AUTHOR'S NOTE: Unlike the other Tokyo Babylon fics I've posted here on this one is brand new. I've retained the use of honorifics, since it's so much a part of the character of the three protagonists.
"That was such a great show!" Hokuto Sumeragi gushed as she walked through the front door of her apartment building. "Thank you so much for taking us, Sei-chan!"
Seishiro Sakurazuka smiled modestly while he held the door open for the Sumeragis.
"It was nothing, really. Subaru-kun has been working so hard lately; I thought he deserved a treat."
"A-ha!" Hokuto exclaimed. In honor of the musical they had just seen, she was wearing a frothy white shirt over a black leotard, along with tuxedo coat, bow tie, sheer black stockings, high-heeled pumps, satin-lined opera cape, and top hat. Just the thing for a production of The Phantom of the Opera. Hokuto's love for her fancy-dress wardrobe, which she designed and made herself, was perfectly in keeping with her outgoing, even flamboyant personality. Subaru's gentle nature often led him to be turned into her model, a kind of dress-up doll for his sister's creations, which left Seishiro the odd man out in his neatly pressed suit.
Then again, Seishiro was a professional man, a veterinarian, while the twins were sixteen-year-old teenagers nine years younger than their companion.
"Admit it!" Hokuto challenged Seishiro, wagging her finger at him. "This was going to be a date, but you were too shy to ask Subaru out without inviting me along as well, right, Sei-chan? Faint heart never won fair Subaru," she chided.
"Hokuto-san, people are listening!" Subaru protested, terribly embarrassed. His sister and Seishiro teased him far too much about the supposed relationship between the two males, causing Subaru a great deal of unease.
Especially since Subaru himself wasn't sure of his real feelings.
"Oh, Subaru, you're hopeless," Hokuto threw up her arms in temporary defeat. "How can the thirteenth head of the Sumeragi clan--Japan's most important family of onmyouji--be so passive?"
Seishiro let the door swing shut behind them.
"Come now, Hokuto-chan, you know that Subaru-kun's gentleness makes him all the more special to us," he said.
Of course, Hokuto had to admit that Seishiro was right; she loved her brother more than anyone else in the world. Sometimes, though, his shy, kind nature got on her nerves.
It was, she thought, Subaru's greatest weakness.
And, perhaps, his greatest strength.
They took the elevator upstairs. In the hall that led to the Sumeragis' apartments there were benches for waiting. On one a woman was half-sprawled, apparently asleep, her head lolling against her shoulder.
She was only sleeping lightly if at all, though; the scrape of Subaru's key in the lock caused her to wake and jerk upright.
"Oh! Please forgive me." Then, she saw which door the three friends were standing at. "Um...are you Subaru Sumeragi?" she asked Seishiro.
Hokuto giggled.
"I'm afraid not," Seishiro replied, "but he is." He indicated Subaru.
"May I help you, ma'am?" Subaru asked.
"Oh! I'm...I'm sorry, Sumeragi-san. It's just that I was expecting a much older man."
She herself was in her early forties, not particularly beautiful and showing signs of premature age. Dark circles under her eyes highlighted the taut, worried mien that gripped not just her face but her entire body.
"Everyone does," Hokuto confided. "They expect the head of the Sumeragi clan to be an old guru, the 'ancient master' from bad films. Instead they get a young genius--the second-worst cliche!"
"Hokuto-chan!"
"Why not invite this lady in for a cup of tea, Subaru-kun?" Seishiro smoothly suggested. "She's clearly exhausted; that way she can relax for a bit while she tells us what she needs." He turned his most charming smile on the woman and asked, "Would that be all right with you, ma'am?"
"Y-yes, thank you."
Hokuto commandeered the kitchen while Subaru showed the woman to the couch. Seishiro sat beside her while Subaru took the seat facing them.
"Subaru, where did you put the tea?" Hokuto called.
"It's in the upper left cabinet."
"Really, Subaru, every time I get your kitchen set up so that I know where everything is, you go and move things," she groused.
The woman smiled at the byplay. Even inadvertently, Hokuto was excellent at cutting through people's downcast moods.
"That's my sister, Hokuto," Subaru introduced her, "and this is Seishiro Sakurazuka."
"It's nice to meet you all. My name is Meiling Chiang, and I need you to find my daughter."
"To..." Subaru repeated, surprised. He had never been asked to find a missing person.
"My daughter Emiko ran away from home this morning. I...I thought that she was just angry, that she'd come back after school, but she's really gone!"
Subaru was stunned; this was a completely new experience. Although he had become involved in criminal investigations before, it wasn't really his area of expertise. Magic and spirits were what he knew, not combing the streets of Tokyo, asking questions. When he looked at Meiling's tension-strained face, though, he couldn't find it in himself to say so.
Hokuto leaned around the corner, a curious expression on her face.
"Why did you come to Subaru, Mrs. Chiang?" she asked. "Wouldn't this be a job for the police?"
"Emiko hasn't been gone for long enough to be considered 'missing' by the law. To the police, she isn't missing, just...late." She looked down at her hands, avoiding everyone's gaze, and spoke in a very small voice, "And it...it isn't 'Mrs.,' Hokuto-san."
"That must be very hard for you," Subaru said. "People can be very cruel."
"It was hard for Emiko, too," she replied. "Adults are cold and disapproving, but children are far, far worse."
Hokuto nodded in agreement.
"Young people haven't yet learned to moderate their feelings, good or bad."
"They haven't truly become part of society yet," Seishiro added, "so they make up their own groups, usually with much more rigid rules. Plus, being in a position of weakness compared to adults, their fears and hence their hatreds are much stronger."
There were tears in Meiling's eyes. Her pain was a raw, tangible presence in the apartment, and Subaru couldn't help but wonder what the two of them had suffered, the unwed mother from a foreign country and the girl, at least half-Chinese and with no father.
"I'll help you," he said impulsively.
"I'm...I'm afraid that I can't pay you very much."
Subaru shook his head.
"No, no, that's not necessary, Meiling-san," he quickly assured her.
"Really?" she asked, hope dawning in her eyes.
"Subaru-kun is like that," Seishiro said. "He can't stand to see someone in trouble and pass them by."
"Can you tell me the entire story?"
The Chinese woman had just opened her mouth when Hokuto interrupted.
"Oh! Wait a moment; the tea's ready." She dashed back into the kitchen, and the clink and clatter of dishes sounded like it was coming from behind the corner of an all-night noodle house. In mere seconds she emerged bearing the teapot and four cups on a tray, greeted by three stunned faces. Hokuto blinked, confused.
"What?"
Seishiro smoothly rose, took the tray from her, and set it down on the side table, where he deftly poured for each of them. He served Meiling first; she wrapped her hands around the cup and inhaled the fragrant steam rising from it.
"Your hands are cold," he said, resuming his seat. Hokuto perched on the corner of the table.
"I'm afraid...that I've been very worried," Meiling replied softly.
"Talking about it can help, sometimes," Hokuto suggested. "I think one of the things that's wrong with us is that we hold things inside."
Meiling nodded.
"You're right, Hokuto-san. I...I want you to understand everything." She sipped at her tea, examining the faces of the three friends carefully, then clicked her fingernails against the cup pensively.
"Can I trust you?" she asked Subaru, her voice taut.
"Yes," he said earnestly, then added honestly, "At least, I'll try to live up to your trust."
"That's more than most people have been willing to do for me," Meiling said wryly. She set her teacup down, sighed once, and began her story.
"I was born in a small village in China," she told them. "There was nothing ahead of me but a life of hard labor, without any chance for advancement, for an education...without hope."
"So you decided to leave," Hokuto said.
"Yes. I fled my village and went to Shanghai, where I found a smuggler who could take me to Japan. I didn't even care where I went; here, America, Europe, Canada...it was all the same, out of China, to a place where I could find opportunity."
Meiling sighed again.
"Unfortunately, I found that opportunity isn't something handed out to everyone. The only work I could find was serving in a sweatshop in Yokohama's Chinatown, and that wouldn't be enough to pay the smuggler the second half of his fee. So...I did what so many women fall back on when they can't make ends meet in any other way. I became a 'comfort girl,' selling my body to anyone who would have me." She looked up at Subaru. "I know I may not look it, but once I was pretty. Not so beautiful as you--"
Subaru blushed.
"--but able to catch a man's eye all the same. It wasn't pleasant work, but it let me keep up the payments, and my freedom. Too, it put me into a position to attract one of my...clients...into a more permanent relationship. Not marriage, of course, but he set me up in a nice room, gave me expensive clothes and jewelry. It wasn't the life I had hoped for, but it was better than the one I left behind, until..."
"Until you became pregnant," Seishiro deduced.
"That's right. My patron had a wife and family, and he didn't want to deal with another child, so he threw me over, turned me out. I had saved my money, though, so I was able to survive. When my baby came, when I first saw Emiko, I loved her like nothing I'd ever loved before," she said wistfully. "I swore then and there that I'd make something of myself, for her sake. I worked at anything and everything--cook, store clerk, seamstress, often two or three part-time jobs at once. When I wasn't working, I studied; I learned a real trade, bookkeeping, in the hope of getting a decent job."
"That must have taken a lot of courage," Subaru said, impressed. Few people could make a new start with their lives as adults, especially in the face of prejudice, economic pressure, and family responsibility.
"I don't know about that," Meiling replied, "but it did take time, too much time. A little girl growing up needs a mother who can be with her, to love her, to show her how wonderful and special a person she is. Instead, Emiko grew up with a woman who wasn't around most of the time, who was always exhausted even when she was there. The fact that at school, she would constantly be teased and bullied didn't help." Tears glittered in her eyes. "She needed love and support from me, and I was too busy just trying to give her a decent life."
Meiling hung her head, and Subaru felt a cold wrench in his heart, sensing the lady's pain, and worse, the utter hopelessness of it all.
"Three years ago, I was finally able to get that bookkeeping job--finally able to spend time with Emiko--but it was too late. She'd grown hard and resentful, after all the years she hadn't had a real mother. She wouldn't listed to me; I think sometimes she took pleasure in doing the opposite of what I hoped for her just because it hurt me. We fought all the time...I...I don't blame her for that, you have to understand. When she was a little girl, the only time she could be sure of getting my attention was by misbehaving, getting into trouble."
"How old is your daughter now, Chiang-san?" Hokuto asked.
"She's sixteen, just last month."
"Our age," Hokuto said softly.
Subaru laced his gloved fingers together.
"Do you know why she ran away?"
Meiling nodded. She pushed her hair back off her face, then took another drink of tea.
"Yesterday, Emiko announced that she was going to drop out of school. She's always been a good student, Sumeragi-san; she was sure to pass the college examinations and become a success, live the kind of life I dreamed of when I was still in my home village."
Subaru could picture it, a lonely girl with few friends, concentrating more and more on her books as she drew within herself, all the while wondering what it was for.
"We had a horrible fight over it, both of us crying and screaming at one another, until the neighbors were forced to complain over how loud we were being. Nothing was resolved; we just went off and worried and sulked. The next morning we barely spoke to each other over breakfast, and when I went off to work, I thought there would be another fight when Emiko and I got home." A shudder ran through her. "Instead, when I got to work, I found that some of the documents I had taken home to work on were missing, and when I came back home, Emiko was gone!"
"She had packed a bag, taken some of her clothes and a few personal things, and left me a note, telling me...telling me that she couldn't stand living at home any more...that she was going to make her own way from now on. She had stolen the records out of my briefcase because she knew they were valuable, could finance her life alone."
There was something different in her expression when she talked about the stolen documents. All the rest of the time she had been worried, sad, even scared, but now there was a hunted expression in her eyes, fear that seemed to be about herself, not just her daughter.
"Who would Emiko-san try to sell the records to?" Seishiro asked. "Knowing that would be the easiest way to find her."
"I'm not completely sure...but she's been hanging around with a gang lately, a group of punks that call themselves...oh, what was it?" Meiling cursed with frustration, then dredged the name from her memory. "The Fire Ronin."
"How could they help her with business papers?" Subaru wondered, trying to connect street crime and corporate finance in his mind. Seishiro, judging from his serious expression, seemed to know already, but then, he often understood things that Subaru missed.
"It's..." Meiling began, then stopped and started over. "The people I work for...they're not a business, at least not in the ordinary sense of the word."
"You mean...?" Hokuto said.
"They're gangsters, yakuza." Her face twisted wryly. "I should have known better when they hired me. I'm an illegal alien; probably, they found that out and considered it an extra benefit. I could never go to the police to expose them."
Subaru realized that this hadn't been part of her reasoning when she had mentioned why she hadn't gone to the police about Emiko. It wasn't a coincidence, he felt. Meiling wouldn't have minded being deported if it was to protect her daughter.
"So, Emiko-chan has to be found before these yakuza learn she had the papers," Hokuto concluded.
"That would be true," Seishiro said softly, "except they already know, don't they, Meiling-san?"
"Sei-chan, how could you know that?"
He didn't answer Hokuto, but turned to the Chinese woman, who sat trembling on the sofa beside him.
"The yakuza found that you didn't return the records today," he said. "They came to your home, they found your daughter's note. They're already going after her even now; they may even know where to start. You sensed that Subaru was someone who might help her, so you came here. That's why you can't leave yet."
"Seishiro-san..." Subaru whispered, understanding. "Meiling-san, I promise that I will find her."
Meiling smiled, a real, genuine smile that shone with relief. In that instant, her outline began to fade, shimmering away into tiny sparkling lights, and then she was gone.
Hokuto stared, open-mouthed.
"What--?"
"Those gangsters--they probably killed her," Subaru said, clenching his fist. "That's why she came here, not to the police or a private detective."
"Subaru..."
"So...I have to find her daughter."
Seishiro rose, coming over to Subaru's side and laying his hand on the young onmyouji's shoulder.
"I will help you."
"Seishiro-san..."
Subaru looked up at the older man, who gave him a dazzling smile, full of warmth.
"The people you will deal with are very dangerous." He grazed the edge of Subaru's cheek with the back of his fingers, a gentle caress. "I won't allow them to hurt my Subaru-kun."
