Chapter 4

A wind ripped through the open-air market, and hangers clinked against the stall's railings. 'What do you think of the Hell's Angels t-shirt? What if I wear it like a mini-dress? Is that too cliché?'

Have never been asked her opinion regarding fashion—especially not by a stranger—Mai shook her head in confusion. 'No…?' she whispered, her voice scratchy with the beginnings of a cold.

The enquiring woman stretched the shirt over her thighs and huffed with indecision. She lacked the confident nature that Mai assumed any person with a spike through her chin should instinctively embody. 'Help me out here,' the woman said. 'I want this outfit to say I'm tough, I'm original, I'm sexy—and I'm not afraid to show off my ass. You know, just like yours does.'

Mai tugged the waistline of her holey, floor-scrubbing jeans and attempted to smooth the tear lower so that it showed off her leg and not her butt. Mai's mortification made the cold and damp late-October morning feel like a blistering afternoon in mid-July.

Tired of seeing her wear the same mini-skirt for over a week, Aoi had ordered Mai to pick up new barmaid clothing. Fujiwara had asked a lot of questions regarding Mai's situation, and speculations were the hot topic of Gin Knockers staff gossip. Someone was bound to find out that Mai's building had burnt down, and they'd tell her perverted, scheming boss.

The pierced woman pinched Mai's elbow. Mai flinched and jerked backwards. Fisting her hands, she cocked her right arm back with enough tension that she shook bodily. It was a defensive stance that she'd picked up at the shelter. Oblivious to Mai's hyper-alert status, the woman held up five shirts. 'Which one do you think?'

Mai glanced at the stall owner. He hadn't missed Mai's reaction, and he watched her warily. Mai'd hoped to haggle with the owner and purchase a stained dress for half-price, but judging by his pinched expression, she doubted the deal would go through.

Glancing back at the woman and noticing the designer label that hung from her handbag, Mai lowered her fists and pointed at one shirt. 'Not that one. The others are good.'

The woman tossed aside the rejected shirt and regarded the others. To be specific, she put back the 'sometimes I worry about zombies' t-shirt—the only shirt in the bunch that Mai'd found amusing. If it didn't cost much, she planned to buy it.

'Which one is best?' the woman asked.

Having no idea, Mai pointed at the black and the green shirts. 'You could layer them and wear a gold belt?' She gestured at the stall's accessory display. 'But the other two would be nice as well.'

Shrugging, the woman thrust the clothing at the stall owner and pointed at a gold belt. Purchasing clothing on a whim, Mai'd never had that luxury. Even when her mom was alive, they lived frugally on the wages of a teashop assistant, and though Mai wouldn't consider herself jealous, she did wonder if she'd ever have that kind of financial freedom.

By encouraging the women to spend more, Mai'd managed to sweeten up the stall owner. In the end, she guiltily clutched a bag containing the t-shirt and dress that she'd wanted, along with a pair of shorts, stocking, a pack of cotton panties and a large flower-brooch which would hide the stain on her new dress. All given to her for a ridiculously low sum. She bewilderedly thanked the stall owner before losing herself in the growing market crowd. She wondered why some people acted so nice toward her, while other people… well… did not.

Now she faced the problem of hiding the purchases from the other shelter 'guests'. Saint Giles seemed perpetually full of people. People who moaned, smelled, fought and thieved.

The situation at Saint Giles had certainly changed since Father Endo's arrival and her horrifying kennel dream. Excepting Atari, the shelter staff was still rude to Mai—but at least they guaranteed her a futon for sleep. Initially Mai assumed that the gifted futon was part of a compromise: if Mai was allowed a futon, she wouldn't disturb people with her screaming in the canteen. According to Atari, though, Father Endo had submitted Mai's application for permanent futon availability based on health issues.

By Atari's account, Father Endo was merely over-keen about his new role as director of the shelter. Apparently he often recruited new 'guests' that he met on the street, and he was exceptionally proactive in fundraising. The high school girl thought the world of Father Endo, and while Mai couldn't share her enthusiasm, he became a little less terrifying—just so long as she didn't run into him in a darkened hallway.

Every day the dower matron took great pains to remind Mai that drugs were prohibited before showing her to a dark, futon-carpeted room.

On the first day they'd offered her a place to sleep, the futon had been infested with bed bugs. Luckily she'd suffered only mild bites before realising the problem. She hadn't dreamed that evening, nor for the subsequent three. At first it felt like a reprieve, but she had to wonder what she'd done to earn it.

The dreams rekindled on the fifth day at the shelter. On the first occasion that she stepped back into the kennel room, Mai somehow managed to wake herself up. She'd been standing alone in the kennel room when the boy appeared, and his face dropped in shock as she'd faded away. The second instance followed the same pattern, but he'd tried to grab her and reel her back in, saying perhaps we need to try harder! She'd focused on him and shoved with her mind—hoping that she could tap into an undiscovered PK talent—but instead of forcing the boy back, she'd rocketed backward into a will o' the wisp ether, where she floated for sometime before waking in relative comforted. 'Relative' because some crackhead had been trying to steal her rucksack, which doubled as Mai's pillow.

The tips at Gin Knockers had been generous since her haircut and restyle, though, and Mai clung to the knowledge that, if things continued to be as lucrative, she would be able to move out of Saint Giles sooner than expected. When she got her own place, she planned to put up wards.

Well, she planned to try to put up wards. The more she read up on the topic, the more she figured warding was exactly what she needed to get a decent day's sleep—and she'd been doing a whole lot of reading since the fire.

Mai smiled at the security guards as she crossed the foyer of the Metropolitan Central Library. She'd come here the first time because it was free, and it meant that she didn't have to spend more time at the shelter. By some divine mistake, while lost in the stacks, she literally stumbled over a book about omamori. Though in her case buying shrine amulets probably wouldn't be effective, it gave her the idea to do a little research. She came to the library every day during the late mornings and early afternoons, and if the truth be told, Mai'd never studied this hard even during school exams.

Before cracking the books, Mai quickly accessed the internet at one of the library's public computer terminals. The impulse bordered on stalker-ish, but she hoped if she just took one little peek at Naru's face, maybe she could absorb some of his intelligence. She needed all the smarts she could get in order to get through her research.

So she googled Oliver Davis in the image directory—and of course his handsome, stony, unsmiling face flashed up by the dozens on the screen. It was weird how not famous he'd been as Kazuya Shibuya, and how darn-near royalty he seemed as Oliver Davis. She bit down a wave of anger. He'd lied to her. He'd lied every single day.

It had been a bad idea to google him. She moved to close out the browser when a smaller image caught her eye. Naru and an Englishman stood shoulder to shoulder. Both of their grim faces were smudged with soot. Mai clicked to bring up the associated webpage, and it was an article in an English-language newspaper. Her skills in English reading comprehension weren't great, but she managed to make out the words fire, father, and crime. Naru and his father were busy solving psychic crimes. Naru was busy doing the things he loved—with the people he loved. Mai was happy for him.

She really was happy for him.

But she shouldn't have googled his name. She promised herself she'd never do it again. Breathing deep and steadying her nerves, Mai left the computer terminal and wandered further into the library's depths.

Sitting down at the cubicle that she'd begun to consider hers, Mai pulled from her pocket a wad of napkins that she'd filched from Gin Knockers. She set aside half to tend to her runny nose and flattened out the rest into neat sheets of paper. She flipped open a thick book and began to take notes in cramped handwriting on the napkins. She sucked at maths, but research and analytical equations were her strong points. That's probably the biggest reason that she'd loved working at SPR. That and a certain stony-faced, tight-tushed narcissist.

Mai smacked herself upside the head. 'No more googling for you. Concentrate, idiot,' she whispered to herself in a passable impression of Naru, before she returned to reading about Taoist talismans.

Two hours later her eyes ached, and Mai collapsed into her heap of paper napkin notes. Why did this particular book focus so much on the use of chicken blood? Decapitated and drained. Joints popping, flesh splitting, and legs torn from the hips.

Smash. The sound of shattering glass echoed from the top of the dilapidated stairwell. 'You're a filthy whore.' Crack.

A girl of twelve or thirteen tumbled down the stairs—legs tangled and arms pinned to her chest. Her head thwacked against the banister and then against the steps before she finally landed in a lifeless heap at Mai's feet.

From the girl's limp hands rolled a glass ball—like a snow globe but filled with black sand. Mai reached down, but whether it was to help the girl or retrieve the ball, she wasn't sure. Fear knotted in her stomach, and she hesitated at the last moment. The girl sat up by way of a series of mechanical jerks—as though she were a windup doll. Tipping her head back, she stared up at Mai with empty eye sockets. 'Filthy,' she hissed.

Mai spun around and tripped onto a city sidewalk littered with rubbish bags and mounds of blankets. Large paving stones rocked beneath her weight, as though they might drop into the sub terrain at any moment. Bracing herself, sucking in deep breaths, Mai stood upright and waited. Traffic trundled in the distance. Otherwise the place seemed abandoned—but she could feel something watching. Greedy. Hungry.

Encased in meshed shutters, shop windows glowed with dim security lights. Only a furniture showroom's window remained uncaged and fully lit. As though someone had forgotten to lock it up. It exhibited a sample bathroom set—white ceramic sink, toilet, shower—and on the edge of the large tub sat a mannequin.

Mai edged forward, testing each paving stone before applying her full weight.

It was just an average mannequin. No evil smile. No blood. No missing parts. Standing before the display, Mai didn't like it.

A growl rumbled through the street at her back, and Mai whipped around to face it. Red eyes burned like twin ends of newly lit cigarettes.

She scrambled backward, her feet tangling in each other, and the display window shattered. She covered her face in preparation for landing in a bed of broken glass, but she instead found herself submerged in water.

Sputtering, she sat up in a cold bathtub. A metallic stench tainted her first breath and coaxed vomit into the back of her mouth. Beneath her a naked and bloated corpse stained the water red with the blood from his slit wrists.

It was the mannequin—but not. She was in the display—but not. The window, the city, the red eyes had been replaced by four mildewing walls.

Mai's shoes squeaked against the floor as she clambered across the bathroom. With her hand on the door, she hesitated. Whatever awaited her on the other side would definitely be worse than a corpse in a bathtub. If she took a moment to catch her breath, if she could only concentrate, maybe she could wake herself up again.

Something pricked the bathwater. A drop from the faucet? She'd never be so lucky.

Mai wrenched the door toward her, but it wouldn't budge. Rattling the doorknob, it moved freely as though it were unlocked, but the door felt glued to the frame. Water sloshed. Straining backward, she yanked with all her weight. Carrying equipment, crates of beer, trays stacked with heavy glasses, her active lifestyle meant she possessed a great deal of strength despite her petite—and recently bony—body, but the door refused to open toward her.

The shower curtain rustled.

A burst of clarity lit off in the back of Mai's mind, and she rammed her shoulder into the door.

It opened forward, and Mai tumbled into a rioting art gallery. Even as she ducked under jabbing elbows, she sighed with deep relief. This scene she knew. She must've stumbled into the rioting art gallery at least a dozen times. Maybe more. Ladies in fine dresses and men in suits battered each other with palms and handbags and the occasional exhibition booklet.

At the centre of the exhibition was the sculpture of a burst fire hydrant. It reminded Mai of a willow tree with metal rivulets spouting out of the hydrant and arching down like the tree boughs. Mai dodged and weaved through the crowd to stand in the sanctuary between the rivulets. From her shelter she breathed slowly until her nerves calmed.

The shrieking, hair-pulling, shoe-throwing, and clothing-shredding lent the scene a Saturday cartoonish quality. People were knocked to the floor and trampled, but they strung up and back into the fray at the first opportunity.

Those unlikely actions comforted Mai. It could not be a pre- or post-cognitive vision because unless she was witnessing an epidemic of rabies or a case of mass-possession, people could not behave in such a manner. After getting backhanded, knocked to the floor and squashed by a dozen people, no normal human could leap to her feet and tear a man's shirt off with her bare hands.

For the time being, she could stand apart from the insanity and pretend things were okay. If it weren't for the riot, Mai might have enjoyed the art on display—the show seemed to have an urban theme. Paintings and drawing and photographs of crowded trains, streets, clubs and cafés. The art spoke of Tokyo with all its inexhaustible energy.

A laptop computer jettisoned over the crowd and smashed into a wall, shattering the glass frame of a large painting. That was Mai's cue to leave. If she stayed longer, she would see palms and elbows replaced by fists and legs torn off chairs, and things would become bloody.

The way out was, as she'd unfortunately learned, not through the front door. That just led to further rioting. The way out was through a photograph—most any one worked. The unfortunate part was that she had no control of where it took her.

Crouching low and hurrying through the crowd, she paused in front of a photograph of a club—she'd gone through it before and it'd been okay. Nothing too graphic on the other side, and so once again she shoved both hands through the image, gripped the inside of the frame and hoisted herself into the next scene.

More mannequins. Tall and slender as real models, the mannequins towered a good 25-centemetres over her—some even more if they had their arms raised up, posed as though they were dancing in a night club—not just any night club. Gin Knockers. Mai's stomach clenched. This was not where the photograph had taken her before.

Over by the centre bar, a mannequin clattered to the floor. And then another fell from the balcony in the VIP lounge. It wore a tiny red dress. It shattered on impact, taking down other dolls in the process.

Mai darted for the staff exit. Behind her she could hear fibreglass bodies falling like bowling pins. Wrenching the metal door open, she stumbled into darkness and tripped to her hands and knees.

Something covered the floor. She fisted her hand, and the floor covering crackled. Crumpled. Like paper.

Mai blinked hard and light flooded the room.

Newspapers. She knelt on a carpet of newspapers.

Someone screamed in fear and agony. For a moment, Mai thought she'd made the sound herself—but she could hardly fill her ravenous lungs, and numbing exhaustion made it impossible for her to draw out such a long note of terror.

Mai pulled herself upright on watery legs. Professional photography lamps flooded the kennel room with light.

In the far left corner, a young girl shrieked and bowed against a large man who had her pinned to the futon. Blood burbled from her mouth and smeared across her face. Her legs scrambled futilely, and she bucked her hips as the man used a black bladed knife to tear open her dress. The blade sliced her skin, and the girl's writhing forced the knife to puncture her further. When red coated half the blade, the man withdrew it. He then wiped the blade in a meticulous pattern on a newspaper before returning it to her stomach.

Mai clasped her hands over her mouth, but the action did not hold in her whimper. The man whipped his head around. Though his features appeared blurred, she could tell that he was looking directly at her. 'You'll have to wait your turn.'

Something thick and rough tightened around Mai's neck. A rope. It snicked tighter, gagging her, and she clawed at her throat in an attempt to get her fingers beneath the noose. Gouging herself with her fingernails, her neck slicked with blood, but the rope remained taut.

'You aren't ready.' The blur-faced man with the knife stood in front of her.

Freezing up amidst her struggles, Mai tried to slow her breathing—to think. Think. There had to be a way out. Behind the blur-faced man, his battered and bloodied victim was sitting up, clutching her stomach as though she could staunch the welling blood.

The blur-faced man dragged his calloused thumb across Mai's bottom lip. 'When you are, you'll come to me,' he whispered. 'And you'll beg me.'

Mai stepped backwards—into emptiness. The rope fell with her. Flailing she grasped for any support, but she only managed to break apart will-o-wisps. This wasn't the same ether that she'd escaped into before. In that ether she'd floated—in this one, gravity claimed her greedily. In this one she knew there was a bottom, and it wouldn't be long until she shattered against it. Or worse, the length of rope would run out.

Mai clenched her eyes shut and sobbed.

Cold hands cupped her face. 'I want you to scream louder this time. I want him to hear you,' the boy with the deep and grave voice said, and Mai obliged.

The rope snapped taut.

...

'Where the hell have you been?' Aoi demanded, hauling Mai out of the rain and in through the backdoor of Gin Knockers. Mai's lungs ached with exertion and the need to cough. Several staff members stared at her soaked attire and listened intently for their manager's reprimand. Aoi didn't disappoint them. 'If you're late again, I'll sack you. Don't waste my time. Got it? Did you buy a dress like I told you? Get changed. You're on the centre bar tonight.'

Mai couldn't have heard correctly. The residual effects of the latest kennel dream must've messed with her hearing. 'The centre?' Mai worked the side bar; she'd never worked the centre. Working the centre meant moving triple-pace, never chatting with customers, and performing the 60-seconds-on-the-hour bar walk. Only aggressive barmen and flamboyant barmaids had what it took to serve all night on the centre.

'You heard me.' Aoi dismissed Mai with a finger snap.

Perplexed by Aoi's harsh demeanour, Mai hurried to the staff toilet, avoiding eye contact with her whispering colleagues. Alone in the grotty room, she ran the cold tap and attempted to wash some colour into her sallow skin. It only brought out the heavy bruising beneath her eyes. She glanced longingly at the pair of shorts that the kind stall owner had given her, but in the end she changed into the dress as Aoi had directed. The ballooned hem fell to mid-thigh, which Mai considered a great improvement on the belt-skirt. The low neckline, though, showcased Mai's throat to a gruesome effect.

Truth be told, she'd come out of the dream with less injuries than she'd expected. Fingerprint-sized bruises dotted her neck, but it lacked the bloodied scratches. Furthermore considering the conclusion of the dream, Mai felt lucky to be alive and to not have bitten off her own tongue.

No part of the dream had been agreeable—but the aspect that concerned Mai the most was the kennel boy's words. He wanted someone to hear her scream. Did he mean the blur-faced man? Or was it someone else? And since the fire had destroyed everything, she couldn't imagine what she owned that the boy wanted to possess.

The bathroom door crashed open.

'You look like shit. Again. What happened to your neck?' Aoi asked, locking the door behind her.

Mai winced as she placed her trembling fingers over her throat. 'I'm sorry, Aoi-san. I fell asleep at the library.'

'Books don't leave marks like that. Boys do. New bit of advice for you, Taniyama-chan: get yourself a prince, get yourself a knight, get yourself a well-hung stable boy—it doesn't really matter which one you choose, just so long as you get rid of the rat-assed bastard who did this to you.'

Mai didn't have the courage to tell Aoi that she'd injured herself in a final battle against a dream-noose. A disgruntled librarian had shaken her awake, and an annoyed crowd of academics had complained about the disturbance that she'd made. She'd have an issue accessing the library again, that was for sure.

Aoi sighed at Mai's silence. 'Do you have any sense of self-preservation?' She tore the scarf from her own neck, and she wound it around Mai's throat, knotting it in a side bow. 'And who said you could look cute tonight? You've got to be tough, Taniyama-chan. Tough.' Wetting her hands under the faucet, she spiked Mai's downy hair into a Mohawk. 'Fujiwara's caught on to you. Someone's been whispering stories in those tallow ears of his. You've got tonight to prove your worth as a barmaid, or he's going to draft you.'

Mai struggled to swallow. 'I'll quit first.'

'And risk the yakuza? You won't.'

Mai's eyes locked with Aoi's in the mirror. 'How did you know?'

Aoi looked away and pulled out her trusty makeup kit. She concentrated on painting Mai's face as she explained, 'Nice girls like you work in cafés and gift shops. You're personal assistants for handsome bosses that fall for your cheerful spirit and profess their undying love for you while on a romantic business trip. Then they eagerly marry you and give you two adorable kids and a big house and happily-ever-after.'

Mai half-choked and half-laughed at the notion of Naru and her ever going on a romantic business trip—let alone him professing his undying love for her. The man couldn't even say please or thank you. The idiot thought that she was in love with his dead brother.

Blotting Mai's lips with a piece of toilet paper, Aoi continued, 'I'll bet that it isn't even your debt that you're paying off, eh? What is it? Your dead mother's? Has anyone ever told you that you're life reads like a bad television drama?'

'More like a Nakata Hideo film,' Mai muttered, but her comment was lost in the hiss of hairspray.

'You've got to keep it together. No hesitations. No mistakes.' Aoi pinched Mai's chin between her thumb and forefinger. 'This is all the help you're getting from me tonight.'

'You keep saying that you're not my fairy godmother, but—'

'If you're still harbouring under that delusion by the end of this shift… well then we'll know for certain that you're psychotic.' She shoved Mai toward the door. 'Now get behind the centre bar and don't let Fujiwara see you fuck up.'

The head barman spared Mai exactly five minutes to run through the unique procedures performed behind the centre bar, and fifteen minutes later, Mai felt like a pinball as her colleagues forcefully moved her out of their way in their rush to serve. She struggled to pull beers, mix cocktails and pour shots all in one go. Sweat dripped off her face, and the taste of makeup soured in her mouth. The scarf constricted her throat, but she didn't dare to take it off.

Until that night, Mai'd considered herself knowledgeable when it came to mixing drinks—if Gin Knockersdid anything right, it was to drill cocktail recipes into the brains of new staff—but half the orders from centre bar customers were for drinks that she'd never heard of. Danish Minuets, Bonsai Titties, Quadriplegic Ninjas. The requests had her pouring over the cocktail bible, and the latest order—a Szarlotka Squall—literally had Mai scratching her head.

'Here!' the head barman shouted, plonking two oversized martini glasses onto the counter. 'It's a Polish martini garnished with coffee beans and a vanilla pod! It'll be popular tonight! Charge 3,000-yen each!'

Mai nearly dropped the bottle of Krupnik. 'How much?'

The barman just winked and rushed off.

When Mai turned back to her customers with the outrageously expensive Szarlotka Squalls, she faced a mob of hens, stags and disgruntled mother-in-laws to-be. It turned out that several wedding parties had booked into Gin Knockers, and the drunken brides were getting territorial.

Soon after that she figured out the customer patterns. The men from the stag-do strictly ordered cask beer, the hens preferred fruity shots and frilly cocktails, the older women stuck to wine, and the dodgier guys demanded their liquors straight up. Forecasting the requests smoothed the pace, and Mai ceased to get trampled by the other bar staff.

'Mai-chan! Mai-chan! I found you,' Captain-san shouted over the music. Thrusting several scrawny girls out of his way, he leaned across the bar. 'Hey, hey…. Knock-knock.'

Relieved to see a familiar face, Mai grabbed two tumblers and a bottle of rum, and she hustled over to pour the drinks in front of her favourite regular. 'Who's there?'

'Smell mop.'

'Smell…?' Mai paused to work the joke out in her head. 'Captain-san! That's terrible.' As she laughed, the tightness that had manifested in the bottom of her lungs moved from a vague rumbling to a rather unattractive and painful hacking fit.

'You got to quit smoking, Mai-chan! It'll kill you!' Captain-san said, handing her the usual wad of money.

Mai pressed the back of her hand to her mouth for a second. 'I don't smoke.'

'In that case,' Captain-san tossed another lump of cash onto the bar, 'go see a doctor, jou-chan!'

Dismayed Mai waved her hand at the money, trying to indicate that he reclaim it, but the man turned his back and shuffled across the dance floor. Although the DJ remixed Bob Marley in a trance track, Captain-san still appeared to be doing the travelling-time-step. Mai put the dually generous tip in her apron and promised herself she'd find a way to repay his kindness.

Aoi hurried behind the bar with an unlabelled bottle of spirits. 'You're first to walk the bar tonight, Taniyama-chan!'

Mai shook her head, but Aoi ignored her. She dropped a glow-in-the-dark necklace and a whistle around Mai's neck and handed her the unlabelled bottle. Another staff member kicked a chair up against the end of the bar.

Sirens sounded through the club and all the spotlights swung to illuminate the centre bar. DJ DeeJay whooped into the mic. 'What time is it?' he asked.

'60-seconds-on-the-hour!' the crowd answered.

'That's your cue, Taniyama-chan! Life's a bitch.' Aoi smacked Mai on the butt, and a barman lifted her up onto the chair. Mai pleaded silently with Aoi, but the older woman shrugged and shouted: 'So fuck her!'

Mai hesitantly stepped onto the bar. She'd seen other bar staff do this every Saturday night—and she'd hoped to never do it herself.

The crowd rushed the bar, only a few stragglers and the VIPs remained apart from the heaving mass. On the balcony, Fujiwara leaned into a booth and chatted with a tall, shadowed man. Mai's stomach lurched. Fujiwara nodded in her direction.

Someone grabbed Mai's ankle, and when she jerked away, several guys whooped and announced that she was wearing polka-dotted panties. Pressing her legs as firmly together as possible while still edging toward the centre of the bar, Mai stumbled over grasping hands and empty glasses. DJ DeeJay started the countdown from 10. Mai fumbled with the whistle that hung around her neck and she shoved it into her mouth. Choosing a harmless looking guy from the crowd, she gestured that he should turn around and lean his head back on the bar. When the alarm sounded, Mai upturned the bottle of spirits and poured a steady stream into the guy's mouth.

When the guy could swallow no more, he choked and jolted away. Mai blew her whistle and moved on to the next person with her head on the bar. One of the brides. She only took five second's worth of spirits before gasping, and the next two brides followed suit. By the time the 60-seconds were up and the sirens sounded, Mai had emptied the spirit bottle down five customer's throats. Making a random guess at which customer had swallowed the most, she pointed to the first guy and blew her whistle several times. The crowd went mad. The bridal parties tried to boycott the decision, but generally the patrons agreed with Mai's judgement, and they continued to cheer. It was impossible to not smile when everyone seems so exhilarated. She handed the empty bottle to the 'winner', and he held it over his head like a trophy.

Mai took a moment to image just how disappointed the guy would be if someone told him that the bottle had been filled with 10 percent gin and 90 percent water. He'd probably cry. Mai giggled at his deluded sense of victory and at the drunken, but jovial, patrons as they moved back to the dance floor. The head barman and several other colleagues gave Mai the thumbs up. Aoi leaned against the mini-fridges with her hands in her pockets and her eyebrows raised. She appeared satisfied, if mystified, as though she'd won an ill-gambled bet. From the dance floor sidelines, Captain-san and Polly-kun waved at Mai, and she returned the gesture, shrugging with a bewildered grin. It boggled her how everyone found the 60-second ritual amusing. Staff and customers alike.

Only one person did not appear amused, and he too stood on top of the bar, facing Mai from the far end. He crossed his arms, and his mouth pulled into an uncharacteristically ominous frown.