Chapter 70: True Day Off
The Glowline square pulled them in like a tide.
Vendors were already arguing, bells ringing from cart handles, steam curling from grills. Strings of paper lanterns stitched one balcony to the next. Music bled from doorways and tripped over different music. The eight stood a second in the middle of it, faces tipped up, eyes jumping from color to color.
"Pick one," Arashi said, as if that helped.
They didn’t. They were pushed the way water is pushed - wherever the current was brightest.
A man in a light vest waved them toward a long counter with slots cut in it. He slid polished rifles along to each of them and thumbed a switch. Targets rose on rails - not cardboard ducks, but little round drones with glossy shells. Neck lamps blinked green. Shot counters ticked up on a board behind the man’s head.
"Simple," the vendor grinned. "Hit three, win one."
Raizen lifted the rifle. It was heavier than it looked. He planted his feet like Kori had drilled into bone. Hikari mimicked him and almost dropped her gun anyway, giggling at herself. Esen checked the stock like he planned to critique it in an essay.
They fired. The rifles snapped with a tidy electric kick. The first drone jittered left a hair before Raizen’s shot reached it, as if the thing had flinched early. His round smacked empty air. Hikari’s missed by a palm width and she laughed again, surprised at how much fun failing could be. Shots stitched light through the space and hit nothing. The drones danced - always a breath ahead.
Esen frowned. "They’re cheating."
"They are predicting the shot trajectory and velocity, then they’re just dodging," Raizen said, already trying to solve it and failing anyway.
Arashi sighed in the full, suffering way of a person who knows a racket when he sees one. He raised his rifle, then, just as he squeezed, his wrist turned a degree that should have ruined the shot. The bolt leapt - and curved midair like a fish deciding to be a bird. It bit the drone from the side. The target chirped and collapsed, lights dimming.
The vendor stared. "Lucky."
"Skill." Arashi said, and did it again, with enough smug in his mouth to season a stew.
"Hey" the vendor said carefully, "no funny business."
"Define funny business. The only funny business I see here is your rig, mister." Arashi cut him off.
His third shot traced a lazy "S" and tapped a drone like it had asked to be put down gently. The vendor grumbled but slid a prize - a small black stuffed thing with bright button eyes - across the counter anyway.
Esen leaned near Arashi’s ear. "You cheated."
"You say that like it is a moral category," Arashi responded.
They spilled into the next noise. A glass-bellied machine waited, stuffed with plush beasts - a turtle with wings, a fox with nine tails, a soft caricature of a Nyx head whose smile should not have been that cute. Actually, Nyxes don’t even have mouths, what are we talking about here?The claw hung like a shiny promise that absolutely did not intend to keep any.
Feris pressed her hands to the glass. "That one."
"The bine tailed Fox" Ichiro observed. "Bold."
"It called to me," Feris said.
Arashi folded his arms. "They greased the claw."
"You can grease a claw?" Hikari asked, grossed and fascinated at the same time.
Feris fed the slot. The claw descended with theatrical purpose and then, at the last inch, changed its mind about strength. It kissed a turtle like a polite aunt and drifted away, empty.
"One more," Feris insisted.
It went worse the second time, which seemed mathematically rude.
"Allow me" Esen said. He dropped a token in and squared his shoulders like the machine could be intimidated. He tracked the claw above two prizes at once. His finger hovered over the button as if he could hear a music everybody else had missed. On the drop, he exhaled - something tiny corrected the tremor in his hand. The claw slapped down and - by nonsense or miracle - snagged two plushes by their tags. The nine-tailed fox and a plushie whale.
"Don’t breathe," Keahi hissed.
The claw rose. One tag tore. The fox tumbled back into the glass ocean, mocking them. The claw jerked and kept climbing, the second prize hanging by will alone. It thunked into the chute.
Esen cleared his throat. "As fated."
"You nearly pulled two," Lynea said, unable to stop her smile.
"I deliberately did not," Esen said.
"Right," Arashi said. "Greased claws respect you now."
Feris was thrilled and hugged the plushie whale tightly.
They moved again because the street moved beneath their feet. A booth attendant opened a door and waved them into a dim space lined with small panels. No name on it. No instructions beyond "Hit the light when it blinks."
Raizen stepped inside. The door hummed shut behind him. It smelled faintly of clean plastic and citrus. He set his feet without thinking. The light in front of him did not flash so much as remember to exist a fraction brighter. His hand went to it. Chime. Another glimmer to the left. He hit it. A whisper to the right. He struck that one too.
Time changed. He folded himself down to a thin, steady line, every extra thought shaved off. The chimes stitched into a single note. His hands kept finding what they were told to find, faster than his eyes could announce it. He didn’t know he was smiling until the last light went dark.
When he came back out, the board above the door blinked with his score and a pale blue ribbon icon he didn’t really understand until the attendant whistled.
"New high," the man said. "Not by a little, either!"
People in the square clapped as if it had been a tiny show. Raizen wanted to fold into a pocket. Hikari, watching through the slats, gave him the kind of look that could keep a person standing.
Arashi bumped his shoulder. "You will never live that down."
"From you" Raizen said, "I can survive it."
The next racket was old and simple - a post with a target and a lever, a scoreboard that promised numbers large enough to embarrass a person. The wooden mallet looked like it liked breaking wrists. Feris took it from the attendant and rolled it once to feel its balance. No preening, no carnival wind-up. She planted her feet, set the strike through her hips, and brought the mallet down the way she had brought her mace down a thousand times - clean, no apology.
The metal slider shot up the track and smacked the bell so hard the bell reconsidered its relationship with the post. Lights flew to the top and then realized there was not any top left and tried to improvise more.
The attendant stared at the scorched number on the board. "That - that is a record. That is several records. Please do not sue me if this explodes."
Feris handed the mallet back and attempted boredom. Her ears were pink. "Average" she said.
They dragged her five steps to the next game which should have been harmless - a table and a row of rubber mallets and a sign with cheerful letters. Black rounded heads popped up from holes and vanished again, eyes painted in permanent mischief.
Keahi picked up two mallets.
"Maybe one" the attendant ventured.
She did not hear him. The first head popped. She tapped it like it had insulted her grandmother. The machine squealed with glee. The second dared and died. The third lasted a fraction longer. By the fifth, the attendant had both palms up and a pleading look that said he did not have the coin to replace what Keahi could end.
"Okay, okay," Arashi laughed. "Mercy, warlord."
Keahi let the mallets rest. The attendant sagged like an old house after a storm. The score blinked numbers that made no sense for a game made to eat money.
They came up for air on a quieter edge of the square where the sound tucked itself away. A stall there had a wooden rack with neat rows of hand-made pieces, no glowing screens announcing discounts - just brass, silver, threads knotted into bracelets, rings with small imperfections that felt like honesty.
Hikari drifted to it before she knew she had moved. On a folded cloth lay two brass earrings shaped like four-pointed stars, each point beveled to catch light without shouting. Her fingers hovered. She brushed her eartips like she had to ask permission from something older than common sense.
Raizen saw. He saw the way she looked away from wanting like it was a crime. He checked his pockets. Twelve coins. It was all he had, all of his savings. He turned to Keahi. "You have any tokens left?"
Keahi’s eyes narrowed like he was trying to borrow her weapon. "For what."
"I will pay you back." Raizen said.
Keahi fished in her jacket, coins and a folded voucher that smelled like dumplings. She dumped them into his palm without another question. "You better."
Feris caught on, wordless, and pressed two tokens into his hand, then a third as if fate insisted on uneven numbers.
Raizen closed his fist around the metal. "Thanks!" He only said "Be right back," like a person going to refill a cup, and slipped into the moving crowd.
The square spun on. Esen challenged a plate balancer and learned humility. Ichiro watched two knife jugglers with the calm of a mathematician, knowing that he could also do it with rocks. And now, rubber balls too. Lynea bought a paper cone of roasted nuts and ate them one by one like each deserved a special goodbye. Arashi narrated everything like a nature show that had learned sarcasm. Hikari stayed by the stall a moment longer, fingertips ghosting her earlobe, then turned away before wanting could burn her face.
Far back along the row of vendors, Kori and Kenzo closed a ledger and shook hands with a shop owner who had finally admitted her back door latch was a problem. Kenzo tucked his pencil behind his ear. Kori stood a little too straight for a woman who had just worked her way down a hundred meters of alley silt and brass fittings. The Glowline’s roar found them late.
"That’s the last..." Kenzo finally said. He looked strange without a task in his mouth. "We still have time. Want to look around?"
It was a question and it wasn’t. Kori’s ears did that thing again where they forgot how to pretend. She reached up, smoothed a flyaway hair that did not exist, and put herself back into her posture like a sword back into its scabbard.
"For... Uh... Efficiency" she said, which was how she agreed to things she wanted.
Kenzo’s mouth tilted. "Efficiency, huh" he echoed.
They stepped off the duty line and into the lights. The crowd folded around them and let them pass. Somewhere above, the Lighthouse kept its patient turn - slow, constant - reminding the city that sunsets were not shields, only beautiful.