The rule with people like Teruo is simple: the longer you wait to follow up, the smaller the number gets
He knows I need the money. He knew it when he underpaid me the first time. He knows it now, three days after the insurance job, because I haven't come to him yet and in his experience, desperate people either show up too fast or they stew until their leverage rots. He is betting on the latter. He is probably right about most people.
I show up on the fourth day at eleven in the morning, which is early for the yakitori district and late enough that Teruo has already convinced himself I'm not coming. I know this because he looks up from behind the grill with an expression that takes a half-second too long to settle into its usual blankness. That half-second tells me everything.
He was hoping for more time.
"You're early," he says.
"For what?" I say. "We didn't set a time."
He goes back to the grill. I sit at the end of the counter and order tea I can't really afford and wait. This is part of it. You don't stand in front of someone and demand. You sit. You let the weight of your presence do the slow work that words would do badly.
After about five minutes he comes to the back table. I follow.
The noren curtain falls behind us and Teruo puts both hands on the table and looks at me with the expression of a man preparing to offer something he already knows is insufficient.
"The files are complicated," he says.
I already know what that means. It means he found a buyer, the buyer lowballed him, and he is about to pass the lowball down to me and keep his margin intact. This is the information broker economy at its most honest: everyone passes the loss downward until it lands on whoever has the least ability to refuse.
That's me. For now.
"How complicated," I say.
"The hero names in those files — two of them are still active, licensed, ranked. Anyone who buys that information is buying a liability. I had to find a buyer who operates far enough outside that it doesn't touch them."
"You found one," I say. Not a question.
He shifts. "Thirty-two thousand."
I look at him for a moment. Thirty-two thousand. The files were worth forty at a conservative estimate and I told him that. He found a buyer, took his cut first, and is presenting me the remainder as if it's the full sale price. His Quirk detects dishonesty. It doesn't stop him from practicing it with some creativity.
"The deal was sixty percent of the sale," I say. "Not sixty percent of whatever number you bring back."
"That is the sale price."
"No. That's what's left after your cut. Which you took before telling me what it sold for, which is not how this works."
He meets my eyes for exactly one second and I angle away the way I always do and he looks off to the side and says nothing. His Quirk is registering that I know the truth and he knows I know it, which puts a floor on how far he can push this.
"Twenty thousand," he says finally. "That's my final number."
Twenty thousand. My sixty percent of thirty-two would have been nineteen thousand two hundred. He is offering me twenty and calling it generosity. This is what the bottom of the chain looks like. You fight for a number and then you fight to keep it and then you walk away with something that is technically a win and tastes like nothing at all.
"Twenty thousand," I say. "And you move the next set I bring you at full price. No creative accounting."
He studies me. Decides I mean it. Nods once.
The bills come out of the apron. I pocket them without counting. I drink the rest of the tea that went cold while we talked and I stand up and I leave.
Outside, the sky is doing the thing it does over Musutafu lately — a white-gray that isn't quite overcast and isn't quite clear, like the city is being kept under glass and the glass hasn't been cleaned in months. I walk east toward the drainage canal that runs behind the bunker access and I do the arithmetic.
Twenty thousand from Teruo. My share of the split with Matsuda means I owe him eight thousand from that. Net for me: twelve thousand yen. Plus the four hundred I already had. Twelve thousand four hundred.
For two nights of work, one headache that lasted until morning, and a negotiation that cost me four days of waiting and still ended below what the files were worth.
Twelve thousand four hundred yen.
I count it out in my head the way I always do and I let myself feel the number plainly without dressing it up. It's not enough. It's never enough. It's the floor of surviving this week and nothing more. No forward movement. No compounding. Just the treadmill of staying alive at the same altitude I was at seven days ago.
The thing about being this broke is that it's not dramatic. Nobody is chasing me. There's no single terrible thing happening. It's just the slow grind of numbers that never quite add up to escape velocity. You find something worth selling. You sell it for less than it's worth. You pay what you owe. You eat. You sleep on a concrete floor. You start again.
I stop at a corner where a vending machine still works, which is something of a minor miracle in this part of the district. I stand in front of it for probably thirty seconds longer than I should, looking at the options. Coffee. Water. Some canned juice drink with a cartoon on it. I think about the twelve thousand four hundred yen in my pocket and I think about Ogata's utility payment due in nine days and I think about the next building I need to find and the next set of files I need to locate and move before their information ages out.
I buy the coffee. One hundred and twenty yen. It comes out lukewarm and it tastes like the idea of coffee rather than coffee itself.
I drink it walking.
Matsuda is in his usual spot when I get back to the corridor, sitting against the east wall with his arms on his knees, watching the card game without playing. He looks up when I come down the stairs. I cross to him and hold out eight thousand yen in folded bills without preamble.
He takes it. Counts it this time, unlike me, but I don't hold that against him. Counting at the table is a power move. Counting after the table is just sense.
"Twenty total," he says.
"Teruo happened," I say.
He makes a sound that is not quite a laugh. "He always does." Which tells me this is not his first time in this particular food chain.
I sit against my section of wall. The corridor smells the same as it always smells. Nakashima is coughing in his corner. The card players argue quietly about something that probably doesn't matter.
"There's another building," Matsuda says after a moment. He says it the way someone drops a coin on a table — lightly, like it costs him nothing. Like he isn't watching to see whether I pick it up.
I look at him.
"Not tonight," I say.
He nods. He doesn't push. I'll give him that much — he doesn't push.
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the pipe housing. My neck aches. The headache from two nights ago left a residue behind my left eye that still hasn't fully cleared. I'm tired in the specific way that comes not from lack of sleep but from the constant low-level effort of calculating everything, every minute, never being able to turn the math off.
Twelve thousand four hundred yen. Nine days to Ogata's payment. Another building waiting.
One step. Then the next. That's all this is.
I stay very still and I breathe and I let the lantern light do what lantern light does, which is make everything look slightly warmer than it actually is.
Above me, Musutafu keeps burning in its quiet, sustained, post-war way. The city does not care that I'm down here doing arithmetic in the dark.
Good. I don't need it to care. I just need it to hold still long enough for me to take what I need from it.
I open my eyes.
"Tell me about the other building," I say.