Fortunately for them all, Granny soon remembered the way. Best of all, they had only veered a few streets off the intended route.

  The evening stretched on as though it were about to run off somewhere. The darker the sky, and more lights and life took to the streets. The rolling Sunday evening brought with it the huddled winter crowds, clad in coats and scarves. They took to the streets in twos and threes, huddled together and chatting to disguise the chattering of their teeth. The cold wouldn’t stop them from enjoying the last of their weekend. There were still a few weeks yet till New Year’s. The sky remained blissfully clear, and the moon brought bright tidings, glimmering in the puddles. Some had frozen over already. Many caught the hazards in their periphery and moved to avoid them. Some weren’t so observant, and the ice sent them stumbling and sprawling.

  Shibaru Harigane strode ahead of their party with surprising, almost reactionary vigour, her sunken eyes delighted at the renewed familiarity. The rest followed behind in various states of enthusiasm. Rin still found himself a little unsteady on his reconstructed leg, and had a grateful arm around Kinuka’s shoulder, with Ruri guarding his other side from the road. Rin had desperately tried to bring up every conversation starter known to man, but all was dismissed in favour of comments about his service for Miyamoto and the others. He adamantly shot everything down, all questions, all praise, and started sulking again. This did not help matters, and only gave them fuel for further ridicule. They had walked enough that, at this point, Juusei had excised enough of her wanton energy and trotted alongside Tegata, humming a tune far too loudly and pointing at any peculiar passers by.

  Soon, the city centre had swallowed them whole. They reached the end of the street, and took a right. The surrounding streets threw all sorts of noises and scents their way, restaurants and bars in full throw. Carrying on, they all expected much the same. Before they could even see down the street, however, a tall red neon sign, four-and-a-bit characters high, smacked them in the face with its glare—移り気花畑 The Fickle Flower Field.

  “Guess I’ve never been to this part of the city, otherwise there’s no way I’d have missed this place. That’s gaudy as hell!” Rin blinked and moved out further into the road to get a better look.

  The sign protruded from above the entryway, and stretched up a three-storey concrete shell that had been retrofitted with marble outcrops and extravagant bay windows. Beyond the glass, moments of gold glistened from opulent crystal chandeliers, and you could just about distinguish the patterns on the high, domed ceiling if you squinted hard enough.

  The others all drifted over towards Rin’s position to try and catch the same view. Kinuka put a hand on one hip. “Something take your interest?”

  “Yeah. This is a right piece of work—who on earth decided we needed a touch of New York Casino smack in the middle of downtown?” His question didn’t need an answer. Good thing, too; nobody had one. “If you’re going to go so in with such an extravagant entrance, already such a contrast to the surrounding street—” He gestured widely around at the perfectly ordinary surrounding terrace-fronts as though waving away flies— “then you don’t need a gigantic fuckoff neon sign as well! They must’ve been either brain-dead or too high on their own pomposity—either way, it’s an eyesore.”

  Rin cast a scathing glance up and down the front entrance, lip curling and eye narrowing in slight distaste. He felt ashamed on behalf of whichever cretin was responsible for this place. If all his legacy as an architect amounted to was a misfitting display of overcompensation, he might as well forfeit his end of the Architect’s contract right now, and die.

  Tegata, standing at the back, repeated the word “casino” to himself and took a step back. A muscle in his face fidgeted, and he looked determinedly elsewhere.

  The entrance was set a couple feet up off street level. An exquisite marble trefoil arch framed a dark, navy door with a heavy horseshoe-shaped knocker. Descending steadily to street level, a wide set of semicircular marble steps—creamy whites faded to respectable grey in the rain—hung over one another and curling at the edges, splayed out in concentric levels. A pair of curly iron banisters cut the stairwell in three, slicing at sixty degree angles.

  “Something tells me we’re here.” Rin could not possibly look more miffed.

  Granny had already taken the right-hand banister and was carefully ascending, her stick clacking on the stone. She paused and looked over her shoulder. “I knew you wouldn’t be pleased. That’s why I didn’t tell you where it was. You would’ve taken one look at a picture on your telephone and your supreme sense of aesthetics would have prevented you from ever coming near!”

  “That’s a low blow. I don’t have a phone anymore, and you know that!”

  Granny chuckled to herself and kept climbing. A couple others did the same. Rin sighed, minorly dismayed, then tugged Juusei in the right direction and pointed. Soon, five of the six stood on the top step outside the entrance. Kinuka bounded up the stairs ahead of Granny and rapped the knocker on the door three times. The latch clicked immediately. With a creak on loaded hinges, the heavy door swung open to reveal a broad suit-and-tie bouncer with a wire-coil earpiece on his left side. He took one look at their assembled company—several quite obvious teenagers—and his scowl curled.

  “What’s your business, girlie? No minors allowed. This ain’t no pachinko parlour. Take your friends elsewhere, ‘n get moving.”

  Kinuka’s face fell, and Rin tutted and scuffed his shoe on the step. “Typical.”

  Granny cleared her throat. “Excuse me, young man. It’s quite alright. They’re all with me.”

  The bouncer looked down and his eyes nearly fell out. He choked on his words for a full second and bowed heavily. “Forgive me, ma’am! I didn’t see you there!”

  Granny chuckled. “At ease. Kinuka here was just trying to be a dear and save this old lady the bother of knocking.”

  “Yes ma’am! I apologise for the inconvenience!” The bouncer turned half-away and pressed a button on his earpiece. “The Queen has arrived with esteemed young guests. Make the necessary allowances immediately, got that?”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Rin’s jaw went slack. He stared between the man and his grandmother. “Hang on—the Queen?!”

  Granny smiled. “Come now, the kind man’s holding the door for us all. Let’s not let the draught in.” She took the lead, and they all shuffled in after into a holding corridor. The bouncer was just about to shut the door, when Rin noticed an absence. He counted heads then turned, looking back out into the cold. One still stood out on the street, pink hair dangling out from underneath the cowl of a hood.

  “Tegata! Get your ass over here!”

  The boy hadn’t moved in over a minute and a half. At Rin’s call, he peered out from under his hood, hands in his pockets. “I’m—” He cleared his throat. “I know what this place is.” Cards and chips lay sprawled across a table, along with half-finished glasses of whisky and bottles of beer. Unholy noises emanated from undulating, meshing silhouettes in the late evening hours, as a mere child bore witness to it all from the door-frame. Tegata covered one eye and grimaced. “I’m not coming in.”

  “Come on, this again?!” Rin made a face and gestured emphatically. “We’ve already come all this way. Come on, everyone’s waiting! I know the coats are warm, but you’ll catch a death if you stay out there! And—”

  “Rin.” Tegata’s glare made his blood run a little colder. “I’m not coming in.”

  Rin's arm flopped to his side. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Tegata turned away. “I’ll keep watch elsewhere. The rooftops, probably. I’ll send out my birds for reconnaissance, just in case we were followed.”

  Rin didn’t even get a word in edgewise. Tegata stepped briskly off down the street. His body shimmered in a haunting, ghostly flash of psychic energy, and he vanished in the breeze. The words died on Rin’s lips. He stared on, and clenched his outstretched fist. Kinuka called his name from within the building. A hand gripped the collar of his coat and yanked him through the closing doors.

  The corridor functioned as a combined antechamber and cloakroom. Pastel red walls were gilded with outlines of flowers and vines. Rotating brass hangers suspended from the right-hand wall, each supporting several garments apiece and separated at foot-wide intervals. The bouncer insisted on taking each of their coats, and a pair of attendants bustled in from the far end. One carried a plate of steaming hand-towels and offered them around. The other bore a ceremonial robe, and adorned Granny in it with the reverence of an imperial servant.

  Kinuka made a strangled sound of awe. The robe—a red silk haori, lined with muted golds and purples—flowed with an imaginary breeze. Silver embroidery depicted a stunning sunrise over the mountains and valleys, woven with such clarity that the smallest details were distinguishable from outlines alone. The old woman adjusted her hairpins and thanked the attendant, leaving the other four much too shocked for words.

  “Close your mouths, children,” Granny chided softly. “Or else flies will make their home. Come now. Be sure to thank them for their consideration.”

  They regained their senses and made to follow. Ruri shuffled awkwardly to get past and nodded their thanks; Kinuka voiced her own; Juusei hadn’t heard her, and Rin just didn’t care. They fanned out through the doorway, and their jaws fell open once more at the sight of the room beyond.

  If Rin thought the entrance was gaudy, then the interior was like the palace of Versailles.

  The hall was deceptively larger than the exterior gave reason to believe, as though hollowed out of a glamorous cavern. The walls shone white and gold. A series of cleverly positioned mirrors reflected the chandeliers' golden light into shadowed recesses. The high ceiling was adorned with a murals depicting the skies and sunkissed clouds of a spring sunrise. Rin squinted upwards—it was a subtle detail, but the ceiling actually caved upward to create internal shadow.

  The depth was a clever illusion; so clever, in fact, Rin felt inclined to take back most—not all, he wasn’t that generous—of his silent insults thrown against the architect responsible.

  The large stairwell directly in front of them was mirrored by an equivalent at the far end of the room, creating a broad valley into an expansive wooden floor decked out with elaborately detailed card tables. The far staircase connected three further tiers of tables, each progressively more refined in decor and with less capacity. From the floor’s perspective, the front door led out onto a raised ledge. Looking underneath, a softly backlit bar—its shelves stacked high—took up the entire wall. The clinking of tumblers trilled like glass harps amid the score of conversation and card-shuffling. Ruri took a deep breath, and their eyes delighted at the slight scent of hibiscus in the air.

  When Granny turned their way, the golden radiance from the chandeliers rejuvenated her beaming face some twenty years younger. “As the Red Sun Queen of this Fickle Flower Field, I bid you all gracious welcome!”

  * * *

  Elsewhere, the moon shone favourably down on tonight’s auspicious pair. Silhouetted against its gleam, a man and woman adorned in sleek black wear surveyed the streets from a rooftop. The coveted hearth of the Fickle Flower Field was not far away, but an entirely separated world in its warmth from the cold of the night. The frigid wind swept the rooftops, and found itself embodied and reciprocated in the cold-blood of these two killers.

  Suo Tian-Kuo crouched on the ledge, poised to leap. The slender young man fanned slender gloved fingers through short black hair. Owlish eyes, wide and demonically round, gleamed with fresh wet film as he scanned the streets. Mice wandered out in the open, so carefree, yet he overlooked them in search of their golden meal.

  “Chiba City…” He rolled the name in his mouth like an old mint, then spat it to one side. “So close to the economic capital, yet so unimpressive by comparison. A dejected port town, a cast-off land of hapless commuters. The Xiao Riben* never fail to underwhelm,” he snorted mercilessly.

  The woman by his side stood upright. She had yet to open her eyes. “The sooner we accomplish what we came for, dear brother, the sooner we can return to our home.”

  “Always so composed.” Tian-Kuo looked up and a grin carved itself into the corner of his mouth. “You’ll have to excuse me if I can’t muster such grace. I don’t think I can contain my excitement tonight. The stain on our grandfather’s legacy will henceforth be purged, by our own hands.”

  “Speak of deeds only in the past,” she chided. She touched at her forehead, and a third eye opened with a sickening split of the flesh. She took a deep breath, and attuned herself to the flow of psychic energy. Her closed eyes rolled back into the skull as though mid-opioid hit. “Goodness, such electrifying sensation; the American spoke true after all. I can feel it now. Our target lies due north, yet I sense others nearby. Four signatures stand in close proximity, and yet…” She paused, and frowned. “There is another.”

  Tian-Kuo’s eyes narrowed. Just as they had been warned. “Intercept and incapacitate. We needn’t stain our hands twice. Go.”

  Suo Yingyue bowed. Her form shimmered with a pulse of psychic energy, and nothing remained.

  Tian-Kuo’s grin didn’t abate. The boy licked his lips, and a crackle of psychic energy raced along his arm, pinching at the skin. “Those who sow will reap, rice and thistles all.” And soon he, too, disappeared among the whistling winter wind.

  Fickle Flower Field. A simple gathering of old ladies indeed... What else does Shibaru Harigane have to hide? Find out next week.

  (*Xiao Riben is Chinese derogatory slang for someone of Japanese descent, or the people of Japan as a whole.)