Machida Kimi operated out of a tea house that didn't appear on any merchant registry in Muramachi.
It sat on a narrow lane three streets behind the fish market in the city's eastern quarter, wedged between a paper merchant and a sake wholesaler. Its presence was marked by nothing more than a faded cloth curtain and the scent of roasted barley tea drifting into the salt-heavy air.
There was no sign. No name.
In Kimi's world, if you had to ask for directions, you weren't the kind of person she was interested in meeting.
Shuji had given Takeshi a single, sharp instruction: Bring something she doesn't already know. Kimi had no patience for those who treated her like a library; walking in to take what they needed and leaving nothing behind. Information with Kimi flowed in both directions, or it didn't flow at all.
Takeshi had spent the previous day conducting a silent inventory of three Tsushiguta-adjacent businesses: a courier operation, a money-lending house, and a dockside storage facility that handled cargo without the burden of paperwork.
He hadn't stepped inside. He didn't need to. He watched the traffic patterns, the guard rotations, and the faces that appeared twice in places where they had no honest reason to be.
By evening, he had harvested four names and two courier routes that weren't public knowledge.
He stepped into the tea house at the second hour past noon.
The interior was small and stiflingly warm. Four low tables sat in the dim light; two were occupied by men reading in a silence so practiced it was clear they were tracking every breath in the room.
A young woman moved between them with a tray, her footsteps muffled by the reeds. Behind a wooden partition at the back, the steady, rhythmic rasp of a hand-cranked tea grinder provided the room's heartbeat.
A woman emerged from behind the curtain and fixed her gaze on him.
Machida Kimi was somewhere in her mid-forties, carrying her years with a sharp, economical grace. She didn't fight time; she simply declined to be diminished by it. She had an ink-stained index finger, a face built for scrutiny, and the terrifying stillness of someone who had spent decades reading people until the effort was no longer necessary.
She studied him for three heartbeats. Then she said, "You look worse than Shuji described."
"Shuji described me?"
"He said you'd been through a storm. That was an understatement." She gestured toward the partition. "Back table. I'll bring the pot."
The back table was screened from the main room; small, spare, with a single candle guttering at its center.
Takeshi sat and waited. Kimi returned with two cups, sitting across from him without ceremony. She poured, set the iron pot down, and folded her hands.
"The Tsushiguta clan," she said. It wasn't a question. She already knew the shape of his hunger.
"I need camp locations. Eastern territory operations. A full roster if you have it."
"I have a partial list. The Tsushiguta don't consolidate their records in a way that makes life easy for people like me." She lifted her cup, the steam veiling her eyes. "What did you bring me?"
He gave her the four names and the two route deviations. He delivered the intelligence as he delivered a death blow: flat, precise, and without wasted motion.
Kimi listened without taking notes. When he finished, she sat in a brief, calculating silence, her mind performing rapid internal arithmetic.
"The courier operation," she noted. "You're certain about the northern route deviation at the Katsura bridge?"
"I watched it for six hours across two days. Every third run, they deviate to avoid the district watch rotation. It's timed to the minute."
"That's useful." She set her cup down and reached beneath the table, producing a folded document. She placed it between them but didn't push it forward. "Three confirmed camp locations in the eastern territories. A fourth I have at sixty percent confidence; they rotate their outer perimeters on an irregular schedule. Certainty is a luxury they don't often grant."
Takeshi looked at the paper, his hands steady. "And the clients who hired them?"
The air in the small alcove shifted by a degree. The temperature seemed to drop.
"That," Kimi said carefully, "is a different kind of question."
"But I demand an answer."
"The Tsushiguta's client relationships are the one area where I have significant gaps. They are surgical about their privacy. Whoever contracted them for your... situation... paid for silence as an itemized expense."
"Can you find the name?"
She looked at him steadily, her eyes hard as flint. "Given time and a reason to take the risk, perhaps. But be plain with yourself, Bando-san, the direction you're pointing in involves people who sit on councils. People who decide who operates in this city and who vanishes. Including me."
She took a slow sip of tea. "I'm not saying no. I'm saying that what you will eventually ask of me is not a four-name trade."
"What is the price?"
"We'll discuss that if you finish with the camps and are still alive to return." She finally pushed the document toward him. "Start with these three. I'll confirm the fourth within ten days."
Takeshi took the paper, folding it into his robes. He stood to leave.
"Bando-san." Her voice caught him at the curtain. He looked back. She was staring into her tea, her sharp features softened by the candlelight. "Shuji told me about your family. I don't say things like this often, so I'll say it once: I'm sorry. Genuinely."
He stood there for a moment, the weight of the house in Muramachi pressing against his ribs.
"Thank you," he said.
He walked out through the tea house and into the lane. The cold afternoon air hit him, but he didn't stop walking until the tightness in his chest had been converted into forward momentum.
He stopped on the bridge to open the document.
Three locations. Distances, access routes, estimated personnel. He read it twice, filed the data into the dark corners of his mind, and refolded the paper.
He didn't choose the first camp based on strategy. He chose it because it was the closest. Twelve miles east.
He could be there before the second watch.
He started walking.
He didn't look back.