Millennial Mischief Page 6

  I started walking back to my apartment but an afternoon of sitting around, waiting for someone to update me on this job seemed like a waste of time, so I got out Ashley’s list to see if there was anywhere on it that’d interest me.

  Nope.

  Things like “The club from Death Note.” didn’t mean a thing so I ditched the list. I’d passed a couple of cool looking shops on the way to the cafe this morning but had been in too much of a rush to check them out. What was the point of even being in Tokyo if I couldn’t buy cute stuff then say things like “Oh this, I picked it up in Tokyo”?

  I had a wad of cash in my pocket and a city full of shops. Bring it on. A very small wad of cash but enough to do a little shopping.

  The first shop I went into didn’t live up to its promise. There were a few nice things outside but inside, everything was chintzy. Not my style. The second store seemed way too expensive for my taste. I didn’t know the exchange rate but I got that feeling from the way the sales assistant gave me that “you’re too poor to shop here” look.

  I got as far as the cafe then kept walking, not sure if there was anything much worth exploring. About a block later, loud pop music blasted out of a brightly colored store. Oh yeah, that called my name.

  I rushed in and found myself surrounded by awesome. Earrings shaped like sushi, hell yeah. I grabbed a shopping basket and threw them in. One pair? That’d be selfish. I grabbed a dozen so I had enough to give my friends.

  A woolly scarf with a love heart pattern went in the basket. I had a scarf with me but this one was so much cuter. That’s all I’d buy, though.

  Well, until I found a plushie dinosaur backpack. There might be people in this world who could walk past a dinosaur backpack without buying it but they were people with no souls. The hardest part was deciding whether to buy the red one or the yellow or the blue. I patted the soft dinosaur fur. The red one, definitely.

  Once I started, I couldn’t stop. A super cute check skirt that would probably fit me if I didn’t zip it up fully and some pink and blue platform sneakers and a panda hat and a bunch of cool socks.

  Eventually, I had to go to the counter because the weight of that shopping basket was too much for me to handle.

  The girl asked if I had my passport and, when I handed it over, I got a tax-free discount. Woohoo. If I’d known I’d get that, I would’ve shopped more.

  She handed back my shopping bags and I balanced them in my arms.

  A bit further along, I got a whiff of something very delicious. Crepe van! Hells yeah. Ashley had told me about them and said I absolutely had to try one. I wasn’t going to pass up a cultural experience. It’d be wrong.

  In the front of the van, fake food models filled a display case so that I could pick which one I wanted. Only I couldn’t decide. Out of all those hundreds of crepes, picking just one seemed torture. Strawberry looked so delicious but did I want it with just whipped cream or whipped cream and ice cream and maybe caramel sauce? But then banana looked good too. Tuna, just wrong. I could rule out the whole tuna section.

  The strawberries looked nicer, all in layered slices, but you didn’t look at the insides while stuffing a crepe in your gob. The banana would probably be more delicious.

  The girl working the van glared at me. I guess I was taking a long time but surely most people did. I hated being rushed in making important life decisions.

  Then a bunch of tourists hit the van and, if I didn’t order soon, they’d get in the line ahead of me.

  “Banana with caramel sauce and nuts,” I said. “No. Strawberry. No. Wait. I will have the banana.”

  While the girl went to work, making my crepe, I leaned against the van. So many promising shops filled the streets around me and about half the people wandering down the street were foreigners, so my lack of Japanese would be no setback. But the handles of those shopping bags dug into my skin. I should go home and dump them and come back.

  Once I got my crepe, I searched around for somewhere to sit. With all these bags in my arms, I wouldn’t be able to eat it otherwise. There were no seats, not even a ledge I could sit on. The best I could do was lean against a stone wall with my shopping bags between my legs.

  Even then, eating that crepe was no easy task. All that whipped cream didn’t help. It had to be all over my face and I was pretty sure I’d dropped some into my cleavage.

  I’d taken a few bites then looked up to find a couple of crows sitting on the wall behind me, their beady eyes focused on my food.

  “Not a chance in hell,” I told them.

  One of them put his head to the side as though he understood me and it made him sad.

  “Sorry, crow, but I don’t think desserts are part of a well-balanced bird diet.”

  I finished up, not looking at those crows trying to guilt me.

  From the crepe van, some old stone stairs led from the shopping street to a shrine. Well, the sign said they led to a shrine. That could be a great backdrop for some selfies. I was in no rush to get home. Sitting alone in my bare apartment didn’t exactly thrill me.

  As soon as I put my foot on the first step, the crows swooped down. They sat on the step in front of me, blocking my path.

  “The crepe’s all gone,” I told them.

  They didn’t leave, though. I took another step, trying to avoid stepping on them.

  A few steps more and those few crows had become a flock. I tried to brush them away but there was no shooing them. I had no idea how many crows gathered around me but there was no way I could walk up those steps.

  They cawed and screeched.

  “You don’t want me going to the shrine?” I asked.

  I stopped walking, leaning against the stair railing and folded my arms.

  “Listen, guys. I don’t know what’s going on here. If you’re trying to protect me or give me a message or what, maybe you could try something a bit less intrusive than this.”

  The crows just cawed. One of them sat on my shoulder. I worried about the hygiene aspect of that but I guess I couldn’t do much about it.

  “I’ll listen to what you have to say but just get a little less intense. Deal?”

  The crow gently pecked my ear. I took that as a yes.

  It seemed we’d come to an agreement, the crows and I, when they started cawing again.

  “Hey, I’m listening to you, okay guys. I’m not going to that temple. I’m just having a little rest before I go home.”

  Then I turned to see a guy walking down the stairs. Holy guacamole! Not just a guy but a maximum hottie. Whoa.

  I had crepe face. I totally had crepe face, and I had nothing to wipe it with.

  Did my hair look okay? I put my hand up to flatten it. Those crows had probably made it look like a literal bird’s nest. Not that hot guy would notice me.

  His hair flopped onto his face that effortlessly unkempt way. He didn’t have the same stylishness as Shun but, when he reached up to sweep the hair from his face, the bottom of his t-shirt edged up, revealing a strip of muscular stomach that almost made me swoon. Those cheekbones, those dark eyes. Heck, the guy even had sexy eyebrows. Definitely #hotAF. Even #out_of_my_league.

  He stopped on the stairs, though, and smiled at me.

  Scrap everything. This guy was so far out of my league there wasn’t even a hashtag for it.

  “Are these crows bothering you?” he asked. “They can be a real menace around here.”

  When the crow on my shoulder cawed louder, I almost said yes.

  The guy smiled at me again. “If you need help, you just need to ask. I’m Hotto.”

  “Hotto?”

  There’s no way this guy’s name could be Hotto. Was he even real or a vision I’d stirred up from my mind of everything I found hot in a guy.

  The crows began swarming again but Hotto put up an umbrella. I wasn’t sure if that’d stop them for long, the determined little buggers, but it was a smart idea.

  “Not Hotto,” he said with a smile “Hokto.”

  �
�Hokto?” I wasn’t sure why I cared so much about the pronunciation of this guy’s name. I’d probably never see him again in my life. Except in my dreams, that is.

  “Ho-ku-to,” he said slowly, but when he said it again, it sounded more like “Hok-to.”

  “Hokuto,” I repeated, trying to say it like he did.

  He looked down at me as though expecting something.

  My mind whirled through all the possible options of what that could be, like a slot machine spinning through a zillion pictures of fruit. Finally, it came to a stop. He’d told me his name. I hadn’t given him mine. Damn it. That made logical sense but some of those other scenarios had seemed closer to the jackpot.

  “Molly,” I said.

  The crows bashed against his umbrella. Either they didn’t like Hokuto or they had something else going on. Even though I’d said I’d listen to them, I wasn’t sure I’d trust their judgment in men.

  “Mori?” He smiled as he said my name as though it gave him extreme pleasure just to say it.

  I didn’t want to correct him. The way he said it was just perfect.

  He tapped my cheek. “See you around, Mori.”

  As he walked off, the crows went nuts in my ear.

  “Stop getting too big for your crow boots,” I said. “I thought he was nice, so just shut up.”

  Chapter 11

  I headed home and found a note under my door saying I had to meet with the others. Shit. I had ten minutes.

  I threw my shopping bags in the corner then went into the bathroom to make sure I didn’t have cream smeared all over my face. I headed back out but, before I locked the door, I rushed back inside and got that dinosaur backpack then dumped the stuff from my boring bag into it.

  Then I realized they hadn’t mentioned where we were supposed to meet. Damn it. I stood on the landing, wondering if I should head back to that cafe or stay here. Maybe Shun planned to swing by and get me.

  “Molly!” Shun called.

  He waved at me and I rushed downstairs.

  “I didn’t think this meeting would be today,” I said to Shun. He stood on the street with Yuki beside him.

  “Me neither.”

  “You need to get a phone so that we can contact you,” Yuki said, glaring at me.

  “If I knew where to buy a SIM card, I’d do that.” I rolled my eyes. No way would I let her think she intimidated me.

  Before either of us broke down and looked away, a car pulled up and man in a black suit got out. It seemed we’d been waiting for him to turn up. He got a cardboard carton out of the car. I thought he’d be taking it to my apartment, since he’d parked outside my place and all, but he headed for a downstairs apartment.

  That box must’ve weighed a ton from the way he struggled with it. And he was a big guy. The bulges of his muscles nearly ripped through his suit.

  Yuki opened the door for him and he took the box inside. She tried to close the door once Shun walked in but he held it open for me. That was a petty thing for her to do.

  The man set the box on a coffee table and we all sat down.

  Yamaguchi had said we had to look after something. This must be it. Curiosity burned me. I needed to know what was in the box. There were no air holes so it wasn’t a pet.

  To be honest, if Yamaguchi had all those goons working for him, wouldn’t they be better to protect his valuables than us? I’d be next to useless in a fight and Shun looked wiry but not too strong. I guess Yuki could fend attackers off with her evil glare. Actually, if I was going to back one of us in a fight, it’d be Yuki. Even the goon seemed a little wary of her.

  The man talked to Yuki and Shun while I pretended to look interested but the whole time I just wondered if Shun would let me tether to his phone. It’d been ages since I’d been online.

  Then I started weighing up Shun’s dimple against Hokuto’s incredible eyes, oh and that stomach. Shun definitely fit into the cute but stylish category while Hokuto was all tall, dark and handsome. But then I now worked with Shun while I’d probably never see Hokuto again. That was a definite plus in the Shun column.

  Both Shun and the goon nodded and then the man stood back while they explained the situation to me.

  “This box contains something very valuable,” Shun said.

  I’d figured that much. No one wants you to babysit a box of rubbish.

  “So, we watch it?”

  “That’s about it,” he said.

  “Here?”

  I looked around the near empty apartment. Would we have to stay here? All three of us? We’d all be bunking in together? That’d be okay with just Shun but I’m not sure how much of Yuki I could handle.

  The box made a noise and I stared at it, wondering if it’d moved. No one else seemed to have noticed it so I didn’t say anything.

  “Yuki lives here,” Shun said. “We take it in turns of watching with her.”

  Something died inside me. Maybe not actually died but curled up in the corner of my soul and whimpered. I had to spend time with Yuki? Lots of time? You could tie me to a chair and run your nails down a blackboard for hours. You could cover my entire body with paper cuts. You could cut off my Wi-Fi... wait...

  “Do you have Wi-Fi here? Can I use it?” I asked Yuki.

  She screwed up her face like she wanted to refuse but then gave a slight nod. “If you keep your mouth shut, you can use my Wi-Fi.”

  “Thanks, man. How long do we have to do this for?”

  “Until Saturday. Four days,” Shun said.

  I’m sure that box moved. I looked to Shun for confirmation but he acted like nothing had happened.

  “So, why are we doing this at Yuki’s?” I asked. If we babysat the cardboard box at Shun’s place, I could hang out with him heaps more and, when I wasn’t hanging out with him, Yuki would be so I’d never see her. That’d be a total win.

  “Show her, Yuki,” Shun said.

  “I’m not a circus act,” she said, stretching into a yawn.

  “It’s easier to show than explain.”

  She sighed but then clicked her fingers.

  Ha? She could click her fingers, so what?

  Then I saw it. Or rather, didn’t see it. I gasped. The box had disappeared from the coffee table.

  “She can make it disappear? Then why do we need to look after it?”

  “Feel it,” Shun said.

  I wiggled over to the coffee table and put my hand out gingerly. Yep, I could trace the cardboard sides of the box with my fingertips, as solid as ever. I just couldn’t see it.

  I still had my hand on the box when Yuki clicked again. The box reappeared with ants crawling all over it.

  I screamed and jumped back. “What the hell?”

  Yuki laughed. For the first time, she didn’t have that sour look on her face but it was a mean laugh. Ants freaked the hell out of me.

  I backed away from the box even though the ants had gone and they’d never been real in the first place.

  “You make people see things?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “I’m a kitsune, a trickster.”

  Wow, Shun could enter dreams and Yuki could do that. The only thing I’d found I could do was talk to crows. Talking to crows wasn’t a very useful skill, although they’d been plenty helpful when those guys had attacked me. And today, I wasn’t sure what that’d been about but they’d sent me a clear message.

  “So why the hell do we have to watch this box? Can’t Yuki just make it disappear? What does she need us for?”

  Yuki sighed like the effort of explaining things was too much bother for her.

  “It takes a lot of her energy,” Shun said. “She can’t do it while she’s asleep or doing other things. I’ll take first shift and we’ll change over every eight hours. You just have to sit watch and alert her if anything happens.”

  What he meant was that I was so useless that I could only be used as a lookout, but he put it politely.

  Before he said any more, the goon excused himself and left. When I was
sure he’d gone, I moved to the box.

  “Okay, now he’s gone, we can look inside,” I said.

  “We know what’s inside. The kami,” Yuki said.

  “Kami?” I asked. That word meant nothing to me except as in “camisole” but it’d have to be some damn special camisole to need the three of us to protect it. Maybe it was a magic camisole.

  “Go ahead, look,” Shun said.

  I lifted the flap of the box. Something gold glittered inside. I opened it further to see a gold box with intricate work on it. It looked heavy as hell. There’s no way that box could’ve been moving.

  “A kami is a god or spirit,” Shun said. “It’s complicated but I’ll leave it for Yuki to explain later. Right now, you should sleep. Come back at midnight.”

  Chapter 12

  When my alarm went off, I had no idea where I was. Then I remembered but that seemed more dream-like than the dream I’d been having.

  I threw on some clothes then checked that my phone was fully charged. I threw my charger into my bag just to be on the safe side. The internet would be my bitch tonight. Then I headed down to Yuki’s apartment. It was only when I got there that I thought I should’ve eaten first. Maybe I could order a pizza. Online. With my internet.

  Yuki didn’t exactly look pleased to see me but she offered me a drink.

  “I only have iced tea,” she said.

  “That’s fine.”

  Shun sat on the floor, kind of sprawled in front of the TV. He looked up and raised his eyebrows. He seemed engrossed in a movie. Good. He might stick around for a while.

  I hadn’t paid much attention to Yuki’s apartment earlier but now it struck me how bare the place was. I had more decorative stuff around my place and I’d only been there for a day.

  When Yuki handed me the glass of tea, I asked her if she actually lived here.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “No reason,” I replied.

  I’d thought maybe she lived somewhere else and we were just using the place while we looked after this box. There was not one personal item around. Not a photo, not an ornament, not even a piece of jewelry she’d taken off and left sitting around.