Chapter Fifty-Five Hana’s Choice
Chapter Fifty-five
Hana’s Choice
There is a river that runs between knowing and understanding. Tonight, inside an illusion of her home, Hana crossed it. Though she had long known about how the Shiikuin experienced time differently, it wasn’t until she stood between Keishin and the door the Shiikuin were battering down that she glimpsed a fraction of its meaning. Her mother’s screams and the Shiikuin’s shrieks evaporated the seconds around her, but within the walls of her mind, time slowed to a stop. Hana wondered if this reprieve was a kindness given to those who hovered close to danger or death, a moment to sift clarity from chaos or make peace with their end. In this brief eternity, Hana found herself standing in a place that was as familiar as it was not. The pawnshop she had grown up in looked different from the opposite side of the counter.
“Thank you for choosing to visit us today.” A woman who was Hana’s mirror image smiled. “I am certain that you will find that we make very fair, if not generous, offers at this pawnshop. What choice would you like to pawn?”
Hana inhaled sharply, taking a step back. Her father had trained her to handle every possible scenario as the pawnshop’s new owner but neglected to provide any instruction on how to be her own client. “No. This is a mistake. I…I have nothing.”
“You would not be here if you had no need of our services.”
Hana shook her head. “I do not have any regrets.”
The woman with Hana’s face leaned forward and looked into her eyes as though reading the pages of a book. “Ah. I was mistaken.” She bowed. “You have nothing to exchange. Please forgive me.”
“You do not have to apologize. I understand. This is your first day.” Had the woman behind the counter been real, Hana might have bothered to tell her that a choice worth more than all the pawnshop’s silk-wrapped boxes of green tea waited to be made at the end of this imagined respite. Collecting a choice this rare would have made the woman’s father beyond proud. There was nothing more valuable than a choice that honored one’s duty. But as this conversation was nothing more than wisps of fancy, Hana settled on being polite. “Perhaps I will return when I have something for you.”
“You won’t,” her other self said with a well-rehearsed smile.
Hana wrinkled her brow. “Why not?”
“Because a decision worth trading,” the woman said, “requires being able to tell the difference between a real choice and cowardice in a clever disguise.”
—
“Hana!” a ragged voice ruptured Hana’s thoughts.
Hana jolted. Time resumed its course, sweeping everything in its current.
“Trade me now,” Keishin pleaded. “Before it’s too late.”
“You are right, Kei. You are your mother’s regret.” The Shiikuin shrieked over her words, but Hana did not hear them. She dried her tears and pulled her shoulders back as she had been trained to do in front of clients. The view from the other side of the counter had reminded her of who she was. She was the pawnshop’s new owner and her job was to collect regrets, not make them. She glanced at her father, her bleary eyes passing a message she was confident that he would understand. Silence had always been their language, and Hana had never needed words less. Toshio nodded back, a tear finding his small smile. She grabbed Keishin’s hand. “But you will not be mine.”
—
The young girl who had warned them about the Shiikuin led Hana and Keishin through the garden to a shortcut into the tunnels. Hana sprinted, trying to outrun her thoughts. They gave chase faster than the Shiikuin did, trying to drag her back to the pawnshop and her parents. Her mother’s last words to her echoed louder, screaming for her to run.
The girl pushed a bush aside, revealing a small hole in the cavern’s wall. “The tunnels are through here.”
“Thank you.” Hana hugged her. “I never got to ask you your name.”
“Hana.” The child smiled up at her. “Okaa-san calls all of us by your name.”
—
Hana and Keishin felt their way through the dark, through a tunnel that was narrow and barely high enough to stand in. Hana was grateful that the darkness hid his face. She couldn’t bear to look him in the eye. “Kei…” she said when she found the courage to speak.
“Don’t, Hana. Just don’t.”
“There were so many times that I wanted to tell you the truth.”
“But you didn’t. Our entire time together was a lie.”
“My feelings for you were real. I know that now. It is true that in the beginning, I had every intention of handing you to the Shiikuin. When I first saw you through my mother’s glasses, all I saw was a chance to end the nightmare I had woken up to. By some incredible miracle, Takeda Izumi’s missing choice had walked through my front door. Every lesson my father had instilled in me about dealing with our clients…manipulating them…making them feel at ease…making them feel like the decisions they were making at the pawnshop were entirely their own…they came alive like instinct.”
“That’s bullshit, Hana.” Keishin twisted around, his voice quivering with tears. “That’s bullshit and you know it. It wasn’t instinct. It was a choice. You keep saying that the map on your skin keeps you from making decisions of your own, but that’s exactly what you did when you chose to lie to me. You strung me along, letting me care for you, letting me believe that you cared for me too.”
Keishin’s words struck Hana harder than any fist, hitting a spot north of her diaphragm just below her lungs, in the exact square inch where the softest part of her soul lived. Tears boiled behind her eyelids. “I do care for you, Kei. More than I planned and more than I wanted. Despite convincing myself that I had to turn you over to the Shiikuin, I could not bring myself to do it because…”
“Because what, Hana? Because you realized that I wasn’t a good enough bargaining chip to get your family back into the good graces of the Shiikuin? Because you got cold feet? I’m all ears. I’m looking forward to hearing something out of your mouth that isn’t a lie.”
“I deserve your anger. Your hate. I know that there is nothing that I can say that will ever make you want to forgive me, but I want you to know that I chose you over bargaining for the safety of my father, my mother, and myself not because I was scared I was going to fail, but because I was certain that I was going to succeed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Shiikuin would have spared my life for the same reason that they had spared Haruto’s. No one else can run the pawnshop. No one else can collect souls for our world. The Shiikuin would have made me suffer to make an example out of me, but they would let me live.”
“If you knew this, then why didn’t you hand me over to them?”
“Because in a vault full of choices, you were blinding. You are meant to do great things, Kei. Not for your mother. Not for revenge. For yourself. You will find answers to all of your questions, and those answers will change your world. You have no reason to trust me, but I swear to you that I will do whatever it takes to get you safely back home.”
—
The empty Indonesian restaurant was as dark as the tunnel he and Hana were groping their way through. Keishin had never seen it this way. He blindly shoved away tables and chairs, searching for his old friend. “Ramesh? Are you in here? Ramesh?”
The echo of Keishin’s own voice answered him. He slumped on the floor next to a toppled chair and screamed at the ceiling. “Where are you?”
A firm hand squeezed Kei’s shoulder. “Get up.”
“Ramesh!” Keishin jumped to his feet and threw his arms around him. “You’re still here.”
“Where else would I be? I live here, remember?”
“Here.” Keishin spat the word out. “What does that even mean? In my head? My memories? I just found out that up until a few days ago, I was a glowing bird in a cage.”
Ramesh frowned, leaning heavily on his walking stick. “Nonsense. Nothing has changed. You’re still you. This is still your mind. And for god’s sake, please switch the lights on. I nearly walked into a wall.”
“You don’t understand—”
“Understand what? What’s real and what isn’t? I think that more than anyone, I know the difference between the two. I am imaginary. You are not. I cannot exist outside of you. You, meanwhile, are in a tunnel, running for your life.”
“Hana lied to me, Ramesh. Everything was a lie.”
“If that were the case, then you wouldn’t have come rushing in here, overturning tables and chairs, shouting for me like some kind of madman,” Ramesh said. “You turned off all the lights because you didn’t want to see the truth.”
“What truth?”
“Switch the lights on and see for yourself.”
—
Moonlight washed over the wildflowers, making them almost seem to glow. Keishin and Hana climbed out of the tunnel and collapsed onto the field. Hana rubbed the bruise on her head.
“How’s your head?” Keishin asked softly.
“You do not need to be polite or talk to me,” Hana said. “You can pretend that I am not here.”
“I think that’s going to be rather difficult to do considering that there are only two of us here. Running for our lives might be more efficient if we coordinate. That’s just a theory, of course. I could be wrong.”
“I cannot tell if you have forgiven me or if you just hate me even more.”
Keishin pretended to scan the field. He had reluctantly done as Ramesh had asked and faced what he had hidden in the dark.
At the edges of the familiar dining room’s warm lights, giant steel bars surrounded him. What he had thought had been a refuge was a cage no different from those that hung inside Hana’s vault. Keishin stood next to Ramesh, his mouth agape. “Has…it always been this way?”
A sad smile settled on Ramesh’s lips. “You’ve spent your life observing the world from a distance. Always objective, always detached. Science was the cage you chose to live in when your mother abandoned you, a place where nothing could hurt you like she did. Within the confines of its laws, you felt safe.”
He pointed to a gap in the bars where the cage’s door was wide open. Across from it, Hana stood at a pawnshop’s doorway. “But now you are not bound by its rules. You are free, Kei. To forgive. To hate. To love a woman who betrayed you…and sacrificed her family to save your life.”
A knot formed in Keishin’s throat. Freedom, at its most absolute, was more terrifying than the Shiikuin.
“What you felt for Hana was not a lie,” Ramesh said. “And now, like Hana, you have a choice to make.”
“Kei?” Hana’s voice found its way into Keishin’s thoughts. “Did you hear what I said?”
“No, sorry,” he lied. “I was just trying to figure out how to get back. I don’t think that we’ll be able to hitch a ride on any rumors from here unless wildflowers like to gossip.”
A Shiikuin’s shriek tore through the field.
Keishin and Hana scrambled to their feet, their backs pressed against each other. A chorus of shrieks echoed around them.
Keishin’s eyes darted around the field. “Where are they?”
“Everywhere.”