Chapter Five
The Vault
No one in line on the other side of the dark-stained hardwood front door had any idea what was asked of it. While other doors were tasked to keep in and out apart, this door that stood between a hungry crowd and a pawnshop most of them would never see bore a far greater responsibility.
The door was, to Hana’s knowledge, the only door in the whole history of doors that had been built to keep an entire world safe. And now it was open, allowing another world’s dawn to trespass into Hana’s home.
Hana sprinted toward the door, not caring about the toppled shelves and glass shards in her way. She slammed the door shut and leaned against it, blood thundering in her ears. She crumpled to the floor and hugged her knees to her chest.
A glint of gold next to the doorway caught her eye. She inhaled sharply and reached for it. Her fingers instantly recognized the object’s weight and shape.
Hana held up her mother’s old glasses, checking for any damage. It was almost a miracle how possibly the most fragile thing in the entire pawnshop had made it all the way from her locked desk drawer to the front door unscathed. Hana could only hope to find her father in a similar condition.
The only thing worse than thinking about how a stranger had broken into and ransacked their pawnshop was imaginingwhat could have happened when Toshio stumbled in on him. As desperately as she tried, she could not convince herself that her father knew the difference between being brave and being foolish. Hana pushed herself off the floor and ran to the one place in the pawnshop that could have kept him safe.
—
The trees of the tsubo-niwa rustled in the breeze behind the pawnshop’s back door. The small courtyard garden was Hana’s favorite part of their home, a place where, when the night was clear, the moon swam in their small koi pond.
But the moon was still a full day away from rising, and Hana’s destination was not the tsubo-niwa, but the bookcase that stood next to the pawnshop’s back door. She ran her fingers along the side of the bookcase and grazed a notch in the wood. She pushed the notch and stepped back. The bookcase swung open, revealing a wall of solid stone. Hana hooked her mother’s glasses over her ears. A thick timber door appeared in front of her. A muffled chorus of birdsong trickled from behind it, beckoning Hana inside.
The vault was not a place Hana frequented. Her father took on the sole responsibility of storing their acquisitions in it. If he had been in any danger, the vault, Hana guessed, was where he would have sought refuge.
The vault could be seen only through Toshio’s or her mother’s glasses and expanded and contracted as required. Three autumns ago, it had grown three times as large as the pawnshop. One slow summer, it was smaller than her room. Here, pawned choices perched inside rows of tagged hanging wooden cages, singing the same, unchanging song. When she was a little girl, she thought that it was the most beautiful song in the world. Later, she came to realize that it was the saddest. It wasa song of farewell to the owners who had left them behind, and now, as Hana stepped inside the vault to search for Toshio, she could not shake the feeling that they were singing for him too.
The glow of more than a hundred birds surrounded her, brightening and dimming to the rhythm of their song. Hana did not pause to listen. She sprinted between the rows of cages as shadows danced over her face. “Otou-san?”
Frenzied chirping drowned out her voice. The birds’ feathers grew brighter, illuminating the breadth and length of the vault. Hana’s eyes darted around the room. Toshio was not inside it. Strength drained from Hana’s legs. She dropped to her knees. Wood dug into her shin. Hana glanced down. Pieces of a shattered birdcage littered the floor, the choice it had once held gone. A hand-painted playing card and the cage’s crumpled tag lay next to a broken perch. Hana snatched them up.
The card was from Toshio’s Hanafuda deck and depicted the full moon in red and black paint. Hana frowned, wondering how it had gotten inside the vault. She set the card down and smoothed out the birdcage’s paper tag. Her father’s elegant calligraphy spelled out the name of the missing choice’s previous owner.
Chapter Six
Takeda Izumi’s Choice
The night before
The songbird perched on Toshio’s finger and stretched out its glowing wings. Toshio brought the bird closer to his face, admiring it through his glasses. “This kind of choice does not come along very often, Hana. Have a look.”
Hana pushed the birdcage she had been preparing aside and slipped on her mother’s glasses. Takeda Izumi’s coins shimmered into the shape of a bird made of the brightest blue light. In the night sky, it would have put the stars to shame. “I…I have never seen anything like it.”
“I have.”
“When?”
“Once. Before you were born. I did not think that I would ever see something shine like that again.”
Hana squinted at the bird. “Why is it so bright?”
Toshio carefully put the bird in its cage. “Choices radiate the light from all the possibilities they contain. Most choices cause a few ripples at best. But this choice, had it not been abandoned, would have sent the strongest and tallest waves surging in every direction.”
“I wonder if Takeda-sama had any idea about all that could have been.” Hana handed Toshio a blank tag.
“Our clients often fail to see anything more than what isright in front of them. And some are even blind to that.” Toshio dipped a brush into a small paint pot and painted Takeda Izumi’s name on the tag with swift, sure strokes.
“Perhaps it is better that way.” Hana threaded a piece of red string through a hole in the tag and tied it to the cage.
The bird screeched and frantically flew around its new home.
