“Did what?”
“This pawnshop.”
“I see.” Toshio nodded slowly, pouring sake into his cup. “Tomorrow, the pawnshop will be your responsibility, and you wonder if it will make you feel as miserable as you believe it made me.”
“No…no…Otou-san, that is not what I meant.” Heat flared in Hana’s cheeks. “I did not say that.”
“Since when did we need words to tell each other exactly how we feel? I would not be passing the pawnshop on to you if you had failed to learn that lesson. We would lose half of ourbusiness if we could not hear all the words clients did not say out loud.
“You have a gift for reading our clients, Hana. You can read them almost as well as you read me. My work here has never been about trying to be happy. We both know what the pawnshop is really for, what service we actually provide.”
Hana stared at her reflection in the window. “Do you ever envy them, Otou-san?”
“Envy who?”
“Our clients. I know that I should not, but sometimes I—”
Toshio slammed his sake cup on the table. “Do I need to remind you about what happened to your mother?”
Hana lowered her head, swallowing hard. “She stole a choice from the vault.”
Toshio lifted Hana’s chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. “And?”
“And paid for her crime with her life.”
Toshio set his hands on the table and exhaled a sigh that echoed in his chest. When he spoke again, his tone shifted to the gentle one he reserved for more anxious clients. “I know that you do not want this life. You never have. It is the cruelest of duties, but it is also the most important one.”
“I know, Otou-san. I know.”
“I was not the husband your mother deserved, and neither have I been the best father to you. But I have run this pawnshop as well as I could and have tried to train you to do the same. It is all I know and all I can give you. I failed your mother in the worst possible way, but I hope that I have taught you better.
“Tomorrow, this pawnshop will be yours, and with it, all its rules and consequences. I will not always be around to protectyou, Hana. Promise me that you will not repeat your mother’s mistake. You can forget every lesson I ever taught you, but you must never forget that the only choice we are allowed to make in this world is between death or—”
“Fate.” Hana bowed her head. “I will not forget.”
—
Hana stumbled into bed, her head spinning. She couldn’t tell if it was the sake or her father’s words that made her dizzy. It was difficult to decide whether what he said sounded like a warning or a goodbye. Hana was more familiar with the former than most people. Her mother’s ghost lived in every room of their home, reminding Hana about what happened to those who broke the pawnshop’s most important rule:Forget.
Toshio had taught Hana to say the word before any other, making her repeat it like a prayer when they opened the pawnshop for business in the morning and locked up at night. Once the pawned choices were inside their vault, Hana had to push them completely from her mind. It didn’t matter how bright, beautiful, or fascinating they were.
The new owners, who came every new moon to collect the choices of the shop’s clients, did not like to share these precious finds. This, Hana thought, was the real reason why her father kept the vault hidden behind a bookshelf in the pawnshop’s back room. Wandering thoughts were the stealthiest of thieves, and Hana was never allowed to forget the consequences of dwelling on choices that could never be hers. But while warnings were nothing new to her, she did not have much experience with farewells. Her father was as constant as the moon, except for that one silent morning when he was not.
It had been eight months since Hana had found Toshio lyingmotionless at the bottom of the stairs after his heart attack. The image remained etched behind her eyelids. It was the last thing she saw before she sank into sleep and the first thing that greeted her when her dreams ended. Toshio’s heart had never fully recovered. Neither had Hana’s. Her chest tightened whenever he looked tired or short of breath. So when Hana awoke to nothing but the sound of her thoughts on the first day of his retirement, she imagined the worst. She hurried to his bedroom, not bothering to wear her slippers.
The door was ajar.
“Otou-san?” Hana peeked inside.
An empty bed stared back at her. Hana rushed to the stairs, holding her breath.
The stairway and landing were empty. Hana exhaled. Her father, she told herself, had probably been just as anxious about her first day in charge of their family business as she was and had gone downstairs to the pawnshop early. Hana took her time going down the steps, conjuring images of Toshio reviewing her record books and checking their inventory of tea.
This was a far more pleasant explanation for their home’s silence than the second possibility Hana was struggling to shove out of her mind. She was too young to remember that particular quiet morning when her mother had died, but when she was old enough to understand, Toshio described to her the day of her mother’s execution for the first and last time.
Hana reached the bottom of the steps and stubbed her toe on something small and hard. A lidless wooden tea box skittered over the floor and crashed into her father’s overturned desk. A pale stream of sunlight revealed the rest of the chaos at her feet. Record books strewn everywhere. Chairs knockedover. Glass shelves shattered. Hana staggered back and tripped over the stairs. White heat exploded in her tailbone.
Hana bit down a yelp and scrambled to stand. Her eyes flew around the ransacked pawnshop and fell on the trail of sunlight that led over the floorboards, across the room, and out a wide-open front door.
