Tokyo Station was a cathedral of glass and chrome, loud in its silence, the kind of place where the crowd moved like code running on perfect rails. Screens looped adverts in twenty-second bursts: gene-mod clinics, temp-skin tattoos, corporate banks promising loyalty upgrades. Drones hung like patient insects under the ceiling beams, humming as they swept barcodes off tickets and faces off bone-structure. The air smelled of coffee steam and ozone, battery packs warming against coats.
Mira walked through it with her left hand weighted by a case. Brushed steel, not polished, not new — scuffed and scratched — chained to her wrist with a clasp that pinched hard enough to leave a line of red. The chain rattled when she moved. Heads turned. Of course they did.
A boy in a blazer stopped dead to stare. His mother caught his arm and hauled him away with a whispered, "Don't point." Two men in salaryman gray flicked their eyes up, clocked the chain, then pretended to study stock tickers sliding over their lenses. An old woman with mirror implants for eyes paused, tilted her head, and smiled the brittle smile of someone who's seen worse and doesn't want to admit it.
Mira ignored them. She always ignored them.
She stopped at a vending wall because that was what you did before a long run. Machines stacked floor to ceiling, each one lit like a shrine. Their voices pitched themselves to whoever stood closest, cheerful, intimate, a little uncanny.
Mira squinted at the vending wall like it had personally wronged her.
"Tea," she muttered, stabbing the glowing menu. "Not kale infusion. Not neuro-boost jasmine. Just... tea."
The machine chirped cheerfully: "Recommended: BrainMax Neuro-Jasmine™ with ninety-nine percent recall boost!"
Mira leaned closer to the mic. "Do I look like I need recall boost? I just need to stay awake through three train stops without dying."
She fed it coins. The machine hiccupped, spat one back into the tray like a wet cough, and chirped an apology that sounded smug.
"Rejected?" She picked it up, glared at the machine. "What, not shiny enough for you?"
An old woman with mirrored eyes chuckled beside her. "They do that when the software's lagged."
"Oh good," Mira said. "Even the machines are exhausted at midnight."
Mira reinserted the coin. The bottle thunked down with cold condensation and a click like a polite throat-clear. She fidgeted the rejected coin in her fingers anyway. You never knew when hardware would win the argument with software.
"Old-fashioned," someone said behind her, voice bright and fraying at the edges. "Coins."
Mira half turned. A man in a crumpled suit grinned at her over the shine of a travel flask. He smelled faintly of plum liquor, his tie was off by a notch; his hair, by several.
"Line's long," he said, pointing at the gate. "But you look like you've got time." He wobbled a friendly salute with the flask. "Jin."
Mira took her bottle. "Congratulations."
He laughed too loudly, then winced at his own echo. "Kidding. Relax. I'm a fun disaster, not a real one."
The screens over the concourse flashed platform numbers. Platform Seven pulsed white against the list, and the Shinkansen slid into view like a blade deciding where to cut. Boarding was a ritual — queue marks lit up on the floor, drones inched into position over the doors, the crowd adjusted itself without needing to be told. Briefcases knocked knees. Augmented eyes bloomed with data overlays and appointment reminders. Children tugged at hands that didn't let go.
Boarding was a ritual — queue marks lit up on the floor, drones inched into position over the doors, the crowd adjusted itself without needing to be told. Briefcases knocked knees. Augmented eyes bloomed with data overlays and appointment reminders. Children tugged at hands that didn't let go.
And then there was her: a woman with lacquered hair and a voice sharp enough to scratch glass. "Excuse me. Excuse me! You're standing in my boarding lane." She jabbed her ticket at Mira's shoulder like it was a badge of authority.
Mira looked at the chain tugging her wrist, then at the case, then at the woman's impatient face. "You are fucking excused, lady," she said, stepping aside half a centimeter.
The woman sniffed, satisfied, and marched ahead like she'd won something. Mira let the case bump her ankle and muttered, "Congratulations on conquering Platform Seven."
Jin, still orbiting nearby with his flask, nearly choked on a laugh.
"So, where are you headed?" Jin drifted beside her like a balloon that had escaped its owner.
"Forward," she said.
"Same." He gave her a smile that tried for charming and landed on persistent. "We could be travel buddies. I'm excellent at buying snacks."
"Thrilling," Mira said, stepping onto the carriage.
Inside, the air was scrubbed too clean, light tuned to a wavelength meant to calm. Everything aligned: seats, luggage racks, seams in the flooring. Precision like this didn't hide human mess; it framed it.
Mira claimed a window seat and set the case between her knees. The chain bit her wrist when she adjusted it; the thunk against the floor drew a look from the man across the aisle. Office fatigue in a discount suit, skin gone sallow from halogen lighting. He leaned toward her with the optimism of a person who had not yet learned not to try.
"Heavy thing," he said, not unkind.
"Not as heavy as it looks."
"Chain makes it worse."
"That's the point."
He half smiled, relieved to have earned a line, and retreated to his tablet. The screen hiccupped, blinked an error, froze.
Down the carriage a woman in a slate jacket folded her coat with neat precision and slid a folio onto her lap. Smooth bob, minimal makeup, posture balanced like a ruler's edge. She didn't even glance Mira's way.
The PA chimed, neutral and smooth. "Next stop: Shinagawa. Boarding complete. Doors closing."
Jin flopped into the aisle seat opposite Mira, bumping the armrest, nearly collecting the office worker's tablet with his elbow. "Sorry, sorry," he said, and did not sound sorry. He capped his flask as if in concession to common decency and grinned at Mira. "So, snacks—"
"No."
"Great, I'll get two."
A steward came by with a drone-assisted trolley, smile practiced to tolerable friendliness. "Would you like—"
"She'll have water," Kaoru said. "And I'll—"
"I can order for myself," Mira said. "Water's fine."
The steward's gaze snagged on the chain and then politely peeled away. "Of course." He dispensed a bottle with a gloved thumb and slid a receipt into the tray even though no one had asked for one.
Two rows back a man with a gray cardigan and an academic stoop eased a hardback book onto the fold-down table with the tenderness of a priest arranging a relic. He wore the kind of old-fashioned glasses that only people with very new tech wore. The book itself had a real-paper smell, which was suspicious. Real paper didn't smudge quite that way.
He turned a page and the corner flashed a grid of tiny lights.
The steward moved on. Jin leaned in and stage-whispered, "You see that? Book guy. He's either a professor or a magician."
Kaoru didn't look. "You're loud," she said to Jin. "And drunk."
"I object to one of those adjectives." He thought. "Maybe both."
The train slid forward with the soft push of acceleration. Tokyo smeared into neon glyphs against the glass, corporate mascots bobbing through drizzle and reflection. A delivery drone drifted too close to the window and corrected itself with a nervous shiver.
The office worker across the aisle jabbed at his tablet. "Come on," he muttered. "Not now." The dictation program hung on a half sentence and refused to be bullied into finishing it. "Every time we pass Shinagawa," he said to the air, catching Mira looking and giving her an embarrassed shrug. "Whole network hiccups. Doesn't matter the provider."
Mira nodded like she had a degree in telecom curses. Kaoru made another infinitesimal note to herself that did not reach her face.
The vending trolley rolled back. Someone at the rear laughed too loudly, and a box thumped under a seat with a metallic clunk. "Just books," a student said brightly, which was an odd thing to say about a box that had just sworn in iron. His friend elbowed him and grinned at nothing in particular.
The lights dipped and returned in a single breath. Around the carriage people did the theater of not reacting. A child let out a sound; his father shushed him with the urgency of a man who did not have the bandwidth for another variable.
Mira felt the chain cool against her skin. Across the aisle the gray-cardigan academic was still turning pages, his lips moving through what sounded like trivia or prayer. He held the book awkwardly high, as if the sightline mattered more than comfort. The corner lights flickered; the spine hummed once. The case between Mira's knees clicked in response, a polite, awful tap.
Kaoru tilted her head, then looked away as if she had not.
Jin's flask made a hollow sound when he set it down. "I'm going to get snacks," he announced, and stood with a sway he did not need to sell. The steward, returning with a hot drinks tray, stepped back and pinched a smile at him. Jin misjudged the gap and bumped the tray. A cup tipped, then righted with a miraculous catch by the drone harness. Everyone breathed again as if they hadn't been holding it.
"Sorry," Jin said, and actually sounded it this time.
"It happens," the steward said, and looked at Mira and Kaoru to see whether it had. Kaoru's face said it had not; Mira's said nothing.
The PA chimed again. "Shizuoka in forty-five minutes."
"Ugh," the office worker muttered reflexively. "Hate that station. Something always breaks."
"Stations don't break," Kaoru said, not unkind. "People do."
He considered this like it might be a revelation he could put in a slide deck and nodded. "Huh."
The line at the carriage door shifted. A man stepped through from the connector with the unhurried certainty of someone who believed doors existed for him. His suit was too sharp for comfort, his tie a precise vector. He took the aisle as if measuring angles, eyes skimming luggage, faces, the space between people and their things. He didn't stop. He didn't speak. He sat three rows back, spine straight, an unsheathed line.
The students got quieter. The steward's smile slid down a shade. The academic with the book turned a page that didn't need turning.
Jin reappeared carrying a paper bag that smelled of salt and MSG optimism. He plunked into his seat and offered Mira a packet. "Squid chips?"
"I have enemies already," she said. "I don't need help."
He beamed. "You're funny."
Kaoru, without looking, said, "She's busy."
"Doing what?" Jin asked, genuinely curious.
Mira lifted the chain an inch and let it settle with a soft clink. "This."
Jin opened his mouth, closed it, nodded like that made perfect sense. "Right. Important clinking."
The academic turned another too-careful page. The lights held steady. The steward disappeared up the aisle. The sharp-suited man three rows back didn't move at all.
The vending machine bottle on Mira's table left a ring of condensation she wiped with the pad of her thumb. She checked the clasp by feel, not sight, pressed the bruise under it with a quick, private wince. She told herself to breathe. Ride. Wait.
A woman with ink-stained fingers slid past, murmuring something under her breath. She folded a scrap of paper while she walked — crease, turn, crease — and when she reached the end of the row she set it on an empty seat like a gift for no one. The paper sat there with the unnatural crispness of something new pretending to be old.
Jin leaned across the aisle to look. "Origami," he whispered, as if the word were delicate enough to break the train. "Neat."
Kaoru's glance flicked over the paper and away. "You're in everyone's personal space."
"It's a community," Jin said, then smiled at Mira. "We're a community."
"Great," Mira said. "Maybe the community can be quieter."
He put a hand to his heart. "I can try."
The PA chimed once more, softer this time, like it had something it didn't want to say. "Attention: scheduled network maintenance ahead. Expect intermittent connectivity for the next—" A stutter, a correction. "—fifteen minutes."
Around them, the civilians shrugged and went back to their shows. The assassins — if that was what they were — lost the performance of their faces for a fraction of a second and then found it again.
Mira looked at the window and saw herself reflected over Tokyo's smudged light, the case a dark, patient rectangle between her knees. She took a drink. The jasmine was lukewarm now. It tasted like something she'd decided too long ago.
Jin tore open his squid chips with unnecessary triumph. "Well," he said through a smile he meant to be disarming, "if we're going to be offline, we should talk."
Kaoru closed her folio with a soft click. "About what?"
Jin considered the ceiling, the chips, Mira's chain. "Hobbies."
"Pass," Mira said.
"Okay," he said cheerfully. "New topic: favorite vending machine item. You look like a—"
"Don't," Kaoru said.
"—jasmine tea person," Jin finished, triumphant.
Mira looked at him. "You're a detective."
"I contain multitudes."
The gray-cardigan academic glanced up, as if surprised to find himself on a train with other people, and smiled at Mira in a way that tried to be harmless. "Did you know," he said, "that early Tōkaidō schedules accounted for the possibility of lightning—"
"Please don't," Mira said, almost gently.
He blinked. "Of course. Of course." He lowered the book. Lights ticked along the corner. The case tapped once against her knee.
Mira breathed.
Outside, the city bent away. Floodlit fields took its place, and then a scatter of houses, and then dark. Inside, engineered comfort hummed at a pitch designed to hide all other pitches; it only made the off-notes louder. The steward's drone harness clicked in the next car. Someone's call dropped. Someone else pretended not to care. The man three rows back watched the aisle without moving his eyes.
Mira rested her palm on the case as if it were a living thing that might need calming. She didn't close her eyes. Not yet.
Fifteen minutes, the PA had said, and tried to make it sound like nothing at all.