Shinrabansho: Myriad Souls

Akihabara hit me like a wall of signs and pure noise.

Even before I had fully cleared the station area, bright storefronts and layered advertisements crowded my sight. Screens flashed. Music spilled out of open doors. Side streets branched off in dense little corridors full of electronics, hobby shops, cafés, vending machines, and people who looked like they lived half their lives collecting anime swag and half driving in some private world of obsession.

It was not my world, but it suited the task in front of me.

Finding an electronics store was as easy as planned. Picking a phone was not. The rows of them all looked more expensive than I hoped, and I had to keep reminding myself that Natalia-sama had given me the card for a reason.

In the end I chose the cheapest smartphone that still seemed like it would survive being dropped once or twice, paid for it with the bank card while feeling guilty the entire time, and stood off to one side while I fumbled through the setup with the help of a clerk who looked relieved that I was at least capable of reading the screen without melting down.

Once I had a number, I stood off to the side of the store and finished setting up the rest properly. I made a new email first, one with my own name in it instead of anything borrowed or half-hidden, then set up a new LANE account to match. I paused longer than I should have over the username field.

Not the ones from the dream world.

Not Susumu’s habits. Not Reiko’s.

Mine.

In the end I chose something plain enough to feel real and personal enough to keep.

しのはらすみれ304… I guess. ShinoharaSumire304. A bit on the nose, but it would be ideal for a business account later. Much better than fish, foodtype, or whichever name that might appeal too. And it looked a little bare on the screen at first, but maybe that suited me most. A fresh start was never going to feel comfortable on day one.

I set up a new e-mail account and LANE account with that name.

After that, I pulled Natalia-sama’s business card back out of my wallet and added her phone number, email address, and LANE account. Then I sent her the shortest message I could think of. Plus the name people avoid my having to explain who was messaging her, so when I wrote the first message, I kept it simple and direct.

しのはらすみれ304: I got a phone. I made a new email too

The reply came back so fast that I could only stare at it.

きゅうびのひかり: Good

きゅうびのひかり: Send me your number

きゅうびのひかり: And your new email address

I hurried to type them in.

しのはらすみれ304: 090-XXXX-XXXX

しのはらすみれ304: [email protected]

There was barely even a pause this time.

きゅうびのひかり: Saved

きゅうびのひかり: Send me your address the moment you have one

きゅうびのひかり: Buy what you need first

きゅうびのひかり: Do not be stubborn about essentials

I couldn’t help blushing faintly.

しのはらすみれ304: I’ll try not to be

A few seconds passed.

きゅうびのひかり: Don’t hesitate

I stared at that for a second, my face still warm.

Then I searched for the nearest realty office on my phone, which was part of what I needed a phone for. I set up the GPS and walked out of the electronics store at a brisk pace.

The walk there took me through a quieter stretch of streets and up to a modest office with apartment listings displayed in the window. Inside, the air smelled faintly of paper, printer toner, and that clean artificial citrus offices always seemed to have. A woman in her thirties with neat hair and a practical blouse looked up from behind the desk when I stepped in.

“Welcome. Looking for a place?”

“Yes,” I said.

She gestured toward a chair across from her desk. “Go ahead and sit. Do you have a preferred area?”

“Somewhere I can afford before anything else,” I said, sitting down and setting my bag near my feet. I’d learned quite a bit about apartment shopping last time and always regretted what I chose. “Then somewhere with decent station access.”

That got the faintest little shift at the corner of her mouth. Not amusement. Recognition. The kind people got when someone said, without saying it directly, that affordability came first and everything else had to come after.

“Fair enough,” she said. She pulled her keyboard closer. “Will you be living alone?”

I nodded.

“Are you a student?”

Reiko had been. I searched through the memories she allowed me to see, finding that she hid very little from me now. That realization warmed me more than it should have in the middle of a realty office.

Thanks, my wife.

I hoped she could hear me somehow, even if she could not answer me directly. I knew she was always there, always watching over me. It simply took time for her to stir enough to take control, and that was part of why I had trained so hard. I did not want to need her immediately every time something went wrong.

She had not graduated yet. She was in the internship phase, earning credits and building practical experience at the same time while investigating Mitsuhiko on her own. Becoming a yōkai had torn straight through the life she had been building. If I wanted, I could study her memories and learn what she knew about reporting and journalism. Those skills would probably help me to become a detective. I could probably even follow the road she had meant to walk. But when I pictured myself doing that, it did not feel like something that I wanted.

My face was hers. My memories were not only mine. The girl that I had been in Baku’s dream world mixed with mine and Reiko’s. My name was also different.

I could not be Miyata Susumu. I could not be Tanimura Reiko.

But I could be Shinohara Sumire.

“For now,” I said.

She glanced up at me once, then back to the screen. “Do you know your budget?”

I gave her the number.

Her eyebrows moved just slightly. She did not laugh, to her credit. She only clicked a few more times and said, “All right. Let’s see what I can do with that.”

I let out a breath through my nose and folded my hands in my lap while she searched. Papers sat in neat stacks around her desk. A small plastic stand held a few pens with the office name on them. Somewhere farther back a printer started up and spat out a page.

CHT… CHT… CHT… CHHHHHTT

After a minute or two she turned the monitor a little for me to view and started printing a list.

“I’m going to be honest with you,” she said. “At this price range you are not going to have many glamorous options.”

“I’m not looking for anything glamorous.”

“That will help.”

I almost smiled.

She stood and collected the pages from the printer, returning to the desk with them. Then she sat down beside the stack instead of behind it, close enough to point things out without making me crane my neck.

“All right,” she said. “This one is extremely cheap, but it’s far from the station. This one has better access, but the building is older than I’d prefer to recommend to a young woman living alone. This one is technically in your range, but only if you enjoy having almost no floor space.”

She slid that page toward me.

I looked at the floor plan and frowned. “That’s not an apartment…. it’s practically a closet.”

Micro apartments were really scary and practical. A few had toilets that the neighbors could see you using, resting flush against a massive glass wall.

No… I can’t handle that one…

A short laugh escaped her before she hid it behind a cough. “Yes. Well. Some landlords are optimistic as to what renters will tolerate.”

She flipped to the next page.

“This one is a little better. Small kitchen. Unit bath. Laundry downstairs.”

“How thin are the walls?”

She blinked, then looked at the property notes again with more care. “No complaints have been listed.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No,” she admitted. “I suppose it isn’t.”

We went through a few more like that. Too far. Too narrow. Too expensive once the extra fees got involved. Too inconvenient. Too depressing. My eyes moved down the next page and then stopped so hard on one that my fingers tightened against the paper.

I knew that address.

The back of my neck went tight before I had even fully processed why.

The narrow room. The worn flooring. The kitchenette. The view from the balcony.

And that woman next door.

She already listed it…

I had a very bad feeling about my things. That was on my list of things to investigate once I got a new place to live… recovering what I could from my old apartment.

I could hear her voice at once, nosy and too familiar, always fishing, always watching, always storing away little scraps of information for later to spread more rumors. If I lived there again, she would notice within a week that something about me did not line up with whatever version of me she had preserved in her head. Then she would start talking about me too.

The agent noticed my expression change.

“Do you know that building?” she asked.

I set the page down a little too fast. “Yes.”

“A bad memory?”

I gave a short laugh with no humor in it. “You could say that.”

“All right,” she said calmly, taking the page back without pushing. “Then we can cross this one off.”

“Please do.”

Her pen moved with a quick line through the listing.

I let my breath out slowly and looked at the next one.

This address did not hit me with dread. It caught at me in a different way.

I frowned and leaned closer. The floor plan was simple. Narrow entryway. Compact kitchen. Main room with just enough space to breathe. Small bath. Not pretty. Not spacious. Not the kind of place anyone would show off.

Something about it tugged at me anyway. It was the best of the options that I’d seen so far.

The agent watched me for a second. “That one interests you?”

“Maybe,” I said. “It might be a good fit.”

“Good!”

She tapped the listing with one finger. “That one is popular with people living alone for the first time. Affordable, decent access to the station, not especially glamorous.”

“That sounds about right,” I murmured.

“You really do not care about being glamorous.”

“Not especially.”

“That’s surprising. A beautiful young woman that knows how to keep herself beautiful should want more in life.” she laughed softly. “You say it doesn’t matter now. Just wait until you’ve spent a week with bad insulation.”

I looked up at her. “Does this apartment actually have bad insulation?”

“I didn’t say that.” Her lips twisted, studying the listing. “I don’t see any complaints here.”

I snorted before I could stop myself, wondering whether she was covering something.

She smiled a little more openly then and pulled two more sheets from the stack. “Here. These are probably the strongest options that are comparable with what you want. Not exciting, but realistic.”

“We all live in reality as best we can.” I nodded.

“Mm. Everyone makes realistic choices. People always regret overextending.”

She stacked the best listings together, straightening them using the desk, and slid them neatly into a folder. Then she reached into a little holder near her computer, took out her card, and tucked that in too before handing the folder to me.

“Take your time and narrow it down to what you want,” she said. “Once you know which places you actually want to see, contact me. If one of them goes before then, I can suggest alternatives.”

I accepted the folder with both hands. “Thank you.”

She nodded. “Also, if you’re moving from somewhere nearby and need time to arrange moving your belongings, tell me that up front next time. It’s easier to plan around that than people think.”

That made me pause.

My old place. My things. That part of my life had been waiting to be dealt with ever since I left the day that we went after Mitsuhiko.

I tightened my grip on the folder. “Right. I still have to handle that.”

She studied my face for half a second, saw enough, and did not pry.

“One thing at a time,” she said.

I nodded. “One thing at a time.”

Then I thanked her again, tucking the papers into my bag, and stepped back out into the afternoon sunlight.

Outside, Akuchi lingered where a side wall and a vending machine created enough shadow to hide her from a casual glance without shapeshifting. The two men from the train were still hanging around.

Having to watch them more than Sumire annoyed her more than she expected.

One of them was pretending to scroll on his phone near the corner. The other had drifted farther down the block and was leaning near a railing, watching foot traffic in that bored, meaningless way that meant he was very much paying attention. Neither looked like much. They never had. Both were a great deal of trouble brewing.

Akuchi kept one eye on the office door and one on them.

She still did not move.

Sumire could handle herself. Akuchi knew that. She had watched her enough to know that the girl who came out of Baku’s dream world was not the same one who had gone in. The hesitation left in her existed in different places now. She had much more spine.

If the men lost interest once Sumire started moving again, there was no reason to interfere.

That was what Akuchi told herself.

Then Sumire emerged with her bag and headed back toward the station, and the men separated without speaking and let the crowd carry them after her from two different angles.

Akuchi’s ears twitched sharply.

So much for losing interest.

By the time I returned to the station, my shoulders had begun to ache from carrying the pack and from the simple fact of being looked at all day.

People still noticed me as I passed. Some were only curious. Some looked twice in that assessing way strangers had when they saw something interesting. And then there were the men. Several of them had looked almost bold enough to try to approach me, but so far none had except for the two that annoyed me on sight. A month ago, maybe even less than that, it all would have dug into me harder. I would have curled up over receiving this much attention. I would have started wondering what exactly they saw, worrying about all sorts of things.

Now I noticed it and kept walking.

Training had not erased my self-consciousness. It had simply taught me to not fold under it.

I dug out my transit card, swiped myself through the gate, and stepped onto the escalator down toward the platform. The train I needed would take a little while to arrive. I could see that from the display board before I even reached the bottom.

There was a vending machine near the wall. I stopped, swiped my card again, and bought a bottle of cold ocha. It made me think of the bottles that Oba-chan had given us the morning that I’d left my home without Aoi. She’d known right away what had happened, even if she didn’t know the details. The plastic bottle clicked down into the collection tray. I bent, picked it up, twisted the cap open, and took a slow sip while I leaned back against the wall a few steps away.

For the first time all day, there was a pocket of quiet inside me.

The station wasn’t silent, however. It was humming with activity, the platform filling with bodies, shoes scraping on the floor. An announcement rolled across the platform in familiar tones. Trains came and went on other lines. But inside that ordinary noise, I felt a small stretch of peace open up.

I had a phone and listings to look over as well as a business card for the realty agent I’d met. None of it had completely solved my problems, but I had taken the first steps for myself. The pieces were beginning to come together, nowhere near what they had been before. That was gone. I knew that, not that I wanted my old life back. Adding pieces of it to what I was building would be fine, but something was coming together anyway.

I lifted the bottle and drank again, looking out across the platform with my thoughts loosened just enough to drift.

Then I saw them again.

The same two men from the train approached the vending machine I had just used. One bought a canned coffee. The other got a sports drink. I looked away at once, my mouth tightening, and told myself that if they passed by without stopping, I would not let them take up any more space in my head.

They moved in my direction.

I kept my gaze on the platform.

They kept coming.

Then one stopped on my left and the other on my right, close enough that the air around me changed.

I turned my head slightly and looked at them with my lips pressed tight.

Special thanks to PrincessArylin, ShinjiHinako, Assurbanipal II (Achan) for beta reading book three!