickly shifted to complete and utter confusion.

“How…how can you see me?” the kid asked. “You’re human, and I haven’t left the illusion yet.” 

There was an illusion on this place? But that was the stuff of fantasy. Things like that didn’t exist in the real world.

“You’re as clear as day, kid.” A thought passed through Jesse’s head. Maybe this kid was just a figment of his imagination, something he was making up. Maybe this was just a sign of his mental state completely breaking down due to shitty alcohol. Other people had lost all cognitive reason due to less, right? Maybe that’s why his mother never told him stories about the Japanese half of his family? They all suffered mental breakdowns, and he was next in line. But wasn’t that something you needed to medically disclose to your son?

But something clicked in his head at that moment. Something that the kid had pointed out that was incredibly odd to say. “Wait,” Jesse said, shaking his head. “What do you mean? Both of us are human beings.” 

“Jesse, who are you talking to?” Shintaro asked. In his hands clutched his and Jesse’s shopping bags of empty alcohol cans.

“Uh, there’s a kid here,” Jesse said, pointing at the smaller boy in front of him, but the kid just sighed.

“He can’t see nor hear me,” the kid said. “I’m invisible to him because he’s just a human.”

Jesse motioned to himself and the kid in front of the bar. “But we’re both humans.”

“No shit,” Shintaro said. “I’m human. You’re human. Everyone on this planet is human.”

There had to be a way to get Shintaro to see this kid. He had seen the bar. He had acknowledged that it existed, but what had Shintaro done in order to see it? They had sat in the park. Jesse had thought that Shintaro was joking with him. Jesse had gotten angry then reached out and grabbed Shintaro’s shoulder. Shintaro saw the bar and then-

Jesse reached out and grabbed Shintaro’s wrist, and he watched as the dawning realization hit him like a load of bricks that a teenager had appeared from thin air.

“What the fucking shit balls magic sorcery is going on here? Where the fuck did you come from you little-” Shintaro kept shouting obscenities from behind Jesse’s hand, and the kid looked at both of them with a strange expression on his face. 

“Who are you?” the kid asked. “I’ve never met a human like you before.”

“I’m just Jesse,” he said, taking back his hand from Shintaro’s mouth the second he felt his best friend lick it. Jesse wiped his hand on Shintaro’s pants.

“Well, Just Jesse, I have no idea how you can see me or rocks. I haven’t learned that much yet, but maybe the owner can help you?” The kid tapped twice on the door, and it opened for him. “Come on. I’ll introduce you.” 

Jesse looked over at Shintaro, the other man shaking his head no as if not to follow, but Jesse ignored him. He was going to learn what was happening to him or die trying. Shintaro followed not long after him, closing the door behind him. 

The inside of the bar was as classy as the exterior and was perhaps the fanciest establishment Jesse had ever seen. The interior furniture was all black with accents of gold detailing. There were a few chandeliers hanging from the ceiling with the lights burning low, giving the room a dark but moody atmosphere. Clusters of four stuffed armchairs were scattered across the floor with low tables in the center of each grouping for customers to place their drinks upon. The walls had half circle booths lining them and on the right side was a long bar, and Jesse spotted a staircase heading up to the second floor.

The strangest part was the man behind the bar, polishing tall crystal glasses. He had a small frame, but he was covered in jewelry. His neck had at least four chunky necklaces, his wrists weighed down with bracelets with at least three pairs of earrings dangling from his ears, and Jesse could hardly count the amount of rings the bartender had. His golden hair was styled into curtain bangs and cut a shorter length, and, despite the low lighting of the bar, he had sunglasses hanging halfway down his nose.

“Ren-chan, I told you your lesson was over for the day,” the man said, holding a glass up to the light to check for smudges. “Go home. Your parents are probably worried because I kept you out so late.” 

“But I think your illusion is malfunctioning, Juri,” the boy, Ren, said. He pointed at Jesse. “That human saw me through it. He can see your magic den, too.” 

Juri placed the glass down, his vision bearing down into Jesse. He whipped the towel he had been using over his shoulder as he came out from behind the bar. The closer Juri came over, the faster Jesse’s heart was beating in his chest. This was it. This had to be the moment where he would learn exactly what was going on. This Juri guy didn’t look like a doctor, at least any kind that Jesse had been to as a kid, but he had to know something.

Juri’s gaze was intense as he stood in front of Jesse, hardly a few feet in front of him. His eyes never lingered for too long on a part of Jesse’s tall frame, but Jesse had no idea what the bartender was even looking for. A mole? A scar? Some kind of abnormality on the little skin Jesse was showing? Maybe even if his posture was slightly off? He only hoped that this wouldn’t take too much more time.

“Hey, so, if you could not kill either of us, that would be great,” Shintaro said as Juri continued to appraise Jesse.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Juri said, pushing his sunglasses up to the top of his nose. “I’m not well versed in magic law, but I’m fairly certain there’s rules against killing humans. Besides,” his gaze shifted to Shintaro, “I’d get blood on the carpet. That’s bad for business.”

“Magic?” Jesse laughed. “Magic’s not real.”

“It’s not?” Juri asked.

Jesse felt someone tap him on the shoulder, and when he turned to look Juri was somehow behind him. He scrambled away. In his rush, Jesse tripped on one of the armchairs and went tumbling to the ground.

“How, you, but you were over, but, how?” the words kept flowing through Jesse’s mouth, but he could never complete a full sentence. 

“Magic is very much real, you silly human,” Juri said, stepping over Jesse’s gangly limbs so he could crouch next to him. “It’s why I’ve illusioned my bar so heavily, so I don’t have to be the one to explain how magic society can exist at the fringes of your little human one.” Juri’s long fingers grabbed Jesse by the collar, tugging him up so they were eye level. “Our stories, our history, are not little games for you to treat like novelties. Now get out-”

“I kind of like him, Juri,” Ren said, butting into Juri’s little speech and making the bartender stop. “You have to admit that he’s pretty unique for a human. No one from his kind has ever seen your magic den before.”

There was that word again. Magic den. Ren had said it earlier, but it was the first time it had really latched itself into Jesse’s brain.

Juri’s focus had shifted elsewhere, his grip on Jesse’s clothing lessening, so he took the time to free himself. He inched away from Juri’s clutches and wobbled his way back into a standing position thanks to one of the armchairs.

“But, Ren, I’m not going to be the one to explain everything to-” 

“Then don’t,” the kid said, the softest smile gracing his lips. “Don’t you have that lion line friend of yours that’s pretty powerful? You can always ask him to help. You know he would if you asked.”

Jesse watched as Juri sighed, his features softening with Ren’s words. There was a gentleness that hadn’t been there before, and there was almost the hint of a smile. Almost. It could have been a trick of the light or the angle of Juri’s face in Jesse’s vision. “But that means the two of them have to come back.”

“And?” Ren said, his expression only turning purer as he continued to speak. “Aren’t you always telling me to be nice to the humans at my school? You should practice the kindness that you tell me to have, too, Juri of the Fox Line.” 

Juri continued to crumble, the rough expression on his face melting away with every retort that Ren gave. He seemed to be fumbling for any bit of rational logic to continue to deny them but was failing at every turn within his mind. Every argument he gave, Ren had an answer for, and Jesse was cheering for the kid in his head. Luckily, Ren had an ace up his sleeve.

“If you don’t help, I’ll tell your mother you were being mean to humans,” Ren said.

Juri waved his hand and, within it, two dog tags appeared. “Do not,” he said, passing one to Jesse and the other to Shintaro, “under any circumstances bring any of your human friends here. These tags are for you and you only to get back into rocks. That’s it.” He eyes them both. “I’ll ask my friend why you can see my magic den and if he has an answer for it. After he finds the answer, I’m taking the tags back. Got it?” 

Jesse and Shintaro both nodded.

“Now get out. All three of you. I still have work to do.” Juri snapped his fingers, and the door to the bar-magic den?-opened, and Jesse wasted no time in exiting.

Once on the street, Jesse couldn’t help but ruffle Ren’s hair. “Nice going, little man. I don’t know why you did that, but I appreciate the help.” 

“That dude was so scary,” Shintaro said, and Jesse could hear the empty beer cans rattling around in the bags Shintaro was still clutching. “How do you put up with him?” 

Ren just laughed. “Juri isn’t that bad. He just likes to look scary. You’ll get used to him, don’t worry.” He gave a little wave. “It was nice meeting the two of you. Maybe we’ll see each other again one day.” 

Jesse gave the kid a wave before he blinked and suddenly the kid was gone.

“That was so weird,” Shintaro said. “I really hope this is all one big weird dream.” 

Jesse looked down to the dog tag he was still clutching, one side holding the cursive script design of rocks’ logo on it with a fox outline on the left side.

“Something tells me,” Jesse said slowly, his thumb swiping over the indented lettering, “that this is just the beginning of something big.”

Shintaro was still passed out when Jesse woke the next morning, mumbling something about flying cake when Jesse tried to wake him up. Jesse let him sleep and quickly got ready for his ten a.m. class. When he was halfway to class, Jesse would send Shintaro a text letting him know where he had disappeared to.

The walk from Shintaro’s apartment to the medicine and health sciences building wasn’t long, no more than fifteen minutes, and Jesse had enough time to pop into a convenience store for an orange juice and a package of fluffy pancakes from the bread aisle to tide himself over until lunch. Today would be fine. Everything was fine. 

Those words became his mantra as he weaved his way around his fellow university students, the events from the previous night replaying in his head. The mysterious appearance of that magic den, Ren’s confusion, and the display that magic was somehow real. He didn’t know how, but it was. When Jesse had awoken, the dog tag was still clutched in his hand, the swooping cursive writing still etched into the metal along with the fox. It was the one tangible bit of proof that everything that happened hadn’t been a dream.

The thought it could be a prank entered Jesse’s mind as he crossed the threshold of his major’s building. It had all of the makings of an incredible hoax. Shintaro could have hired both men as actors for one of his biggest pranks ever. He had done something similar in the past with much less success. Not to mention Jesse had been drinking the night before, so it could have been possible for Juri to switch positions without Jesse noticing in his drunken stupor.

But, even then, Jesse didn’t doubt his memory and the turn of events. Juri had been too far to make that leap behind Jesse. It was a blink of the eye kind of movement that even the world’s fastest human couldn’t achieve. Which meant-

Jesse shook the thought from his head as he entered his anatomy class. There was no way he could think about this right now. He needed to keep his mind sharp for today’s lecture. His professor had already hinted at a pop quiz in Friday’s class the week before, and the subject matter for today’s lecture would most definitely be on it. He needed to keep his grades up if he had any chance of getting into a good medical school. 

But a familiar hand on Jesse’s shoulder tugged his attention, the low voice of its owner sending a strange beat through his heart. 

“Jesse…are you okay?”

He whipped his head around, his jaw dropping. “Hokuto, what are you doing here?”

Hokuto had been a part of Jesse’s life since his first day at university. Jesse, Shintaro, and their high school friend, Kochi, had all moved into the same dorm building, and Hokuto had just kind of…appeared out of nowhere. He clung to Jesse’s side as if he had always been there, and Jesse didn’t see a reason to turn Hokuto away. The handsome, bookish Japanese kid seemed sweet, and, when he let his personality out, was ridiculously funny as well. No one else seemed to reject the new addition, so their trio swiftly turned into a foursome, spending lunch together more often than not. 

Hokuto settled into the seat next to Jesse on the back row, shedding his backpack and depositing it on the floor next to him. He was dressed in his signature checkerboard bomber jacket and had accessorized with magenta loafers that day. His pants had slits at the knee, so Jesse could see how they bent. “You didn’t hear me call after you? You looked a bit out of it, so I was worried.” 

Hokuto had been trying to call out to him? Jesse racked his brain, trying to pull a memory, anything, from his brain but came up with nothing. He had always prided himself on being able to pick Hokuto’s voice out from a crowd of people and not being able to remember this hurt him more than he imagined.

“Something crazy happened last night,” Jesse said. He opened his own backpack, getting out his notebook and pencil case as Hokuto got out his own supplies. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me,” Hokuto said as he stifled a yawn.

Jesse raised his eyebrow. “Are you okay? You usually go to bed so early.”

“Late night phone call,” was Hokuto’s response, and he didn’t offer any more information than that.

The statement made Jesse pause. Outside of their group of four, it didn’t seem like Hokuto had many friends. Jesse had seen his fair share of women, and a few men, approach Hokuto with the intention of asking his friend out. Even in his quirkiness, there was a beauty and elegance to Hokuto that Jesse couldn’t help but admire. But there was a firm wall that Hokuto had erected between himself and those around him, and his social circle remained small and compact. It begged the question, who had he been talking to?

A thought hit Jesse over the head as his professor came into the room, voice loud and commanding as they brought order to their classroom. 

“Wait,” Jesse hissed between his teeth. “What are you doing here? You’re a political science major, and you’re not signed up for this class.”

Hokuto only shushed him as the professor started the lecture on muscles pertaining to the leg.

The two hour class passed excruciatingly slowly, the words Jesse’s professor said floating in one ear, traveling the course of his body to his hand to be written down on the page in front of him. His brain couldn’t process the information with Hokuto sitting at the desk next to him. Jesse risked a few glances over throughout the lecture, seeing how intrigued Hokuto looked throughout the class, scribbling a word here or there in his notebook. 

The past twenty-four hours was starting to feel more and more as if Jesse had entered an alternate dimension. Ever since high school, he had known that his calling in life was to be a doctor. Jesse wanted to help people in any way that he could. His father had been thrilled, his mother not so much, but she still expressed her joy at him deciding what he wanted to do with his life.

It meant long hours of studying and more tests a month than Jesse had fingers and toes. Hokuto had often been the one helping Jesse study for his exams, Kochi and Shintaro hardly able to pronounce the complicated words on Jesse’s notecards. Not that Jesse could read them either. His textbooks were littered with his cramped hiragana above each difficult kanji. It was his process to help him learn and remember the readings of the complicated characters.

His life had been so by the textbook that these little anomalies popping up concerned him to his very soul. He would have never imagined Hokuto studying muscles next to him nor learning that magic was real. The only logical explanation to this all was he had slid into a different multiverse once the clock hit midnight, and Jesse was now living the life of another one of his counterparts. That was what had happened, and he would roll with it…somehow. 

When his professor dismissed them at noon, Jesse stuffed his belongings back in his bag before grabbing Hokuto’s hand as his friend stood up to leave.

“Now, now, dear Hokuto,” he said, lacing his fingers with his friend’s. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Hokuto smiled, giving Jesse’s hand a tight squeeze before letting it go. “I knew your major was interesting, but I hadn’t realized how fascinating it was until now. I can see why you love it so much,” he said as he melted in with the other students leaving to go to their next class or lunch. 

Jesse stood stunned for a moment before collecting himself and hurrying after Hokuto. Under any normal circumstances, what Hokuto said would be fine. There were plenty of Jesse’s classmates who would bring partners or underclassmen friends in to get a taste of what the upper level professors were like. Jesse’s anatomy teacher was the one outlier. Jesse had never known them to accept a student not on the class list. 

“How did you do that?” he asked once he had caught up to Hokuto.

“Do what?”

“Sit in on that class,” Jesse said.

“Jesse Lewis, you would be surprised at the opportunities you get when you show kindness to the people around you,” Hokuto said as he opened the door to the dining hall.

Shintaro and Kochi were already at their usual table in the corner, lunches half consumed in front of them. They were bickering about something, he didn’t care to listen to what exactly. Jesse dropped off his bag at their table before going to join the lunch line with Hokuto. They spent the better part of the wait cracking jokes if the new “stamina yakiniku rice bowl” on the menu would instantly inflate their muscles or if it still required gym time. In the end, Jesse ordered his usual fried chicken, rice, miso soup, and sides with Hokuto copying his exact order. 

The table was oddly quiet when they returned. Too quiet. Hokuto didn’t say a thing. He only pulled out a small novel from his backpack. Hokuto had always preferred to read during lunch, his books always covered by the same nondescript paper covering bookstores offered with each book purchase, and chimed into the conversation when necessary. Jesse didn’t mind. He liked imagining what sort of dirty romance novels Hokuto enjoyed while chaos surrounded him on all sides. But the lack of boisterous energy from the other two at the table was concerning to Jesse.

“Everything alright?” Jesse asked, eyeing the two across the table from him.

Shintaro spoke first. “Tell him I’m not lying!”

“Oh, come on, grow up!” Kochi snapped. “You had a drunken dream.”

“It wasn’t a dream!” Shintaro said, his voice rising in pitch with every word. “I know what I saw, and Jesse was there, too. Right, Jesse?” 

Out of the corner of his eyes, Jesse saw Hokuto do a little spiral with his chopsticks, his eyes concentrating on the food in front of him. His tongue darted out, licking his lips, before settling on which piece of chicken he wanted to eat next. 

“I need a little more context before I agree with either of you,” Jesse said. 

Shintaro leaned forward, his voice barely hissing from between his teeth. “It’s about the magic.”

“Dude, stop acting so childish for once in your life,” Kochi huffed. “Magic isn’t real. It’s the stuff of fairytales.”

Shintaro’s eyes were pleading, desperate almost, and Jesse couldn’t bear to let his best friend look like a complete and utter fool. “But Shin is right,” Jesse said. “Magic is real. We both experienced it last night.”

Kochi sighed and pushed his lunch tray forward, it bumping into Hokuto’s and sending his soup sloshing around the tiny bowl. “You’re both drunk! Or on the tail end of a bad trip or something.”

“I don’t do drugs. I’m perfectly sane,” Shintaro muttered.

“Sorry, I forgot about that,” Kochi apologized, wincing at Shintaro’s words before continuing his rant. “I know we’re all hardly considered real adults by society’s standards, but you have to learn to separate dreams from the reality of the situation,” Kochi said. “You both got drunk last night. You both obviously had some kind of weird connected dream, and you woke up convinced that magic is real.”

“But it is real!” Shintaro whined, but Jesse only saw Kochi’s annoyance continue to flare.

“It. Is. Not!” Kochi’s hand slapped the table, and Jesse felt himself jolt up from the sudden sound. Kochi turned to face Hokuto who was across from him. “Hokuto, you’re logical and a decent human being. Tell them magic isn’t real.” 

Hokuto paused in his chewing, a half-eaten piece of chicken perched between his chopsticks. If he was invested in any part of the argument, his face didn’t show it. He took his time chewing then swallowing, Jesse’s eyes following the movement of Hokuto’s neck as he swallowed before returning to Hokuto’s face.

“But it is real,” Hokuto said before plopping the other half of his fried chicken in his mouth.

For a moment, just a moment, no one said a thing. If there hadn’t been a symphony of noise around them, their fellow students talking and shouting their conversations at surrounding tables, you could have heard a pin drop amongst the four of them. Three sets of eyes glued to Hokuto as he stayed engaged with his novel until things descended into a chaotic swirl of voices all speaking at once.

“I FUCKING TOLD YOU IT WAS REAL, YOU LITTLE-”

“Hokuto, come on, not you, too! You can’t keep playing into their-” 

“Wait, why are you agreeing with us? This doesn’t make any-” 

Hokuto turned the page of his book. Jesse saw how he read a few lines, his lips mouthing the words, and at the end Hokuto gave another little wave of his chopsticks. When the movement was complete, Jesse felt something within his throat change, and, no matter how he tried to speak, not a single word would fall from his lips.

Hokuto sighed, a serene smile gracing his lips. “Much better.”

Jesse looked across the table, Kochi gripping his own throat as fear clung to his eyes. Shintaro’s gaze kept flicking between the other three at the table.

“Now, if the three of you promise to not make utter fools of yourselves, I’ll release the spell on your voice boxes, so you can speak,” Hokuto said. “I’m sure you all have a lot of questions. There’s a barrier spell around us all, so we can speak freely without being listened in on.”

When he received a nod from each of them, Hokuto waved his chopsticks once more. Jesse felt his throat release, and he could speak once more.

“What kind of weird and twisted world did I just enter?” Jesse heard Kochi mutter under his breath. 

“A magical one,” Shintaro said, earning a glare from Kochi. 

“Hokuto,” Jesse said, his voice oddly soft, “what in the world are you?”

“The same as you,” Hokuto said.

“Yeah, you’re human. We’re all human,” Kochi said, elbows on the table with his face in his hands. He groaned loudly. “When did all of my friends turn into drunken idiots? I wasn’t made for this!”

Hokuto’s voice was firm when he spoke, a fire burning in his eyes that Jesse had never seen before. His words were like flames when he spoke, each one catching onto Kochi and making the oldest of the group jump in order to avoid getting burned. “I am not human. I’m magic.” Hokuto discarded his chopsticks, the wood clattering to the tray as he continued to speak. “I come from powerful lines with seats in Shizuoka and Tokyo. The idea that my family could be anything but magic is a disrespect to all those who came before me.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Kochi said, his hands clasped together. “I didn’t mean that at all.” 

Shintaro’s eyes were practically sparkling. “So you’re, like, super powerful or something?”

“I…I am.” Hokuto’s voice sounded unsure as he spoke. “If magic lines are to be believed, I’m powerful. Compared to a squirrel or a rabbit, of course.”

The more Jesse’s friends spoke around him, the more his world continued to crumble. Hokuto had been magic since the day they met? Had he seen these pitiful people around him and only saw them as a joke? Something to pass the time? Jesse knew in his heart this wasn’t the truth. Hokuto was their friend. He had proved it time and time again over the years, but why hold onto this big of a secret after so long? 

“Jesse.” The way Hokuto said his name was so soft, so gentle. It was caressed as if it was the most precious thing in the world, and Jesse couldn’t ignore its call to him. “This doesn’t change anything. You’re still the same person we all became friends with.”

Hokuto’s words weren’t connecting to his brain. What did that mean? Of course Jesse was the same person that he was. Nothing had changed about him except the mysterious circumstances from last night. 

“I’ve been waiting years for you to realize your capabilities, and, now that it’s finally leaking out, I’m sure that there’s a lot of confusion bouncing around in your head,” Hokuto continued to ramble, but Jesse cut him off.

“Hokuto, what do you mean?” he asked.

“Jesse…you’re magic.”

The world around him seemed to fracture into a thousand pieces. Magic? Wouldn’t he have known if he was magic? From the few magic individuals that Jesse had met, they all seemed to be able to do these incredible things. Juri could teleport around a room and was training that Ren kid. So that Ren could probably do something incredible. Jesse wasn’t sure what that was, but it definitely existed. And Hokuto? Hokuto could do spells with a flick of his wrist. All Jesse could do was see strange bars at midnight in Tokyo. That couldn’t make him magic. It just made him an anomaly.

“Not every magic being can sense your power,” Hokuto said, taking Jesse’s hand in his. His light touch traced the knuckles of Jesse’s hand. “My lineage has been trained since the dawn of the ten brothers to sense the power in magic beings. Your magic has always been there, hidden behind a block, but it’s been there.” The skin of Jesse’s hand began to tingle until a red light lit up beneath his fingertips, spreading across the veins of his hands and following them through his whole body. With a wave of Hokuto’s hand, the red light died out as quickly as it had appeared. “Your magic exists deep within you, but the block bars access to you being able to use it. I sensed it the first day I met you, and I knew you would have questions the moment the block started to fade. Someone needed to explain what you were, and I knew I had to be the person to do it.”

“This is crazy!” Kochi butted in.

“It is kind of insane, not gonna lie,” Shintaro said.

“But it’s true,” Hokuto said, brows furrowed. “I’ve been waiting for Jesse to start exhibiting some kind of magical ability. Now that his magic is starting to seep out, it’s time.”

When Jesse’s voice came out, it was hardly an audible whisper. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

Hokuto bit his lip, his gaze drifting before he met Jesse’s eyes once more. “Sometimes…sometimes it’s better to spend time away from this world. It is a cruel and difficult place to grow up. I wouldn’t blame your family for not wanting to be a part of it. If I hadn’t been born into my line, I would have completely left a long time ago.” He sighed. “But now that your magic is being released, we have to move fast. If you’ll let me, I would love to teach you the side of magic society that I love and adore.”

The sentiment in Hokuto’s words made Jesse’s heart flutter though he wasn’t quite sure why.

“Let’s talk more after our classes today,” Hokuto said. “All four of us. I know a place we can go where we won’t be disturbed by humans.”

“I thought I warned you,” Juri said the moment Jesse walked into rocks, Kochi right at his heels, “no more humans besides the two of you.” Juri was dressed up compared to the last time Jesse had come into the magic den, an all black attire of slacks, button up dress shirt, and suit jacket on. He even had a tie, but his accessories still remained. He was still weighed down with enough bracelets, necklaces, rings and earrings to fund a small nation’s economy. 

“At least we didn’t double the number of us,” Shintaro said, stepping through the threshold after Kochi. “You know what they say in America! ‘Double entendre, double the fun!’”

“They don’t say that in the U.S. Don’t listen to him,” Jesse stage whispered behind his hand, earning a loud “HEY!” from Shintaro.

Jesse watched as the annoyance flared up on Juri’s features, collecting at his nose, mouth ready to form more cutting remarks, but everything faded the moment Hokuto followed Shintaro through the front door. “You’re early!”

“Early?” Shintaro asked, sliding sideways into one of the armchairs closest to the bar, legs dangling off of the arms. Jesse watched as Kochi wandered around the inside of the magic den, mouth agape at the décor. “You two know each other or something?” 

“We went to school together,” Hokuto began before Juri jumped in.

“Hokuto moved here from Shizuoka when we were young,” Juri said, and Jesse saw something—admiration?— shining in Juri’s eyes. “We studied at the same schools until Hokuto left to study at a human high school.” His nose crinkled at the word ‘human.’ “If anyone can find out why there are three stinky humans in my-”

“Excuse!” Shintaro said, hand over his heart is fake aghast. “There are only two normal smelling humans in this bar-”

“Magic den,” Juri cut in, earning a roll of the eyes from Shintaro. 

“Sorry. Two normal humans in this magic den,” Shintaro finished.

“You mean to tell me that he’s magic?” Juri asked, gesturing over to Kochi who had gotten up onto one of the low tables and was prodding at a chandelier.

Jesse raised his hand. “That would be me apparently.”

Juri stared at Jesse. He stared at him as if Jesse had spouted three heads and an additional five eyeballs scattered around his forehead. It was as if Juri had been given a thousand piece puzzle and was told to solve it only by bouncing the pieces together. The sight before him appeared to be such a confusing conundrum that, no matter how he attacked the problem in his head, there was no possible solution. 

“But-”

“Trust me, Juri. He’s just like us,” Hokuto said, coming farther into the den. He took a seat at one of the barstools, and he dropped his backpack on the floor next to him. “Jesse only lacks access to his magic.”

Juri’s rough and stern exterior cracked for just a moment and he sighed with such sweet relief. “I was worried there was something wrong with my magic,” Juri said. He raised one of his hands, stretching it up to the lighting and his gaze followed the movement. “I thought I was broken.” He sighed once more, his hand returning to the bar. “This does make things easier since you know Hokuto of the Lion Line."

“Uh, don’t you mean Matsumura Hokuto of the Lion Line?” Kochi asked. A mass of tiny light bulbs was clutched in one of his hands, the other in the middle of unscrewing another to add to his growing collection.

Juri’s mouth opened, a scornful word ready to launch in the air, but Hokuto beat him to it once more. “In magic society, we don’t have last names. It’s something we choose in order to blend in with humans.” He tapped on the counter. “Juri, my usual, please,” Hokuto said.

Juri grumbled but began to fill whatever Hokuto ordered.

“My family chose the last name ‘Matsumura’ in order to appear normal to humans, and, when I came of age, I decided to follow in their footsteps and keep that last name. Juri on the other hand,” Hokuto gestured to the bartender concocting a drink that appeared to be the blackest night sky riddled with stars, “and his family have chosen the human last name ‘Tanaka’ throughout their generations. In magic society, we are addressed by our given names at birth and which magic line we were born into.”

“Isn’t that needlessly….confusing?” Jesse asked, inching closer to the bar as Juri added a blue syrup to the drink that sent a swirl of purple galaxies through the glass. “I mean what if there are two Hokutos in the lion line or wherever you’re from. Wouldn’t a last name help distinguish one from the other?”

“These ideals and practices began when our society was small,” Hokuto explained. Juri finished up the drink with a sprinkling of red powder that, when swirled in, added the sweetest aroma Jesse had ever smelled. “It’s the tradition families continue to cling to despite the magic community growing larger each year.”

The drink was placed upon the bar, and Hokuto picked it up. He breathed in the scent of it before offering it to Jesse. “I’ve gone to countless other dens in the city, but nothing compares to the concoctions Juri creates here.” 

Jesse took the glass from Hokuto, their fingers brushing ever so slightly, before taking the smallest sip. The flavor was unlike anything he had ever tasted, a sweetness so mild but a flavor that consumed his very being. It felt as if Jesse had been ripped from his body and thrown thousands of miles in the air, his body caressed and held by a hundred stars as the planets slowly turned before his eyes.

He felt Hokuto take his drink back as starlight continued to twinkle before Jesse’s eyes. “Incredible, isn’t it?” Hokuto asked, taking his own sip. “No human drink can ever compare to one made in a magic den.” 

“Can I try one, too?” Shintaro asked, but Juri’s response was swift and cutting. 

“When you start exhibiting magical abilities, you can try my drinks,” he said, and Shintaro deflated on the armchair.

“How about me?” Kochi had claimed the low table in front of Shintaro and looked as if he was setting up some kind of checkers game, just missing the standard play mat. He threw one of the ten light bulbs he had collected, hitting Shintaro in the thigh, before motioning for Shintaro to join him on the floor.

“I feel like I’m babysitting a kindergarten full of children.” Juri rolled his eyes. “Honestly, Hokuto, how have you survived so long in the human world? I would go insane having to deal with all of these people.” 

Jesse felt himself slowly return to his body, a gentle downward rocking motion as he blinked the stars from his lashes. “Hey, we’re not that bad!” he said. “Sometimes Shin does a cartwheel and almost doesn’t kick Kochi in the face.”

“I had to see a doctor twice about the damage!” Kochi shouted. Whatever strange checkers game had started, and Kochi had claimed one of Shintaro’s light bulbs. He tossed it at Shintaro, hitting him in the shoulder.

“I said I was sorry,” Shintaro pouted, rubbing the opposite shoulder that had been hit by the light bulb. Kochi rolled his eyes at him. 

It was hard not to crack a smile at the memory, even if it had been the most stressful five hours of their lives. Jesse had been the one to dial for the ambulance, fingers trembling over each number on the touchpad of his phone as Shintaro scrambled to stop the bleeding. Only one of them had been allowed in the ambulance with Kochi, and Shintaro had taken the spot since he had been the one to injure him in the first place. They had been lucky Kochi hadn’t required any surgery. The second time it had happened a few weeks later, the doctor had stared Shintaro down, warning him to be careful of where he kicked his legs. 

Juri did a sweeping gesture at the three men not seated at the counter. “I rest my case, Hokuto. You need more magic friends. You’ve only got like two.”

Jesse perked up where he stood. He had been eyeing Hokuto’s drink, trying to make eye contact with his friend to ask for another sip, but Hokuto’s gaze never left the rim of his glass. “And one of those magic friends is me, right?” he asked, nudging Hokuto’s arm with his elbow.

“….he’s got like three magic friends,” Juri said. “And I am his friend from the fox line, so you better not end up from there. Also,” Juri flicked his wrist, and one of the light bulbs from the checkers game smacked Kochi in the chest., “that’s enough of that.” 

“But we’re almost done,” Kochi said, gesturing to the game in front of them. Kochi had two pieces left while Shintaro was doing his best to claim victory with just a single light bulb. “Give us like five more minutes and two more rounds, and we’ll put stuff back in place.” 

“Yeah, chillax a bit!” Shintaro said. He moved his light bulb to a single place, and Kochi moved his to be diagonal from it. Shintaro moved swiftly to claim it. “It’s just a bit of harmless fun.” 

“I said put those back!” Juri snapped. One of his glasses was in his hand, cocked back and ready to be thrown across the den.

“Hey, hey, relax.” Jesse threw up his hands as Kochi began scrambling to collect and put all of the light bulbs in their proper places. Shintaro helped with a few before he returned to his arm chair, flopping on it sideways once more. “I won’t be a fox if you’ll stop threatening my friends. I’ll choose something else, like a zebra, so we won’t overlap.”

Hokuto’s laugh was magic to Jesse’s ears, so low and smooth like melting chocolate. “There’s no zebra line. Your line is determined by which ones your parents belonged to. The ten magic lines are lion, wolf, hawk, snake, fox, monkey, rabbit, chameleon, cow, and squirrel.” 

Out of all of the animals, Jesse really hoped that he wasn’t a squirrel. Just from the sound of it, it felt as if that one was the weakest. He wouldn’t have minded being a chameleon or even a monkey, at least those sounded somewhat interesting. He couldn’t imagine what good a squirrel could do.

“Each line has their own special brand of magic. As a fox, Juri specializes in illusion magic,” Hokuto continued. Jesse leaned in as Hokuto spoke, wanting to soak in every word from his friend’s lips. “Lions are leaders and the most powerful casters. They say that some lion lines are well versed in blood control magic.”

A crashing sound came behind them, but it was only Shintaro falling to the floor, scrambling to get as far away from Hokuto as he could.

“YOU BETTER NOT DO THAT SPELL ON ME!” Shintaro shouted, and for a second, just a second, Jesse saw Juri contemplate throwing another glass he was cleaning at his friend. At the last moment, Juri put it down amongst the others. 

“That’s not my family’s specialty,” Hokuto said, but Jesse could see Shintaro didn’t quite believe Hokuto’s words. “Ever since I was young, I’ve been raised with the intention of taking over my mother’s family’s seat in magic society.” He gripped his glass just a bit tighter. “Once my grandfather abdicates his position, I’ll be in charge of creating spell books for magical youth.” 

Spell books seemed…a little crazy to Jesse. Not that he couldn’t believe in their existence, but it felt a little too scripted, a little too by the book for his taste. He was already having to accept that magic existed faster than he could comprehend, not to mention many of Hokuto and Juri’s words weren’t clinging to his brain the way that he wanted them to, but spell books? He wasn’t sure why, but this was the one thing Jesse couldn’t believe. 

Hokuto dug into his backpack, depositing the little novel he had been reading at lunch on the bar counter. It rested perfectly between himself and Jesse. “Juri,” he said, motioning to the magic den owner. 

Juri sighed, pushing back his suit jacket so he could lift up his dress shirt just enough to reach for a small notepad that was tucked between his pants and his stomach. He slapped the little notebook on the table across from Hokuto’s.

“These books are the physical representation of our magic. Their form is dependent on the choice of the user,” Hokuto said, motioning for Kochi and Shintaro to come closer and look. Both did so almost begrudgingly. “In order for a magic being to cast, we must touch our spell books. To maintain that kind of connection, they’re often hidden beneath our clothes, so we have constant access to our abilities when among humans.”

Memories clicked firmly into place as Hokuto spoke. Throughout the years they had known each other, Jesse had seen Hokuto read countless novels during their time together. But the more he thought about it, the more he noticed the brown paper-covered novels had never changed size or shape. The books in Hokuto’s hand had always been roughly the size of his hand, hardly three hundred pages, and Jesse was kicking himself for never noticing it was the same book the whole time. More importantly, he couldn’t believe his theory of Hokuto being a dirty romance connoisseur was wrong . 

“Can I…?” Jesse gestured towards Hokuto’s spell book. There was a second of hesitation, Hokuto freezing for just a moment, before he gave the smallest of nods. 

Hokuto’s spell book felt like any other novel from a bookstore in Jesse’s hands. It was wrapped in the standard paper cover stores would wrap around their books to keep nosy patrons on trains from seeing exactly what novel was being consumed. Even then, the pages felt soft under Jesse’s hands as if they had been read time and time again, showing the love from its owner.

The inside was completely different from any novel Jesse had picked up in his life. Each page had the words of a spell written upon it along with a small illustration hinting at its intention. There were spells for creating barriers, cleaning, and swiftly changing clothes. There was even one that took up three pages with the illustration appearing as if a book was being expelled from someone’s chest. Each page held a new discovery for Jesse to find, and he devoured each one.

He felt himself grow more and more excited as he mouthed along the words to a spell he thought involved levitation. If this was the kind of knowledge Hokuto had, he couldn’t wait to expand his own magical knowledge. There was a lot to learn, and Jesse wished that he could start studying right away.

“Just…be careful whose spell book you ask to look through, Jesse.” Jesse looked up from the page, and Hokuto’s face looked a little more red than normal. “Reading another person’s spell book is the most intimate thing you could do. It shows a deep level of trust you have for the other person because you’re letting down your defenses against them.” 

“Oh,” Jesse said simply. He could feel a blush starting to spread across his cheeks. “Sorry, I didn’t know.” He closed Hokuto’s spell book and put it back at its place on the counter.

“You’re fine.” Hokuto waved him off. “I’m sure there are plenty of people who share their spell books with their friends.”

“Not me,” Jesse heard Juri mumble. There was an odd expression on Juri’s face. He kept glancing back and forth between Hokuto and Jesse, but, if he had any qualms or worries, he didn’t say anything. He kept restocking the area behind the bar. 

“In regards to your spell book, we can’t go to my grandfather and his colleagues to make yours. It will invite too many questions.” Hokuto took a large gulp of his drink, and Jesse saw the way the stars danced across Hokuto’s pupils. How could he drink so much and yet remain so present? “But if we don’t conduct the ceremony soon, your magic will break free of the block encasing it, overwhelm you, and kill you.”

Jesse felt as if he had been shocked. His limbs tingled as his heartbeat picked up. This had all felt like fun and games since this morning. A little ridiculous adventure, a few magic lessons here and there, and Jesse would become an expert spellcaster in no time, or whatever these magic people said. The fear built in his body like a lightning strike, and Jesse lashed out.

“Excuse me?” Jesse said, pushing himself back from the bar. The stool he was sitting in went clattering to the floor. “How are there consequences to all of this now?” His blood was rushing through his veins the more he spoke, and he clutched onto the edge of the bar to keep himself standing. “You should have told me earlier, so I could mentally prepare for my impending death!”

“Calm down,” Juri snapped. “And stop talking to my friend like that.”

“He’s my friend, too!”

“And he was my friend first, you hulking excuse for magic.” Juri slammed his hands down on the bar. “We all go through this ceremony as teenagers. We all get our magic bound into a spell book because if we don’t, it’ll grow exponentially and kill us. It’s not Hokuto’s fault your parents excluded you. Now apologize or I’m kicking you out of rocks and making it so you can never return.”

Jesse couldn’t breathe. His lungs wouldn’t work like he wanted them to. He felt as if no matter how much air he took in, it wasn’t enough for his body to function like normal. How did Juri expect him to move forward when Jesse had just been told if they didn’t act quick enough, he would expire and be gone from this world just like that? It wasn’t news that anyone could properly process in minutes.

But then he looked to Hokuto, and every bit of air was expelled from Jesse’s body. The other boy was clutching onto his glass as if it was the one thing grounding him in this world. There was fear in his eyes, all consuming fear, and Jesse couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed how much Hokuto was shaking. Every emotion that had passed through Jesse, his own fear and panic, anger, and annoyance, evaporated, and he pulled Hokuto into a hug.

“I’m sorry,” Jesse whispered, squeezing Hokuto tight before releasing him.

“It’s fine,” Hokuto said, wiping the side of his face that Jesse couldn’t see. “Don’t worry about it.”

Jesse felt a hand be placed on his shoulder. “Jess, you’ll be fine,” Kochi said, squeezing Jesse’s shoulder. “These magic people probably know what they’re doing.”

“I do.” Hokuto took another sip of his drink. “The spell is usually cast with ten people, but I believe we can do it if there’s only three of us.” Hokuto paused for a moment. “Juri and I will of course take part. I’ll also be teaching our snake line-”

“No,” Juri said. He snatched his spell book from the countertop and slid it back into the waistband of his pants. “I’m out. If you’re inviting him, I’m not doing it.” 

Hokuto looked absolutely flabbergasted. “Juri, the two of you are friends-” 

“And you know how I feel about his kind of magic,” Juri snapped. “You know I don’t, I can’t, be around him when he does that. I can’t, Hokuto, I can’t.” Juri’s words lost their edge the more he spoke until they were hardly a murmur in his throat.

There was something there, some kind of past event, that Jesse couldn’t put his finger on nor find the courage to ask about. Juri’s walls were firmly up, and, having only met the guy once before, Jesse wasn’t sure he even had the right to know. If he was barely alluding to whatever had happened, there was no way he would let three strangers into his world.

“Hey, so, I don’t really know you or anything,” Shintaro said from his place at the bar, “and you’re one of now three magic people that I know now, but you got this, my magic fox bro.” Shintaro reached over and nudged Juri’s shoulder with this fist. “Besides, if anything goes wrong, Jesse will be there to save your ass.”

That sentiment made Juri snort. “Oh, please. If anything, I’m going to save him.”

“Got him!” Shintaro said, slapping Hokuto’s shoulder, making the lion almost spill his drink. “So we’re all good! Operation save Jesse’s life is a go! You guys learn the fancy spell thing, Jesse, Kochi and I relax, and Juri gives Kochi one of those dog tags so he can come here, too.” 

Juri coughed.

Shintaro’s eyes were glittering in anticipation.

“You probably should give him a pass, Juri,” Hokuto said. “Whether he has an invitation or not, you know these two will keep bringing him regardless of your wishes.”

Juri waved his hand, another one of his dog tags appearing from thin air. “I hate it here,” he grumbled, passing the tag to Kochi, and Jesse let out the largest laugh.

The days passed slowly as September bled into October. The air grew cooler, humid fall bleeding into a more cool and temperate weather. Jesse’s professors pushed their classes farther into the textbooks, demanding more work from their students. Quizzes became an almost daily occurrence in order to pound the material in Jesse and his fellow classmates’ heads. It was all in the name of preparing them for their final year of undergrad, but it felt more like torture. 

Though his school days were spent pouring over textbooks in the school library, there was a new scent burrowing its way into Jesse’s nose. It was the most delicate smell, fragile but it coyly crawled amongst all of Jesse’s senses. It begged for his attention, sneaking into Jesse’s lungs with every breath he took until his head was spinning from the smallest hint of it. He racked through his brain, trying to pull at any memory of why this scent felt so familiar to his soul but came up with nothing. It wasn’t until one evening Hokuto was helping Jesse study, the pair sitting next to each other on the couch, did Jesse get the courage to ask Hokuto about it. 

“That,” Hokuto said, thighs brushing against Jesse’s as reached for the next set of flashcards on Jesse’s coffee table, “is the scent of magic. Isn’t it incredible?”

Of course magic had a smell! Jesse should have known, especially the way it enticed all of his senses. Walking down the streets of Tokyo from his apartment to his university, magic floated all around him, and Jesse couldn’t believe he had never noticed it before. The city thrummed with magical energy no matter where he went. Now that he was paying attention to the world around him, he saw people’s clothes changing with the blink of an eye as well as others disappearing into thin air. Magic was all around them and yet every day humans passed it by without so much as a second glance.

There were a few magic dens in the neighborhood surrounding Jesse’s apartment in buildings that had appeared long ago abandoned to his non magical eye. Jesse had gone into one after a particularly rough test, the music bumping from the speakers and bleeding onto the streets intriguing him far too much to ignore. It had more of a club atmosphere, the complete opposite of the more classy image Juri had built for rocks. Jesse had thought the name was a bit on the odd side— Kiss Me? Really?—with its logo having some kind of hand character on it but elected to try it on his own anyways. 

The owner had been an eccentric and incredibly airheaded blond man who Jesse had to repeat his drink order three times before it clicked and he filled the order. The drink that had caught his attention on the menu had a ridiculous name, Sha la la Summer Time, but was cool and refreshing on his tongue. Jesse was transported to a tropical paradise, a warm summer breeze brushing against his skin until the final drop in the glass was gone.

When it came time to pay, Jesse panicked. How did he pay for a drink in a magic den? Did they accept Japanese yen? Did magic people have their own currency? Did he have to give some part of his own magic in exchange for the beverage? He shot off a text to Hokuto and hoped he didn’t look too suspicious as he anxiously waited for a response. He had half expected Hokuto to tease him at his lack of knowledge, but the response was sweet.

Yen is fine to use! Magic society doesn’t have its own money system, so don’t worry!

A series of texts quickly followed the first.

Sorry I should have explained that earlier!

Let me know the next time you go to a magic den!

I’d love to join you and explore other hangouts!!!

The thought of trying out other dens around the university with Hokuto had Jesse smiling. His cheeks felt toasty as he kept rereading Hokuto’s texts, sending off his own reply with his availability.

Now that his magic was seeping out, Jesse found himself spending more and more time with Hokuto in his free time. When they weren’t helping each other study and cram for upcoming quizzes and tests, Hokuto had been trying to teach Jesse easy spells from his spell book. Jesse had been cautious the first few times Hokuto had laid the little novel between them on Jesse’s coffee table, not wanting to cross any boundaries or make his friend uncomfortable, but Hokuto waved Jesse’s worries away.

“You’re someone I trust,” Hokuto said, eyes drifting off. He rubbed the back of his neck as he spoke. “I know you wouldn’t use my knowledge against me. Besides, it’s easier to study from my spell book than trying to have you memorize the words audibly.” 

They always sat side by side in these magic lessons, shoulders brushing as they leaned in to study the words on the pages. Hokuto’s finger would gracefully dance across the page, pointing out words and rhythms Jesse needed to be cautious of when speaking the spell. When he turned to make sure Jesse was paying attention, Hokuto’s breath was warm on Jesse’s face. It was only when Hokuto stiffened, turning back to his book to lecture on some other minute detail, that Jesse realized how close their faces had been. 

Jesse found himself craving Hokuto’s presence the further into October the days went. Though it wasn’t often that they could meet, a few evenings outside of their usual lunches as a group, Hokuto was opening up more and more now that the secret of his magic had been exposed. There were a few late nights, the hours ticking past when the trains stopped running, when Hokuto would sink into Jesse’s couch, and his lips would wander with worries.

“Sometimes I wonder if I can do what my family is asking of me,” Hokuto said one night, the consonants of his words so soft Jesse strained to hear him speak. “I wonder if I should wait and let my mother take over before it’s my time.” It was a long time before Hokuto spoke again, so long Jesse had thought his friend had fallen asleep. “Will I be good enough?” 

He laid back on the couch next to Hokuto, pulling his friend onto a tight hug against him. Hokuto’s nose was smushed against his chest, his hair so perfectly messy that Jesse’s fingers ached to thread their way through every strand. He craved knowing how soft it would be to the touch. “You will,” Jesse said. Hokuto sunk into the hug, wrapping his arms around Jesse’s chest to reciprocate. His light touch felt as if it was being burned into Jesse’s skin so he would always remember the sensation. “I believe that you will.”

Hokuto had been too exhausted to teleport home that night, and Jesse had offered his bed for him to sleep in. Jesse planned to take the couch, but Hokuto had clutched onto the end of Jesse’s shirt.

“Please,” Hokuto said. “Stay.” 

Jesse got under the covers, trying to give Hokuto as much space as he could without the risk of falling out of the bed in the night. In the morning, Jesse woke up with Hokuto in his arms, the hair at the top of his head tickling Jesse’s nose. The sound of Hokuto’s breathing was so gentle and warm, and he found himself wishing he could stay in that moment forever. 

They rarely made progress during those late evenings with Jesse’s magic. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t tap into the power flowing through him. The lack of spellcasting had baffled Hokuto, for he believed there should have been enough magic seeping out to warrant a small levitation spell or two.

“This is a first for me,” Juri said one day when Hokuto had dragged Jesse to rocks after classes had ended, seeking another opinion on the conundrum plaguing him. “You know as well as I do that magic without spell books just…don’t exist. It’s a wonder that guy is even alive.”

Juri had taken to calling Jesse “that guy,” even when he was in the room. Part of him had wanted to retaliate, to make up some kind of ridiculous nickname for Juri in return, but a swift glare from Hokuto snuffed out that idea quickly.

“Give Juri a little grace,” Hokuto said when Ren had come bursting into the den, joyfully shouting how happy he was that ‘Just Jesse’ was back. Juri’s attention swiftly changed to the young magic kid, leaving Hokuto and Jesse to talk. “Juri is a bit closed off when you first meet him, but he would do anything to help his friends.”

Jesse found that hard to believe. They had all but worn down the magic den owner until he had agreed to helping Hokuto create Jesse’s spell book. Every request to Juri was like pulling teeth, clenching his jaw and refusing to open his mouth when asked. The image of Juri willingly agreeing to help someone was the farthest thing from Jesse’s mind.

Ren’s voice broke through Jesse’s thoughts. “I can’t do it,” Ren said, tears beginning to well up in his eyes. “I can’t. I tried it at home. I tried it with you, but my magic won’t pick up the spell.” The young boy wiped away the tears that began to fall with the sleeve of his sweater. 

Juri’s voice was soft when he spoke. “Hey, now, that’s no way to talk.” He guided Ren to one of the arm chairs to sit down, Juri crouching down beside him. “This spell is a lot more complicated than the previous ones we worked on. Using illusion magic on a living object takes a lot more concentration than a nonliving one. You know how long it took me to pick up that spell?”

Ren shook his head, a few stray tears still escaping his eyes.

“A whole year! And look at how good I am now!” Juri said, the biggest grin on his face.

“That’s so long,” Ren giggled. 

“It is, right? The point is,” Juri patted Ren on the shoulder, “is that you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. Foxes are crafty and smart, so, even if it takes you three weeks or three months or three years, I’ll be here to help guide you.”

In the blink of an eye, Ren launched himself at Juri and pulled the older fox into a big hug. “Thank you, Juri,” Ren said, smiling up at Juri with the biggest grin on his face. Juri picked the teen up, spinning Ren around so fast and quickly his legs were floating in the air. It wasn’t until Ren was screaming with laughter, demanding that he be put back down, that Juri complied, and the lesson picked up once more.

“Fox lines are more common in the prefectures surrounding Tokyo,” Hokuto said, drawing Jesse’s attention from Juri explaining the concept of the illusion spell once more. “The magic schools in the area are trying to recruit teachers but no one wants to make the move. Ren’s school doesn’t have someone from his line to instruct him in the illusions. Juri is from a well-respected line, and a powerful caster in his own right. Since Ren and his family live so close to here, his parents asked Juri to teach him a few times a week.”

It was sweet, Jesse had to admit, for Juri to step up and fulfill the role of an instructor. He had a way with speaking to children that was heartwarming and kind, but Jesse would continue to wait for the day that kindness was turned upon him.

Though Kochi and Shintaro didn’t have much to do in terms of preparation for Jesse’s new life of magic, they still latched onto Hokuto every time the four of them met at lunch. They poured out their questions about the magical community every day, digging deeper into this mysterious world. No question was too ridiculous, and Jesse had even laughed when Shintaro asked if magic people wore underwear. It was times like these, when Hokuto was more focused on Shintaro and Kochi, that Jesse missed having a little bit of Hokuto’s attention, but he pushed those desires down. They spent plenty of time together outside of school. This was fine.

When those lunches were done, Jesse would return his tray and bowls to the cafeteria staff, backpack hanging off one shoulder as he tried to remember which class he had next. Hokuto would appear at his side, placing his tray next to Jesse’s on the counter.

“I don’t mind answering questions from you, too,” Hokuto said one time, the hem of his jacket seeming quite interesting as they left the cafeteria together. He looked up at Jesse, his eyes so wide and sweet. He pouted his lips, making Hokuto’s cheeks look so fluffy. Jesse wanted to reach over and poke them to see if they were as soft as they looked.

Jesse linked their arms together as they continued walking, and he let the first question that came to mind fall from his lips. “How much can a magic person burp after consuming a soda?”

Hokuto’s laughter was loud despite him hiding it behind his hand, making Jesse’s heart beat even faster. He did everything he could to make Hokuto continue laughing until they needed to part or risk being late to class.

On one particularly warm Thursday just before lunch, Jesse’s biochemistry professor sent an email announcing their class as well as the test for that day had been canceled. Something about his daughter being sick and his wife being out of town for a conference but Jesse had skimmed the rest. He had a free period!

Jesse often ran off to class in the middle of conversations because he lost track of time on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Meanwhile Shintaro, Kochi, and Hokuto hadn’t scheduled classes for themselves after lunch on those days. He had kicked himself when he selected that particular biochem class, but it was the only decent time with a professor he had heard good things about through the rumor mill. He hadn’t wanted to miss out on the best teacher just because his friends were free.

Shintaro had been ecstatic, saying how they should claim a spot on the quad before it filled up with other students. Hokuto magically pulled a blanket out of his crammed backpack full of books for all of them to use, and they took turns running off to buy lunch at the convenience store around the corner. When Jesse returned from his turn, he heard Kochi ask a question that piqued his interest.

“Squirrels are such a random animal to include in your magic thing,” Kochi said. He was laid on his side, snacking on a bag of black pepper chips that Shintaro kept sneaking his hand into. “I would have chosen something much cooler. Like a hedgehog.”

“No way! A bear is so much better than that tiny thing!” Shintaro said. He reached out for another chip, but Kochi smacked his hand before it could enter the bag.

“Apologize and you can have more,” Kochi said. Shintaro muttered a half-hearted apology to which Kochi turned the bag in his direction, giving him free reign access to continue munching.

“It’s based on a story from our history.” Hokuto was laid on his back, his head resting on his backpack as his pillow. His hands were folded over his chest with his spell book resting underneath them. “Long ago there were ten villages founded by ten brothers, and-” 

“They were all animals!” Shintaro interjected. 

“Shin,” Jesse hissed out as a warning, and his friend quickly apologized once more for the interruption.

“As I was saying,” Hokuto said, his features a little flustered. “The villages were founded by ten brothers. Each village was plagued by various disasters that no one, not even the brothers, were able to solve. In order to protect their homes and ensure the longevity of their people, the brothers sought out the ten sacred animals.”

Jesse leaned forward the more Hokuto spoke, wanting to cling onto every word Hokuto said. He had never thought to ask about legends within the magic community when the two of them were alone, and this history, his history, was absolutely fascinating. He would have to buy Kochi a snack as a random thank you for instigating this tale. 

“Lion, wolf, hawk, snake, fox, monkey, rabbit, chameleon, cow, and squirrel. Each animal gifted one brother their special brand of magic in order to combat the problems surrounding the villages,” Hokuto continued. “The legend says magic was passed down through each generation, mingling and mixing with each other until our modern day magic was created. But,” Hokuto paused, brows furrowing a tad before he continued, “they say that within each line there is a family who can trace themselves back to the brothers.” 

That sentiment sent a wave of shock through their little group. Jesse sat up straighter, and he saw both Shintaro and Kochi sit up.

“Wait, so there’s people out there that are just…like legendaries? Like in Pokémon?” Kochi said. He had completely abandoned his snack.

Hokuto nodded. “I’ve never met one before, but supposedly they’re incredibly powerful. I mentioned before that a specialty of the lion line is blood control magic. That kind of spell is incredibly complex, so someone of my caliber could control only a single person,” Hokuto said. “The rumor is that the descendent of the brother who received his magic from the sacred lion could control hundreds if they chose to.” 

Jesse’s heart stopped. Hundreds? There was someone so powerful that they could control the actions of so many people with a single spell? 

“I hope that I never get the chance to meet them,” Jesse said.

“Avoid any and all Nakamuras that you meet,’ Hokuto said. “From what I’ve heard, that’s the last name they chose to blend into the human world.”

It was easier said than done. Jesse had three of them in his anatomy class. It didn’t count for the thousands of them in Tokyo. He was beginning to see the appeal of choosing last names to blend in with human society. Picking one Tanaka or one Nakamura out of a crowd would be near impossible to do.

“Not gonna lie, it would be kind of cool to meet one of them.” Shintaro laid back on the blanket. He snatched up Kochi’s chip bag once more to polish off the last few remaining ones. “We could make some kind of superhero team to save the city.” He grinned. “Just imagine it! Jesse uses his doctor degree to heal and take care of anyone injured and then our three magic bros and this super powered person fight them off. It’s foolproof!”

Kochi sighed, flopping back down on the blanket with a loud sigh. “And how do you propose we even find someone like that?” 

“We put up a flyer, dumbass.”

“Most people don’t know about magic, dumbass.”

Jesse scooted over next to Hokuto, laying down next to him. Their shoulders brushed as Jesse’s back connected with the blanket, but neither of them moved to give the other more space. Shintaro and Kochi continued to bicker and argue, each of their sentences punctuated with an insult to the other. “Never a dull moment with them, right?” 

“It’s what made university so much fun for me,” Hokuto said. His head turned to look at Jesse, and the soft expression on Hokuto’s face made his heart skip a beat. The world around them melted for a moment, Shintaro and Kochi’s words fading into obscurity, and the only thing Jesse could focus on was Hokuto’s smile. “Though I do have to admit, sometimes I like our quieter chaos a bit more.” 

His heart was flying in his chest, though Jesse couldn’t quite figure out why. He appreciated Hokuto’s energy and rationality compared to the blind pandemonium that came from the dynamic he had with Shintaro and Kochi. He liked looking over and catching Hokuto mid laugh at one of Shintaro’s dumb jokes or the thoughtful way he would explain something happening in the news that Jesse didn’t understand. Or the way Hokuto would ignore them all, getting lost in his book, and the gentle way he would bite his lower lip when he was concentrating on the words on the page. That was a normal way to appreciate your friend…right?

It had to be. But Jesse couldn’t help comparing Hokuto to Shintaro and Kochi. Of course he liked the two of them. He liked all of his classmates, too. Hell, he even liked the lunch lady who would sneak him an extra piece of chicken despite the portion size being six pieces per order. But he didn’t wish for more hours in the day to spend with Shintaro and Kochi. Their time together came, it passed, and Jesse left feeling content. With Hokuto, he never wanted those moments to end. He would glance at the clock and wish for it to slow down. Give him a few more minutes.

Maybe…maybe it meant he treasured their friendship more than he thought. Maybe he-

“Uh, guys!” came a hiss from Shintaro, and Jesse shot up from his place on the blanket. Shintaro’s words had snapped his attention, and he felt dazed and confused until he could follow where Shintaro’s finger was pointing to.

Kochi’s chip bag was floating through the air. Kochi hadn’t moved from his spot and was staring blankly as the empty bag floated around the sky as if it was being carried by the breeze. Hokuto was the first one to properly react. With a quick wave of his hand, the bag gracefully fell back to the blanket.

“Hokuto, I know I shouldn’t be the one to warn you about this considering you’re magic and all, but you have to be more careful with what spells you cast,” Kochi said. His hands grasped onto the blanket, eyes darting around to the surrounding area. “What if someone else had seen it?”

“That…that wasn’t me.” Hokuto pushed himself into a sitting position, his spell book sliding down his chest until it rested lower on his stomach. His attention turned to Jesse, a small thought blooming behind Hokuto’s eyes until it consumed his features. “That means…Jesse? Jesse, I think you cast your first spell.”

He cast a spell? He had cast a spell! It took all of Jesse’s energy to not yell out in glee, to let the whole campus know his joy. Finally, after so many long nights of study and practice he was able to cast a levitation spell! He hadn’t known how he did it, he definitely hadn’t said the words that Hokuto had taught him, but perhaps it was a latent casting? Maybe the words from the previous day had caught up to him finally. Jesse didn’t know. Magic was still a strange and foreign concept to him. He longed to pull Hokuto into a hug, to share his joy with his friend, but he held back. Perhaps Hokuto would celebrate with him during their next lesson together.

“Oh hell, yeah!” Shintaro shouted before the trio of them shushed him. “You know what that means?” A manic grin spread across Shintaro’s features.

The joy in Jesse’s heart was ripped from him in a moment, memories of his younger self flashing through his brain. “Shin, no!” It was one secret he had been clinging to and didn’t want Hokuto to know. Jesse launched himself across the blanket. He curled his arm around Shintaro’s neck to obstruct his airways while the other covered Shintaro’s mouth from speaking. But Shintaro was big and strong, not as strong as Jesse, so the two rolled off of the blanket, turning into a mess of limbs and cursing.

“I feel like I’m missing something,” Jesse heard Hokuto say as Shintaro was attempting to shout through the hand Jesse had covering his mouth. He attempted to lick and bite at Jesse’s fingers, but Jesse refused to remove them.

“It was before my time, but years ago Jesse wanted to be an amateur magician in elementary school,” Kochi explained.

“Kochi, don’t you dare!” Jesse shouted. He could feel Shintaro getting the upper hand. He knew all of Jesse’s weak spots, the ones where he was most ticklish from years of rough housing, and it was taking all of Jesse’s energy to not let go and fall into a fit of laughter. 

“He had the most ridiculous stage name, too,” Kochi continued. “Jesse gets so embarrassed the second Shin brings it up.”

Shintaro’s fingers reached Jesse’s weakest point, a small place in his side just above his hip. It was a small brush of his finger, but it was enough. Jesse released Shintaro, rolling away to avoid further attacks. Being tickled to death wasn’t worth trying to hold in an embarrassing secret any longer.

“It’s the return of Mr. Zudon!” Shintaro gleefully shouted, throwing his hands up in the air. “Come one and come all to his fantastic and enlightening magic show!”

Jesse could feel his cheeks burning. He hadn’t even been able to do that many tricks back then. He knew a few sleight of hand things on top of a few card maneuvers that had amazed his classmates, but, when he showed off his skills to his mother after school one day, she quickly ordered him to stop. He tried to ask why. It was only a bit of harmless fun, but her decision had been final. He hadn’t practiced since. Shintaro continued to tell people about Jesse’s old stage name because he thought it was funny and that the whole world should know it.

Hokuto’s laughter cut through Jesse’s embarrassment, the tone of it not biting or cruel like others Shintaro had told in the past. “That’s so cute,” Hokuto said in between giggles, and Jesse felt his face turn red from the compliment. “We should choose stage names to match.”

The conversation changed to discussing what each of them should be called and their role in Jesse’s magic show. As the conversation drifted on and on, he found himself liking the silly name he had chosen so many years ago more.