DESIGN LED THEM back to the noodle shop. They snuck in quickly, trying not to draw the attention of the many painters coming off shift and gathering at their usual tables. Namakudo, one of Design’s assistant cooks, had been forced to come out of the kitchen to take orders.
Design led them through a kitchen full of boiling pots into a small room at the rear filled with…numbers? Yumi stood in the center and frowned, looking at the walls, which were ornamented with long stretches of numerical sequences that flowed and circled around; it was hard to tell where one ended and another began, or if they formed an infinite loop.
“Ah…” Design said. “It feels so good to come here and be near real art. Be back quicker than a chasmfiend gobbles a chull.” She darted away, leaving Yumi and Painter.
“Do you think she’s getting more eccentric?” Painter said, sitting on the floor. “Or is she just comfortable enough with us to let it show?”
“The latter,” Yumi said, looking up and finding numbers written even on the ceiling. “Definitely the latter.”
Design returned a few minutes later with Masaka in tow. Short, too much dark makeup, black skirt and her customary black sweater, collar all the way to her chin, hands lost in her sleeves.
“Ha!” Painter said, leaping to his feet. He pointed. “Ha! I knew it. I knew she wasn’t human.”
“Yumi,” Design said, “meet Chinikdakordich, the sixtieth horde of the Natricatich strain.”
Masaka pulled into her sweater a little farther, like a tortoise seeking the safety of its shell during the heat of the day. “We prefer the name Masaka,” she said softly. “We’re being human, Design.
We’re getting very good at it.”
“I know you are,” Design said, patting her.
“So it’s true?” Yumi asked, feeling intimidated. “You’re…a creature like Design?”
“Not entirely like her, but yes,” Masaka said, looking down. “Is it… so obvious, Yumi? We’re figuring out many things. Human girls like cute things. We like cute things.” She looked up, and almost seemed ready to cry. “We made such a good human. You can’t even see the seams in our skin, so long as we wear makeup, and clothing with long neck portions! The trick is to make the entire face one piece.
Took years of breeding.”
Breeding? One piece? Seams?
Uh… Yumi steeled herself.
Painter, laughing, sat back down. She shot him a glare, but he shrugged.
“Yumi,” he said, “Masaka being an alien is literally the first thing about any of this that has made sense to me.”
“I think,” Yumi said to Masaka—who evidently couldn’t see or hear Painter—“you are doing an excellent job. You’re, um, a very cute young woman.”
“We are?” Masaka said. She smiled, then stepped closer. Yumi forcibly prevented herself from backing up as the girl—thing—took her hand. “Thank you, Yumi. Thank you. Here, this is for you.” She slipped something from her pocket and handed it to Yumi. A… A knife.
“Very good at cracking shells,” Masaka said, pointing at the hooked end. “And prying out the insides. Look, look.” She pointed at the
handle. “Flowers inscribed here. Very cute.”
“Very cute,” Yumi repeated.
“Don’t tell anyone what we are, please,” Masaka said. “We are tired of people being scared of us. We are tired of wars. We like painting.
Please.”
“I…won’t tell anyone,” Yumi said. “But please, we need help. You… know about what’s out in the darkness?”
“No horde,” Design said, holding up a finger, “settles on a planet without knowing everything about the terrain. I’ll bet she’s been sending out…um, scouts. Little scouts. To investigate the entire place.”
Masaka looked out at the kitchens, then shut the door. “Is it important?” she asked Yumi. “As important as Design said?”
“Yes,” Yumi said. “I think it really is.”
Masaka took a deep breath. “We… I am not so paranoid as others, Design. I am trying to be human. To avoid the conflicts. But I have sent hordelings out. Most of the landscape beyond the cities is wasteland, enveloped in this strange Investiture. Like the slag castoffs of half-refined souls. But there are places we cannot go.”
“Cannot go?” Yumi asked, looking at Painter. “What do you mean?”
“Hard places,” Masaka explained. “Walls in the blackness, where the Investiture has become solid. Rising up high in the sky, into the atmosphere. Like columns. One vast one a few miles away. Other small ones, circles all of them, like…fortifications.”
“Around towns?” Painter asked, standing up, then waving for Yumi to say it—which she did.
“No way to tell,” Masaka said. “I can’t get through.” She wilted. “I am young. I am not so…eager as some of my kind. I don’t have the knowledge, have not gathered the power, to deal with things like this.
I came here to hide.”
“It might be enough,” Yumi said, “if you draw out a little map of it, maybe? Where these places are?”
Masaka nodded, and Design went to fetch some paper.
“Towns,” Painter repeated, stepping up beside Yumi. “Those circles she found. They’re your towns!”
“It’s impossible,” Yumi said. “I’d know if I’d been living in little enclaves inside a vast darkness. We can see all the way to the
horizon!”
“The shroud can look like anything,” he said. “Design said it could fool us. And you yourself said that people from your lands rarely travel between villages because of the heat of the stone in between.
So it could all be some kind of strange cover-up.”
“And you really think,” she replied, “that of the thousands upon thousands of people who live in my kingdom, none would stroll out and find one of these barriers? That a flyer would never smack into an invisible wall in the sky? You think this could have been hidden from all of us for such a long time?”
“I…” He winced at the implausibility of it all. “Yeah, all right. But I would bet you the biggest bowl of noodles you can eat that if we overlap Masaka’s map with a map of your lands, we’re going to find a correlation.”
Masaka had watched all of this with interest, but didn’t seem to find a woman talking to herself to be all that odd. When Design returned with a paper, Masaka knelt down with a fine brush and sketched out a large circle near one edge of it.
“Kilahito,” she said, pointing to the circle. “Where we are now.” She drew another circle of similar size across the page. “The largest of the impassable zones.” Then she drew out several other smaller circles, about a dozen. Yes…those could be the size of towns. “The other ones.”
“How accurate,” Yumi said, “are these distances you’ve drawn?”
“Hordes have incredible spatial awareness,” Design said. “Comes from having bodies that can spread out to the size of a nation. Her guess will be more accurate than most people’s instrument-measured surveys.”
“Here is a scale,” Masaka said, drawing a line at the bottom with some numbers on it. “It is exact.”
Painter knelt and studied the painting in detail, then measured the distances using his palm and fingers, something he’d taught Yumi to
do for measuring parts of a painting.
“You ready to sleep?” he asked her.
“I’d prefer to eat first,” she said. “I never did get dinner.”
He nodded. “I’m going to memorize this drawing. See if I can reproduce it exactly. Shouldn’t take me too long. After that we can get
back to your land and fix this once and for all.”
Yumi nodded in return and wandered out to the main room, taking advantage of the longer leash. Design, having put off her customers too long, came out and took charge of the restaurant. So Yumi sat at the counter, watching Masaka join the rest of the painters. They
noticed Yumi and waved.
Fix this once and for all.
It might be…the last time she saw these people. Her last chance to be a normal person rather than the collected hopes and needs of an entire people. And so she let herself leave the bar, then trail across the room to the others.
“Yumi, Yumi,” Tojin said. “Look at this.” He flexed, stretching his… neck muscles? She hadn’t ever even thought about the fact that people had muscles in their necks. “What do you think?”
“Your head,” she said, “looks small by comparison.” She blushed immediately, as that felt rude.
Tojin, however, grinned widely. “Thanks!”
Akane sat nearby, gazing at the ceiling as Izzy kept talking. About dramas, of course. “So it turns out,” she was saying, “he didn’t leave.
He thought he had to because he was being threatened by his evil
brother.”
Yumi’s breath caught.
“His brother,” Akane said, “that you just told me was dead.”
“He is dead!” Izzy said. “He set it all up before he died! Using people who hate the honor of ronin.”
“So…” Yumi whispered, “Sir Ashinata came back?”
“There was an extra episode,” Izzy said, “that they didn’t tell us about.” She raised a finger. “This proves my theory of the importance of dramas. I’m writing a book on their relevance for improving mental health.”
Tojin frowned. “What about…drama-horoscope-figgldygrak— whatsit?”
“Old news,” Izzy said. “I’m going to be a viewer critic instead. It’s going to make me famous.”
Nearby, Masaka had settled into her seat. And though she didn’t say much, Yumi could see her contentment. She understood that.
Being an outsider, then finding a place. Being alone, then finding friends.
“I wish,” Yumi said, trying to hold back the tears, “that I’d been able to meet you all sooner.”
“It’s your brother’s fault,” Tojin said. “He could have invited you at any point. Only did it when he wanted someone to try doing his work
for him.”
Yumi felt a sudden, burning anger.
“I’m surprised,” Akane said, “that he didn’t try to recruit her to go to his classes for him in school. Considering that all he wanted to do was take time off. He—”
Yumi leaped to her feet, cutting her off. “You,” she said (lowly), “do
not know Nikaro!”
“We…know what he did to us,” Izzy said.
Tojin nodded.
“I know he hurt you,” Yumi said. “I know it was hard. But did you think about how hard it was for him?”
“Hard for him?” Akane asked. “He was quite literally sitting around doing nothing.”
“Wanting to fix things,” Yumi said, “and not knowing how to do so is the most excruciating experience I’ve ever had. You don’t know him, Akane. You really don’t. Do you know what it’s like to feel the pressure of needing to succeed, not for yourself but because everyone else depends on you? Do you know what it does to someone to realize that your value is wrapped up—almost exclusively —in what you can do for people? To know that if you fail, you become nothing to the ones you most love?”
They shied away from her. All but Akane, who leaned forward. “We never thought he was nothing, Yumi,” she said softly. “He wasn’t our friend just because of what we thought he could do for us.”
“Did you ever tell him that?” Yumi asked. “Did you ever wonder how he felt? Can you tell me, honestly, that you think he lied because he wanted to hurt you? Do you actually think he was enjoying himself?
Sitting alone? Staring at the wall? Trying desperately to think of a way
to not let you down? To not fail you?”
“He should have told us,” Akane said.
“He should have,” Yumi agreed. “He agrees. I agree. You agree.
We all (lowly) agree! But he didn’t tell you. It happened. It’s over. I’m sorry.” She sighed, her rage waning like the last jets of a drowsy steamwell. “You were his friends. He failed you. He ruined your lives.
But did you ever think how unfair it was that he was responsible for your lives?”
“I can’t pretend,” Tojin said softly, “that he didn’t hurt me.”
“I know, Tojin,” Yumi said. “But he loves you all still; I can see it in him. He cannot change what he did, but he is a good person, trying very hard. You don’t have to forget what he did. But did you ever think that maybe instead of constant wisecracks and snark you could simply…try to understand? On that day, when he was rejected from the Dreamwatch, Painter lost everything. Every hope, every dream.
He lost his love of what he did. But I think losing you as his friends was the worst of all.”
She met each of their eyes in turn, and they glanced away, not contradicting her. Akane, last of all, looked down.
“Thank you,” Yumi said, “for the kindness you’ve shown me these past weeks. I truly appreciate it. But I’m going to be leaving now. So maybe spare some of that kindness for someone who needs it even more.”
She bowed to them, the most formal bow she knew, as if to the spirits themselves. Then she turned away, joining Painter, who had just come out of the kitchen.
“Come on,” she said, walking toward the door.
“But dinner—”
“I’ve lost my appetite,” she said. “You’re right. It’s time to end this.”
