Chapter 2
The inside of the building was pretty much what Neku would have expected―hardwood paneling, tile floors, fake plants, and two pairs of shiny elevator doors off to one side. What he didn't expect to see was the Reaper waiting impatiently for the elevator with a sack full of take-out boxes. The man had his hood thrown back and the red bandana pulled down, his hair undyed and left slightly messy. Neku was startled at first; but then, Reapers had to live somewhere, didn't they?
Right as Neku was half-intending to just slip behind a faux palm tree and let the Reaper go on his way without seeing him, his reflection crossed the stupid shiny doors and the Reaper looked back, recognition, and then a mix of confusion and fear, flashing across his face. "You have GOT to be kidding me." The Reaper's voice was familiar but Neku couldn't exactly place it; he could tell for sure that the guy had "worked" during his time in the Game, though.
Neku tried to straighten and pretend that he was very much not attempting to hide behind that plant, thank you very much. "Yeah, that's my feelings exactly." The awkwardness was practically palpable as he went over the stand by the elevator next to guy.
"Like a bolt from the blue... You're the last guy I expected to see." Oh, so it was Reaper Review guy. Neku had always kind of hated his little quizzes, but as long as he hasn't getting quizzed on the origins of the elevator he supposed he could give the guy a chance. "How'd you find this place, anyway? Last I checked, Players weren't exactly welcome here."
"A little bird told me." Like hell Neku was going to tell this guy that Joshua was practically dragging him here...
"Wouldn't happen to be a little Composing birdy, would it?" Neku just let his face answer, jaw hanging down for a moment before he managed to pull himself out of his shock. The Reaper sighed. "I guess it's only fair to warn you then, kid. It's no big secret around here that the Composer is obsessed with you. You shoulda seen him after Uzuki's little fit at that ramen shop; he was LIVID. Scariest damn thing I've seen in my life, and I was two floors down at the time."
"Guess that's why she hasn't messed with me since then." Not that Neku especially minded. There was a ding, and the elevator doors opened. Neku hurried inside, hoping to not get seen by any other Reapers, and punched the button for the top floor. Afterwards, he got out of the way for the Reaper to push his floor number.
"She does at least have a sense for saving her own skin." The two of them lapsed into silence again, the smell of the food the Reaper was carrying drifting to Neku's nose.
"What's for dinner?" Hey, Neku could at least attempt smalltalk, even if he wasn't very good with it.
"Just some teriyaki. My roommate's being a pain and refusing to cook again, the brat." The Reaper shook his head. "Another new kid. Between the Taboo Noise and you, that Game two years ago really did a number on the ranks. I think I'm pretty lucky to have gotten out, myself."
"Yeah, I think it was lucky that anyone got out of that mess..." Another lapse into awkward silence. Neku was by now figuring out that most of his conversation with Reapers would be this way, except maybe talking to Kariya about hair dye (they used the same brand). "So, uh, how's the Game been?" Neku thought it was Day Six today, but he wasn't entirely sure.
"Looks like we might have a winner this week." The Reaper's tone was fairly neutral about the whole idea. "Despite what you might think, Mr. Three Weeks, usually no one even makes it to Day Seven."
"I guess I'm just that special then."
"Guess so. It's been a bit of a pain having to deal with the Composer directly, though... He gets all these weird mission ideas."
"Probably involving crossdressing," Neku mumbled under his breath.
The Reaper laughed. "Haha, now there's a thought. The most powerful being in Shibuya in a skirt... No, they mostly involved you, actually."
"Me?" Neku broke off his attempt to avoid meeting the guy's gaze to look up, startled. "Why?"
"No idea." The Reaper rubbed the back of his neck nervously. The elevator dinged, the doors sliding open. "Anyway, this is my floor, so... See you 'round."
"Seeya." And then Neku was alone in the elevator, with the awkwardness of Joshua's invisible gaze on him. "Do you really have to watch me when I'm five minutes from your door?" he asked the air. Neku could have sworn he heard a familiar chuckle, then the elevator dinged and opened out onto the penthouse floor.
The entry was much smaller than the lobby downstairs-there were only two doors, 1301 and 1302, and a small table with a potted plant sitting on it. Neku was a little surprised to see that this plant was real; it looked like it was going to bloom sometime soon. After taking a deep breath, the former Player raised his hand to knock on Joshua's door.
"Come in, Neku~" ...Yup, Joshua, or at least Joshua's voice, was the same as ever, with just enough of an air of mocking sarcasm to put Neku on edge. Neku glared at the door before reaching for the knob.
"Don't I at least get to knock...?"
"Are you going to come in, or are we going to talk through the door all night?" Neku snorted, pushing the door open and kicking off his shoes. To his surprise, Joshua had even left out a pair of purple slippers for him, neatly set apart with the rack of paired shoes of all varieties (including several pairs of women's shoes―oh Reaper Review dude, if only you knew). The Composer himself was nowhere to be seen. Neku had almost expected to be tackled to the ground and raped, with the way Joshua had been acting the last few days...
The apartment itself was huge. A light hung from the high ceiling over a coffee table surrounded by armchairs, with a massive flat screen television set into the wall facing the chairs. Across the room, a little dining table was set up with chairs for two. A huge leather couch sat off to the far side, facing a window with curtains open to the view of the city below. All in all, though, it was too much space for far too little furniture, giving the impression of the Composer's apartment as a lonely place.
"In the kitchen~"
Neku followed the sound of Joshua's voice, setting his bag on the floor near the door and walking towards the little dining area. In contrast to the rest of the apartment, the kitchen was quite full- two refrigerators framed a set of pantry doors, and the counters held a double-wide stovetop, a microwave, two ovens arranged one over the other, and an extra wide sink. Oddly, there was no trace of a dishwasher, or even a rack for drying dishes; then again, this was the Composer's kitchen. The dishes probably washed themselves.
And central to it all was Joshua, holding a teakettle, and wearing the most ridiculous frilly pink apron Neku had ever seen, complete with stains running down the front. The Composer himself had "aged" a little (Neku wasn't so stupid as to think he appeared as anything but what he wanted to be, now), just enough to keep up with the amount of time that had passed.
"Tea, dear Partner?"
Neku shook his head slightly. "You cook?"
"Of course I cook. You don't expect me to live off takeout, do you?" Joshua set the teakettle on one of the stove burners in the back, putting the burner on low to keep the tea warm. "Really, just because I didn't get the chance to demonstrate during our time together~" Why had Neku missed this bastard, again?
"You'd probably poison me somehow, anyway."
"Now why would I do that?" Joshua put on a mock-thoughtful face, putting his hand to his chin in an all too familiar gesture.
"Don't ask me. You're the one that shot me twice."
"And yet you keep coming back for more," Joshua chided, a dangerous undertone in his voice. Neku ignored it, opting instead for glaring at the Composer.
I'm tired of you playing with me, Joshua. Couldn't you at least pretend that I mean something to you?
Joshua put a finger in his ear and mimed cleaning it out. "Neku, if you're thinking something at me, I can't hear you with that Player Pin on." And he was just... smirking like it didn't even matter and it pissed Neku off so much and―
"If you only called me here to see you parade around in that stupid apron, I'm leaving." Neku turned towards the door, fingers clenching into a fist, but suddenly Joshua was right there, stupid apron and all, and damnit he forgot he was dealing with the Composer for just a moment and he was going to die again, right now, and that was the end of it.
Joshua came closer, and Neku automatically backpedalled, until his back was up against the wall and Joshua was practically pressed against his chest, only a tiny space separating the two of them. Neku kept expecting to feel Joshua's breath on his neck, and it took him a moment to realize that the Composer simply wasn't breathing.
"You really don't get it? How special you are..." Out of the corner of his eye, Neku could still see Joshua's face near his ear, still smirking, eyes hidden by his hair like some kind of dramatic shonen antihero. "For your own, safety, though, I'd advise against insulting my apron again." And then he backed off, smiling like nothing had even happened, walking back to the kitchen and leaving Neku breathless and listening to the blessed sound of his heart pounding in his ears.
It was always this way with Joshua, wasn't it? One moment Neku's about to get Erased, and the next the Composer has walked off with some witty, mocking comment.
"What's so special about me, then?" Neku was surprised at how even his voice was; he'd expected himself to yell it out, or his voice to be shaking, or something. Joshua glanced over at him before pouring himself a cup of tea with a sigh.
"To the point as always... You might as well sit down, Neku." Not really willing to tempt fate any further, Neku pulled out one of the chairs at the table and sat. Joshua hung his apron up on a hook near the kitchen door and sat across from him, setting his cup of tea between the two of them. "Where to begin..."
"How about why you shot me in the first place?"
"You aren't going to let that go, are you?" Joshua paused, chuckling a bit. "You looked interesting, to be honest. And you were alone, which is a bit of a bonus when you need to kill someone."
"Glad to be of service," Neku muttered.
"Let's see… I'm sure by now you know that all humans have a Soul. Yes, even little old me," Joshua added with a bit of a laugh. "I'm still human enough for that, at least…Anyway, the quality of a person's Soul is measured by their Imagination-their creativity, in short."
"And let me guess," Neku said in a sarcastic tone, "my Imagination is of 'exceptional quality.'" He made finger quotes in the air over the table.
"You're catching on." Joshua twirled a stray lock of hair in his fingers. "To be honest, I really didn't expect you to do as well as you did. You're even more exceptional than I thought."
"Lucky me."
"Neku, you survived three weeks of the Game. Surely realize what an achievement that is?"
"Yeah, but you helped."
"Not as much as you seem to think." Joshua ran a finger around the rim of his teacup. "You recall my Game with Megumi?"
"The whole reason you needed me as a proxy in the first place. Kind of hard for me to forget."
Joshua chuckled. "I suppose so. The point is, even Composers are expected to pay entry fees. Mine for that Game was the ability to play directly. Hence all this proxy business."
"Mmm, fair enough." It certainly made enough sense to Neku-after all, everything he'd seen from Joshua so far indicated that the Composer did love his Games. "Doesn't explain why you couldn't just stay out of my life afterwards. I mean, I can't even… I still see it." No doubt Joshua already knew what he meant.
"Recall our last Game-"
"Can't exactly forget-shooting me once wasn't enough for you?"
"Would you please drop that? I had my reasons." Reasons that Neku was never going to hear, no doubt. "The point is, that was your entry fee for that Game. Your 'normal' life." Neku wasn't too fond of the finger quotes being used against him. "That was what you wanted most at the time, wasn't it?"
Yes, it was. Neku would remember clearly, how much he missed being just a normal kid, how much he wanted to be free of the Game, the confusion and hurt that had stopped his hand on the trigger. He'd never forget, even if he lived as long as the Composing bastard sitting across from him. Neku sulked back into his chair, eyes focused on the teacup, refusing to answer the question.
"If you had gone back to 'normal,' would you be here now?" Before Neku could figure out a suitable reply to the smirking question, Joshua continued on. "The Game is a system, Neku, it needs all its parts to do its job, to force human Soul to evolve by depriving them of the thing they care about most-the melody of their internal song, if you will. This evolution, in turn, drives the creativity in the world. And for the record, I'm not supposed to be telling you any of this," the Composer added with a smirk.
"Why bother, then?" Neku could have gone on with life perfectly happy without knowing any of this, but now it was like an itch on his back that he couldn't scratch. Joshua had gone and gotten him interested and damnit, Neku intended to walk out of here with answers, not more questions.
"Because I have an offer to make, and there's no point if you don't at least have some understanding of what I'm talking about."
"I should have known better than to think you dragged me here just to say hi," Neku muttered.
"My sincerest apologies." And he actually did seem sorry about something, even though Neku had a feeling it wasn't about this "offer" he was planning. "To continue, without the experience of playing the Game or some other such driving force, most people's Imagination stagnates and eventually decays, which is a reason, I suspect, for why all businessmen in this city even seem to think alike." Okay, so Neku did get a bit of a laugh out of that, remembering the time the two of them had scanned a group returning from their commutes and found no less than three of the suit-clad men hoping that their wives were making steak. Joshua blinked at the interruption, then chuckled a bit as well, and for a minute Neku felt like he could pretend that his old Partner wasn't a complete asshole.
"So old people don't play the Game because they're too uptight to change anyway?"
"To a certain extent, yes. They also rarely possess the Imagination in the first place to work even a Player Pin, which would make even the task of finding a Partner quite difficult, as I'm sure you can imagine." Joshua waved one hand around before pausing for a sip of his tea. "I should stop before I get derailed any further, but I assume you have the basic idea?"
"Get derailed all you like," Neku told him, "this stuff is more interesting than I expected."
Joshua laughed. "Neku, if I followed every subject through to its conclusion, I'd keep you up all night. And unlike me, you do actually get to sleep."
"You don't sleep?"
"Technically I don't need to do anything except eat, which reminds me that I should start on dinner eventually. I hope you don't mind yakisoba."
"No, that's fine." Okay, so Neku was just a little curious to try Joshua's cooking. Just a little.
"Then I'll be right back, I need to wash some carrots."
Right as Neku was half-intending to just slip behind a faux palm tree and let the Reaper go on his way without seeing him, his reflection crossed the stupid shiny doors and the Reaper looked back, recognition, and then a mix of confusion and fear, flashing across his face. "You have GOT to be kidding me." The Reaper's voice was familiar but Neku couldn't exactly place it; he could tell for sure that the guy had "worked" during his time in the Game, though.
Neku tried to straighten and pretend that he was very much not attempting to hide behind that plant, thank you very much. "Yeah, that's my feelings exactly." The awkwardness was practically palpable as he went over the stand by the elevator next to guy.
"Like a bolt from the blue... You're the last guy I expected to see." Oh, so it was Reaper Review guy. Neku had always kind of hated his little quizzes, but as long as he hasn't getting quizzed on the origins of the elevator he supposed he could give the guy a chance. "How'd you find this place, anyway? Last I checked, Players weren't exactly welcome here."
"A little bird told me." Like hell Neku was going to tell this guy that Joshua was practically dragging him here...
"Wouldn't happen to be a little Composing birdy, would it?" Neku just let his face answer, jaw hanging down for a moment before he managed to pull himself out of his shock. The Reaper sighed. "I guess it's only fair to warn you then, kid. It's no big secret around here that the Composer is obsessed with you. You shoulda seen him after Uzuki's little fit at that ramen shop; he was LIVID. Scariest damn thing I've seen in my life, and I was two floors down at the time."
"Guess that's why she hasn't messed with me since then." Not that Neku especially minded. There was a ding, and the elevator doors opened. Neku hurried inside, hoping to not get seen by any other Reapers, and punched the button for the top floor. Afterwards, he got out of the way for the Reaper to push his floor number.
"She does at least have a sense for saving her own skin." The two of them lapsed into silence again, the smell of the food the Reaper was carrying drifting to Neku's nose.
"What's for dinner?" Hey, Neku could at least attempt smalltalk, even if he wasn't very good with it.
"Just some teriyaki. My roommate's being a pain and refusing to cook again, the brat." The Reaper shook his head. "Another new kid. Between the Taboo Noise and you, that Game two years ago really did a number on the ranks. I think I'm pretty lucky to have gotten out, myself."
"Yeah, I think it was lucky that anyone got out of that mess..." Another lapse into awkward silence. Neku was by now figuring out that most of his conversation with Reapers would be this way, except maybe talking to Kariya about hair dye (they used the same brand). "So, uh, how's the Game been?" Neku thought it was Day Six today, but he wasn't entirely sure.
"Looks like we might have a winner this week." The Reaper's tone was fairly neutral about the whole idea. "Despite what you might think, Mr. Three Weeks, usually no one even makes it to Day Seven."
"I guess I'm just that special then."
"Guess so. It's been a bit of a pain having to deal with the Composer directly, though... He gets all these weird mission ideas."
"Probably involving crossdressing," Neku mumbled under his breath.
The Reaper laughed. "Haha, now there's a thought. The most powerful being in Shibuya in a skirt... No, they mostly involved you, actually."
"Me?" Neku broke off his attempt to avoid meeting the guy's gaze to look up, startled. "Why?"
"No idea." The Reaper rubbed the back of his neck nervously. The elevator dinged, the doors sliding open. "Anyway, this is my floor, so... See you 'round."
"Seeya." And then Neku was alone in the elevator, with the awkwardness of Joshua's invisible gaze on him. "Do you really have to watch me when I'm five minutes from your door?" he asked the air. Neku could have sworn he heard a familiar chuckle, then the elevator dinged and opened out onto the penthouse floor.
The entry was much smaller than the lobby downstairs-there were only two doors, 1301 and 1302, and a small table with a potted plant sitting on it. Neku was a little surprised to see that this plant was real; it looked like it was going to bloom sometime soon. After taking a deep breath, the former Player raised his hand to knock on Joshua's door.
"Come in, Neku~" ...Yup, Joshua, or at least Joshua's voice, was the same as ever, with just enough of an air of mocking sarcasm to put Neku on edge. Neku glared at the door before reaching for the knob.
"Don't I at least get to knock...?"
"Are you going to come in, or are we going to talk through the door all night?" Neku snorted, pushing the door open and kicking off his shoes. To his surprise, Joshua had even left out a pair of purple slippers for him, neatly set apart with the rack of paired shoes of all varieties (including several pairs of women's shoes―oh Reaper Review dude, if only you knew). The Composer himself was nowhere to be seen. Neku had almost expected to be tackled to the ground and raped, with the way Joshua had been acting the last few days...
The apartment itself was huge. A light hung from the high ceiling over a coffee table surrounded by armchairs, with a massive flat screen television set into the wall facing the chairs. Across the room, a little dining table was set up with chairs for two. A huge leather couch sat off to the far side, facing a window with curtains open to the view of the city below. All in all, though, it was too much space for far too little furniture, giving the impression of the Composer's apartment as a lonely place.
"In the kitchen~"
Neku followed the sound of Joshua's voice, setting his bag on the floor near the door and walking towards the little dining area. In contrast to the rest of the apartment, the kitchen was quite full- two refrigerators framed a set of pantry doors, and the counters held a double-wide stovetop, a microwave, two ovens arranged one over the other, and an extra wide sink. Oddly, there was no trace of a dishwasher, or even a rack for drying dishes; then again, this was the Composer's kitchen. The dishes probably washed themselves.
And central to it all was Joshua, holding a teakettle, and wearing the most ridiculous frilly pink apron Neku had ever seen, complete with stains running down the front. The Composer himself had "aged" a little (Neku wasn't so stupid as to think he appeared as anything but what he wanted to be, now), just enough to keep up with the amount of time that had passed.
"Tea, dear Partner?"
Neku shook his head slightly. "You cook?"
"Of course I cook. You don't expect me to live off takeout, do you?" Joshua set the teakettle on one of the stove burners in the back, putting the burner on low to keep the tea warm. "Really, just because I didn't get the chance to demonstrate during our time together~" Why had Neku missed this bastard, again?
"You'd probably poison me somehow, anyway."
"Now why would I do that?" Joshua put on a mock-thoughtful face, putting his hand to his chin in an all too familiar gesture.
"Don't ask me. You're the one that shot me twice."
"And yet you keep coming back for more," Joshua chided, a dangerous undertone in his voice. Neku ignored it, opting instead for glaring at the Composer.
I'm tired of you playing with me, Joshua. Couldn't you at least pretend that I mean something to you?
Joshua put a finger in his ear and mimed cleaning it out. "Neku, if you're thinking something at me, I can't hear you with that Player Pin on." And he was just... smirking like it didn't even matter and it pissed Neku off so much and―
"If you only called me here to see you parade around in that stupid apron, I'm leaving." Neku turned towards the door, fingers clenching into a fist, but suddenly Joshua was right there, stupid apron and all, and damnit he forgot he was dealing with the Composer for just a moment and he was going to die again, right now, and that was the end of it.
Joshua came closer, and Neku automatically backpedalled, until his back was up against the wall and Joshua was practically pressed against his chest, only a tiny space separating the two of them. Neku kept expecting to feel Joshua's breath on his neck, and it took him a moment to realize that the Composer simply wasn't breathing.
"You really don't get it? How special you are..." Out of the corner of his eye, Neku could still see Joshua's face near his ear, still smirking, eyes hidden by his hair like some kind of dramatic shonen antihero. "For your own, safety, though, I'd advise against insulting my apron again." And then he backed off, smiling like nothing had even happened, walking back to the kitchen and leaving Neku breathless and listening to the blessed sound of his heart pounding in his ears.
It was always this way with Joshua, wasn't it? One moment Neku's about to get Erased, and the next the Composer has walked off with some witty, mocking comment.
"What's so special about me, then?" Neku was surprised at how even his voice was; he'd expected himself to yell it out, or his voice to be shaking, or something. Joshua glanced over at him before pouring himself a cup of tea with a sigh.
"To the point as always... You might as well sit down, Neku." Not really willing to tempt fate any further, Neku pulled out one of the chairs at the table and sat. Joshua hung his apron up on a hook near the kitchen door and sat across from him, setting his cup of tea between the two of them. "Where to begin..."
"How about why you shot me in the first place?"
"You aren't going to let that go, are you?" Joshua paused, chuckling a bit. "You looked interesting, to be honest. And you were alone, which is a bit of a bonus when you need to kill someone."
"Glad to be of service," Neku muttered.
"Let's see… I'm sure by now you know that all humans have a Soul. Yes, even little old me," Joshua added with a bit of a laugh. "I'm still human enough for that, at least…Anyway, the quality of a person's Soul is measured by their Imagination-their creativity, in short."
"And let me guess," Neku said in a sarcastic tone, "my Imagination is of 'exceptional quality.'" He made finger quotes in the air over the table.
"You're catching on." Joshua twirled a stray lock of hair in his fingers. "To be honest, I really didn't expect you to do as well as you did. You're even more exceptional than I thought."
"Lucky me."
"Neku, you survived three weeks of the Game. Surely realize what an achievement that is?"
"Yeah, but you helped."
"Not as much as you seem to think." Joshua ran a finger around the rim of his teacup. "You recall my Game with Megumi?"
"The whole reason you needed me as a proxy in the first place. Kind of hard for me to forget."
Joshua chuckled. "I suppose so. The point is, even Composers are expected to pay entry fees. Mine for that Game was the ability to play directly. Hence all this proxy business."
"Mmm, fair enough." It certainly made enough sense to Neku-after all, everything he'd seen from Joshua so far indicated that the Composer did love his Games. "Doesn't explain why you couldn't just stay out of my life afterwards. I mean, I can't even… I still see it." No doubt Joshua already knew what he meant.
"Recall our last Game-"
"Can't exactly forget-shooting me once wasn't enough for you?"
"Would you please drop that? I had my reasons." Reasons that Neku was never going to hear, no doubt. "The point is, that was your entry fee for that Game. Your 'normal' life." Neku wasn't too fond of the finger quotes being used against him. "That was what you wanted most at the time, wasn't it?"
Yes, it was. Neku would remember clearly, how much he missed being just a normal kid, how much he wanted to be free of the Game, the confusion and hurt that had stopped his hand on the trigger. He'd never forget, even if he lived as long as the Composing bastard sitting across from him. Neku sulked back into his chair, eyes focused on the teacup, refusing to answer the question.
"If you had gone back to 'normal,' would you be here now?" Before Neku could figure out a suitable reply to the smirking question, Joshua continued on. "The Game is a system, Neku, it needs all its parts to do its job, to force human Soul to evolve by depriving them of the thing they care about most-the melody of their internal song, if you will. This evolution, in turn, drives the creativity in the world. And for the record, I'm not supposed to be telling you any of this," the Composer added with a smirk.
"Why bother, then?" Neku could have gone on with life perfectly happy without knowing any of this, but now it was like an itch on his back that he couldn't scratch. Joshua had gone and gotten him interested and damnit, Neku intended to walk out of here with answers, not more questions.
"Because I have an offer to make, and there's no point if you don't at least have some understanding of what I'm talking about."
"I should have known better than to think you dragged me here just to say hi," Neku muttered.
"My sincerest apologies." And he actually did seem sorry about something, even though Neku had a feeling it wasn't about this "offer" he was planning. "To continue, without the experience of playing the Game or some other such driving force, most people's Imagination stagnates and eventually decays, which is a reason, I suspect, for why all businessmen in this city even seem to think alike." Okay, so Neku did get a bit of a laugh out of that, remembering the time the two of them had scanned a group returning from their commutes and found no less than three of the suit-clad men hoping that their wives were making steak. Joshua blinked at the interruption, then chuckled a bit as well, and for a minute Neku felt like he could pretend that his old Partner wasn't a complete asshole.
"So old people don't play the Game because they're too uptight to change anyway?"
"To a certain extent, yes. They also rarely possess the Imagination in the first place to work even a Player Pin, which would make even the task of finding a Partner quite difficult, as I'm sure you can imagine." Joshua waved one hand around before pausing for a sip of his tea. "I should stop before I get derailed any further, but I assume you have the basic idea?"
"Get derailed all you like," Neku told him, "this stuff is more interesting than I expected."
Joshua laughed. "Neku, if I followed every subject through to its conclusion, I'd keep you up all night. And unlike me, you do actually get to sleep."
"You don't sleep?"
"Technically I don't need to do anything except eat, which reminds me that I should start on dinner eventually. I hope you don't mind yakisoba."
"No, that's fine." Okay, so Neku was just a little curious to try Joshua's cooking. Just a little.
"Then I'll be right back, I need to wash some carrots."