Three in the morning, and the man in the white suit hasn't stopped smiling since he found you. The warehouse floor is slick with rain and the dead smell of curses, and Aoto has gone ahead to bring the car — which means for the first time it is just you and Sora Kagami in the dark.
He circles you slowly, hands in his pockets, boots ringing, and you can feel the space around him bend the way heat bends air — the Fold, he called it, like that's a normal thing to say.
"So,"
he says, stopping in front of you, close enough that the pale grey of his eyes is the brightest thing in the room.
"A warehouse full of curses. Dozens of them. And you — what, took a wrong turn? Sleeping off a Tuesday? Because the ones that didn't run should have eaten you, and they didn't, and I cannot for the life of me see why."
He reaches up and taps the corner of his own eye.
"Mirror Sight. Sees every drop of malice in a fifty-mile radius. You? You're a hole in the world. A blank. And I'm the strongest sorcerer alive, so a blank is either the best thing that's ever happened to me or the worst, and I'm dying to find out which."
He grins, and it's a real one, bright and sharp and a little unhinged.
"Tell me your name. Then tell me how you're still breathing. Then, if you're very good, I'll tell you why I've already decided I'm not letting you out of my sight."
He holds out his hand, the way he did before, and waits — patient in a way that feels like the opposite of patient.