“You don’t even know me.”
“We could change that. You could start by telling me your name.”
“I—” Hana’s eyes fell to his lips. Her name in his mouth was a dangerous thing. She imagined how his lips might shape its syllables and how his voice might turn them into a stream of honey wine. Sweet drinks were the worst traitors. You drowned in them with a smile. “I can’t.”
“I’ll make you a deal. Since you already know my name, I’ll throw in a little secret about myself in good faith. It might make you believe that I’m even stranger than you think I am now, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. Does that sound fair? Your name in exchange for something no one else in the entire world knows?”
“I grew up working in this pawnshop,” Hana said. “You may want to reconsider trying to win any negotiation with me.”
“I don’t care about winning. I want to help. That’s all.”
“And just like that, you have lost,” Hana said. “You’ve shown me your hand.”
“You might have the advantage in negotiation skills, but all the years I’ve spent in a lab may have taught me a thing or two about observation.”
Hana narrowed her eyes at him. “And what have you observed about me?”
“That you haven’t decided what to do with me yet. If you really wanted to get rid of me, you would have pushed me out the door by now. Instead, I’m standing here while you try to figure out whether or not my secret is worth it.”
“You should not be so carefree with your secrets.”
“You’re right,” Keishin said. “But I trust you.”
Hana looked away. Had Keishin been a client, she would have been elated. Instead, the Shiikuin’s shrieks tore through her mind. She had allowed Keishin to step into a world whose dangers he could not even begin to comprehend. To give him her name was to let him take another step closer to her. And all the secrets her door hid. “Perhaps you shouldn’t.”
Keishin shrugged. “It’s only my credibility and my entire reputation as a scientist at stake. No big deal.”
“You are making a mis—”
“Whenever I’m stuck on a problem, I conjure up my mentor, Ramesh, to help me work it out at an imaginary Indonesian restaurant that serves the best nasi goreng and pecel lele. Sometimes we have beer. And dessert. They have the most amazing—”
“Hana.” She sighed and closed her eyes. “My name is Hana.”
“Hana…‘flower,’ ” he said, translating her name into a language Hana did not understand. “I hope that I pronounced it correctly. My Japanese is a bit rusty. I’m sorry.”
Hana nodded. She had never heard her name spoken with greater care.
“So will you let me help you, Hana?”
Hana pulled her shoulders back and lifted her chin. “Heads.”
“Sorry?”
“I choose heads.”
“Heads?”
“I can tell that you are a stubborn person because I am one too,” Hana said. “You will keep on insisting on helping me, and I will keep on refusing you. This is like the debate you had with yourself on that rooftop before coming here. As you said, youcannot win an argument with yourself. You have less chance of winning one with me. So let a coin be our judge. You trusted a coin to take you across the world. Why not trust it to decide whether you should stay or go? Heads, you leave right now.”
“Tails, you tell me what happened here.”
Hana nodded. “Agreed.”
Keishin fished a coin from his pocket. He flicked it with his thumb and sent it into the air.
Hana watched it fall. She did not understand Keishin’s world of subatomic particles and underground neutrino detectors, but she understood fate. Her father had made sure of it.Death or fate. The only choice anyone in their world could ever make.She caught the coin midair. She flipped the coin over the back of her other hand and lifted her palm, revealing the coin’s decision.
Keishin looked up from the coin. “Tails.”
