The double doors marked for the stairs actually opened into a large space with benches and shelves for everyone to take off their shoes. There were even complementary cheap flip-flops for those uncomfortable going barefoot. I appreciated the familiar sensibilities and made a note that the shelves had no locked cubbies; that was a level of communal trust that was vanishingly rare in Black Harbor.

I joined a few stragglers, two women and their children, for Huo’s class, identifying them by the large calligraphy pads they’d brought. The youngest proudly showed off the jar of rainbow gel ink she’d brought to me. We made small talk in Japanese as they led me to the classroom. Being an incorrigible extrovert, I did it without really thinking or noticing, but these little, day-to-day interactions with virtually everyone I met were also the in-world justification for ‘Locals (Black Harbor)’ being one of my Allies. Mostly, I just found it relaxing to talk to people, strangers or not, something Alan could never have related to.

Looking at the second floor of the building, you could have easily been forgiven for thinking it was somewhere in Japan. Tatami mats for floors, rice paper wall dividers, paper lanterns, and appropriate décor covered completely any hints of the building’s former industrial use. Even my undeveloped spiritual sense was telling me to tread lightly here, especially around some of the older artwork. One vase, upon which two tigers fighting had been painted seemed to draw my eyes towards it. Not that that alone guaranteed something supernatural afoot; I’d been preoccupied with tigers as of late.

“Ah, James!” called Huo as I entered. “I was just telling Maki-chan about you.” He grabbed me by the shoulder and presented me proudly to the woman. “This is my former student, James Li.”

Maki Ishida was a haunted young woman, though I couldn’t say why exactly I thought that when looking at her. She was beautiful and appeared to be put together. Her hair was straight, black and shiny in a way that only regular upkeep to maintain, her sweater clean, she even wore jewelry, but there was a flatness to her eyes and expression that gave me the sense that she hadn’t smiled in years.

I felt like a cow ready for slaughter at an auction as she turned to examine me. Her cold eyes picked me apart. Whatever she saw in me must have satisfied her because relief flickered across her face before vanishing as quickly as it came.

“Ishida Maki,” she said, “Huo Sensei tells me you’re here to practice your Japanese.”

“That’s right! Please forgive me if I butcher your beautiful language.” I bowed a little.

“No, it’s…good.” Maki seemed annoyed, if anything, at my easy smile, but I could see her estimation of me rise at hearing my Japanese. Rarely had positive attention like that made me uncomfortable, but I had to suppress a shiver at the woman’s robotic evaluation.

“Maki-chan, a few of my ink jars broke in transit yesterday,” said Huo. “James doesn’t have one, and I’m not sure if I have enough for everybody. Could he share yours?”

“Sure.”

Maki led me over and knelt down at her foldout calligraphy table in the front corner of the room, deliberately choosing the area with the worst view of the instructor’s easels and therefore the bulk of our classmates. As I waited for Huo to give me the brushes and paper I’d be using, I got a text from her.

‘Assume you’re being watched.’

I sent a thumbs up emoji in response.

Maki had been forbidden from pursuing the particular ghost we were hunting tonight. I hadn’t been told why, but I had a pretty good hunch after meeting with her mother below. In order to make the hunt work, I needed to visibly charm her enough to justify her bringing me back tonight to show me the shrine afterhours. Considering I was sitting next to the emotional equivalent of Fort Knox, that was going to be a challenge.

The first part of the class didn’t leave much room for conversation. Huo picked a kanji character and walked us through it twice. Once just to learn the stroke order and then again with some style and emotion. Todays was the kanji for ‘attack’, something I was pretty sure he chose for my benefit. As much as I might have vibed with the character as a concept, I didn’t have the Calligraphy skill and was rolling only raw Finesse. I didn’t embarrass myself with my two Successes, but I wouldn’t be winning any awards either.

The second half was more freeform. Huo put up a short phrase as well as a lengthier poem in simple script. We could choose to either keep working on the character from earlier or try one of the other two. Huo flitted around the class with suggestions, and we were encouraged to talk to our neighbors about our technique and thoughts.

“Huo Sensei said you were learning Japanese in order to read the martial arts pamphlets at the flea market. Was that a joke?” asked Maki quietly.

“I’m always trying to improve. You’re looking at a genuine, er…” unfortunately the closest Japanese word to Youxia, meaning literally ‘Wandering Vigilante’ was probably Ronin, which had dishonorable connotations, “warrior.”

She gave me a side-eye. “You know those are scams, right?”

“Of course. I like the challenge of making flashy nonsense moves into truly dangerous techniques.”

“Is that even possible?”

“For me it is. I can give you an example. Did you watch any of the ‘Road to’ series?”

“I don’t watch fiction.”

“Ah. Well, you remember Vega from Street Fighter?”

“Of course not.”

“Right, yeah, should have probably assumed that. I guess you’ll have to take my word for it. Haha…” I let out a long exhale. Christ, woman, you could give me something to work with.

We continued in awkward silence for a moment. I’d deliberately chosen the hardest of the three options, the full poem, so I could have plenty of excuses to ask Maki for help. I didn’t have the skill to choose to do badly, as strange as that might sound, at least not without giving the game away, so I gave it an honest attempt for my first go. One Success – I hadn’t spilled ink everywhere and the text was mostly legible, but beyond that it was pretty bad.

“Yeesh. I might need some of your help here, Ishida-san.”

She shook her head at the sight. “I thought samurai were supposed to value calligraphy as a skill. Why did you choose the hardest assignment if you didn’t know what you were doing?”

I held up my finger. “One, I like a challenge. But let’s be clear here, I am not a samurai. Do you see me walking around with a sword like some kind of maniac?”

Her head snapped to look at me with more emotion than she’d displayed all evening. “What’s that supposed to mean? You have something against swords and samurai?”

“Swords are great, very cool – I love swords. I mean look at me, that should be obvious. But you see a guy walking around the street with a sword and what do you think? I think, hey look, that guy’s nuts.”

“I think, ‘There goes a diligent swordsman,’ when I see one, which I see fairly often,” she said tersely. I confess, I didn’t expect the woman to be so defensive about swords, nor did I expect that I would ever in my life be taking the anti-sword position in an argument.

“Okay, fair. But imagine you live in a neighborhood where there isn’t a kendo or aikido gym every two blocks, like say, any other neighborhood. Say you see a guy grocery shopping in Upper Debney with a sword – or hey! Imagine you’re at your college library or cafeteria and some dude’s walking around with a katana on his belt. You don’t think, ‘What’s that guy’s deal? I hope he isn’t a maniac.’?”

Maki bristled. “It’s not like there are cubbies for swords outside the library or cafeteria. I would assume he lives a busy schedule.”

“What? No shot. There is absolutely no way you mean that. Okay, how about this, what if I had come here today with twin curved sabers on my back?”

She shrugged. “If I see a samurai with their swords in the shrine, I assume they’ve brought them to be blessed.”

“But, wha—guh! I refuse to believe that’s the majority opinion! And again, I’m no samurai.”

Maki frowned. “And what’s wrong with samurai?”

I had to switch back to English, my Japanese was not quite there yet. “Samurai were a military caste. They existed by their lord’s will. I’m a Youxia – these fists belong to the people.”

“Hmph, I think you’re mischaracterizing both the noble samurai and the homeless vigilantes that once terrorized country sides around the world. But regardless, I imagine your opinion would differ if you used a weapon. You only feel this way because you rely on your unarmed abilities.”

“Wrong,” I said smugly. One thing I loved about this athletic windbreaker, was how deep the zippable pockets were. I reached into my right pocket and pulled out my titanium nunchaku. “See, concealable weaponry! You had no idea I was armed. That’s a much better place to be in at the start of a fight.”

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Maki jumped a little, startled by the reveal. “Eh! What’s wrong with you? Are those nunchaku?”

My jaw dropped. “You—what. What is happening right now?”

“You walk around with metal nunchaku in your pocket? Is there something wrong with your head?”

I searched desperately for a hint of irony on Maki’s face but came up short. “How on Earth are these worse than if I had brought two swords!?”

There were snickers from the class behind us. I shot a very amused Huo an apologetic look.

She scoffed but didn’t respond. After a long pause, she said, “You’re not good enough at calligraphy to let your emotions guide the brush as you go. You need to clearly visualize what you’re trying for and then take your time. Get more paper from sensei and then start again with the easier phrase.”

I blinked at her statement, having forgotten what we’d been doing, and closed my agape mouth. “Ah, good point. Thank you.”

There was a rising impulse to a die or two in Craft (Calligraphy), but I didn’t want it hanging out on my character sheet to remind me of a bad decision. My life was on the line tonight; I wasn’t wasting even 5 Experience on a skill I didn’t actually need.

Thus far, I had not actively tried to put the moves on Maki, instead just talking to her like I would one of my friends; after all, we were supposed to be working together on this, I thought. But she wasn’t making it easy for me, and that was starting to wound my pride. As I consciously considered how I would actually woo a woman like Maki, I heard the mental clatter of dice, rolling my stacked Charisma + Seduction pool. I thanked the Lucky Penny and my Silver Dollar, as they gave me the third seven Success roll of the night.

“You’re quite good,” I said, taking a different approach. “Is that a function of being a Miko? I think I recognize your style from a few of the hanging charms I passed on the way here.”

That was a complete bluff, based only on the fact that most of the charms were made of paper and that there were enough of them that multiple people were likely responsible for them. It seemed to work though. The question caused Maki to make an error in her stroke as she looked at me with new appreciation.

“That’s…right. You have a sharp eye. It’s one of our responsibilities.”

Maki sighed at the small error. She moved to unclip the page from the desk and move onto a clean one.

I grabbed her wrist gently, perhaps following some instinct born from my good social roll. “Wait,” I said, “you should try to fix it first. It’s a class, right? Things will never all go as planned no matter how good you become – adjusting course and correcting your mistakes is a sign of true mastery.” I used my expression to convey the subtext. ‘Perfectionism will get us killed tonight,’ I said with my eyes.

Maki maintained eye contact for a moment past when it was awkward before nodding, nonverbally agreeing with both my spoken and unspoken message.

I continued as she quietly contemplated her work. “My sister and I were lucky enough to have Huo Sensei come to our home and tutor us. Most of the American-born kids I grew up with went to ‘Chinese School’ a few days a week as a way to learn how to read and write in Hanzi. If they were still enrolled by high school, then they’d spend a lot of that time doing traditional arts or learning traditional musical instruments. Does the shrine serve in that sort of cultural education role?”

“A little, but not to the extent you’re describing,” answered Maki. She paused to think before continuing the answer. Between her intense focus on her calligraphy and the agreeable topic of conversation, her walls started to lower.

Once I had my hook in her, I began to reel her in like a patient fisherman. I kept up my questions about growing up in Little Tokyo – my curiosity genuine, for what it was worth – and occasionally offered tidbits about my background in Chinatown. As much as Maki may not have wanted to admit it, we had a lot in common growing up in such strict, distinctly foreign, upbringings, her in the Shinto shrine, and I in my family’s martial arts. She also knew more than I was expecting about the various Chinese provinces and the historical waves of immigration which shaped the culture of Chinatown. It turned out that East Asian Anthropology was one of Maki’s two majors in college, along with the more sensible choice of Accounting.

I never got her smiling, and she was still visibly annoyed by my jokes, but by the end of the class our conversation flowed smoothly, and I could tell that she was less apprehensive about me in general. Throughout it, I had made sure the topic revolved around Little Tokyo.

So it felt natural when I asked, “It’s crazy how little I really know about this neighborhood despite living in the city all my life. If it’s not too forward, do you think you’d mind showing me around?”

“I don’t know…” she said.

I kept my expression as neutral as possible, but my widening eyes and the hint of a manic smile said, ‘You can’t be serious. What are you doing?’

Her lips curled up ever so slightly. Her smug expression responded, ‘You said all I had to do was let you woo me.’

I had to bite back a laugh. The audacity of the woman – for the first time tonight, I was hit with genuine romantic desire. What that said about me, I didn’t want to examine.

“I’ll even pay for dinner,” I said. “I’ve got to have some proper sushi while I’m Little Tokyo. What do you say?”

“Hmm…I suppose that’s fair.”

“You are unbelievable,” I groaned once we were outside the shrine and a bit away. Thankfully, the rain had died down to where it was just an ever-present mist. It was firmly sweater weather and traversing the rooftops would be treacherous tonight, but at least it wasn’t pelting down like it had been this morning.

“Why did my mother give you that strange smile?” she asked suspiciously, squinting at me.

“Because I’d already charmed her into wanting to introduce us. She said you needed a friend. All you had to do was be even slightly warm to hanging out, and we could have gotten away without any suspicion.”

“Oh.” She frowned, clearly uncomfortable with her mother trying to help her with her social life. “Well why didn’t you say that when I texted you?”

“I would have if I’d known you would make it deliberately difficult. That was like pulling teeth at the start!”

“You were the one who proposed the flirting plan. I remember you being exceptionally confident that you could sell it.”

I gestured to the city around us. “Hey, I got it done in the end, didn’t I?”

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “Oh please, the only reason I agreed was for our exorcism.”

“Sure. Whatever you need to tell yourself.”

I sighed and leaned against a wall, watching the crowds pass by. Little Tokyo had become a booming tourist spot, both from out of, and from within the city itself. The neighborhood had spent the better part of fifteen years revitalizing its network of alleyways, filling them with neon signs and little hole-in-the-wall shops. Not only could you feel safe walking through them, but it was also fun to see all the authentically Japanese shops and restaurants.

“So what now?”

“Now we wait. We need the shrine to empty out for the night. I’ll text my mom and the other caretakers that I want to show you around it. My cousin Susy is an interminable gossip, and she’s obviously…enchanted by your looks. I’m sure she’s stalking your socials as we speak, which means she’s also going to see your fight with that gang member. She’s sure to tell my aunt, who will tell my mother, meaning that it won’t seem suspicious if I ask to perform a few blessings on you.”

I checked the time. “I’m guessing that’s a minimum of four to five hours we need to kill. Looks like you’re showing me around the neighborhood.”

“I guess so.” She paused. “You don’t actually have to pay for dinner, by the way.”

“Thanks. Shall we?” I stuck my arm for her to take.

She glared at it and crossed her arms. “You’re joking.”

“One, it’s actually very crowded here. Two, it gives us an excuse to talk quietly into each other’s ears. And three, your cousin is absolutely texting all of her friends about this. You want to fumble this now, after getting out of the shrine together?”

“Fine.” She slipped her arm through mine and leaned in close. “I misspoke. You are paying for dinner.”

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s go.”