“What are you saying?”
Hana held out her fist and opened her fingers. Keishin’s coin sat in the middle of her palm. “I needed your help even if I did not want to admit it.”
Keishin stared at the coin. “You cheated at the coin toss?”
“I did my job. Misdirection and manipulation. That is what pawnbrokers do to win at every negotiation.”
“Why bother with tossing the coin then? I told you that I wanted to help you. All you had to do was say yes.”
“Fate, even the perception of it, seals deals better than any word could.”
“Why are you telling me all of this now?”
“Because I made a mistake. I was selfish and desperate. I was wrong.”
“And this is how you’re making things right? By asking me to leave? Because you feel guilty about showing me a world I never imagined existed? If that’s the case, then I’m sorry to tell you that you aren’t as good at reading people as you believe. You didn’t appeal to my curiosity or my kindness, Hana. You appealed to my greed.” Keishin waved his hand around the pawnshop. “This place…your world…it’s what I’ve been looking for my entire life.”
“Another mystery to solve?”
“Not a mystery.More.Something beyond the known, beyond reach. The flower in the mirror. The moon in the pond. I thought science and the stars would help me find it, but here it was, all this time, behind this door. If you truly believe that you’ve wronged me, then make things right therightway.”Keishin walked up to Hana. “Pay me. If you won’t accept my help because you think it’s from a misplaced sense of empathy, then pay me. Pay me by letting me stay, at least until we find out what happened to your parents.”
“You will have no memory of any of this once you leave. None of this will matter.”
“I’ll have now. For the first time in my life, I won’t have to spin a coin on a ledge to keep my mind anchored on what’s right in front of me. Don’t take this from me. Not yet.”
“Even if you stayed, we still do not know which way to go next. We have reached a dead end.”
“Good.”
“What?”
“Because if we don’t hit walls, we can’t break through them. Every significant scientific discovery ever made was because someone hit a blank wall and decided to push further.”
Hana shook her head. “This is not one of your experiments.”
“But it’s a puzzle just the same. Maybe we can’t find answers because we’re not asking the right questions.”
“What question is there left to ask? Where is my father? Why did he do this? He had every chance to say something to me about his plans. Anything. But all he did was—” Hana froze.
“Hana?”
“My father…he…”
Keishin watched a thousand thoughts dart across Hana’s eyes like cars speeding down a highway, but much faster. Her brow furrowed, slowing them down. Keishin held his breath, convinced that the rest of his life depended entirely on what she was going to say next. “What did your father do?”
“He gave me a box of tea.”
Chapter Seventeen
The Gift
The box of tea patiently sat on the table next to Hana’s bed, waiting for someone to notice it. It was wrapped in a silk cloth Hana had painted the week before. Though it was distorted by knots and folds, Hana recognized her design. A water lily bobbed over the cloth, floating along the edges of a calm pond. Hana untied the silk and let it pool over the table.
“What’s so special about this tea?” Keishin said.
“Absolutely nothing.” Hana had not asked Keishin to stay. Nor had she pushed him out the door. But she found herself drawing steadier breaths when he stood by her side, as though his voice made the air easier to breathe. “It is the same tea that we give to our clients in exchange for their choices. I thought that my father did not have the time or imagination to get me anything else. Now I think that there may be another reason. When he gave me the tea, he told me that it would taste different today because it was my first day as the pawnshop’s owner. He said that things would change even if they looked the same. This tea could be another clue.”
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