“Hiding solves nothing,” Remi spat. “And neither did this idiotic fight, not for you. Now get the hell out of my bar.”

Remi stood watch while the man recovered slowly. When he had his bearings, he found his repeatedly beaten friend coming to.

“C’mon, let’s go.”

“No… wait.” He waved him away, his words slurred with the voice of a man suffering a concussion. “Where’s Matsu?”

“Matsu? He was outside…”

“I told him… to back us up…”

The man twisted his face in fear. “No, my friend, what did you do…?”

The other man screamed. His expression was cold sober and panicked. He fled the support of his friend, stumbled over an empty stool and landed at a nearby table occupied by a lone man cradling a half-drunken mug of beer, his form and face masked by a traveler’s cloak.

“Matsu!”

A drop of blood fell from the cloak’s hem. Then several more.

The man fell shivering onto the table. He reached up and gripped the shoulder of his lifeless friend and sobbed pitifully. The other patrons of the bar hardly reacted to his behavior; they were all silent to the outsider’s cries, their conversations carrying on as usual, if not more quietly, each and every man refusing to relieve themselves from a lively atmosphere. All but one.

“He brought a weapon out, son,” an old American, clothes dusty from fieldwork, a face full of wrinkles and a tempered calmness, spoke softly and almost apologetically. “He pulled a gun while you fought with your fists. He dishonored himself and broke the gravest of rules here.”

Remi started suddenly as the man spoke: her mother, matron of the Kaijin, had been standing behind the body unnoticed until she stepped forward, revealing a naked and bloodied blade in her hand that shimmered in the bar’s lamplight. The small woman said nothing and her aged, expressionless face revealed nothing. Remi moved to the other side of the dead man. Her mother may have saved someone’s life tonight, but for a moment she was swept with the guilt that it required the sacrifice of another to do it. She motioned to help carry the body out as the dark-skinned man approached but he stopped her.

“No. This is our burden now. You have done enough. Kazuma, help me lift him…”

Remi watched them leave. The instigator, Kazuma, had simmered his outcries to short stifled sobs as he lifted the body of Matsu in his hands. The dark-skinned friend was a blank stone, his face hardened into the familiar expression of a man who had a long, exhausting journey ahead of him. Remi found herself snapping out of it only after one of the guards slipped inside after the two had left and spoke quietly to her mother, who nodded slightly, sheathed her blade, and glided away without a sound.

“Remi! Hey, Remi!”