“I’ll repeat it as many times as I have to, Ryo. You’re stubborn as an ox.” She picked up a pitcher from a tray on a small stand next to the star-catcher and poured sake into one of two empty cups.

Ryo smirked. “Aren’t you going to say hi to the kid that waved at you? He seems nice.”

“Don’t change the subject.” She gave the pitcher to Ryo. “Now fill the other one.”

“Why do we have to do this every time?” Ryo sighed. He sniffed the smelly liquid and wrinkled his nose. “I don’t even like sake.”

“It’s our custom, you baka. Now pour, or I’ll sic Shinji on you.”

Ryo filled the other cup and gave it to Remi, who in turn gave him hers. They bowed slightly to each other, the sake quivering in their hands, and then they drank simultaneously before replacing the cups on the tray and quietly slipping through the door.

“Mother,” Remi stopped to bow before the small robed woman who stood silently in the dimly lit hallway. She was old, and one would have guessed fragile upon first glance. But as Ryo noticed the subtle bulge at her hip, he knew that appearances were deceiving and the foolish that dared cross her and enter these halls without consent would taste the punishment of a blade at her discretion.

Ryo bowed as well and she acknowledged him faintly with a barely perceptible nod, as though he were a ghost. “Speaking of Shinji, what district is he planning on—”

“Shush! No speaking of these things until we have reached the room.” Remi made a left down the hall full of paper sliding doors stitched skillfully and lovingly with depictions of great scenes of chaos: rolling hills cracked and opening a maw into the earth, clashing armies toiling in a stalemate, Old Edo scourged by fires, a great explosion that erupts skyward centered above a single entity. She passed by several of them. “Hostility is a coward’s charade,” she repeated. “That’s what my father used to say. And you are hostility incarnate, from what I hear.”

“Hearsay is never the real truth, Remi. Would’ve thought you’d be the first to know that.”

“Your reputation is as much a reality to those that fear it as the destruction of Edo by the Sparkfall. To them, you are Death. I hear mutterings of a shadow that wanders the night, cloaked in darkness. Some people believe that you are a ghost that was given a Spark and became tangible enough to murder the living.”

Ryo laughed bitterly. “That’s absurd.”

“Its validity is inconsequential. To them, you’re not even human. Do you know what they call you? The—”

“I know what they call me, and I don’t want to hear it.” Ryo stared grimly ahead. “They can sit idle with their legends and stories. It just makes my business easier. Anyways, if you haven’t realized it by now, it’s my job to be hostile.”

“But are you the job?” Remi questioned. “Are you really just Death? Is that all there is?” Ryo just shrugged and stared lazily at the ceiling as they walked. “I don’t think so. My father taught me many wisdoms, Ryo, but my intuition is a craft of my own making. And right now I can tell you for a fact that you are not the summation of your job. There is evil for evil’s sake, and it lives outside these walls, beyond the Neutral Zones. The Americans, the clansmen, the Loyalists, the individual opportunists… It seems like everyone’s fighting these days, and almost for nothing. They say it’s for territory, or weapons, or remnant shards of the Sparkfall. They kill each other in the scores over ideologies and nationalities. That, Ryo, is hostility without moral reason. And that is not you.”