Zaniel manages to get the scooter back to his grandmother’s place in Fuse, where she makes him a surfeit of food and wants to hear all about why he borrowed her scooter so last minute. She scolds him about why can he not be a real man and get his own car and a house, he is going to have to stop sponging off her eventually, and so on and so forth, the way all grandmothers tend to do. When he tells her about his date, she exclaims in shock. She wants to hear all about her. Zaniel shows her a picture of the girl on his phone. “She dream-walks, like me,” he tells her.
“Bijin!” his grandmother shouts over and over again. “Aitai, aitai!” She demands he bring her over for a meal. “Can she eat tempura?” she asks. “Can she use chopsticks? Can she speak Japanese? I can’t speak English! What will I do?” To Zaniel, it is one of those cute displays of youthfulness with which his grandmother spoils him every time he comes to visit.
She sends him on his way with all the leftovers. He gets on a train back to uptown Osaka. He falls asleep. As soon as he does, a very large man gets on at the next station. There is plenty of space for him to sit anywhere but he squeezes himself right next to Zaniel. He watches the young man sleep. For a hafu, he is quite beautiful when he sleeps. The large man can see why women warm up to him so easily.
But the women, the ones he met and had Zaniel escort to him … he never saw them again. They all woke up and left him. The presence of his nightmares is inconsistent. They do not always come when called. And Hino, the closest thing he has to a friend … Hino, whose intermittent visits can be anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of centuries. She is always leaving him. This one, though, this single, beautiful human who needed Akki once, as a sad, gentle boy; this one he wants to keep. He must keep him. In fact, he decides, he will keep him. He is not going to be alone. No.
Not anymore.
Not this time.
The train pulls into Osaka Station. Only the bag of food remains where Zaniel once slept. Both he and Akki have disappeared.