Chapter 49 - Beneath the Import Shop

Yuzu walked directly from Maido street to Tye-An street, heading back to the outskirts of the market on its main road. Before long the half-concealed entrance to the import shop came into view. She stood across the street from it in the shadow of a stall, peering at the grey door.

As she activated her spiritual vision, she saw a number of threads entering the door, each belonging to a different individual that had entered or would enter through the door. What caught her attention immediately was that almost none of those threads were golden in colour, but rather were silver or black, with the vast majority of the threads being silver.

And there, in the middle of them all was a singular white thread that entered the shop. It had already solidified in form and was more akin to a thin thread floating in the air currents than a wisp of smoke. She interpreted it to mean that the boy would soon arrive at the shop. Yuzu reached out to the thread with her spirit to check, but hesitated just before she made contact.

She was worried that if she touched his string directly, the boy would be able to sense her interference again. The first time she had touched his thread he had reacted but was otherwise unaware, the second time he looked confused but had a curious smile on his face. Surely if she did it again he would be expecting it.

She frowned, hesitating for only a brief moment longer before impulsively grabbing his thread and pulling it towards her.

At the same time, she took her own thread in her other hand and twisted the two strings together!

She honestly wasn’t sure what she expected to happen, but she felt that the longer she hesitated the worse her indecision would become. Therefore she decided to seize the moment and act directly.

Her spiritual intuition triggered almost immediately as she looked down the street past the tea shop. There, a young boy with curly golden hair walking down the street stopped in his tracks and stared directly over to her. The two made direct eye contact from over a block away.

For a moment, neither of them moved or averted their eyes. Sweat trickled down the back of Yuzu’s neck as the seconds stretched on for what felt like forever.

The boy looked like he suddenly came to a realization as he suddenly broke eye contact and looked away, quickening his pace to a brisk speed-walk as he headed straight for the import shop door. Yuzu watched in silence as he walked past the patio of the tea shop, keeping his eyes down and still looking away from Yuzu. When he reached the door of the import shop he opened it and swiftly entered without looking back.

Yuzu stared dumbfounded at the closing door. Having the boy both acknowledge her and yet completely avoid making contact with her was definitely not what she expected to happen. Staring down at the strings of fate in her hands she realized that the twist she had made between their strings had already come and passed.

That already counted as making contact? Yuzu furrowed her brows in disbelief. She tried again to tug on the boy’s string, but this time there was a definite resistance to her force. As she pulled on the thread it became increasingly more defined and rigid, as if in direct opposition to her actions.

Disbelief turned to petulance as she walked across the street towards the import shop door. She felt indignant, like she had politely called on the boy and he had responded by rejecting her outright.

“Well, if he won’t come to me-“ She muttered to herself as she reached out to the doorknob, “I’ve got longer legs than him, if he tries to run I’ll chase him down!”

As Yuzu opened the door a gust of wind accompanied her into the dimly lit shop. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust in the cramped room, though it didn’t take her long to feel that something wasn’t quite right about this shop. The walls were made of cracked plaster, as if the space was not a room inside a building, but merely a roofed space between two adjacent structures. It was more like a corridor, with walls placed so close together Yuzu could almost reach out with her hands and touch the opposite walls at the same time.

There were no shelves, only a single rickety table behind which sat an old man reading a newspaper. He had on a ragged shirt and pants, and a pair of sandals. His two sunken eyes glared at her from across the room.

“Business?” He asked gruffly, not even giving her time to walk across the room.

“There was a boy that came in just now.” Yuzu said, feeling particularly uncomfortable under his gaze. “Did he pass through?”

“If you have no business, then get out!” He waved dismissively at her as he stood up from his seat. The action was made with quite a bit of effort as he leaned against the table to push himself to his feet.

Yuzu hesitated as she took another look around the room. At once she realized the source of her discomfort - there were no threads in this room!

Not only could she not see the white thread of the boy, but the prevalent golden shimmer that had become a normal part of her periphery was gone. There was no golden thread coming out of the old man, there were no smoky trails of people who were going to pass through later. Instead, the dark corners of the room seemed darker in her spirit vision. It felt like the room was cut off from the rest of the world.

Yuzu had no intention to force the matter as she started to turn and leave, but as she did the door behind the old man creaked open. A small hand appeared on the door frame as she heard a quiet voice say from behind it,

“Let her through, Mr. Ban. Room 2.”

The door remained ajar as the old man glared at her. Without a word he sat down and made a rough gesture for Yuzu to proceed. Yuzu swallowed the lump in her throat as she walked past the table and opened the door.

The door closed heavily behind her as she descended a set of stairs. Though the decor and construction materials of the corridor was plain and bare, the air smelled surprisingly clean, with only a faint scent of dust. The pale glow of dusty lanterns led to a hallway with several old wooden doors.

The second door on Yuzu’s left was slightly ajar. The warm glow of fire leaked out from inside the room into the cold corridor.

Yuzu stepped inside with her emotions sealed on her face, as if she was walking into a formal meeting. Despite the curt greeting from the old man and the dismal decor of this ‘shop’, and despite the fact that her new abilities seemed to be suppressed in this environment, Yuzu did not feel that she was in danger.

It was the same gut feeling that she had felt when she had wandered out into the storm without a lantern. A feeling of confidence that spurred her on, though she did not know what the source of that feeling was.

As she entered the room she found herself in a small room that was clearly a living space. The floor was hardwood, the walls and ceilings were white plaster. The junction of the walls and ceiling had plaster cornices, and the furniture was not only well constructed but had slight artisanal touches. Along the walls, several oil painting landscapes were hung in elaborate frames, which would have elicited a feeling of elegance to the room. Would have, if not for the fact that the room was in complete disarray.

Tan coloured silken sheets and pillows were strewn about the bed in the corner, which had been pushed away from the walls by a meter. A number of dog eared books with worn covers were piled on the headrest and had spilled over onto the bed itself. In the other corner a study desk and bookshelf occupied most of the wall and were equally packed with books, sheafs of parchment bound with string and writing utensils and implements. A complicated looking woven rug sat in the center of the room, its pattern concealed by piles of newspapers.

All of this would have been irregular enough to give Yuzu pause upon entering, but the most striking part about the room was its wall ‘decor’. Along three out of four of the walls, parchment had been tacked and newspaper articles had been hung up covering almost every open surface. Various notes and markings had been scribbled and drawn around phrases and passages in red and black ink, with connecting lines often traveling over multiple pages along the wall making connections. On the floor at the base of the walls countless scraps of paper, spilled ink and worn out quills lay in piles that had clearly not been cleared in ages.

The clippings and tacked up parchment only reached up to about Yuzu’s chin level, leaving most of the upper parts of the walls and the paintings untouched.

At the far side of the room next to the bed, the young boy who was more than a head shorter than Yuzu stood facing the wall. He was wearing a grey vest over top a white short sleeved shirt and black trousers. When Yuzu stepped inside he was inspecting a particularly messy looking set of clippings. She let the door close behind her as she took in the chaotic disarray of the room.

“So, you finally found me.” The boy said in a quiet voice, which had not yet changed from puberty, “I knew this day would come.”

Slowly walking around the boy while keeping her distance, Yuzu could see that he was holding a strange looking golden pocket watch in his hand. It had two long hands, and instead of numbers there were strange engravings in irregular, broken shapes spread about the entire face of the watch. He looked at it solemnly, muttering to himself, “The upper constellations wane into the western sky. The moon is shadowed as the star of Kefket crosses the Weaver.”

He looked up at Yuzu, his green eyes were like deep, bottomless pools. Flecks of star-like light seemed to sparkle in the depths of his pupils.

“Good evening.” The boy said solemnly. “My name is Argus Dayton.”

Argus placed the strange looking watch into his vest pocket and held his straightened palm against his chest in a formal salute. “I’ve been waiting for you, Soryana.”

Yuzu frowned as she remained stoic, unable to find a response to his greeting. She was both confused and skeptical as she thought inwardly:

That’s not my name!