I cleared my throat.
The cook had moved to the far end of the counter and was working on the stove burners with a wrench. The drama on the TV had ended and the late-night news was running, some anchor going through rainfall projections for the Kanto region.
I turned to Serafall.
"I don't know if you'll be enemies," I said. "I suppose that part depends entirely on your people."
Serafall chuckled. She leaned back on the stool until her shoulders touched the wall behind the counter and her sneakers lifted off the floor.
"Yeah," she said. "Ain't that a bitch."
She stayed like that for a moment, looking at the ceiling, and then she dropped forward and put her elbows on the counter and rested her chin on her folded hands.
"But I get it. I do." She turned the empty karaage plate in a slow circle with one finger. "For what it's worth, I'm really sorry for what Helena did."
Helena Stolas. The devil who kickstarted this whole bullshit.
"Yeah," I said. "It wasn't your fault."
"I know. But I'm a Satan. And she was a devil. And the system that let someone like her operate the way she did is a system I'm responsible for, at least partly, and saying 'it wasn't my fault' doesn't actually fix anything for the people who got hurt." She picked up a grain of rice from the counter and rolled it between her thumb and forefinger. "So I'm sorry anyway."
I watched her for a second. She meant it.
"Devils, I've realized, are just as stupid and varied as humans," I said.
Serafall let out a breath through her nose. "That might be the nicest thing anyone's said about my species in a century."
I flagged the cook and paid for both tabs, and he took the money without comment and went back to his wrench. I left enough for a good tip.
I stood and pulled my jacket straight and looked at Serafall, who was still sitting on her stool with her chin on her hands.
"You showed me that there's another side to your race," I said. "Thanks for that, I guess. If nothing else, it was a good reminder of humanity's place in this world."
She looked up at me with a small and quiet smile and nodded once without saying anything.
"You wanna walk?" she asked.
"Yeah, sure."
We walked out of Ichiraku and into the empty street. The air outside was cool and salt-tinged and carried the sound of the ocean from somewhere below the town. A vending machine hummed on the corner, its light casting a blue-white rectangle across the pavement, and beyond it the street curved downhill toward the harbor district where the hotels and bars had mostly gone dark.
We fell into step without discussing direction. Serafall walked with her hands in the pocket of her hoodie and her sneakers scuffing the pavement, and I walked beside her with my hands in my jacket pockets, and for the first thirty seconds neither of us said anything.
The silence was comfortable. That was the strange part.
"Okay, important question," Serafall said. "Favorite movie."
I thought about it. "I don't know. Interstellar, maybe."
"Interstellar!" She turned to look at me while still walking. "The one with the corn and the bookshelf and the crying?"
"It's about a lot more than just those three, but yes."
"I know what it's about. I cried during the docking scene. The one where he's spinning the ship to match the station and the music is going and everything is on fire." She mimed gripping a control stick and rotating it with both hands. "The Hans Zimmer organ thing was just completely unfair."
"The man is the GOAT of cinematic music."
"Ya know, I kinda remember meeting him when he was still a teenager."
We turned a corner and the street opened up into a wider road that ran along the hillside above the commercial district. The town spread out below us, rooftops and garden walls and the distant flat silver of the harbor, and beyond it the Pacific sat under a sky that was clear enough to show stars between the scattered clouds.
"What about you?" I asked. "Favorite movie."
"Spirited Away."
"Really?"
"What do you mean, really? Spirited Away is a masterpiece. Ever seen absolute cinema? Yeah, it’s Spirited Away." She kicked a pebble and it bounced twice and disappeared over the curb. "Also, it's about a kid who gets pulled into a world she doesn't understand and has to figure out the rules while everyone around her is either lying or trying to eat her, and I find that deeply relatable."
"In what way is that relatable for you?"
"I guess you’ve never been to the Underworld?"
“Good guess.”
“Well, it’s open to everyone.”
“I’ll take that under consideration.”
"Music," she said. "Go."
"I don't know. I listen to a lot of different stuff."
"That's a cop-out answer. Pick one artist. Right now. Gun to your head."
"Ed Sheeran."
"Oh, okay. Respect." She nodded. "I would've guessed something more brooding. Like Radiohead, or one of those bands where the lead singer sounds like he's trapped in a well."
"I like Radiohead too."
"What’s not to like?"
A cat crossed the road ahead of us, moving from one garden wall to another. It paused in the middle of the street and looked at us and then kept going.
"Mine is Baby Metal," Serafall said. "And before you say anything, yes, I'm a Satan, and yes, I unironically love Baby Metal, and no, I do not see a contradiction."
“Huh, not what I’d expected, given the outfits.”
“The outfits are to get people to lower their guard.” Serafall said. “My height helps.”
We kept walking, and the road curved along the hillside and the view changed as we moved, the harbor rotating slowly below us as the slope carried us around the town's southern edge. The air was warmer here, sheltered from the ocean wind by the hill itself, and the sound of the water was quieter, just a distant and steady presence beneath the crickets and the occasional car passing on a lower street.
"Do you read?" I asked.
"Constantly. I am the Chief-Diplomat of the Devils. It’s kind of part of the job."
"What about for fun?"
"Manga–mostly. Anything that helps me turn my brain off, like Cultivation stories.”
“Fair enough.”
She glanced at me. "What do you read?"
"I used to read a lot. Med school kind of ate my free time, and then everything after med school ate everything else."
"What did you read before?"
"Brandon Sanderson. A lot of Sanderson. I read the Stormlight Archive twice."
"Oh, the magic system guy!"
"You've read Sanderson?"
"Eh, not really, but Sirzechs likes his stuff and Ajuka once tried to create an actual magic system off of something called Mistborn."
We reached a section of the road where the hillside dropped away on the left, and a low stone wall ran along the edge with a metal railing bolted to the top. Beyond the railing, the slope fell through terraced gardens and old stone steps down toward the harbor, and beyond the harbor the bay opened up into the Pacific. The water was dark and vast and the moon sat low over it, bright enough to lay a broken column of silver across the surface that stretched from the horizon to the shore.
Serafall climbed onto the stone wall and sat with her legs over the drop, her sneakers dangling above the dark garden below. She patted the stone beside her.
I sat.
The view was good. The town spread out beneath us in clusters of warm light and dark rooftops, and the harbor curved in a gentle arc with the fishing boats moored along its inner edge, their masts and rigging making thin dark lines against the water. The hills rose behind the town and above it, forested shapes that blocked out the lower stars, and the smell of the ocean came up the slope mixed with pine and something floral from one of the gardens below.
"You know what's weird?" Serafall said, kicking her feet gently against the wall. "This is the most normal conversation I've had in years."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Everyone I talk to either wants something from me or is terrified of me or is trying to manage me politically. It's the job. I chose it, and I'm good at it, and I don't regret it." She looked out at the water. "But sometimes you just want to sit somewhere and talk about movies and not have it mean anything."
The breeze came up the hill and moved through her hair and she didn't fix it.
"This is nice," she said. "Just this."
I looked at the bay and the silver track of the moon on the water and the dark line where the ocean met the sky. I was having fun. Just having fun, for the first time in months, maybe longer. That I was having fun with a Devil really wasn’t the kind of thought I would’ve entertained a few months ago. And yet, here I was.
The sound of the water carried up the slope, and somewhere down the hill a dog barked twice and went quiet. The town was still.
And Serafall was quiet for a while, her chin on her knee, looking out at the water.
"You know," she said, quieter now. "I can destroy you right now and none of this would matter."
I looked at her. She was still facing the water, her profile sharp against the glow of the harbor lights below. The twin tails and the star clips and the pink hoodie and the sneakers, and behind all of it a Satan.
She turned her head and looked at me, and her eyes were dark and steady.
I held her gaze.
"Yeah," I said. "I guess you could."
The wind came up the hill and the moon sat on the water and neither of us moved.
And then Serafall chuckled. It started small, and her shoulders shook once and she shook her head and looked away, back out at the ocean.
"But I guess I won't," she said. “I kinda like you, Amir.”
She kicked her feet against the wall, and the star clips in her sneakers caught the moonlight, and the bay stretched dark and silver beneath us while the town slept.