THE MOON KEEPS CALLING MY NAME

SILVER EYES

I slept around the clock. Fourteen hours, according to my phone, which had eleven missed calls and a c***k in the corner of the screen I couldn't explain.

I woke up at dusk, starving in a way I didn't have a word for. Not hungry. Hollow, like someone had taken out the middle of me and I needed to fill the space fast.

The fridge gave up everything it had: leftover rice, two eggs eaten soft-boiled standing over the sink, half a cabbage I tore into with my hands and gave up on because it wasn't helping. Then I pulled on a hoodie and went to the corner store in the rain and bought two rotisserie chickens and a bag of rice balls.

The old woman at the register rang it up and said, "Big dinner?"

"Tapeworm," I said.

She laughed. She thought I was joking. I ate both chickens on a bench by the harbor, in the rain, and it was the best meal of my life, and I tried not to think about what that meant.

Back home, the hallway light was out — it was always out; my landlord changed bulbs on a geological timescale — and on my way to the bathroom I caught myself in the mirror.

In the dark, with the streetlight coming through the window behind me, my eyes shone back silver. Like a cat. Like a dog on the road at night.

I stood there a while. I turned my head left, right. The shine moved with me.

Then I did what any sensible person does: I made a list on my phone titled rational explanations. Fever. Concussion. Mild poisoning from the airbag, which I was fairly sure was a real thing. I got to four items, read the list back, and deleted it, because it looked like the notes app of a crazy person.

The radio in the kitchen was playing the evening news while I worked through the rice balls. Local segment. A single-car accident on the coast road at kilometer seven. Vehicle abandoned. Police seeking the driver and, quote, "a large dog, possibly a bear, sighted in the area."

My car. Front and center.

Daichi called thirty seconds later.

"Your car is on the news."

"...Is it?"

"'Driver missing.' There's a photo, Ren. Your airbag's out. Where are you?"

"Home. I hit a dog. I panicked and walked."

Silence on the line. I could hear him doing the math.

"You walked home," he said. "Eleven kilometers. With a concussion."

"I'm stubborn."

"You're lying." He didn't say it angry. That was almost worse. "But you sound okay, so I'm going to let you lie. Come in early tomorrow and lie to my face, so I can see your eyes when you do it."

"Deal," I said, and meant it, and then remembered the mirror and spent the rest of the call hoping he wouldn't actually look too closely.

I went to work. Of course I went to work.

Everything was too loud. The vending machine in the lobby had a hum I'd never noticed in four years. Daichi's typing sounded like hail on a tin roof. Somewhere in the walls, water moved through pipes, and I could tell which direction it was going.

I turned my mic gain down and got on with it.

The show helped. It always did. Mrs. Etou called at one to report that her dog had spent all night howling at the mountain — "not at the moon, Ren-chan, at the mountain, there's a difference" — and I said I'd look into it, and for a few minutes everything was normal enough to hold on to.

Then 2:17 came around, and the board lit up.

Blocked number.

I stared at it. Daichi looked up through the glass. The light blinked, patient as a metronome.

I put it on the air. I don't know why. Habit, maybe. The board lights up, you answer. That's the whole job.

"You're on Midnight Harbor."

"How's the shoulder?" she said.

Every light in the booth felt suddenly brighter. Daichi was on his feet.

"Shoulder's fine," I said, in the voice I use for prank calls and drunks. "Listeners, looks like we have a regular."

"Don't put me on the air."

She hung up. The line tone hummed out over the harbor, over the fishing boats, over whoever was awake in Minakami at 2:19 in the morning, which was more people than you'd think.

Daichi came on the talkback. "That's her? The wolf girl?"

"That's her."

"You look—" He stopped. Chose his words. "You look like you knew she'd call."

I didn't answer that, because he was right.

We finished the show. I played two extra songs and took no more calls, and Daichi didn't push it, which is why we've been friends for four years.

It wasn't until sign-off, when the studio lights dimmed to the overnight setting and I reached for my bag, that I caught my reflection in the booth glass.

In the dark, under the red ON AIR sign, my eyes shone silver. Just for a second. Just long enough.

I looked away first.