A/N: I'm alive! Midterms are over, and I dedicated my weekend to finishing this chapter. It's been sitting on my computer half-finished for weeks, and I'm still not happy with it, but it's going up anyway because I really want to write the next one. My sincerest apologies for the wait and for the typos I know I missed. This one's full of Charlie saying hey and Li pretending it's not giving him panic attacks, so maybe that'll make up for it?

For your ears: Hello Time Bomb by Matthew Good

Also, this is kind of like a Where's Waldo chapter. EVERYBODY's in it. Except for Misaki.

Misaki is not in this chapter.

OR IS SHE?

Chapter 5: Hello Time Bomb

I was sitting at the kitchen table, carefully pulling butterfly stitches across the laceration on the heel of my left hand. Last night, after using a pair of forceps to pull the glass out—just a small splinter—I'd feared I would need actual stitches. Seeing it now, the cut wasn't as bad as I'd thought. Tape was enough.

"Would have made a lovely tracking device."

I could hear the teasing note in Jack's tone, but I looked up and shot him a don't-push-it glare anyway. Something in me felt off-kilter after my dream. I wasn't bothered so much that my mind had taken me back in time, back to Cambridge. It did that on a much-too-regular basis anyway, taunting me with the echo of a memory. I'd built up a resistance to it over the years, stopped noticing the aching hole it left in my chest. What bothered me was that, this time—

—this time, nothing had changed. I'd waited for it, fully expecting that feeling of loss to hit me since Jack was right there and he was holding me and it felt like it used to and I could pretend nothing had changed even though everything had. But I hadn't felt suddenly empty. And now I was scared that maybe I'd shut down; maybe I should have wished for the way things were, but I'd made myself numb to it.

Except… I knew that wasn't entirely true.

I frowned down at my hands and hoped that, if Jack was watching, he'd think it was in concentration, or even pain, as I pinched the edges of the laceration together and smoothed another piece of tape over it.

There weren't many things I was certain about, but one of them was that I still cared for Jack. How much and in what way were points I was figuring out.

Done patching myself up, I closed the first-aid kit and gathered the plastic backings from the stitches to throw in the trash. Sitting next to Jack on the couch in the living area, July tracked me across the kitchen with his slate-colored eyes.

I had nothing against July—in fact, I rather liked the strange, quiet boy—but I hadn't exactly come to terms with the fact that he was keeping track of me for Jack. Learning that Hemlock most likely had a troop of Dolls doing the same thing had me constantly fighting the urge to look over my shoulder. Even though I wouldn't see anything, not even if the specters were there.

"Someone is in the hallway," said July.

I shook my head as if my thoughts were something physical I could dispel if I applied enough force, but they settled at the back of my mind, heavy and clouded. I glanced at the door, then at July. "Is it Li?"

July sighed—even a simple sound like that lacked inflection. "Black hair. Blue eyes."

"It's Li," I confirmed, glancing around the room for Bard. I didn't see him, and thought he might have retreated to the darkness of the bedroom to rest. I almost hated to go after him, just in case he had finally managed to go to sleep. I was about to go look for him anyway when I glanced back at Jack, hearing the creak of the couch as he and July stood.

"Hey."

"What?"

I waited till Jack was looking at me and dropped my voice to a whisper. "Did you get her messier code from him?"

"From who?"

"Li."

Jack shook his head. "No, why?"

"Who'd you get it from?"

That smug smile crept across his face again, lending a boyish, mischievous gleam to his eyes as he walked towards me. "I'm afraid my sources are confidential," he said, his smile turning to a playful smirk. "But I might be persuaded to give them up for something in return."

"Ha." I quirked an eyebrow at the thinly veiled suggestion. "Everything you say sounds so charming with that accent."

"Yes, I know," he said, drawing out each perfectly formed, perfectly British syllable. "Is it working?"

"Nope." I swung towards the door, trying very hard not to giggle as Li knocked and I reached for the handle. I braced an arm against the frame and smiled, laughter lingering in my expression. "Hey."

I realized I'd probably answered the door too quickly when his eyes widened in surprise. But he recovered faster than I did, his eyes softening into an affable smile. "Good morning."

"Thanks for coming. I know it's kind of early." Nine-ish was still early, right? I stepped back to make room for him. "Come on in. I've got to go find the dog."

He stepped past me into the foyer. If I hadn't been looking down, I might not have caught the small hitch in his stride when he noticed Jack standing a few feet away. I glanced up; saw Jack's eyes narrow as he tilted his head. The lurch in his expression was familiar enough that I knew he was about to break social convention—polite introductions be damned.

"Sorry. Have we met?" he asked abruptly.

The door clicked shut behind me.

"No, I don't think so," said Li, some of the brightness gone from his voice. And Jack just stood there, staring as if he were studying a painting whose name escaped him.

I'd been about to run down the hallway to get Bard, but I hesitated and glanced between them. "Uh… Jack, meet Li. Li, this is Jack, my boss."

I thought that would get at least a smirk from Jack, but he hardly seemed to have heard. I waited a little longer, watching a few more seconds of intent staring, before turning down the hallway. I heard Jack say something—hopefully hello, nice to meet you, but probably not—as I poked my head into the bedroom. The blankets were still rumpled. I hadn't bothered with them; a good thing since Bard was sprawled across the foot of the bed. One of his ears twitched in my direction.

"You make a better welcoming committee than Jack."

He groaned.

"Let's go get your teeth fixed, huh?"

Another groan as he pulled himself off the bed. He slunk towards me, using his first few steps to stretch the stiffness out of his joints. Had the situation been different, I probably would have teased him about being an old man like I usually did, but Bard was getting old. I saw it especially clearly now that he was injured, and it wasn't something I was too keen on thinking about. I'd known from the beginning that wolfhounds lived short lives; I'd only recently had to begin considering the possibility that Bard might be approaching retirement.

Unaware of my inner turmoil, he poked his nose under my hand and trudged into the hallway. His tail perked up at the same moment I noticed the strange, staticky chill in the air. I rubbed my arms as goose bumps prickled across my skin.

"Jeez, is there a draft in here?" I paused in the threshold between the hallway and the foyer in time to see an unsmiling-Jack release an unsmiling-Li from a handshake.

"Is there?" Jack asked. He finally managed a pleasant expression, but I thought it probably had more to do with July quietly walking to his side and taking his hand than feigning politeness. "I didn't notice."

I narrowed my eyes at him. If I'd learned to associate anything with Jack, it was the various meanings of the word cold. I couldn't be sure he understood the what-are-you-doing? look I gave him—if he did, he ignored it.

Bard chose that moment to scratch at the door, and we all turned towards the sound as if it were the most interesting thing ever.

"Guess we should get going," I said. I darted into the kitchen and grabbed my bag, which was conspicuously lighter without the weight of BK-201's knives. I spared the pair of silver blades a glance as I turned away from the table. I was thinking about their strange shape, the way the metal hilts had felt in my hands, when I looked up and noticed Li watching me. He smiled.

"We'll walk out with you," Jack said. He led July to the door and opened it enough for Bard to slip out.

"He needs a leash or I'll get deported."

Jack laughed as I rummaged around in my bag for the leash I'd been using. "Oops. Better hurry—I think he's calling the lift."

"Bard!"

"He knows how to push the elevator button?" Li was the last one out and pulled the door shut behind him. "Smart dog."

"Too smart, sometimes."

The elevator's gleaming doors were just yawning open as we reached them. We piled in, moving to separate corners with Bard sitting in the middle. In the time it took for me to snap the leash onto his collar, the doors were opening again to let Jack and July off.

Hand resting on top of July's ever-present hat, Jack guided the boy off the elevator and heaved a dramatic sigh. "Guess we better go see who made the assassination list today."

I barked a laugh that fell somewhere between surprise and mortification, and wondered if I should acknowledge Li's alarmed expression.

"That was a joke," Jack said over his shoulder as the elevator doors began to close between us. I barely caught his amused smile. "As far as you know, anyway."

"You keep an eye on him, July!" The doors thudded closed on his name, but I thought I heard the boy's answering "Mm" from the other side. I looked at Li and quickly said, "He was joking. There's no list."

He looked at me askance, blue eyes narrowed over an uneasy smile as if he didn't quite believe me. "Seems like an interesting guy to work for."

"Yes… Very." I busied my hands with adjusting the strap of my bag across my chest and shoulder, it's weight settling against my hip. "Had you two met before?"

"Not that I remember, but we might've passed each other on the street or something."

I nodded. "He's not the best at socializing. I tell him all the time, but social conventions aren't really his thing."

"You tell that to your boss?"

"Well, him being my boss is kind of secondary."

"Oh." His eyebrows rose as his face filled with understanding. "You two are—"

"No! Ha, no…"

Bard's head swiveled around, and damn it if he wasn't raising his eyebrows, too. My stomach twisted into a knot as if the elevator had just begun to free-fall to the ground floor.

"We're not together," I said firmly. "We're just old friends."

"So, July…?"

… is a seven-year-old Doll working as an agent for MI-6. But since I couldn't exactly tell Li that, I said the next most ridiculous thing that came to mind. "He's Jack's son."

"Ah. They look a lot alike."

"Yeah, they do." And they did, didn't they? At thirty-eight, Jack was plenty old enough to have a seven-year-old son, too—had I known the timelines didn't match up, I might have entertained the idea that July actually was his.

"Do you have the vet's address?" Li asked.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and thumbed over the note I'd made. "Right here."

He nodded as I leaned over to show him the screen. "It's not too far from here. A fifteen-minute walk, maybe. Do you mind walking?"

"Fine with me. Might be hard to get a taxi with Bard, anyway."

"That's true."

I decided I liked his smile. He did it a lot—an endearing mixture of friendliness and timidity. Even when he'd picked me up at the airport, I'd gotten the impression he was one of those perpetually easy-going people who took everything in stride. Not quite the never met a stranger type Jack could be, but still easy to talk to.

Nice. Maybe that was the word I was looking for. But it felt too simple.

Li tilted his head at Bard as the elevator reached the bottom floor and the doors dinged open. "What happened to him?"

I gathered Bard's leash in my hands and stepped out. "A couple of his teeth broke off last night, and he won't eat or drink anything."

"Sounds rough," Li said, a note of sympathy in his voice.

"Yeah. Thanks again for doing this."

Another smile. "Of course."

Morning sunlight streamed in through the lobby windows, illuminating the front desk and the woman sitting behind it with a golden glow. She gave a polite smile and said what sounded like "good morning" as I handed over my key.

Li held the exit door open for Bard and me, and, suddenly, we were out on the bustling Shinjuku street. It was like walking out of a movie theater after the credits and into the noisy, incoming crowd.

"How is it living on the top floor?" Li asked.

"Surprisingly quiet." I appreciated it right at that moment, now that I felt like I'd just been dropped into the middle of an overturned anthill. "I figured out how to get up on the roof, too. The city's really bright, but you can still see most of the stars."

The noise made talking difficult, so we fell into silence and concentrated on weaving through the crowd.

I stuck close to him, walking side-by-side when space allowed, and keeping an eye on the back of his white shirt when the crowd thickened. I tried to remember the path we were taking; I looked for landmarks, but the combined problems of my lack of a good-night's sleep and the sheer number of would-be landmarks made it impossible. To be honest, I'd never enjoyed big cities very much. All their smells and colors and people and street-mazes. Sensory overload generally meant I found them more exhausting than energizing, and it wasn't like I had that much energy to spare anyway.

Bard made the commute more bearable—people were less likely to bump and jostle when faced with a bear-sized, grumpy-looking dog. I kept a hand on Bard's shoulders, and I gave his ears a rub every now and then. He kept pinning them back so they pressed flat against his skull, and the way he held his jaw slightly open made it look like he was snarling. I thought maybe he was.

I was sure his current predicament didn't help much, but crowds weren't really his thing, either.

By the time we reached the vet's office, Li was the only one of us who didn't look harried. Bard jumped into one of the chairs in the waiting area and refused to move, while I stood at the front desk listening to Li translate the secretary's broken English. We were the first ones there, so we didn't have to wait long before the veterinarian walked Bard and me back to the examination room.

The vet was a middle-aged man with streaks of gray in his hair. His eyes were a dark, unusual shade of green; I only noticed because the blue scrubs he wore under his lab coat made them stand out. He could speak English well enough that even Bard understood what was about to happen, which was probably why, I thought, he tried to sneak out when one of the assistants crossed through the examination room and left the door open. Had he been the size of a normal dog, he might have made his escape, but I caught his tail and called him back.

He put up with having his mouth pulled open and poked around in, but the temperature-taking business didn't go so smoothly. Even I felt awkward about it and stared at the ceiling the whole time. When it was over, Bard just stood there looking embarrassed with his tail tucked between his legs.

"Is a good dog." The vet gave Bard's head a vigorous rub that left pieces of his fur standing on end. "Eight is old for dog his size. You notice him slowing down?"

"He still gets around okay." I caught Bard's eye and gave him a reassuring smile. Thoughts of his retirement came floating back to me, but I wasn't going to talk about it now. "He gets stiff in the mornings and whenever it's cold out."

"Don't we all," said the vet. "I have two options for teeth. Both are surgical, so he'll stay here for while. I either remove completely, or cap with titanium crowns."

Bard's ears perked up.

"Titanium crowns?"

"Is very common—especially among Schutzhund and police dogs."

"He's not really a guard dog or anything like that…"

"He chews a lot?"

Bard snorted and stared at me, brown eyes unblinking. He couldn't talk, but I got the message.

"Yes," I said. "Go ahead put in the crowns."

Bard wagged his tail.

"Very good, very good." The vet grabbed his clipboard and scribbled a line of notes across the page before handing it to me. "Take to front desk. We work him in this morning, and you pick him up in few hours?"

"All right. Thank you." I stood and tousled Bard's ears one last time before reaching for the door. "You be good, okay?"

When I walked out to the waiting area, Li excused himself from a conversation with a squat, older man holding a black cat. A few other people had gathered as well, most with small dogs, though one woman had a brightly colored macaw sitting on her shoulder.

I handed the vet's paper to the secretary and folded my arms across the top of the tall desk as Li walked up.

"How'd it go?"

"He's getting titanium teeth."

Li wrinkled his nose. "Like dentures?"

"Doggy dentures," I laughed, shaking my head. "No, they're just caps. He likes to chew on things—" Like vials of poison and metal cables. "—so it's worth it, I guess."

"I see."

According to Li, the secretary would call once Bard was ready to be picked up, so I made sure my phone was turned up loud enough that I could hear it before we left. I thought I heard something growl as the door swung shut. One of the dogs, I figured, except I heard it again a few paces down the sidewalk.

I looked at Li, a sheepish blush creeping across his nose. I tried to stifle my snort of laughter, but failed. "Is that your stomach?"

He rubbed at the back of his head self-consciously. "I guess breakfast is wearing off."

"Well…" I pulled out my phone to look at the time. "How about brunch? My treat. As a thank you."

"You don't have to do that," he said. A second later, his stomach gave a contradictory rumble.

I couldn't help laughing again. "I insist. I don't know where anything is, though, so you have to lead the way."

"All right."

I was momentarily surprised when he took my hand and abruptly turned against the flow of traffic, forging a path down the sidewalk against the pull of the crowd. It was different now, without Bard. I felt the vacancy at my side as a sharply unsettling emptiness; my large, furry shield was missing. But Li did well enough, cutting through open spaces and towing me along so I wouldn't get swept away. Right then, he reminded me of Bard—enthused by the promise of food. We travelled several blocks in this way before a corner stand caught my eye.

"Hey—"

He stopped so abruptly that I walked into him.

"Whoa. Sorry. You mind if we stop here for a second?" I pointed at the cigarette stand and the posters of a smoking woman exhaling a white cloud pasted onto the walls.

Li's blue eyes followed my finger, and then shifted back to me with a flash of surprise. "You smoke?"

"No, can't stand it, actually. I just owe Jack a pack."

"Oh. Yeah, sure." He released my hand and I strode up to the window. The pedestrian traffic was lighter here; I could move without fearing the crush of bodies shifting to fill the empty space left in my wake.

"Do you have any packs of Death?" I asked, grinning at the irony as I rummaged through the front pocket of my bag for the change I could feel jingling there. I'd only given the silver-haired girl sitting on the opposite side of the window a passing glance, so I nearly missed her small voice when she slid a black and white pack across the counter.

"It's free."

I paused, hand still in my bag. "Free?" It wasn't usually my nature to look a gift horse in the mouth—Free things? Yes, please.—but the unexpectedness of this small kindness had me peering through the glass at the girl inside. "Are you sure? I've probably got the exact change here somewhere."

"It's free," the girl said again, her voice oddly flat. Not out of annoyance, as far as I could tell. In fact, there didn't seem to be any emotion in her tone at all—as if she were channeling July. I might have thought offering free cigarettes was a standard part of her day except for what she said next. "Thank you for saving him."

"For saving—?" I blinked hard before shaking my head to clear the cobwebs out. The girl's voice was so quiet, I'd probably misheard her. "For saving who?" I asked.

The girl's violet eyes stared straight ahead, fixed on the pack of cigarettes still perched on the counter with a subtle intensity her voice lacked. Her eyes didn't follow the pack when I picked it up and dropped it into my bag. She didn't say anything, either, and I began to wonder if she'd heard me.

"If you're sure…"

She nodded.

I smiled a little unsurely. "Thanks." When I turned around and looked at Li, he only shrugged. "I'm pretty sure I've never met her before," I said under my breath as we started walking again.

"What did she say?"

"She thanked me for saving someone. But the only person I've saved is—" My gait faltered when I glanced back at the cigarette stand, but I couldn't see the girl from where I was now, and I kept walking, letting my brain make it's implausible little connections.

"You saved someone?" Li asked.

"No, I… Sort of?" It didn't really count if I'd saved him from something I'd done to him in the first place, did it? All I'd done was restore the status quo. "It was someone I probably shouldn't have bothered with in the first place. But she couldn't know about that."

An image of July flashed through my head. It made me pause, considering the unlikely possibility. What if she was a Doll? She could have known about it then.

"Who was it?"

"What?" I blinked and looked up into Li's interested expression. His eyes held my own, calm and blue.

"Who'd you save?"

"Oh. I don't know." I tugged at a lock of my hair and turned sideways to slip through an opening in the crowd. "I didn't really get a good look at his face. I know he had black hair kind of like yours, and that's about it."

He nodded, lips pressed into a thin line. Before I could interpret the expression, we were turning onto a more crowded street and another wave of people was upon us. I took his hand again and let him pull me through. By the time we reached the little ramen house he'd selected, I was more than ready to sit down for a while. The place was—thankfully—empty, except for a man who seemed to be narrating something to his bowl of noodles and the pink-haired girl sitting across from him.

We took a table near the back and ordered. I went to college, so I'd eaten my fair share of ramen, but never the kind that didn't come in microwavable cups. While we waited, I asked for a pot of coffee.

"You drink coffee?" I asked Li as I poured myself a cup.

"Not really."

"That's probably good. I wish I'd never started. I don't think I'd be able to function without it, now."

An amused smile pulled at his mouth. "Why not just take a nap?"

I shrugged, the warmth of the coffee mug seeping into my fingers as I raised it to my lips. "I don't know. Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting time by napping when I could be doing other things." I took a quick drink and shook my head. "Sleep can be so troublesome!"

"That's true," he agreed, laughing. It was a clear, musical sound, easy and genuine. "School and work would be easier if we could get on without it."

"If only," I mused. "What are you doing till school starts up again?"

"Odd jobs here and there. And a lot of studying."

"Ah, studying." I set my cup down and stirred in a spoonful of sugar. "Most of the time, I don't miss it."

"Just most of the time?"

"Ha. I guess school is what I miss, and the work and the studying, not so much. It's just, with school, there's a path to follow. There's no guessing about what you've got to get done to graduate. Now I feel like I'm just wandering."

"But you're here on business, right?" he asked, head canted to the side. "That doesn't sound like you're just wandering."

"Yeah, well…" I tapped the spoon against the rim of my cup and set it down on a napkin. An earthy brown stain slowly spread from its center. "I don't want to be doing what I'm doing forever."

"What are you doing? I don't think you ever said."

"I'm kind of… off the books at the moment," I hedged. "I thought I was going to be a doctor—started med school and everything, but I left after two years." I pursed my lips. "That was five years ago."

Li's eyes widened as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "Med school's a big deal. Why'd you leave?"

"My sister." I didn't really intend to stop there, but the rest of my explanation got stuck in my throat. Like it was a freakin' code word and I forgot how to talk at the first mention of it.

Li's shoulders stiffened, and he nodded as if in understanding, like maybe I didn't have to say what had happened because that word said it for me.

"You have a sister?" I asked.

"Mm."

"Older or younger?"

He looked down at the table, his eyes hardening. "She was younger."

I leaned back in my chair, fingers still wrapped around the coffee mug. I wasn't cold, but the heat gave me something to anchor myself to as I nodded, comprehending. "Mine was older."

He looked up then, his eyes still hard and much different from before. He seemed world-weary, and I wondered if I'd undergone the same transformation. Maybe we both looked exhausted for no good reason.

"She was attacked the day I finished my pre-clinical phase," I explained. "She wanted me to keep going." I shrugged and pulled the coffee mug to the edge of the table, balancing it there as steam curled off the top. "I guess I might one day, but there's something else I have to do first. She's the reason I came to Japan, actually."

Li was quiet, but I caught the miniscule nod of his head.

"You, too?"

Another nod, this one bigger.

Any other time, and I might have felt the thorn of morbid curiosity prompting me to ask what had happened, but I didn't. I felt like I already knew, and talking about it at this point wouldn't accomplish anything. At any rate, Li plainly didn't feel like telling the story, and I harbored no desire to hear the tale of another dead sister. I already knew how it ended anyway.

I picked up the spoon and swirled it around my cup a few times, the metal clanging against the glass like the clapper in a bell. "This took a depressing turn, didn't it?" I forced a smile and hoped what they said about smiling to trick yourself into feeling happy was true. It felt backwards to me, but whatever. "And I never answered your question, did I? I'm a shady freelancer. That's what I am."

I could feel Li eyeballing me as I chugged what was left in my cup and poured myself another. If he found my ambitious intake of caffeine at all alarming, he didn't say so. "You don't seem that shady. A little odd, sure…"

I nearly choked. "Odd?" I sputtered.

Li nodded as if it were self-explanatory. "You're an American who calls herself a shady freelancer, you're working for a man who might be a British assassin—"

"He's really not," I interjected, though I suspected I was lying.

"—and you're buying your dog titanium teeth."

"He'll use them!"

Li laughed and shook his head, pushing away a swath of black hair when it fell in front of his eyes.

I crossed my arms. "Okay, you've got me pegged." I waved a hand dismissively before pointing at him. "Now it's my turn to profile you."

"All right." He sat up a little straighter, like a student about to take a test, and looked at me expectantly. A small smile dimpled the corners of his mouth.

"You speak Mandarin, Japanese, and English fluently, right?"

"Yes."

"You speak any other languages?"

"Spanish and Portuguese."

In an effort to disguise my surprise—and jealousy, because mastering American and British English was hard enough—I picked up my coffee and blew on it, watching him with narrowed eyes over the rim. "South America?" I guessed.

He nodded.

"All right. You're a well-travelled linguist, you have a strong interest in the alien sky, and you're helping a shady American and her dog navigate Tokyo. Anything else to add to your resume? A secret identity, perhaps?"

He heaved a despairing sigh. "You've got me."

"Thought so," I said, smug. "Seriously, though. Why'd you pick astronomy?"

"Because of the old stars." The answer came easily, and his eyes softened as he said it. "They always fascinated me when I was a kid, and then, when they disappeared…"

When he didn't go on, I asked, "You think they'll ever come back?"

"I don't know. I don't think they're really gone—just covered up by the new stars."

"All right, so I'm curious." I leaned forward over the table and lowered my voice. An almost-empty ramen house was as good a place as any to talk about this, right? "What do you believe about the new stars?"

He turned his head, as if listening from a new angle would change the question. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean." Despite the mild surprise that tightened his expression, I pressed on. "What are they? I already told you my theory. That they represent the lives of certain people?"

He gave a reluctant nod. "Mm. You did."

"And? Don't lie and say you don't have a theory. If you study the stars, you must have one."

He started to laugh, but it turned into a long exhale when he realized I was being serious. "All right. I guess I believe the same thing as you, then."

This time, I was the one who straightened with surprise. "Really?" And my brain—dammit, my brain—started making all these leaps and bounds it had no business even thinking about just yet. But even as the waitress, a pretty teenaged girl, arrived with two steaming bowls of noodles and vegetables, I was trying to figure out how to ask Li if he knew about Contractors and Dolls and their specters, and if he did, had he ever heard of a woman named—

"There's an all-you-can-eat special today," said the girl. I was semi-intimidated by the one large bowl in front of me, but Li seemed pleased with the news. He was taller than me and athletically built, so I thought he'd finish off two bowls, maybe three. Not twelve. By the tenth, I was fighting the urge to peek under the table to see if he was slipping the noodles to a huddle of hungry orphans or something. By the eleventh, I'd just accepted I was eating brunch with a freak of nature.

I didn't know how to bring up the stars again after that—not because I'd just witnessed a truly spectacular demonstration of overeating, but because more people were filing through the doors and sitting down. Business types, mostly, probably on their lunch breaks. The room was soon humming with the low drone of conversation, almost exclusively in a language I didn't understand.

"What do you want to do now?" Li asked.

A little more than two hours had passed since dropping Bard off, so we elected to start wandering back in the direction of the vet's office. Li chose quieter walking paths; we wound up covering more distance, but the decreased pedestrian traffic was worth it. The air was no longer heavy with noise; I could hear myself thinking and take the time to observe my surroundings.

I'd already seen the industrialized, business-centric parts of Shinjuku, so full of tall, shining, metal buildings. The quieter areas, mostly residential, were older and tightly packed together to maximize space. Despite the dim sensation of claustrophobia cloying my senses, these were the areas I liked better. They were calm; even though morning had passed, the footpaths between the buildings seemed full of the feeling of just waking up.

"Oi, Li-san!"

My head snapped around so quickly that my neck cracked. I stood there rubbing it as I looked for the owner of the impossibly shrill voice, startled when my eyes fell on the unlikely form of a tiny old lady brandishing a broom nearly as tall as she was.

Li turned towards her with his hands in his pockets. "Oh! Oyama-san!"

The small woman said something in Japanese as she waddled towards us, but I didn't realize it was about me until the broom handle was leveled at my face. Out of reflex, I leaned away, but she was sort of half-smiling as she stared up at me.

"Ah, Oyama-san…" Li reached out with one pale hand and carefully lowered the broom. "This is Charlotte. She's visiting from America."

The woman blinked and shifted into English. "An American, huh? We've got a couple of those here."

I shook my head. "Sorry?"

"Oyama-san is my landlady," Li explained, nodding first at the woman and then at the apartment building behind her.

"Buncha foreigners," said the woman. She swung the broom around so it was resting against her shoulder. "You know, there's an opening if you need a place to stay! Right next to Li, actually." At this, her eyes narrowed and shifted between us. "Say, Li, is this your girlfriend?"

My eyebrows shot up at the unexpected question; Li turned bright red and waved his hands back and forth. "N-No! What gave you that idea?"

"Just asking." She turned to me and leaned in, shielding the side of her mouth with her hand to whisper to me, "He's such a good boy, sometimes I wonder why someone hasn't scooped him up yet."

I tried not to laugh, but I couldn't help it. Part of it was out of embarrassment—I could feel my ears getting hot—but the landlady's smug expression and Li's utterly miserable one had something to do with it, too.

"Anyway. You haven't seen that cat around here today, have you?"

Still blushing, Li pulled a hand through his hair and looked down at his feet. "No, not today."

"Good." The landlady spun on her heel and strutted away, heading back to the apartments. "Maybe I ran him off for good this time. You two youngsters go on, now!"

Li quickly took my elbow and started up the narrow footpath, mumbling apologies.

"No girlfriend, huh?" I teased. "Someone's looking out for you."

"She means well. Most of the time."

"Between your landlady and my boss—"

My phone cut me off. The number was restricted, but I figured it was the vet's office and answered anyway. "Hello?"

No reply. Someone was on the other end; I could hear city sounds in the background, covered by some kind of white noise that might have been breathing.

"Hello?" I repeated. "Is this—?"

"Charlotte. Still in Tokyo?"

I stopped walking. Li turned to look at me, a crease forming between his eyebrows.

"Who is this?" It was a man's voice and, though it sounded familiar, I couldn't place who it belonged to.

"Tsk tsk. Short memory. That wasn't a question by the way—I've got eyes on you right now. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough when I asked you to leave."

Kane. The physical effort it took not to whirl around and look for him made my muscles ache. "Still hiding in the shadows, I see." And yeah, maybe in retrospect taunting him wasn't the best idea, but I wasn't the cautious, delicate type. "I want to see her first."

The traffic sounds all but disappeared, as if he'd ducked down an alley. A few seconds later, some kind of muffled, mechanical ding told me he'd probably walked into some kind of store. So he wasn't nearby… If he really did have eyes on me, they weren't his.

"Who's your companion?"

I looked sharply at Li, my eyes widening. Damn it all. "Why?"

Tipped off by my expression, Li turned and came a step closer to me, the last vestiges of his blush giving way to a concerned scowl. "What's wrong?"

I only shook my head. Kane was laughing. "How'd you get this number?" I demanded.

Somewhere on the other end of the line, a dog barked. "Goodbye, Charlotte."

"Wait!" My phone beeped; Kane ended the call.

If he hadn't already been able to tell, the steady stream of curses I unleashed as I scrolled through my call history all but confirmed the answer to Li's question: "Is everything okay?"

Answering seemed pointless, so I didn't. "What's the fastest way to the vet's?"

"Calling a taxi, probably."

"Can we?"

"Of course." He motioned for me to follow him and cut a path towards a narrow alley between two houses. "Come on."

Even with traffic, we shaved a few minutes off the time it would have taken us on foot, but it still wasn't fast enough. Bard had just gotten out of surgery, and Kane was gone by the time we got there. The secretary behind the desk remembered him—he had just paid the bill for Bard's new teeth. I was still caught up in a mixture of shock and confusion when she handed me a note scrawled on the back of the vet's business card. "From that man," she said.

The only part of it I could read said 01:00.

"What does it say?" I asked, handing the stiff rectangle of paper over to Li.

"For the rest of your going away present, and a time and address."

I took the note back and glared at it. Just thinking about Kane standing where I was now, leaning on the counter as he wrote it, made my heart pound. He must've been tailing me all morning. There was no other way he could have known where Bard was.

"Charlotte, what's going on? Is everything okay?"

I looked at Li then, his face so open and plainly concerned. I supposed it could have been his eyes that made it so easy to trust him—they didn't hide anything, left him exposed—or it could have been what he said back at the ramen house. About the stars. But what I was most intensely aware of at that moment was the fact that there were only two people in the whole of Japan I could go to for help. And Li was one of them.

"That phone call I got was from a Contractor. He was here. He left the note."

"A Contractor," Li repeated. It didn't sound like a question.

The vet's office seemed impervious to the word. The noise from the nervous pets and their impatient owners gathered in the waiting area didn't decrease in volume. Didn't increase, either. Just went on unchanged, keeping up a heavy din I could practically feel pressing into my skin.

"You shouldn't go," Li said. His voice had dropped, taken on a gravelly tone.

"I don't really have a choice."

"Why not?"

I wasn't sure I could explain it—I wasn't even sure I was right. But, whether or not Kane was lying, I knew what he meant for me to understand. "The other half of my going away present." I leaned against the counter. Through the fabric of my jeans, I felt the cold bite of steel press into my hip. "I know what it's going to be."