“...All right,” the man said, though it was clear from the firm pinch of his lips that he knew she was withholding something. “I’m Lee Turner,” he said.
Sen whispered the foreign name under her breath, tasting the shape of it.
Lee Turner pulled the black box from his pocket and touched it again, his face ghostly under its blue-white light.
“Well, Sen of Shimazu,” he said, “it seems that your name isn’t enough information for me to tell you much of anything.”
Sen scowled. “That’s it, then? You won’t answer my only question?”
Lee shook his head. “There’s an archive at town hall,” he said. “We can look for your family records there, but it’s not open this late.”
“We?” Sen said. Could she really just step into another world? She could stand in Lee Turner’s room easily enough, but she couldn’t picture herself out in public one hundred and forty years in the future.
“Well, I doubt they’re going to hand over your family koseki to a foreigner,” he said, like it should have been obvious. “Come back here tomorrow. We’ll find your truth, and then mine.”
And if I die before then?Sen thought, fear clamping her throat shut. But that was not something a samurai was supposed to say, so she only nodded.
Footsteps creaked in the hall.
Lee whirled around, his eyes wide. Sen didn’t know what kind of monsters existed in the future, but if it was enough to alarm Lee, it couldn’t be good. A shadow rolled across the paper doors, and Sen’s heart stopped beating.
She knew this shadow.
The crooked spine, the prickly fingers, the way it swelled across the ceiling like the tide of a dark sea that wanted to drag you into its cold waters. He should not have been on this side of the house.
Sen widened her stance and drew her sword.
“No, don’t do that,” Lee said under his breath.
But the door opened, and it was not Sen’s father.
Another foreign man—this one older—froze at the sight of her. He looked half awake, draped in loose silk clothing with buttons down the front. He had the same dark hair as the younger man, but his face and shoulders were broader, his complexion tanner, his jaw squarer.
The whole house had quieted at his entrance. No breeze sighed through the window, no sword ferns scraped at the porch, no wood creaked as it settled. Even Lee had gone still, like the whole world was prey waiting for this man to strike.
“Oh,” the older man said in surprise as he turned to Sen. “Hello.”
Sen had learned some English in her lessons at the academy—samurai were expected to be well educated, after all. But she had never heard it spoken from a foreigner’s mouth. His smile was sharp at the edges, his eyes flat and colorless in the dark.
Lee moved quickly to block the older man’s view of the closet, then said something in English that Sen didn’t understand. His words were clipped, pressed tightly against each other. The moment the older man entered the room, it was as if Lee had gone from a churning ocean to a frozen sea. The older man let out a stiff laugh, answering before looking back at Sen.
“Put away your sword,” Lee said under his breath in Japanese. “This is my father.”
That is not a reason to put my sword away, Sen thought, but she conceded and lowered her blade anyway, only because the older man was clearly unarmed, and she knew she could slay him with or without a sword.
Then the older man bowed and smiled with stark white teeth. “You don’t have to sneak around here,” he said in Japanese, far more accented than Lee’s speech. “You’re welcome to visit whenever you want.”
Perhaps it was just his accent, but something about his words made her skin prickle the way it did when her father snuck upon her in the forest. Lee’s expression screamed unease at her, so she slid the blunt end of her blade across the back of her hand and sheathed it quickly, bowing.
Sen knew, even then, that she stood on the precipice of something dangerous as she looked between the two men, who wore such similar faces but could not have been more different.
“Thank you,” she said stiffly. “I apologize for waking you.”
“It’s not a problem,” the older man said, smiling again and waving his hand as if to dismiss the thought. “Good night.”
Then the older man turned and shut the door, footsteps echoing as he retreated down the hallway.
“What did you say to him?” Sen said.
