It was another blindingly hot day in Manaus.

Rin and I had taken shelter in the shade of the restaurant across the street from Skye. Luckily, we had been assigned the morning shift, meaning we had the option to retreat to our air-conditioned home before the worst of the heat.

Skye opened at six in the morning and closed soon after the sun had set. No one was forced to sit around for eight hours at a time anymore. Especially with Yuma and Flower finally allowing Rin and I to help.

We stood next to each other, leaning against the window, silently watching the building across the street. We hadn't seen Miku since I tapped her phone, but, according to her calls, she was still somewhere in Skye. Kanon's tapper conveniently doubled as a tracker. She was still here.

She just never left.

"Do you think she sleeps there, too?" I leaned over to Rin and asked.

She shrugged. "She has to. No one's seen her leave yet. Her phone is upstairs and she's been talking to Luka at least once a day since we got here."

I frowned. Spending your entire life in the office did not seem appealing. There would be no way to escape your work.

I couldn't help but chuckle at the irony of my own statement.

The crowd in front of us was thick, like always, with people going about their daily lives. They easily distracted me. I found myself glancing from one person to the next as they strode by.

As if appearing out of thin air, Flower and Anon slid out of the crowd.

"Get outta here," Anon smiled. "Go enjoy the day."

I rolled my eyes. "How can I enjoy anything in this heat?"

"Quit complaining," Flower said with some amusement. "You could always go take a dip in the river. Practice swimming away from the piranhas."

"Yeah. I'll get right on that."

Rin giggled softly before pulling at my sleeve. "Come on. I'm hungry."

So we left the two of them to take over watch.

"I don't even know what to eat in a place like this," I said. "Everything scares me."

She walked next to me with her chin high, glancing curiously at the buildings and people around us. "I'm just gonna eat some chips back at the house. Those are safe."

"I feel kinda bad not even trying anything, you know? It's, like, their culture. I feel like we should try something."

Rin rolled her eyes. "I'm not here to experience culture, Len."

It was nearly lunchtime and I noticed we weren't the only ones in search of food. In fact, the entire crowd seemed to suddenly switch gears, searching for food stands. I furrowed my brow as the crow formed long lines before certain booths, while others were left completely empty.

"Guess we're not the only hungry ones," I told her after a few minutes. Those who had all received their meal sat on benches lining the street. In each pair of hands was a bowl of soup.

Rin seemed curious as well. She pulled a tourist guide out of her bag and flipped through it.

"It's like they were all on a schedule," I wondered.

"Oh, here," she said, pointing to a place in her pamphlet. "In the afternoon, it's tradition for everyone to eat… this dish whose name I can't pronounce. It's like a soup." She glanced up at me with a smile. "They say it has healing properties."

"Let me see." I leaned next to her to read the paragraph. My brow furrowed at the name. "T...Tacaca?"

She chuckled. "That sounds appetizing."

I slid my hands into my pockets. "Looks like I found my lunch."

"You're going to be puking for the next two weeks."

"They're all fine!" I insisted, gesturing to the crowds that were all sitting, eating, and talking.

"They've been eating it their whole lives, idiot," she said with a grin. "But if you want to, go for it."

We stopped in front of an empty bench in the shade of a tall tree. I set my bag down next to Rin as she sat on it, scanning the street for the booth with the shortest line. I spotted it. "I'll be right back," I said before running off.

She shook her head, watching me go with an amused smile.

After a five-minute wait and an awkward exchange with the non-English-speaking woman at the booth, I sat down next to Rin with the dish in my hand.

She wrinkled her nose the second she caught the scent. "Oh, God. You're gonna eat that?"

"It's rude not to appreciate their food, Rin."

"You're dumb if you eat that."

The bowl itself was made of a plain red clay. It was set inside of another, bigger bowl, to protect my hands from the scalding broth inside. The soup itself was yellow in color with green vegetables floating around in it under a large handful of dried shrimp.

"What's that green stuff?" Rin asked, scooting a bit closer to me in an attempt to get a better look at the contents. "Seaweed?"

"I… I don't really know. It kinda looks like it." In the soup was a single wooden utensil, bearing a precise resemblance to a single chopstick. "Were they supposed to give me two of these?"

Rin looked around. Everyone else was slurping their soup straight of the bowl, using the single chopstick as merely a guide. The more we realized about this mysterious, traditional food, the more amused she became. "Nope," she answered with a sly smile. "You gotta drink it from the bowl."

"It's… hot."

"Well, yeah. It's soup."

"But it's already hot outside."

She crossed her arms. "You bought it, Len. Now you gotta eat it."

"Uh." I swirled the contents with my chopstick. "You first."

She held her hands up in defense. "I know better than to go sticking my nose in foreign foods. Learned that back in India years ago."

"Pussy," I muttered, elbowing her playfully.

She smacked my arm away. "You bought it. Eat it."

I took a deep breath and glanced down at the bowl. Before I could convince myself otherwise, I raised the bowl to my lips and drank.

After a few gulps, I lowered it once again.

"So?" She asked, sitting on the edge of her seat. "How is it?"

It was a little spicy. I blinked as I adjusted to the taste. It was unlike anything I had ever had before, and although I wouldn't say it was particularly bad, it was probably something I wouldn't plan on eating in the future.

"Do you have any water?" I asked her, feeling the spice begin to pick up on my tongue.

She reached into her bag. "That bad, huh?"

"No! No. It's actually kinda good. It's just a little-" I coughed. The intensity of the heat was only picking up. "-spicy."

She handed me her water bottle. I snatched it out of her hand and took a few long gulps.

It didn't help.

I lowered the bowl, blinking tears from my eyes. I couldn't focus on anything but the burning in my mouth.

Rin was getting a kick out of it. "You okay?"

"It's really fucking spicy."

She let out a laugh. "You're crying."

"Yeah. I am."

"More water?"

"Yes please."

The soup sat in my left hand, forgotten for the moment as I tried to drown out the unending heat. It felt like the fiery pits of hell had opened up in my mouth and there was absolutely no escaping them.

I downed the second bottle of water in no time. Rin was giggling maniacally at my pain. I raised a hand to my lips, feeling them curiously. "I think… I think my mouth is numb."

"I warned you," she said between laughs.

I stuck my tongue out into the air. The outside heat suddenly didn't feel so bad anymore. Rin clutched onto her stomach, almost in hysterics, as I wiped away a few stray tears from my face.

"You gonna… finish that?" She was completely out of breath.

I waved my hand uselessly in front of my face, trying to cease the heat. "No," I said, my lips and tongue still numb. "No, I'm not." The words came out sounding more like Mo, I'm mot.

We discarded the remainder of the soup, earning a fair share of dirty looks from the locals, and returned the bowl. Only as we turned the corner did the uncomfortable feeling begin to subside.

Rin smirked at me. "So. How was Brazilian culture?"

"Shut up," I pouted.

We entered the cottage to the sight of Yuma and Kanon sitting at the table, listening intently to Kanon's tablet.

I had finally cooled down enough to comfortably speak. "What's going-"

"Shh!" They hissed in perfect unison.

Rin's amused expression disappeared. She pulled out a chair next to Kanon and listened.

"-just thinking, you know, since you haven't been by in a few weeks-"

"Miku, I'm sorry. But I'm busy." The entire room seemed to darken at the sound of Luka's voice coming through the speakers.

"I know! I know. But… don't you think you've been working a little too hard? And what about dinner tonight? I have it all set up-"

"Ah, shit. I can't. I have to take a trip tonight."

"I thought you were coming home."

"Can't. I've got business."

Miku let out a very audible sigh before picking her voice back up. "That's okay! Another time, then."

"Yeah. Another time."

"Well… I'll talk to you tomorrow, then?"

"If I have service." Luka's voice was flat, as if talking to the babysitter. "Don't be surprised if you don't hear from me."

"Okay. Just… just try, okay?"

"Yeah."

"I love you."

"Love you too."

"Bye, Luka."

Click.

"What a bitch," Yuma said the second the call ended.

Kanon nodded in agreement. "I almost feel bad for this Miku girl."

During the call, I had wandered over to the table. I glanced down at the screen. "What's that?" I asked.

"Her camera," Kanon answered, crossing her arms. "It took me a few hours to get it set up, but the tapper can leak into her camera, too."

The screen showed a bare, paneled ceiling. Miku's blue hair was barely visible from one of the corners. Light poured in from a window behind her.

"That's her office," she continued. "She never leaves it."

"That's… creepy," I said.

Kanon chuckled. "Yeah. It kinda is. But necessary."

It was incredibly uncomfortable to look at that screen as Miku worked on something out of sight. She had absolutely no idea we were watching.

"So she's not coming tonight," Yuma said. "We should probably let Flower and Anon know."

"She said she was going to an airport," I offered. "You don't think she's here?"

"Probably not. Miku asked if she was coming home. I'd assume home is here, or somewhere near here."

Kanon shook her head. "We have no idea where she's going, and even if we did, she'd be long gone by the time our plane finally landed there. We have to wait for her to come back."

Yuma rubbed at his temple. "It… it sounds like it could be a while."

Rin scoffed. It was the first noise she had made since the call began. "I don't get why Miku is working for her."

Yuma chuckled. "We can't exactly ask her."

"Why not?"

The three of us turned to Rin with confused expressions. "Why not?" Kanon repeated. "What do you mean why not? Because she can't know we're watching her."

"I'm sure Miku knows all the info we need. And we know where she is. Why don't we just go get the information out of her?"

Yuma opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.

"You're talking about torture, Rin," Kanon pointed out. "You really wanna hurt this girl for information?"

"I want to get this done," Rin responded flatly. "And I want it done now."

"No way," I said.

Now it was their turn to look up at me. The words had exited my mouth without my permission and they seemed just as stunned as me to hear my voiced opinion. They said nothing, which I assumed meant they wanted me to continue.

"She's…" I trailed off. "She's nice. Like, Meiko was a stereotypical mean, corrupted criminal. Luka's the same. But Miku doesn't seem like that."

"How do you know?" Rin asked with venom in her voice. "You act like you know her."

"I talked to her for maybe five seconds and I could already tell she wasn't a shitty person like Meiko. I don't think I can do something like that to an innocent person."

"She's not innocent," she pointed out. Her eyes had narrowed to a glare. "She's working for Luka-"

"You said it yourself! It makes no sense that a person like this is working for someone so evil. Maybe we're missing something here."

Kanon rolled her eyes. "It's obvious why Miku's working for her," she butted in. "She loves her."

Rin dropped her gaze to the floor.

"But I'm with Len. We can't just go in there and force the information from her."

Rin shot up from her seat. "But you're fine with killing people? You can't hide behind morals in your arguments, guys! We're killers!"

"Say it a little louder, will you?" Yuma growled. "It's not the same, Rin. Miku is not our target. Luka is."

"So you guys would rather sit in this godforsaken condo for the next few months waiting for your opportunity when we could go there right now and take it ourselves?"

"Yeah," I answered instantly.

The other two remained silent as Rin's eyes shot up to mine. She was furious.

"You guys are fucking ridiculous," she muttered. With that, she stomped away from the conversation, climbing up the stairs and disappearing into one of the bedrooms.

"Oops," I said. "Made her mad."

"No," Yuma shook his head. "Not oops. She'll get over it. I don't know why she's so eager to make this scouting mission bloody."

Sure, Rin had been the one member of our group to become desensitized to the idea of death and suffering. She had experienced it the most. She had caused it the most. But it seemed out of character for her. Rin had always liked to keep things at a distance. So why was she so eager to commit a violent act that was so… personal?

I sighed. "I should go talk to her." Something was wrong, I could tell. And I wanted to find out what.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Yuma said, opening his laptop once more and resuming his work. "I mean, if you want to be alone in a room with an angry assassin who wants to go torture some civilian, be my guest. But you're an idiot if you do."

The stairs looked uninviting. Maybe it would do her some good to be alone, anyway. "Alright," I said, sitting at the table. "What are you working on?" I asked Yuma.

"Still finishing up Flower's credentials."

"What's she doing?"

Kanon grinned. "She wants to own a gun store."

"And it sucks," Yuma muttered. "Her background check has to be perfect, her files have to be completely spotless. Ugh, why did she have to pick that?"

Tsk tsk tsk. Rin out here wanting to torture everyone.

Thanks for reading! :)