“The glimpses I caught of it always fascinated me. Our clients’ clothes. Their things. Their stories. They lived in my mind long after the clients left and the Shiikuin came to collect their choices.”
Keishin frowned, tilting his head.
“What’s wrong?”
“We’ve been so busy running from the Shiikuin that it just occurred to me that I don’t even know what the Shiikuin want my world’s choices for.”
“Perhaps we should keep it that way.” Hana walked on.
Keishin caught up with her. “After everything we’ve been through, don’t you think I deserve to know the truth? And whatdid Haruto mean by your entire world owing a debt to the pawnshop and your father?”
“It is not about deserving the truth.”
“Then what is it about?”
“It is about being protected from it.”
“You don’t need to protect me, Hana.”
“Not you.” Hana stopped walking. “Me. If you knew the truth about what my father and I really took from your world and what we did with it, you would never be able to look at me the same way.”
“Nothing you could tell me would change how I feel about—” Keishin caught himself. “How I think about you.”
Hana met his eyes. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you should know. Maybe then you’ll realize that coming here was a mistake and that you should go back home before it’s too late.”
“Home…it’s a mapmaker’s ultimate challenge, don’t you think?” Keishin kicked away a rock. “A cartographer can craft the most detailed map, include every landmark, and draw the clearest roads. His map can help you get to almost anywhere you wish. Bridges. Parks. Libraries. But not home. You won’t find it labeled on a single map in the entire world. You can live in the same place for years and memorize every bus, bike, and walking route back to it and never really know your way home. Maybe that’s why you can’t find it on any map. Because it doesn’t exist.” Keishin looked at Hana with a sad smile. “Or because it’s changeable.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying…” Keishin said. “What if I don’t want to go back?”
“We take souls,” Hana said.
Keishin stared at her, his jaw slack.
“The birds we keep in our vault…those aren’t just choices.” Hana’s voice shook. “They are pieces of our clients’ souls. Our clients think that they are trading an old regret for contentment, but they are wrong. My father tricks them. I trick them.
“My father told me that the piece of their souls that we took was so small that they would not miss it, but I never believed him. What we take may be small, but it is the best part of you, the part that made a decision to go left instead of right. It does not matter what the outcome of the choice is. It could be terrible, and they could regret it, but when clients leave their choice at the pawnshop, they give up a chance to make their own peace with the life that they did choose. It will be a journey they will never be able to complete, a lesson they will never be able to learn. How can you be at peace if a part of you is missing? It will be a hole that you will try to fill all your life without ever knowing why that hole exists in the first place.”
Keishin drew a long breath and exhaled it just as slowly. “And what do the Shiikuin do with the pieces you give them?”
“Do you remember the empty cages you saw at the Horishi’s home?”
Keishin nodded, dreading the answer Hana was about to give him.
“You asked me where all the birds were.” Hana pushed back her sleeve and held out her arm. “They’re here. In our skin, in the Horishi’s ink. We take your souls because we don’t have our own. This is the ‘debt’ this world owes my father for the duty he performs. Without the pawnshop, this parasite world that you think is so fascinating would not exist. This cannot be your home, Keishin. It is nothing but an infestation of ticks gorging on a dog’s back.”
—
Keishin and Hana sat in the grass, leaning on opposite sides of a tree’s thick trunk. Branches swayed in the breeze above them, conducting an orchestra of glass and wind. Keishin looked up at the cloudless sky through the wind chimes and found himself missing the rain that usually followed him everywhere. The weather had chosen an inconvenient time to decide that it liked him. Or perhaps, chasing away the clouds was its way of being even more unkind. A storm would have been quite useful in hiding tears that threatened to fall as soon as Keishin blinked. He wasn’t sure if they were angry tears or sad ones, only that they were going to sting.
“When we get to the clearing, you can use the puddle there to take you back to the pawnshop. Once you get there, you just need to walk through the front door to get home,” Hana said. “You will forget everything that happened here and move on with your life. You will find your neutrinos and answer all the questions you have about your universe.”
“And I’ll be happy.”
“Yes.”
“If only I could believe you.”
