Chapter Sixteen Payment
Chapter Sixteen
Payment
Keishin stood at the pawnshop’s door, his hand around its brass knob. It was ironic, he thought, that the only regret he would have wanted to pawn was going to be the moment he stepped back into his world and shut the door behind him. He looked back over his shoulder at Hana. “Tell me why you stopped the Horishi.”
“The price was too high.”
“I was willing to pay it.” He let go of the knob and turned to face her. “It wasn’t your place to decide for me. It was my choice.”
“And it would have been the last real choice you made. Did you think that the Horishi was going to give you your future for free? The same fee is paid by everyone whose path is mapped out on their skin. Freedom. Knowing your future would have stripped you of every choice, every chance you could have turned left instead of right. You would lose the ability to dream and hope, to wish for an outcome other than what is written. Is that a price you would be willing to pay to help a stranger?”
“It would be a lot simpler for me to walk away if that was true. But you aren’t exactly a stranger anymore.”
“You do not know me.”
“I know enough. I know what it’s like to have a parent vanish like smoke and leave you with nothing but questions and pain. My mother abandoned us when I was a young boy. We left Japan because of it. Breathing the same air she used to breathe was like breathing broken glass.”
“I’m sorry…” Hana said. “But this is different. My father did not abandon me.”
“Didn’t he? The doubt gnawing inside you is the very reason you’re trying so desperately to find him. You want to prove yourself wrong. You want to find him and hear him tell you that this is all a misunderstanding. I haven’t seen my mother since she kissed me on the cheek and tucked me in bed the night before she left us. And yet today I found myself walking around Tokyo at dawn hoping that I would run into her and finally be able to ask her why she didn’t love me enough to stay.”
“I…” Tears crept into Hana’s voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I want you to be right, Hana. I want you to find your father and not spend your life searching for answers that will never come.”
Hana shook her head. “Just go. Forget that any of this happened.”
“How?”
“In time, you will be able to live your life just as our clients do. Everything you have seen and heard here will feel like a dream. I should have never allowed you to come with me.”
“You didn’t force me to do anything.”
“I took advantage of your curiosity and kindness. I can read people. It is what I have spent my whole life training to do. I dangled the strange and impossible in front of you because I knew you would not be able to resist trying to figure out whether what I told you was true.”
“You and I both know that isn’t what happened. A coin decided for us.”
“Did it?”
“What are you saying?”
Hana held out her fist and opened her fingers. Keishin’s coin sat in the middle of her palm. “I needed your help even if I did not want to admit it.”
Keishin stared at the coin. “You cheated at the coin toss?”
“I did my job. Misdirection and manipulation. That is what pawnbrokers do to win at every negotiation.”
“Why bother with tossing the coin then? I told you that I wanted to help you. All you had to do was say yes.”
“Fate, even the perception of it, seals deals better than any word could.”
“Why are you telling me all of this now?”
“Because I made a mistake. I was selfish and desperate. I was wrong.”
“And this is how you’re making things right? By asking me to leave? Because you feel guilty about showing me a world I never imagined existed? If that’s the case, then I’m sorry to tell you that you aren’t as good at reading people as you believe. You didn’t appeal to my curiosity or my kindness, Hana. You appealed to my greed.” Keishin waved his hand around the pawnshop. “This place…your world…it’s what I’ve been looking for my entire life.”
“Another mystery to solve?”
“Not a mystery. More. Something beyond the known, beyond reach. The flower in the mirror. The moon in the pond. I thought science and the stars would help me find it, but here it was, all this time, behind this door. If you truly believe that you’ve wronged me, then make things right the right way.” Keishin walked up to Hana. “Pay me. If you won’t accept my help because you think it’s from a misplaced sense of empathy, then pay me. Pay me by letting me stay, at least until we find out what happened to your parents.”
“You will have no memory of any of this once you leave. None of this will matter.”
“I’ll have now. For the first time in my life, I won’t have to spin a coin on a ledge to keep my mind anchored on what’s right in front of me. Don’t take this from me. Not yet.”
“Even if you stayed, we still do not know which way to go next. We have reached a dead end.”
“Good.”
“What?”
“Because if we don’t hit walls, we can’t break through them. Every significant scientific discovery ever made was because someone hit a blank wall and decided to push further.”
Hana shook her head. “This is not one of your experiments.”
“But it’s a puzzle just the same. Maybe we can’t find answers because we’re not asking the right questions.”
“What question is there left to ask? Where is my father? Why did he do this? He had every chance to say something to me about his plans. Anything. But all he did was—” Hana froze.
“Hana?”
“My father…he…”
Keishin watched a thousand thoughts dart across Hana’s eyes like cars speeding down a highway, but much faster. Her brow furrowed, slowing them down. Keishin held his breath, convinced that the rest of his life depended entirely on what she was going to say next. “What did your father do?”
“He gave me a box of tea.”