The letters appeared under the door sometime before dawn with the specific persistence of correspondence that had been arriving regularly enough to have developed its own routine.
Toshi picked them up.
Three envelopes. Official seals. The kind of paper that cost more than the south district's weekly water budget. He read the first line of the first one and didn't need to read the rest.
On behalf of the Dragon Hive Government and President Montego, we cordially invite—
He tore them up.
All three. Methodically. Into pieces small enough that reassembly would require significant commitment from whoever found them. He dropped the pieces in the bin by the door and went to find breakfast.
He knocked on Mora's door.
"Hey Mora, I'm coming in..."
He opened it.
The room was empty. Bed made. The specific tidiness of someone who had left at an hour when tidiness was not strictly necessary but had made the bed anyway because that was the kind of person they were.
He checked the next room.
Jexa was on the couch with her legs folded under her watching something on the television with the focused attention of someone who had been awake for a while and had found something worth watching.
"Where are Mora and Butter?" Toshi said.
"The ghettos," Jexa said without looking up.
"Why...."
"President still hasn't sent aid." Jexa changed the channel. Changed it back. "Parasites are coming through the south entrances again. Nobody official is going." She looked at him. "So they went."
Toshi stood in the doorway.
Something moved through his face that went from concern to anger to a specific kind of anger that had a direction attached to it.
"What the hell is wrong with them," he said.
"They don't care," Jexa said. The flatness of someone who has thought about this and arrived at the simplest accurate answer. "The south district people, they probably see them as annoying. As a drain. As someone else's problem." She looked back at the television. "You know what the situation is, Toshi. This isn't new."
"It shouldn't keep being the situation," Toshi said.
"No," Jexa said. "It shouldn't."
Toshi turned toward the door.
"I'm going to pay the president a little visit," he said.
Jexa stood up.
In the specific way that Jexa stood up when she had already decided what was happening next — the motion of someone whose body was committed before her words arrived. She crossed the room in two steps and lifted Toshi by the back of his shirt and executed a body slam that the floor accepted with a sound that suggested it had opinions about this.
Toshi bounced up immediately.
"Hey." He turned to her. "What the hell, Jexa, I'm not in the mood..."
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"I know you're not." She stood in front of him with her arms crossed. "That's exactly why you're not going up there right now. You go up there shouting about the ghettos with that face you're making and you cause trouble. Which is bad enough on its own." She looked at him steadily. "But you keep turning down the government invitations, which means they're already watching you. You go up there like this and you don't just put a target on your back. You put one on ours."
Toshi looked at her.
The specific face of someone whose anger is finding its edges and recalibrating.
"Yeah," he said. "I get you."
"Good." Jexa sat back down.
"I'm going to the ghettos instead," Toshi said. "Clear out the parasites."
"Fine."
He moved toward the door.
"Toshi."
He stopped.
"You better not leave without kissing your amazing girlfriend," Jexa said. She didn't look up from the television.
Toshi smiled.
He moved at a fraction of his actual speed, which was still considerably faster than normal human movement, crossed the room, kissed her properly, lifted her off the couch, and body slammed her into the cushions.
"TOSHI..."
"Hahahahaha." He was already at the door. "That's for earlier."
He zipped out before she could respond.
Her voice followed him into the hallway: "I WILL END YOU."
He was already on the street.
The Shogun District did its morning things around him as he walked.
Market stalls opening. The specific smell of the district's breakfast hour, something fried from the corner place that had been there since before he'd arrived on Dragon Hive, the coffee from the cart that the old woman ran with the efficiency of someone who had optimized this operation over decades.
"Good morning, Zenko."
He raised a hand.
"Great job with those parasites yesterday." A man from the textile district, adjusting his stall awning. "You were moving so fast I almost missed it."
Another said "Keep fighting the fine fight"
"Don't stay out after dark," Toshi said. "They're coming through the eastern approach."
"You really are Shogun's hero," someone else said.
Toshi kept walking.
He said it to himself quietly, not performing it, not for anyone's hearing: I can't seem to think about anyone else but Burajiru.
The street continued around him.
Darn it, Joy, can't you just restore his memory? He paused at the corner. Then again, that would impose on his free will. He kept walking. In any case. I can't wait for him to remember. We can joke about old times. Maybe do double couple nights.
He was smiling at the middle distance.
Hehehehe.
The black vehicles came from three directions simultaneously.
Not fast, deliberate. The specific deployment of vehicles that want to be seen surrounding someone rather than vehicles trying to catch someone off guard. They pulled up with the coordinated patience of an operation that had been planned and was now executing on schedule.
Toshi stopped.
He looked at the vehicles.
At the men stepping out from the front and rear cars.
At the door of the middle vehicle opening.
His expression didn't change toward fear. It changed toward the specific stillness of someone who has just identified what kind of situation they're in and is deciding what to do with the information.
The voice came from the open door.
"Toshi Zenko."
Toshi looked at the man stepping out.
"Jeriko," he said.
Jeriko stood beside the vehicle with the ease of someone who had choreographed this and was pleased with how it was playing. He was dressed well, the specific well of someone for whom clothes were a statement rather than a covering, and he looked at Toshi with the expression of someone who was about to be very reasonable and wanted that to be clearly established upfront.
"We've got to talk," Jeriko said.
Toshi looked at the vehicles surrounding him.
At the agents.
At Jeriko.
He put his hands in his pockets.
"Alright," he said.