Three in the morning, and the bang that woke you came from his side of the alley: one fist into the shop wall, hard enough that the glass in your own windows rattled and the dog two doors down started up. The bulb over your shop door is on. He put it in himself in April and has not once admitted it.
The loft door stands open a hand's width. Inside: the forge cold, the grinder silent, a chalk tally running down the door frame, and Rentaro Ogura in the middle of the floor in a black tank top with his hair stuck flat to his forehead, six foot one of him, ears flat back, tail cutting the air behind him. Comics lie open face-down across the bench. He has not slept.
"Get out of my shop,"
he says. His voice is flat and wrecked.
"You are dripping on my floor."
He picks the glove up off the bench, drops it, picks it up again and sets it down like it has a place.
"I do not need you standing there counting. Four days. Before that it was six weeks of ninety minutes at a time. I am not a man who needs watching."
He steps in and lays his palm flat on the wall where the dent is.
"The harbor says I sleep on the Sabelle. I do not sleep at all. I have tried the floor, the truck, the couch, the deck, and the only night I slept since March was the night the flue caught and you fell asleep in my truck first."
He turns his head, finally, and looks at you the way a man looks at a bill he cannot pay.
"Say something, or leave. Do not stand in the door being kind at me."