“I didn’t want to!” James protested. “It was… he was just… I had to!”

  “No argument here,” Harue told him. “You did what needed to be done. Now let’s get out of here.”

  “Should we not loot the miscreant’s treasure?” Kana asked.

  “That would take time,” Harue said. “There’s valuable stuff here, but a lot of it needs a very specific buyer. Just sifting through it all could take days.”

  Kana tsked. “He must have gold lying about somewhere,” she said sullenly.

  “It’d take forever to find it,” Harue countered. “And there’s another factor.”

  “What is that?” Mitsue said, from his position on the ground.

  “Mitsue!” James exclaimed, jolted out of his self-flagellation. “You’re alive!”

  “I… will be fine,” Mitsue said, wincing. “It was only a little worse than a modern taser. I have trained to resist such things. You were saying something about another factor.”

  “Right,” Harue looked down at Mitsue’s efforts to get up with interest. “You know how I said that someone—probably Golden Dawn— was looking after this place?”

  “You said they weren’t the police,” James recalled. He walked over to help Mitsue up.

  “Yeah, they’re more like a yakuza group selling protection,” Harue explained. “It looks bad for them if one of their shopfront owners gets ganked—”

  “Ganked?” James objected, wincing.

  Harue grinned and drew her thumb across her throat.

  “Ganked,” she confirmed. “So they’ll have objections.”

  “If they catch us,” Kana observed. “Or, more accurately, if they can restrain us.”

  “I don’t want to run from—or fight—whatever passes for law enforcement in this… world,” James argued. “Can’t we just explain that it was self-defence?”

  “What does your self-defence have to do with their bottom line?” Harue asked incredulously. “They’ve lost face, and a customer, and you’re going to tell them it wasn’t your fault?”

  “No?” James guessed. “What do we tell them?”

  “We don’t tell them anything. We leave behind all this stuff for them to find.” Harue gestured all around them. “That way, they’ll feel a lot better about what happened.”

  “Then we should just leave?” James sighed. He felt a lot better about that option than he thought he should.

  “What about the information we came for?” Mitsue asked.

  Harue held up a leatherbound journal. “Already found it,” she said smugly.

  “You’ve been busy,” Matsuri noted. “Was it that easy, escaping from confinement?”

  “Pretty easy, yeah,” Harue agreed. “He thought the fox had run away, and he was trapping a fellow sorcerer. Totally different set of precautions. The bit that took a while was schmoozing up those storm spirits.”

  “Are those… are they all dead, now?” James asked.

  “Mmnn… not really,” Harue said thoughtfully. “They’ve all gone back to Big Daddy Storm in the sky.”

  James frowned. “Is this like the stories you tell children about their dead pets? They’re living on a farm, upstate?”

  Harue laughed. “No, it’s more like… they were summoned out of Heaven by that guy, and I sent them back. They weren’t really alive in the first place; now they’re less alive, but happier.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “They wouldn’t have told me about the orb if they didn’t want me to smash it,” Harue said.

  “Don’t they have orders preventing them from doing that?” Mitsue asked.

  “No one has ever come up with a set of rules without loopholes,” Harue explained. “And when you enslave a bunch of… entities, they’ve got lots of incentive to find them.”

  “Let’s just go, then,” James said, not wanting to hear Harue crow about how clever she’d been. He was sure he’d hear more of it later. “You’re sure that book is the one we want?”

  “Eh, I’m sure that it was the one he was waving in front of us,” Harue said. “As for the contents, I’m not so sure.”

  She held up the book and shrugged. “I took a quick skim through it. From what I can tell, it’s in Chinese—and not the easy sort of Chinese.”

  * * *

  “I’m not sure it should be properly called Chinese at all,” Suki said thoughtfully. It was the next day, and the group had reconvened for lunch. Suki had been entrusted with the journal to extract its secrets as she was the only one who could speak Chinese natively. James had thought that this was because she was from Hong Kong, but he had been disabused of this notion.

  “It’s not Mandarin or Cantonese,” Suki told the group. “At this stage, Pinghua is the most likely candidate, but I can’t rule out the Shaozhou Tuhua or Shehua dialects either.”

  “You speak all of those?” James asked. Suki knew a lot of languages. She’d listed off a few while explaining why she spoke Mandarin—commonly referred to as Chinese—as well as the Cantonese that was the most common language in Hong Kong. She hadn’t mentioned those three, though.

  “No,” Suki said. “I spent some time researching in the library this morning. It has a surprisingly large section on ancient and esoteric Chinese dialects.”

  Harue snorted. “It’s not surprising at all. The school board have got to keep their high-school primers somewhere, after all.”

  Suki gave Harue a puzzled look, but continued. “It will take some time. Not only is the language unfamiliar, but I suspect some of it might be encoded.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter,” James said, trying to hide his disappointment. “We don’t even know if the journal has anything useful.”

  “I’m sure it has something,” Suki assured him. “It will just take time to uncover.”

  “If this topic is finished, I have a question for Harue,” Mitsue said.

  “Ask away, eager student.”

  Mitsue grimaced, but gamely struggled on with his question. “Are all the Torii gates like that one? Entrances to other… worlds?”

  “Oh…” Harue said. “Um… no? Yes? I don’t really get how it works.”

  “That’s clearly not true,” Mitsue complained. “You knew which gate to use to get to the Night Market.”

  “Yeah, but… It’s difficult to explain. I know the way to the Night Market, and that was the way.”

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  “Was the way?”

  “It…” Harue paused and cocked her head. “It still is the way, for now. But it changes.”

  “Changes how? To another one of the gates?”

  “Maybe?” Harue said hesitantly. “I get the impression that those gates were put there for a reason. But I don’t know how it will change. I only know where it is.”

  “When it changes, you’ll know where it is?” Suki interjected while Mitsue struggled for words.

  “I won’t get notified, but if I need to go there and the way has changed, I’ll know the new way,” Harue confirmed. “There’s probably a pattern to it, but spirits don’t need to know it. We can always get to a place that we’ve been.”

  “You just… know?” James asked.

  Harue shrugged. “This is one of the reasons that sorcerers get so grumpy,” she said. “I mean, as well as sacrificing all that they hold dear in exchange for power. That doesn’t help. But they have to remember all sorts of details about cycles and spirit lines and stuff, and spirits don’t.”

  “It must be nice,” Suki murmured. “Judging from the journal, sorcery looks rather complicated.”

  “It is,” Mitsue agreed. He looked a little upset.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Harue said. “What we do and what sorcerers do is kinda the same, but they have to learn how to do it, while it’s all instinctual for us.”

  The lunch bell rang before anyone could come up with a response for that.

  “Well, I don’t think it’s fair that you got to spend lunch with two untouchable beauties!” Masahiro complained. “It’s bad enough that Ikari-sama is hanging off your arm, but do you have to monopolise Konoe-sama as well?”

  “Not to mention the rest of the Idol Club!” Taro agreed. “They’re all so beautiful, and they’re all sitting at your table!”

  “Nothing’s stopping you from joining the club,” James said. If he sounded irritable, it was because this wasn’t the first time he’d had this discussion. “Or if you wanted me to introduce you to Konoe-san…”

  “No, we couldn’t,” Taro exclaimed.

  “We’re not worthy,” Masahiro agreed.

  “Right.” James rolled his eyes. “If it helps, Konoe-san said something about checking out the Computer Club.”

  “She’s going to join that club? Those nerds?”

  “I don’t think so?” There wasn’t a rule about joining more than one club, but Idol Club was intensive, even for a dragon. “She was just interested in some of the stuff they were doing.”

  For Kana, computers were more or less a form of magic. She was generally dismissive of anything humans did, but James had caught her displaying fascination with her smartphone and the computers that they used in school.

  The boys calmed down as they considered the possibilities, which was necessary because James had more bad news to give.

  “By the way,” he said casually. “You might be seeing Azai-san at the Idol Club table next week.”

  He didn’t want to sound like he was bragging, but he knew—knew—that the two boys would not stop complaining about the lack of warning if they noticed Azai Fuyumi joining his table.

  “The Goddess of the Music Room?” Masahiro gasped. “All three goddesses at the same table?”

  “Is she joining the club as well?” Taro asked.

  “I don’t think so?” James said. “They were saying that she was going to write them a song, and there were going to be discussions.”

  “Azai-sama is writing a song for the Idol Club?” Masahiro gasped.

  “Is that such a big deal?” James asked, taken aback by their suddenly intent stares.

  “James-kun, James-kun, James-kun,” Taro said, shaking his head. “It is only natural that you would restrict your attention to the goddess who has deigned to let you stay by her side.”

  The last bit was delivered through gritted teeth and detracted a little from the friendly banter that Taro was trying to convey.

  “But,” Taro continued, making the word sound like a sob. “Azai-sama was already considered a musical prodigy before receiving the guidance of Hatakiyama-sensei. Now, she is seen as a musical genius, responsible for reviving contemporary classical music! For her to write a pop song…”

  “I see…” James said. “Well, I’m sure they’ll have some fun with it.”

  “We should get on the rumour sites,” Masahiro said quickly. “Imagine the cred we’d get for early reporting.”

  “So true, so true. James-kun, please excuse us.”

  The two of them scampered back to their desks and started furiously typing on their phones. James grimaced. He hadn’t wanted to start a rumour.

  But then, the first rule of Idol Club was that everyone has to talk about Idol Club.

  When James got back to the dorm, he found Mitsue packing a pile of towels into a gym bag.

  “Kana and Harue are using the hot spring tonight, so I thought I’d resupply,” the ninja said.

  “I wouldn’t mind a dip myself,” James said. “Do you want me to come along? We could invite Suki as well.”

  “Ah… I will be fine on my own. Perhaps you should stay and keep watch for… intruders,” Mitsue said.

  James raised an eyebrow. “Mitsue, are you planning anything untoward with these girls?” With great effort, he managed to keep a straight face. Mitsue had commented on Kana’s appearance before, but those two were literally man-eaters.

  “I would not dare,” Mitsue said seriously. “However, they might not resent— I mean, they might be willing to consider mixed-bathing, if I am able to keep my reactions under control.”

  Mitsue sighed. “That is the difficulty, of course. Hopefully, the experience will be good practice for interacting with Midoriko-senpai this weekend.”

  “Oh, right, you’re still going ahead with that?” James asked.

  “I am—unless I freeze up entirely from nervousness,” Mitsue replied.

  “Well, good luck,” James wished. He remembered how nervous he’d been asking Suki out, even though she’d signalled her desires very obviously. “I’m not sure that staring at naked girls is the best preparation for asking a girl out, but whatever it takes, man.”

  “Thank you for your support, James,” Mitsue said. He turned and jumped out the window.

  “Well, what am I supposed to do now?” James asked the empty room. “Homework?”

  There was a knock on the door. “James?” Suki’s voice asked.

  He opened the door to see Suki, looking incredibly beautiful in her school uniform. Not that the uniform was particularly ugly or pretty. It was alright. Suki was just… beautiful.

  “Hi,” she said. “Do you want to watch the sun go down from the rooftop?”

  “Sure,” James said. It was possible that he’d responded quickly enough to not make him sound like a drooling idiot. He wasn’t sure.

  Suki smiled and took his arm as they walked to the elevators.

  “It’s… a rooftop date?” James asked.

  “Yes,” Suki replied. “A rooftop date.”

  She snuggled up to him, and he put his arm around her. You couldn’t see much of the water from here, but they watched the sun go down over the sea.

  It was probably beautiful, James couldn’t tell. Even if he wasn’t looking at her, James could only focus on one thing.

  “I’m sorry, Suki said, “that you had to go through all that.”

  “I’m sorry,” James replied, “that it wasn’t of more use.”

  “I’m sure it will be… eventually,” Suki said. “And… we have time. Everything is going so well right now.”

  Three years isn’t enough, James thought, but he kept it to himself.

  “Have you spoken to your sister?” he asked, instead.

  “I’ve texted her a few times. She says not to. She says that my phone is compromised by Aiko-san’s company. If I travel with it off the island, I will be tracked. And anything I say to her will be monitored.”

  James thought about his own phone. It had probably been hacked as well. Harue had confidence that her phone could eat any attempt at hacking it. He wondered if Mitsue had any ninja techniques to secure phones.

  “Does Professor Toei know?” he asked. “That’s the sort of thing he’d need to be aware of for our trip this weekend.”

  Suki hummed her agreement. “He said we’ll all be getting special phones for the trip, to go along with our new identities.”

  “It feels like a spy movie,” James joked. Suki chuckled with him, but she trailed off wistfully.

  “Most of my life has been like a spy movie,” she said. “Even though I never saw a movie until I left the Garden. Master thinks that they are a degenerate art form.”

  “You’ve never seen a movie?” James gasped.

  “I’ve seen a few since then,” Suki assured him. “In fact, my first movie was the in-flight screening when I left Hong Kong. Ticket to Paradise, which was quite ironic.”

  “But you haven’t seen Star Wars?”

  “I haven’t. I can write an essay on its influence over modern cinema, though.”

  James hugged his girlfriend more firmly. “We’ll have to work out a way to have movie dates,” he said. Watching one together in the dorms was out, but there were some AV facilities in the school that might allow for some privacy…

  “I’d like that,” Suki agreed. “But we have another date coming up. They have a department store on Okinawa.”

  “Oh, a shopping date?”

  “Two shopping dates.”

  “We should have time,” James agreed. “We just have to find a distraction for the others. Mitsue will be occupied with Midoriko, so…”

  He paused. “Did you arrange for Kana and Harue to go to the hot springs tonight?”

  “I may have made a suggestion,” Suki admitted.

  “Nice work,” James said. “I just hope we can find something on Okinawa that will keep them out of trouble.”

  “Keeping them out of trouble sounds like Professor Toei’s problem,” Suki said. “I doubt they’ll want to go to the department store. Neither of them is very interested in buying things.”

  “That’s true,” James agreed. “Oh… about your sister…”

  “What about her?”

  “Do you think that Elidor-san could contact her safely? He’s probably taken steps to secure Kana’s phone, and he has a way of contacting Kagura…”

  “That… might work,” Suki agreed. “I’ll ask her tomorrow.”

  “Just be careful with her,” James urged. “I guess I understand why she’s going after Kotodama, but she’s an international terrorist. She’s killed… so many people.”

  “It’s part of living in a spy movie,” Suki said sadly. “My way is not her way. I don’t think I could do what she did. But I need to talk to her… to understand.”

  “She’s family, right?” James said.

  “Yes, in some strange way. And I never had the chance to talk freely with the rest of my family.”

  “We’ll find a way for that, too,” James promised.

  “Thank you.” Suki rested her head against his chest. “The sun’s gone down.”

  It had. The automatic lights had come on, their glare swallowing the view. Aside from the areas and buildings lit up, the entire island was drenched in darkness.

  “There’s not much to do up here, is there?” James said ruefully. “Do you want to get some hot chocolate downstairs?”

  “That would be wonderful,” Suki said.