Eizo wasn’t lying. He wasn’t being entirely truthful either. Ever since he was a teenager, he knew he wasn’t interested in a relationship, but he didn’t find it unpleasant when someone, regardless of their gender, told him they liked him. He supposed he didn’t have a particular leaning toward man or woman.

  Until college, he would decline any advances made toward him, citing baseball as his true love. At Keio, he grew bolder, tweaking the response depending on who asked. On some days, he said to men who hit on him that he preferred women. On other occasions, he’d show his preference for men. Once in a blue moon, he would hint at a long-distance relationship that never existed.

  Each time, it worked like a charm, and he always smiled at the end—a full stop; a punctuation to any thoughts they might harbor. Eizo truly appreciated that they asked, so he could respond and shut down the conversation for good.

  Could he have said something else instead—something less contentious? He could. But the conversation would tempt people who swore they controlled fate, believing they could change his preference since it wasn’t fixed in one place or the other, and reshape his presence to orbit them.

  Besides, romance was the last thing on his mind.

  Romance was always the last thing on his mind.

  * * *

  Eizo took just a minute to unpack his belongings in his new home.

  His thirty-six-liter hiking backpack carried everything he needed in life: a laptop, a notebook with an ink-dipped quill on the cover, Bluetooth headphones, some pens, a pair of sandals, toiletries, a rolled-up sleeping bag, and four changes of clothes. He made sure never to own possessions that would exceed his carrying capacity and gave away all his Keio merchandise before leaving the dorm.

  The studio apartment came with a kitchenette, a working fridge and washing machine, a shower area with an en suite toilet, a two-seater couch, a round coffee table and copious storage spaces where he could stash his belongings. There was even a foldable desk slotted behind the TV panel. All Eizo needed to do was buy a chair, a futon, some basic appliances, and he could live comfortably.

  The balcony was hopeless. Its triangular shape was so awkward that you couldn’t even fit a full-sized clothes rack in it. Probably just a way to let sunlight stream into the home. The estate agency had scraped off the peeling wallpaper in the corners and repainted the walls a soft yellow. It reminded him of ducklings cuddling together in a nest.

  Yellow wasn’t his favorite color. He preferred beige or light brown. Yellow was too bright, too upbeat, too capable of masking dirt. Still, it was his own space. He would find a way to hang his laundry. He would stare at the walls less. For seventy thousand yen a month and a fifteen-minute walk to the station, this was well worth the woes of an irregular-shaped balcony.

  Eizo had wandered into Kichijoji by chance. Although he was born and raised in Tokyo, he’d mainly kept to the radius of his home and school in the eastern areas of Chiyoda and Minato, occasionally venturing further east to Tokyo Bay. He didn’t have the time or interest to explore places beyond what he was familiar with. It wasn’t until his childhood friend, Suzuki Hayato, suggested visiting Mugino, an award-winning coffee shop in western Tokyo, that Eizo finally made his way to Kichijoji a year ago.

  Eizo loved coffee. It was practically the only reason he would travel outside of his usual haunts.

  He had never fallen in love before, but if love were a flavor, all it took was the first sip for him to fall hard. The intense brew of Ethiopian beans, prepared by the baristas at Mugino, was unlike anything he had tried. He could never forget the perfect dome of reddish-brown foam in the cup, the earthy and smooth mouthfeel of the espresso skimming off the back of his tongue, coursing down his throat before settling in the pit of his gut—a deeply profound journey that lit up every single fiber of his body. He was convinced that he would never drink coffee this good again.

  Since then, he’d been visiting Mugino every weekend. It was the main reason he began considering staying in Kichijoji.

  A second reason was the impression his neighbor left on him.

  Eizo stayed in the corner unit at 526. Next to him was 525. Based on the nameplate affixed beside the door, his neighbor was called Miyamoto. Eizo hadn’t met them yet, but he could tell from how well-kept the area around his doorstep was that they were very tidy and fastidious. Not even a trace of dust nor a smudge of handprint was found on the door handle. That was how impeccably clean Miyamoto must be.

  Either that, or Miyamoto was a professional hitman who was careful never to leave any biological traces behind. But such a thing belonged in the movies, not real life. His last neighbor at the campus dorm had been a slob, often leaving his shoes and socks strewn messily outside the door. Eizo needed to have good neighbors. He had planned to stay here for at least a year.

  In Eizo’s mind, Miyamoto had a neat appearance and dressed modestly. Perhaps someone in their forties or fifties who took to a relaxing life in a stylish district, exercised often to stay sharp and fit, tended to plants on the weekends, and took great care of their belongings.

  Would Miyamoto enjoy coffee too?

  Regardless, Eizo had a feeling that they would get along just fine.

  3

  Ran was fast losing patience.

  Not that he had much patience to begin with, but since that day three weeks ago, every single thing had tested his limits. What remained was stretched taut, then thinned out by the second.

  For months, he’d been clocking nearly fourteen-hour days so that he could free up his weekends and catch up on sleep. Recently, the fourteen-hour days had become sixteen or even eighteen hours, as two more of his coworkers had resigned.

  One was a senior editor who’d joined Suigetsu before him, while the other was a junior editor tasked with copyedits and managing a small team of freelance proofreaders. Ran knew exactly why they’d left. The publishing space in Japan was small. People knew one another. People talked, and companies frequently poached staff. A company like Suigetsu was ripe for the picking.

  With their recent successes, Suigetsu was no longer the spunky startup it once was. Mainstream media heralded them as the curators of the new Japanese voice, with Konishi Kisuke’s impeccable eye for literary talent spurring them to greater fame. After all, he’d single-handedly picked the latest Akutagawa Prize winner from the slush pile of a college literary competition last year and signed her.

  The literary establishment was paying attention to them. He wondered if it was a matter of time before the industry discovered that Suigetsu had whisked away Baka Nori from the web novel platform he wrote for, an arrangement ethically questionable from the outset. Suigetsu needed to be more careful with growing its stable of exclusive writers. One wrong move, and it could send them flying to the bad side of the law.

  Ran was itching to send people flying as well.

  Top of his list was Little Quill.

  For three entire weeks, Ran could not reach them. Calls and messages went unanswered. Ran scrolled through his phone—he’d left thirty-four calls and twenty texts. He hated how his attempts to reach the offender made him look like an obsessive stalker. Was the number fake? Who would go to such lengths to piss him off?

  The damned parcel continued to stake an unwanted claim in a corner of the entryway, down by the shoe rack, greeting him with an insidious wink whenever he left for work and again when he returned home, a malevolent force that snuck its vile, uninvited tendrils around him since the day it was left at his doorstep, perverting the harmony he had worked hard to create ever since he moved in. If he kept it in his storage closet, it would mean that he accepted it as part of his home. He needed to place it in the entryway, a constant reminder that Little Quill was the source of his torment. Ran decided he would give it one more week before he threw out the parcel and moved on with his life.

  Then there was the curious case of his new neighbor, who’d recently moved into the odd-shaped unit next door, left vacant for a month after the previous tenants, a genial couple in their sixties, moved back to Kobe to care for their grandchildren.

  Ran hardly spoke to his neighbors. Throughout his five years at Oakwood, he never once considered befriending the tenants of all twenty-six units on his floor. He only needed to know who flanked his apartment. To his left were the Yamashitas of Unit 524—a middle-aged, childless couple whose dog went missing last month. Where they worked or what they did, he didn’t care. To the right was Unit 526, its occupant a terrible slob who thought that just because they stayed in the corner unit, they had unfettered access to the common area at the end of the corridor.

  Since last week, cardboard boxes had piled up outside the apartment, unflattened and uncollected. Every resident was required to properly sort their trash and place it in the designated collection bins on the ground floor, in accordance with the condominium’s requirements. Ran once rang the doorbell to remind them of the rules, but no one answered.

  He never saw the occupant either. It was as though his new neighbor was a ghost who surfaced at night to stack boxes like a Tetris formation and then disappeared for the rest of the time. No, it was worse. It was as though his new neighbor was the very personification of the parcel in his entryway, a scourge that could end his five years of peace in Oakwood.

  For three weeks, Ran hadn’t been in the mood to make a pot of tea. He was ready to snap, and he would not hold back.

  * * *

  The next morning, Ran slipped on his shoes at the entryway as he sent his daily greetings to Little Quill.

  Collect your parcel this week, or I will throw it away.

  He’d expected it to go unread again when a pair of blue ticks appeared next to his text. Ran blinked in disbelief.

  You reading this?

  He hit send in a matter of seconds to prove he wasn’t hallucinating. Again, the dual blue ticks appeared with no response.

  Ran pressed the call button. Despite his profound dislike for talking on the phone, he needed to get to this asswipe before they tried anything else. Ran had it figured out—that dirty fucker had blocked him and accidentally unblocked him now. No other explanation needed.

  He was ready to curse them out when he heard a phone ringing outside his door. Four rings, and the line went dead.

  Little Quill was at his door.

  Little Quill was right here.

  Little Fucking Quill must be dropping off yet another parcel. Previously, they’d used a courier. This time, they came in person, like a criminal circling back to the crime scene.

  His instincts were right all along—this shit was a prankster out to mess with him.

  But Miyamoto Ran wasn’t someone you could mess with. You could try, as those in school had before. It wasn’t Ran’s fault that they’d ended up with scraped limbs and bloodied noses. The door was the only barrier separating him from Little Quill.

  Ran grabbed his briefcase from the shoe bench and dashed out of his home. He scanned the empty corridor spanning the length of twenty-six units, thinking he was a step too slow when he heard the soft ding of the elevator doors closing.

  There you are.

  If this was how Little Quill wanted to play, then bring it on. It had been a long time since he’d fought anyone. He glanced at his watch. August 5, 2025, 07:15:55. A sequence of fives lined up, telling him it was a good time to start again. Ran loosened his tie and cracked his knuckles.

  Time to pluck those feathers off the stem, Little Motherfucker.

  4

  Eizo stepped out of Oakwood Apartments just as the stairwell doors behind him groaned open with great force. Footsteps thundered down the stairs, each beat bouncing off the empty lobby like a row of cannons firing.

  He thought little of it at first. Must be someone in such a hurry they couldn’t lift their feet as they walked, choosing instead to stomp their way around like a herd of wild beasts on the hunt. Eizo ambled down the pedestrian sidewalk connecting the building to the traffic junction while the same pair of footsteps stomped after him.

  A coincidence, perhaps, since the route he took was the fastest to the station. But something felt amiss. When he turned left, the footsteps fell to his left. When he sped up as the crosswalk signs flashed green, those footsteps closely clomped behind, matching him for pace. The sound of their feet hitting the pavement was like clockwork—left, right, left, right, clipping at his heels like a shadow, never once letting up.

  Eizo felt like he was prey.

  This wasn’t a coincidence. Someone had been following him since he left the building, and they were making sure he knew it.

  He paused.

  Why was he intimidated by a set of footsteps and a pair of very thick soles thumping on the pavement?

  At six foot two, he was taller than the average Japanese man. Much taller. He could argue that he was stronger than the average man, too. He could use his height to overwhelm the stalker if needed. And if things went south, he could always sprint away to safety. At full speed, he doubted the stalker could catch up to him.

  Slowly turning to his right, his chin barely touching his shoulder, Eizo came face to face with his stalker.

  No. He came face to face with a wild beast.

  No. It was more defined than that.

  A wild beast could graze peacefully until it senses danger and flees. It could also be the danger—hunting and tearing out tendons with its bloodied fangs. The one chasing him was the latter.

  He was locking eyes with a wolf, whose piercing brown gaze bored holes into the back of his skull.

  A wolf in a pitch-black suit, cut at all the right angles, his hair perfectly coiffed into a low pompadour. Every single strand of hair was in its place, every crease in his suit carefully ironed out.

  A most scrupulous wolf, Eizo deduced at once. The kind who could easily gut you in the back of an alley, leave you to bleed out, and then howl for his pack to chew on your bones as he slunk off unscathed.

  Such creatures were the yakuza—gangsters affiliated with major criminal syndicates who dressed up to the nines to make a good appearance, and sometimes acted like normal people who cared for their communities, but would resort to the vilest means to extort and enslave you to a lifetime of debt if you so much as blinked.

  Eizo felt blood pulsing through his brain. Fight or flight?

  His instincts told him he would never win against this wolf, despite his height advantage. He didn’t know why. He didn’t need to, just as a lamb didn’t need to understand why when a wolf’s fangs sank into its belly.

  Before the wolf could speak, Eizo fled.

  He had never walked so fast in his life. His pace was a brisk walk fast turning into a run, but not quite that yet. Even in a state of panic, he could still grasp the fundamentals of basic decency and not risk ruining his image in his new neighborhood. Everyone strolled about leisurely except for him and the wolf, entangled in some creepy walk-off that Eizo hadn’t asked for.

  Dressed in a light blue Oxford shirt and jeans, he would look ridiculous running to the station. Heat radiated off the pavement in waves, and the last thing Eizo wanted was to reach his destination looking like he had just emerged from a sauna. If Eizo ran, the wolf would surely follow.

  A police station emerged on the horizon, giving Eizo a glimmer of hope. It was a detour from the route to the train station, but he had to do it. The police station was the only home for yakuza who tailed people for no reason.

  He sped up another notch when his cell phone rang. That same unknown number who’d called when he was locking his door. He declined the call and continued to blaze towards the police station.

  A few seconds later, his phone rang again. This time it was Hayato.

  “Good luck on your meeting with Suigetsu,” Hayato said.

  “What would you do if a wolf were chasing you?” Eizo asked instead. He looked behind him and saw that the damned beast kept up despite his best efforts to shake him off.

  “A wolf?”

  “A ferocious, rabid wolf,” Eizo said, clutching his phone. “A wolf on steroids.”

  “In Tokyo?”

  “A real one,” he said seriously, “right in the heart of Kichijoji.”

  * * *

  Little Quill sure walked fast.

  Propelled by his inhumanly long legs, he gave Ran a cardio workout as he ducked between crowds and scampered down the sidewalk like a sewer rat chased out of its filthy dregs. Ran hadn’t been sure if the man he was following was Little Quill, but once he called the number and saw the man whip out his phone at the same instant, he knew he was right.

  Who knew Little Quill was not little, but a giant? He was at least a head taller than Ran. His auburn hair, likely shoulder-length, was pulled into a half-bun, a fashionable style among Shibuya men. He was tan too, as though he’d spent all summer riding waves on the Shonan coast.

  Little Quill had to be an athlete.

  Anyone could tell he had a strong, well-proportioned physique under those loose-fitting clothes. Broad-chested with wide, straight shoulders and a back that tapered sharply to a trim waist. That burst of power when he first broke away from Ran at the crosswalk. These were traits of an impressive core with isometric strength. He had definitely spent countless hours at the gym, pumping out reps at a high cadence. When he walked, the balls of his feet landed first on the ground—a forefoot strike, favored by sprinters or those who played sports that required short bursts of speed.

  Little Quill had endurance, too. He paced his walk, accelerating and maintaining speed as he continued to evade Ran, his back straight and knees lifted, a forward lean to engage gravity, powering him ahead of Ran as the miles sped by.

  What did someone like this have to gain by dropping packages at his door?

  Ran eased off his antics and slowed to a stroll, blending in with the early morning commuters and a stream of mothers on electric bicycles ferrying their children to school.