The vivid neon of the main boulevard stained the rain-soaked asphalt in lurid colour.
Having driven back the two Public Order Bureau elites ? T?mori Ritsu and Sh?ko Mio ? Miyabi walked on into the dark without pausing to steady her breath.
That single verse, the one that had reduced their cutting-edge devices to silence, had carved deeply into Miyabi herself.
To grind the ink, to hurl one's soul into paper ? it was an act no different from wearing away one's own life.
Behind her, as ever, came the ungainly clank-clank of mechanical movement.
The piece of iron scrap now called Kareno had done nothing during the fierce battle just past but stand and watch Miyabi's back, unblinking.
As though determined not to miss a single fragment of the words she wove.
"..."
Miyabi did not speak. Yet in her silence there was no sign of rejection.
Kareno's sensor flickered once. Whether that was affirmation, or merely a stray spark in its circuitry, could not be said.
Without a word, Miyabi turned deeper into the abandoned district ? into an old tenement building that appeared on no map of the city's information grid.
The elevator had long since died. At the top of a damp, creaking staircase ?
beyond a heavy iron door ? lay a graveyard of paper: tens of thousands of "dead words" stacked floor to ceiling.
The shelves that reached to the rafters held yellowed old stock, hand-copied manuscripts, and fine washi of a quality no longer manufactured anywhere in this city, all of it sleeping under a coat of dust. This was the one establishment in all of Eight-Hundred-Eight that still dealt in analog writing materials ? a paper merchant of the old school.
"...So you've come."
A voice from somewhere behind the shelves.
The man who emerged, pushing aside a mountain of old paper, was of middle years, his hands stained black to the backs from a lifetime's work with ink. His eyes appraised nothing and flattered no one ? they simply met Miyabi's as an equal. In this city, those who looked at her that way could be counted on one hand.
"The usual."
"Aye."
That was enough. The man reached into the shelves and drew out a sheet of genuine washi, rough and real to the touch. Not the smooth synthetic paper that AI generated ? the true article, a craftsman's soul pressed into its grain.
He held out the wrapped bundle to Miyabi, then paused.
He glanced at Kareno, but showed no surprise. In this city, a broken machine was no more remarkable than a broken person.
"...That thing needs repairs."
"Would you see to it?"
The man looked Kareno over in silence, lifted the caved-in arm once, and let it fall.
"I'll do what I can before your next visit."
That said, he turned back toward the shelves ? then stopped, as though something had just returned to him.
"...Come to think of it. There's an old temple in the northern abandoned district. Nobody goes near it, but I've heard there's something strange sleeping there."
"Something strange."
"A bookmark, they call it. Whether it holds the memory of what this city was before ? that I couldn't say. ...Whether it's what you're looking for, I wouldn't know either."
He said no more, and this time disappeared into the shelves for good.
Miyabi tucked the washi she had received into the yatate, then let her hand rest for a moment against the inside of her collar. There, the fragments she had already gathered lay sleeping. They seemed, just faintly, to have grown warm.
She stepped out of the tenement and back into the rain-soaked alleyway.
And it was then.
A crack of electronic light split the air and gouged the ground at Miyabi's feet.
"Did I not say I wouldn't let you go."
It was T?mori Ritsu and Sh?ko Mio.
Whatever had rankled Mio about their earlier defeat, the boredom that had lived in her eyes before was entirely gone ? replaced by a ferocity that made no attempt to conceal itself. Without waiting for Ritsu to restrain her, she deployed the device at her fingertips and drove a relentless *rhythm* into the air.
"I won't hold back this time. ...That antique brush of yours ? I'm going to snap it in two!"
What Mio released was a barrage of rapid-fire linked verse. Thousands of characters every second, turned to physical blades and hurled at Miyabi.
But Miyabi did not flinch.
She spread a fresh sheet of washi and drew a single stroke of ink.
"?? Sound of rain; the clamoring characters ? swept clean away."
GYARIIIIN!
The spray of ink that burst forth swallowed every electronic blade Mio had launched and transformed them into a heavy, absolute silence.
The wave of characters driven straight back against her, Mio could not withstand the overload spiking through her device ? and was hurled violently backward.
"That's ? impossible. My calculations ? *losing*??!"
Mio dropped to her knees in the mud, eyes fixed on Miyabi, blazing with humiliation.
Ritsu, for his part, made no move to attack. He only laid a quiet hand on Mio's shoulder, his gaze not on Miyabi herself but sharpened ? as though trying to trace the nature of the "echo" that lingered in the moment after she recited.
"...Let us withdraw for today, Mio. As we are now, that 'trembling' is beyond our reach."
"But, senpai??!"
Ritsu took Mio with him and retreated into the curtain of rain.
Miyabi did not watch them go. She only resettled the yatate across her back.
"...The old temple, then."
Miyabi walked on toward the destination she had been given.
Behind her, Kareno followed once more ? clank, clank ? tracing her steps.
Battle Haiker Miyabi.
What does she wander in search of?