Time always slows at the very apex of a jump, stretching out with the height of your fall. Each jump, braver than the one before, dilates more and more—until it stops. It is at that moment your life flashes before your eyes—where every single thing you’ve ever regretted burns the brightest—right before it all goes dark.

  Those moments always start with a step.

  Before they end with a leap of faith.

  And then landing harder than I needed to. Fuck that hurt. Skewing it into a roll didn’t do jack shit, either.

  I lay there, limbs sprawled over the bone-white sugar-cube apartment rooftop, the sun nearly baking me into the surface.

  “Still kinda sloppy, kid.”

  “Yeah, well—you kinda get what you pay for, Jiji-san.”

  “Hey, come now,” his voice is tinny through the comms device. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

  I rub my scuffed elbows and squint into the sterilizing glare of the sun. It burns away my shadow, as it stands at my zenith.

  “You’re right—seeing as you’re already doing that.”

  He snickers, voice brumming slowly into a coy hum.

  “Pity won’t get you far, Kumori. In a dog eat shit world like this, especially when—”

  “You’re one step away from whatever fucking cringe-ass fortune-cookie bullshit I’ve also read.”

  He exhales, before scoffing.

  “Who’d’ve thought you could afford those.”

  “Yeah, considering who I’m working for, right?”

  “Yeah—I ought to stave off a few ￥ennies because you’re dallying.”

  “So long as it helps you retire broke, right?”

  “More like I’m paying for the quality of service.”

  “Shit—you mean you saw it?”

  The line goes quiet. Geezer-brain going full wire trying to figure out whether I’m messing with him or not.

  “I see a lot more than you think, Kumori—“

  “—Yeah, sorry. I kinda smushed the package.”

  “You did what?!”

  Hook line and sinker.

  “Hey, how is it my fault your block’s designed by some skezzhead with a diploma? Damn place looks like a Mario level.”

  “Kumori, I swear to God, if that package has—”

  I swear, this is too damn easy.

  “I’m just fucking messing with you, Ji. You take me for an amateur?”

  His breath crackles the comms. “I’m starting to wonder that myself.”

  “Says the guy giving the microphone a blowjob.”

  “Oh, sorry about that.”

  He blows hard into the microphone—I rip out the earbud. “Yo!”

  I can hear his scintilating cackles in the tiny earpiece. He is still laughing after I put the earbud back in.

  “Dude, what are you, ten?”

  “Take or give a few decades, sure.”

  “You sure don’t act like it.”

  “Hey, I’m being responsible by showing you why the hell you ought’a chip a cranial comms device.”

  “Sure, sponsor me one and I’ll drill it in.”

  “I am sponsoring you—by paying you for these gigs.”

  “Yeah, ￥ennies pinched so hard they’ve turned into debt shuriken’s—honestly, I’d be shocked if I got enough to chip my ear lobe.”

  “There’s a reason for that.”

  “Really now?”

  “Yeah—you’re the economic option.”

  “Just like your cyberware.”

  The fucking line flatlined.

  Roppongi midcasters—the easiest, loudest, and pettiest Tokyoites that love to dish shit that fulfills that self-image they’ve bankrupted their own lineage for but hate the moment you give them a realty check.

  “Funny,” he says with a droning and dry voice. “See if you can keep up the humor when you get the delivery on time to the client.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Client’s at the Tokyo National Art Center.”

  “So? Monorail tracks lead directly to it. Brisk power walk, and I’ll be there in no time.”

  “Sure, except you’ve forgotten a crucial detail.”

  I stop, holding the earbud tighter to my ear.

  “Art Center’s 15 minutes away.”

  “Word?”

  “You’ve got about four minutes, take or give.”

  “Oh, word!”

  I reach to kill the comms—

  “One last thing, Kumori,”

  —but stop millimeters shy of it.

  “What’s up?”

  “Next time you call me Jiji-san,” his voice got too damn confident, “will be the last.”

  Really, Jiji? Now is suddenly the best time for this kind of pep talk?

  “Got it?”

  “Yeah, I got—”

  “And fix your damn landings.”

  Click

  “… Ryokai, motherfucker.”

  The wind combs through my hair, flowing it into an inverted white-tousled umbrella. The usual runner hair-do. Short, bobbed, and makes you look hella cute when it’s done right. Looks like shit when I do it, but that’s besides the point.

  Tokyo, Roppongi. Midcasters hometurf.

  The deadset indebt trendsetters of Tokyo. The kind of folks who believe living in the equivalent of voxelated nightmare sugar-cube apartments is status. Feeling fancy, surfaces as sleek as plastic—they come in all assortments of cube.

  You’ve got large cube, and small cube. You’ve got large cube with micro-cubes swarmed around it—pollenating its’ debt to the other cubes.

  And then you’ve the fancier ones with poppable panels, fragmenting the surface of the cube, showing the dark metallic grime-brush, black surface underneath. Some like to go the extra mile of cube, where they’ve chosen to trickle a few black cubes underneath, making it look like it’s dripping—or bleeding, depending on who you’re asking.

  Love, or violence. Poetic. Perfectly describes their financial situation.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  This is the place you want to be to rub shoulders with highcasters looking for a new entourage victim. Just so you can rub off some of that debt on them.

  “Six minutes left, Kumori.”

  Deep breath through the nose, eyes open on out. Roof ahead cutting dead.

  The shack of an AC-unit in front of me looks like the same box—no wait, cube—of fresh air Jiji-san had when we first met.

  It was a cold summers day, and I had leapt—nay, soared like a fucking eagle—and crash-landed into it. The damn thing had crumpled like it sponsored free-runner fall-insurance. I pace my steps to the momentum of its pipes—left foot, right foot on the rows—catch the ledge.

  ‘Catch up to the future. Enhance your evolution, breathe in a new revolution—’

  Artifical lungs by PneuRes. The fact that they’ve added speakers to the billboard, despite being this high up, makes me feel seen—as if they know runners could use a kick of fresh air to get that spring to their legs.

  Same AC-unit like the one, standing aloft between two cubes. Dangerous, but doable if I get a good launch-vault by fitting the rhythm of the pipes, followed by wallrunning up to the edge of one of the buildings.

  Got three pipes. My right foot on the first, left on second, vault on the third. Climb the left apartment wall, and clasp the ledge.

  I sprint, and skip—right foot pressure-latching perfectly on the first pipe lets me kick off to next pipe—followed by vaulting the third—pitter-patter up the wall—throw a left-handed reach towards the ledge—graze the edge.

  I shotgun my right hand, scatter-blasting the edge for a fingertip-grip. Pain tazing to the marrow—weight shifts the second I try to reach for a break with my left hand. Too slow and I’ll lose the grip. Too fast and I’ll rock-a-bye fuck-off to the ground. Taste of iron at the back of my throat, my whole body screaming bloody murder. Trying to pull myself up, the pull cramping down to my diaphragm. Should just let go. Why am I not just letting go? Because—I’ve done this before. A million times at least. With a final reach—and I could feel the sweet mercy of a proper fucking grip.

  Easy come, easy go, right?

  Honestly, moments like this have a tendency of giving you a mortality-check. They make you realize how fucking fragile you really are. Especially if you’re unchipped, like me. You can’t just go by them and pull yourself up like it was another Tuesday, or else it will sow this parasitic seed that grows and cultivates into this endless debate of self doubt and self sabotage.

  ‘Is the ledge close enough?’

  ‘What if I don’t jump high enough?’

  It caps the knees of any runner. It breaks the will of a free man. So, you need to thrive in the moment by hanging on and feeling the echo of death trying to pull you down as your muscles tremble from panic and exhaustion. Feed the insecurities of your mind. Give them the free head space to fucking compete until the different varying degrees of ‘what ifs’ and ‘how ifs’ blend into static. Finally, you turn around—look your maker in the fucking eyes - and hone in the fact that you’re gonna keep on running by giving them the fucking middle fing—

  “Woah!”

  Nearly met my fucking maker with a splash. Forgot how high up I really was.

  I pull myself up to the sudden warmth of the sun.

  Japan. One of the few countries in the world with clear, smog-less, sootless, filth-less sunsets. A love-letter from the government in the form of annihilating anything that blows cancer right into your lungs—all so the country of the rising sun can also see it set.

  “Kid? Sit rep. Kumori? Are you there—”

  I take a deep breath.

  “Two mins left, kid.”

  I exhale.

  No time to waste, I guess.

  Place is two streets away. Stuff in between is your typical shtick of trying to make motifs fit with one another. This street? Pixelated, snow-white cubes. The other? Architectural bismuth centipede nightmares. Stepping down and getting a cab is out of the question since, ‘the roads have eyes!’ according to the demented old bastard Jiji-san.

  So, I’ve got to settle for the monorail-track tunneling through the buildings seeing as it led directly to the marks location.

  As long as I don’t get run over by the tram—oh wait, the tram!

  I could just always hitch a ride on it. Just gotta get past these four leveled rooftops in front of me, and—woah holy shit it’s fast.

  The moment it burned through the corner and hauled ass towards a stop that was right at this block, I realized that the fucking thing was in a damn hurry. Gotta go full blast if I want to catch up to it.

  … I mean, imagine that.

  A girl with no cyberware – catching a speeding intercity monorail-tram.

  Should be impossible, right?

  Well, with a ‘Gambare!! Kumori-ch—’

  Of course it’s fucking impossible. But so is losing out on this gig and potentially being out of a job.

  So, I blast into a full sprint, hitting the pavement so hard it feels like my bones might crack. The tram screams ahead of me, a metal banshee tearing through the city.

  I can easily land on the ceiling using an overlay over my vision which shows the correct trajectory of the tram, along with calculations of speed and momentum. Couple that with a degree in fucking physics and you’ve got yourself a surefire deal of me getting on top of that thing—sike!

  Got no tech, and no overlay.

  Got no degree, unless you count a diploma in guesswork.

  But I was almost there. Just three more steps—ichi-ni-san! And leap!

  “GAH!”

  Agony exploded in my chest, stabbing like I’d inhaled boiling caustic soda. I couldn’t tell if I was screaming. The tram’s clattering burst my hearing into a high-pitched daze—searing pain swallowing everything. Like a smoldering iron worm squirming in my lungs. I had fucking slammed the edge and rolled along.

  “Ow.”

  Could really use those fucking PneuRes Lungs right about now. I try to sit up, fighting the air trying to strip my face of its skin as the tram careens into the rectangular shaped bismuthian structures. Within their dark bodies the colors shift like shades of oil in water—until the interior lights up. A sudden burst of seizure-inducing colors emerged from the darkness of the rectangular-tunnel walls. The echo of high-pitched voices—giggly and relentlessly happy—complimenting the abhorrent crying of the tram.

  The tram screeches—and throws me to the front. It was braking. Hard.

  I twist—sharp pain filling my mouth with blood—clawing the ceiling for support—nails fold and snap clean off. Fingers draw four lines of blood to the jovial arpeggio shrieks of the girls, their voices echoing like rats in a burning pot.

  Time always slows at the apex of a jump.

  I always thought it had to do with the moment bringing a hyper focus. Turns out, it’s a gamble. One where you’re sure of the odds—until you realize the cards you’re holding are just slivers of paper.

  A farce of a hand dealt by the dealer. Your maker.

  With the apex of a jump—your regrets surge forth as static, numbing your mind. It isn’t until time almost freezes that you realise there are shapes in the static. Shapes that are carved into clearer pictures the longer you look—the longer you’re alive.

  As my fingers draw longer red lines, I see my biggest regret becoming clearer in the static. Huh, surprised to see it isn’t bodying a tram.

  Hell, it’s not even working for that geezer.

  No—this one was buried so deep that it might’ve as well had its head covered in a plastic bag.

  ‘You’re the only reason mama’s alive, little Tama Usagi.’

  It’s the fact that I do not get to see Kira’s reaction.

  It would have been hilarious.

  Fingers slip right into a slim vent, and I’m holding on for dear fucking life. The painful stretch swells my cheeks full with blood, making me gag as the tram took its sweet-ass time to get to the fucking point. Should honestly just indulge in the extra boost of iron and swallow. I spit it out ‘graffitiing’ the tram.

  “Fuck your ‘clean and pristine’.”

  Before the tram finally panspermed itself into my destination. The Tokyo National Art Center. The glass walls emerge from the edges of the museum’s double doors to guardrail the throng of ‘connoisseurs’ that were about to vomit out of this metal vomitorium. The hush and hiss of the tram doors declare them opening—

  Shit. Expats. I can’t let them see me. Not unless I want to attract the biggest fucking pity-party known to earth. Just hope they don’t notice the tram looking like a used tampon up here. The voices die down eventually with the hissing and hushing of the closing tram doors. Slowly it rolls forward. Slowly, I roll off of it.

  “Argh!”

  Heavily, I crash on the bridge like a dirty sports bag. I sure hope nobody fucking heard me. The wall-glass starts retracting, easing in the gentle lulling of a 40-meter high breeze that almost canters me into the sickest fucking free-fall I’d ever have for the rest of my life—

  “Unauthorized Personnel are not to tread the docking bay area.”

  Holy fucking shit. Bitch almost made it a reality with her volume cranked up to eleven.

  “Unauthorized Personnel are not to tread the docking bay area—”

  “Lady! I’d be inside already if these damn doors weren’t fucking ‘open-upon-arrival’!”

  Where the hell is the fucking mark? I should ping Jiji, but I can’t. Ditched the comms unit during a patriotic moment a few paces back.

  “Unauthorized Personnel are not to tread the docking—”

  I smash my fists against the glass.

  “Ah!! Ow!”

  This is so fucking ironic. Getting beaten by two inanimate objects in a single day. Wish I could give it another wallop. Maybe that way I’d get—

  “There you are Kumori-san—my goodness!”

  Knock knock, motherfucker. Bastard’s looking around and behind himself like he’s smuggling drugs.

  “Ora,” I rasp, my lungs empty after a single word. “Mind looking less fucking guilty, このクソ野郎?”

  Shit. Could barely talk without slurring. Could barely hear him talk—motherfucker stuttering so badly it sounds like gym sneakers running from a rabid dog.

  “The hell you got in here?” I say swaying in a rhythm with the case I held up. “Drugs?”

  Frantic fucker turning frantic-er tells me it definitely is.

  Still don’t get why the hell he won’t just take the packaging. Is he honestly expecting decorum right now? I’m no stickler for it—hell, kudos to the fuckheap for insinuating it—but it’s kind of hard to keep a straight ‘formal tone’ when my whole ensemble of gutter-punk shway is blood-laced.

  Fuck it. Let’s just get this over with.

  “Yoroshiku na, katabutsu,” I say, giving him the package. “Hope all is…”

  My sight turns all white surfaces into dark crevices, before returning to white again. There is a hand on my shoulder—but I can’t see whose it is. Don’t remember, either.

  Oh right. I’m at the Tokyo Art Center, standing in front of the mark. Delivery’s done, so all that’s left is to give a little bow. Like a fucking business-card trade-off. A good way to get noticed.

  Just a little hunch. I close my eyes. I take a deep breath. I lean forward into the bow and—

  Presto.

  I opened my eyes to a world covered in fog smearing whatever moved. Muffled sounds roiled and reverberated in an echoing staccato. There was a big dark red splotch on the black museum floor before me. The client seemed frantic—his arms and legs smearing into a standing snow-angel. Don’t get what the deal is.

  He got the package.

  … He just… Has to… Ping Jiji.