Meeting of Families

[Eidolon]

Kōta’s gokudō connections bought them favour with this particular rest point. He had insisted Moscow would be the place they would finally set down roots, yet it was already the second of their accommodations in the short months since their arrival. Fortunately Eido had no roots waiting to set down, and she suffered no particular disappointment at the move. The rooms above the bar were small for two people (not least with the small menagerie that sometimes travelled with them), but the landlord here was prepared to turn a blind eye to the manner of Kōta’s work. So far he had, but it always changed eventually.

Legitimate employment was difficult to come by without a CID, which left Eido herself at a familiar impasse in a new city. With so little to her name, oftentimes the only available, no questions kind of work on offer required the selling of flesh or charm, neither of which she had to give. Still, she dutifully combed the city for opportunity during the day. Paused when it grew too fruitless a search, seeking little pockets of solitary peace from the frustrations of her ghostly existence instead. Amidst the bustle of ordinary life she missed home with a deep and abiding ache; pain that afflicted worse, not better, as the years had worn on. This she did not confide in her brother. Nor how sometimes her hand pressed to where the kaiken was strapped to her person.

But there was no honour in a death forestalled for so long.

In the evenings, when her brother was absent, she made herself useful where she could. She did not work the bar, and Gus did not ever ask her. In fact, though she sometimes sensed the weight of his gaze like she were a puzzle he could not begin to fathom, he did not speak to her much at all. But there was a small kitchen out back, for preparing greasy western food when the customers called for it, and there was always something that needed cleaning there. It wasn’t necessary work; they paid, perhaps extortionately, for the space upstairs. But it kept her busy. Silence settled a burden around her shoulders no one usually disturbed, perhaps under the assumption that she did not speak much English. Or perhaps because she simply never looked up.

When Gus plodded in from the bar beyond, wringing tattooed hands on a cloth and grumbling to himself about fucking Japanese beer and the lost virtues of vodka, she did not pay any heed. His tongue was habitually uncouth, his customers always considered nuisances to some degree or other. She found it a strange attitude, but such vitriol seemed both undisguised and unremarkable in this part of the world, and insults flew without meaning or recourse. Cigarette smoke wafted as he passed, only to permeate as his boots abruptly stopped. She felt his attention linger on the sparse scratches half-healed on her forearm as she scrubbed the counters. It was not the first time he had taken silent note of her injuries, seldom though they were. But Gus knew what Kōta dealt in, and he knew it was nothing so innocent as kitten claws that marked her.

“I’ll fetch it,” she said. He had not been about to ask her, but she understood in the shift of his weight that he had been about to reach out. Reflexes saw her smoothly around whatever action he had intended; kindness or curiosity, she had no use for either.

Gus grunted, and it sounded more annoyed than it did grateful, but he also retreated back the way he had come, the cloth whipped over his shoulder. Alone again, Eido closed her eyes. The thought of the avoided touch made her feel briefly sick; that no matter how crude she perceived him to be, he still did not deserve the abomination he had unknowingly welcomed under his roof.

She knew enough of where things were kept, though they had only been staying here a short while. When she emerged a short time later with the crate, she did not look about to see who was in the bar, and least of all who might be drinking the asahi; in fact her eyes remained downcast, muted expression shadowed by the straight curtains of hair either side of her cheekbones. She placed one bottle on the bar, a little to Gus’s left, and then turned to stack the rest away without prompting. He did not thank her, but she was content with the anonymity.