"Ha! So it would seem!" He hadn't even considered that until Angel had mentioned it. "But, no, Yoshiya was from a world where there aren't any Cleanses. At least not the annual sort. Instead some sort of game to test the dead which determined their final fates. Cruel in its own way."

He took a sip of his drink.

"Honestly, we met while getting into trouble not long after we'd both arrived. We were in that first group, and knowledge of the noctaere wasn't well-known at the time. We ended up trapping one in a cave after we got in over our heads. And, as I said, we found each other entertaining, so there was more or less an unspoken truce."