Mint leaves, lemon, green apple... That's Joel's cologne. I open my eyes, and Joel is outside the wood structure, holding a stick. As he comes closer, he aims the stick at the ceiling. He's not smiling, but his warm, beige skin radiates with life. When he crouches down beside me, he notices I'm watching him. Then he smiles, though he's too tense for the smile to really glow. "How do you feel? Are you okay?" He brushes hair off my face.

The thin wood wall twists my back, but my legs stick out from my green dress as usual, and my feet are free. I wiggle them and flex them and move them around. I bend my knees and lean forward to where I last saw the Yakuza. Nothing's there. No shoes or scraps of fabric. Nothing. Not even a burn mark.

Joel takes hold of me. He helps me up. I look for a mark on my arms and legs, finding nothing. If my face was different, Joel would say, wouldn't he?

I don't think I'm going to admit I killed a man, even if he was a bad man. We step out from under the wood structure like survivors of a battle. Moonlight touches the lawn of the park in the same way as before, and it's dark. "What time is it?" I say.

"A little after midnight. We had trouble finding you."

I put my hand on my hair, to puff it off my head a little. "It's only been an hour since I read your last message." I feel like I slept for days and could sleep for more. I drape my hand on the back of Joel's neck. "I want to have your baby." It isn't something I ever say or think. I'm as surprised as he is.

"What?"

My fingertips tingle. It doesn't hurt, but they almost singe the air. They don't seem to burn Joel's neck though. "Not really, I don't want a baby." I turn my hands over and stare at my ordinary-looking fingertips. "Not right now, I mean."

I want to lift my dress off and check my body for a demon's mark. I can't, of course. I'll wait.

Joel covers my fingers with his hands and gives them a little squeeze. "When we got here, the Porsche was parked over there." He points at the road that passes by the front of the park. "My friends followed it. You saw the demon, Makiko, and I think it did something to you... didn't it?" He squeezes my hands again and pulls them, pulls me, to get me walking.

He doesn't want to stick around here, and I don't blame him. It didn't kill me, but something feels different. I can barely sense the change, never mind describe it. "I'm just tired," I say. I try to see myself again - my arms, my legs. I'm the same - except for my fingertips.

I pull my hands free of Joel's and rub my fingertips with my thumbs.

"Are they itchy?" he says.

I don't want to answer him. I want to hide. "No, but..." I want to shut him up, so I push my lips onto his. It's a short kiss, because he stops. "It's good to be alive, isn't it?" I say.

That sounds odd, even to me. He sort of laughs. "Yeah," he says and takes off his coat. He puts it on me. "You're cold, aren't you?"

"I guess." The biggest changes are in my head. I can't explain, but I might have to fight the demon somehow, no matter how powerful it is.

We stopped walking. We're not far from a bathroom and the small park's front exit. Joel takes my hand. "Makiko, I know some things about the demon, not everything, or much, but I think the demon did something to you. You'll be alright, but I want to find out what exactly."

"I'm not going to ask if you love me." I stop babbling and let him button the coat. "I feel horny, Joel."

"Yeah." He smiles. "But you're under some kind of spell, and I don't think we're safe here."

"You're the spell." I love to stick my fingers into the hair on the back of his head. When I do, he laughs and pulls me toward the exit. I don't feel rejected, but I worry that being crazy will drive him away. I almost wonder if I was drinking and forgot about it.

His cheeks bunch up again the way they do when he smiles, except needles keep this smile on his face. "The demon covered you, didn't it?"

It slid up my legs and over my face like a layer of dirt, except I could breathe and it tingled. I must have passed out, because I don't remember more. He said he knows about the demon. "If it did, would you still love me?"

He wraps his arms around me. He blinks to push some tears out of his eyes. "You're all I think about these days."

I get on my tippy-toes and kiss the little tears on his cheeks. He puts his hand on the back of my head and presses his lips to mine. We just kissed, but this kiss is longer and sweeter, hungrier and lovely. We breathe. With his other hand on my back and his torso against mine, we're like a strong tree.

"I love you so much, Makiko. I don't care about the demon." More tears collect at the rims of his eyes.

Now I'm thinking clearer - a little clearer. But some thing's are still muddled. I asked the demon to kill that man though. "Your friends shouldn't chase the demon, Joel. It's dangerous. You have to stop them. Are they chasing it now?"

He pulls the zipper on his jacket, the one I'm wearing. It's a little abrupt and unromantic, because I think he's about to cup my breast, but instead he pulls out a stick, the stick he had when he found me. "Stakes like this kill demons, Makiko."

When I touch the stake with my hand, my fingers sizzle. It doesn't hurt, but I yank back my hand.

He pulls away the stake too. "Did it hurt you?"

"No, but it stung."

"I don't know what that means." He sounds frustrated and holds the stake in his armpit. He shakes his head. "You're not going to believe what I tell you. You're probably not ready."

"You're married?"

"No." He's too serious to laugh. But he raises his thick eyebrows. "Your fan fiction got my attention, Makiko, because I really am a demon slayer."

I push him. I mean it playfully, but it was too hard, because I believe him. There are demons and powerful yakuyoke. Why not demon slayers? "I believe you," I say. "I believe you, Joel."

"It's true. I'm not joking. If I wasn't a demon slayer, I wouldn't have had such an easy time dealing with you and Cynthia when you started talking about them."

I push him again, even harder, because he did handle that well. "That's how you knew it was at Nakameguro station? You have a crew?"

"Yes."

The demon kills, and that must be why they hunt it, but it helped me.

We stop on the sidewalk outside the park. A crosswalk points at the small road with fields that I love so much from when I was younger. "I was on my way to meet Alan, but my house is this way too. Let's go there. I want you to tell me what you know about the demon."

"Okay, first, it probably doesn't come from hell and work for Satan." He holds the stake in one hand and my hand in his other. No cars are coming, but we jog across the street as if one might suddenly zoom toward us. "Maybe. It might not really be a demon."

I'm not protective of my demon, so I don't mind that Joel's a demon slayer, or it's-not-really-a-demon slayer. The demon isn't a part of me, and it's a killer, though I do feel connected to it. "Will your friends kill it?"

"If they can."

"So your work in Tokyo this whole time... is demon slaying?"

He stares straight ahead like he doesn't want to talk about it. A moment later he swings my arm and glances at me. "Yeah." He smiles sadly, making his eyes squint adorably. "I guess I didn't want to believe the demon was closing in on you. I couldn't see... the pattern." Joel's always confident, but his shoulders sag. He blinks out tears and doesn't look at me.

I prayed to it. Over and over. I sought its help. "It's not your fault," I say. "And I'm alive. I'm alive, aren't I?" I jump, so the palm of my hand caresses his far cheek. He dips his head, and our eyes meet. "It's not your fault, Joel. I summoned it or something. Do you know that?"

He doesn't laugh. I mean, it's a new idea - even to me, so it surprises me, really surprises me. I expected Joel to laugh. I want Joel to laugh, but maybe I did summon it.

We walk down one of my favorite roads. Most of the houses, far away for Tokyo, are dark. The empty space of the fields on both sides of us fills me with a calm, like sacred poetry. I rest my head on Joel's shoulder, because we should enjoy this peaceful time, but Joel is stiff. "Are you still worried?" I say.

"Yeah. Hell yeah."

He must know more, but I'll ask tomorrow. Tonight, I just want to go home and be with Joel. I poke him. "Don't be worried," I say.

A paved path to a train station crosses this little back road, and we look up and down it. Deserted in both directions. My phone vibrates. After I pull it out, I don't even look who, expecting Alan. I try to figure out if I should tell him I'm with Joel. "Hello."

"Is everything okay?" It's my father, Robert Pirone. "Where's Alan?"

"He's fine." I push Joel. My father probably hears some commotion. Maybe he'll think Alan and I are still in the hotel in Daikanyama. "Am I really in danger?" I say, hoping it's done and the Yakuza won't show up tomorrow night too.

"We're not taking any chances, that's all," he says.

"This is not improving things between you and my mother." I hope he knows I'm joking.

"I bet. If I'm not finished too late, I'll bring you home tonight."

"It's already midnight. Don't bother. You should get some sleep before your show tomorrow." I don't know what Joel can overhear or figure out, but he nods. He even puts up his thumb.

"Okay," my father says.

I have no idea what he's up to but he almost sounds scared. "Are you in danger?"

"No danger here. I love you."

He can't summon demons, if that's what I did. I think of telling him to just go home, that I'm safe, but I don't know what he's doing or why. "I love you too," I say.

"Thank you, for that."

"Don't do anything stupid." I mean that. I don't know him well yet, but I want to. Joel reaches for my hand.

"Okay," my father says.

After I disconnect the line, Joel widens his piercing brown eyes comically. "I wonder what's going on with him. That was a little weird," he says.

"Yeah, but not as weird as I was being a little while ago."

"You mean you don't want my baby?"

"Shut up. No, I'm sixteen." Up ahead, another skinny back road crosses this one. During the day, taxi drivers park and sleep or smoke cigarettes on it. As we cross, I look up and down for taxis and see men - Yakuza in suits - on both sides, coming our way. "Joel."

"Hey." Someone behind us yells. It's Nobu, the bald-headed Yakuza with muscles. He and a few henchmen cross the street from the park. "I don't know what happened to our guy," he says loudly, "but Joel can't take us all."

Raise your hand if you still believe Joel is the demon!

Believe it or not, I've written a whole book about what Makiko's father is doing during all this.

I'm happy you're reading QUIET!