Tamaki Grill had all the hallmarks of a classy establishment. We were greeted by a well-manicured and many-decades-old bonsai in the initial waiting room, framed by ornate, carved wooden finish work in an arch around it. Ink paintings with stark and impressionistic scenes of somber Japanese forests adorned the walls. There was something vaguely ominous about the paintings, though I couldn’t put my finger on it.
One of the women behind the counter stepped out as soon as she saw us enter, menus in hand. She bowed low and said in Japanese, “Li-sama, Ishida-sama, your table is ready. Please follow me.”
Hm, something was afoot. Not only were we not expected, but the Carters had said there was a wait, and the little waiting room was full. Someone had definitely arranged for us to cut the line, and I could think of only one group of people who had both the power to make that call and the interest in me to do so.
I surreptitiously looked around for more evidence, but it wasn’t like they were going to be showing off their tattoos in public. The suspicion was enough to let me roll a Wits + Investigation though. Two Successes guided my eyes back to the ink wash paintings; the trees had a way of blending together – was that their meaning? They were like individual trees hidden in a forest; I couldn’t find them if I tried? Or maybe, they were the forest looming over us – either way, the choice in décor felt deliberate, even if I was missing why exactly.
Speaking in English, I said, “We were hoping for a booth, actually. It’s no trouble if we need to wait.”
She responded in Japanese. I made a note of that. “Of course, all arrangements have already been made. We hope they’ll meet your expectations.”
Maki and I shared a hesitant glance before following the hostess. She led us past the primary dining room with its packed seating, into an even more formal setting behind an unmarked heavy mahogany door. Once we were past it, all the noise of conversation from the room behind us went silent, trapped by the thick wood at our backs.
Heads did not turn, nor did conversation stop when we entered. There was in fact, a total absence of reaction or attention, in a manner which communicated that we, in turn, would be expected to ignore our fellow diners. The staff, what little there was, moved quickly and quietly about their tasks, avoided looking at the clientele, and never lingered anywhere within ear shot of the low conversations. Even the inebriated old men at the bar didn’t so much as look up.
Two men were standing by the door in finely pressed suits, one a rectangular, refrigerator shaped giant, and the other his physical opposite, very slight and shorter than Maki. They at least reacted a little to me entering, shifting their stances slightly.
The hell was Pak doing, handing out gift cards to a Yak restaurant? We were all forced to tolerate their presence, but deliberately sending people to one of their establishments didn’t seem like his style. Maybe he’d missed the forest for the trees and didn’t know, or maybe they were so inescapable in Little Tokyo that it didn’t matter. Well, if they expected me to play their game, they’d invited the wrong man.
I slapped the smaller man on the shoulder, shifting the collar of his shirt just enough for me to catch the hint of a tattoo. His eyes widened in surprise, and I could feel the entire room tense. “Sheeeeesh, look at you, traps up to your fucking ears like the goddamn Pyramid of Giza. That’s a Silat body if I’ve seen one. Were you the one who gave Pak the gift cards he was handing out?”
He let out a breath of relief, cheeks pinkening slightly. There was a confusion there, perhaps from encountering the Social feat which made me universally appealing regardless of orientation.
He cleared his throat. “That’s right, sir. I’ve been lucky enough to train with Master Hadiman for ten years now. I heard that you beat him in a game of Caci. I’m excited to watch the video after my shift.”
“He was taking it easy on me!”
“I’m sure sir is being too humble.”
I waved him off. “Tell you what, I’ll man the door for a bit, and you can watch it now. Decide for yourself.”
He put his hands up. “No, no, I can’t do that.”
“Don’t worry about it. Me and the big man will beat the hell out of anyone who dares trespass. You a judoka, bro? Built like a brick shit house; that’s usually a good giveaway. You can hold them down while I wail on ‘em.”
The other security guard shrunk a little from embarrassment. Neither man seemed to have any plan for dealing with my unique style of belligerent friendliness. “Uh, freestyle wrestling mostly, sir. I’m no good at the standing stuff, but I’m working on it.”
“No kidding. I could work on my ground game. Let’s exchange numbers. You should come by my backyard gym some time. I’ll teach you some Chin Na. You’ll come to love stand-up grappling when you start practicing on top of a stone surface.”
He started to stammer a reply but was saved by Maki, who tugged on my sleeve and gave me a hard look. I patted the big man on the arm. “Hey don’t sweat it, brother. I’ll catch you off shift sometime, right?”
It’s amazing what a little flagrant violation of social norms can do for a room. Most of the people here seemed to be cautious and confused by what just happened. I could see them debating whether or not to actually turn and look at me. They, I assumed, were the ones who didn’t know who I was, or what I was doing there; probably the regular, wealthy members of Tamaki’s select club. Of the rest, most of them had shifted their focus towards three of the middle-aged men drinking at the bar, as if awaiting their judgment. Those men had all turned to watch me directly, completely uncaring of the unspoken rules of the establishment.
I winked at the three of them, committing their faces to memory. One of them barked a laugh at my audacity, the second raised his martini glass at me, and the third only shook his head before returning to his drink. With that, everyone, even those ignorant of what was happening, relaxed back into what they’d been doing before we entered.
Our hostess took us to the most discrete booth in the room, tucked into the corner and surrounded by walls on all three sides. Maki slid in, patting the seat next to her and pulling her phone out. I ordered a sparkling sake and Maki a water.
“You could have told me this was a Yakuza bar,” I whispered to her once we were alone.
“My apologies. I’ve been to Tamaki many times and never realized the purpose of this room. I assumed there was private reservation seating here, not a hidden club.”
“Did you notice that the hostess only spoke Japanese to me?”
She waffled her head. “Hmm, many people living here are on work visas. She may have been embarrassed by her English.”
“She didn’t switch when I responded to her in English. When have you seen a service employee do that? I’m positive someone told her to speak exclusively Japanese with me. It’s a threat.”
“How do you mean?”
“Maki, in order to understand these people, you have to get into their heads. Outside of a mental institution, these are some of the most paranoid people that you’ll find on the planet. The decorations, the way the flowers are arranged, the way the seats face each other – all of those are methods of communication. Every little slight, and every social inconsistency is seen as carrying intent. Having the hostess speak exclusively their own language was their way of reminding me whose house I was stepping in. Plus, my proficiency isn’t common knowledge. I haven’t spoken more than a few words of Japanese since we left the temple” Not on purpose, it was too loud for my shoddy accent. “They wanted me to feel the shadow of their intelligence network all around me.”
She scoffed. “You’re seriously underestimating my cousin’s ability to gossip. With the kind of eyes she was making at you, Susy is probably cutting K-pop style fancams of you as we speak.”
“That might be, but you’re missing the big picture. Regardless of the source of information, they’re still implying that they know what happens inside your shrine. Doesn’t that bother you?”
Maki drummed her fingers on the table. “It’s not that I’m skeptical or accusing you of being alarmist, but have you considered that you’re just on edge due to your own recent less-than-pleasant interactions with organized crime? By all appearances, we’ve been treated with utmost hospitality.”
She was as unerringly insightful as she’d been all night. That said, while I was definitely primed to see Tigers in the reeds, and was certainly more annoyed than ever by Black Harbor’s criminal underworld, I was pretty sure I was onto something here.
I gestured to the booth we were in. “What do you think this is if not a message?”
“A message certainly, but you used the word ‘threat’.”
“There’s little to distinguish them in the Martial World.”
“I see. And that’s why you felt the need to make a fool of yourself with the security?”
I nodded. “Yep. Letting them know I’m not scared.”
“By disrespecting them in their own establishment?”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Couldn’t that be considered a provocation, or an escalation?”
“Eh, they started it.”
“By saving you a table in their private section?”
I sighed. “You’re hopeless. Yes, of course. That’s obviously way more intimidating than if they’d saved us a table outside.”
She rolled her eyes and rested her head on her palm. “Does being a youxia require you to be relentlessly combative with any and all authorities, or is that a James Li exclusive?”
“It’s Black City Kung Fu’s newest tenet, as of seconds ago. And I would hardly call—” I went silent as a waitress approached with our drinks.
She bowed as she placed a red envelope with a golden tassel next to my sparkling sake, but didn’t comment on it. A name in Chinese was written in gold ink, the calligraphy immaculate, each stroke a masterpiece. Some subtle charm in the way the characters were drawn presented covetous greed, with a hint of carefree recklessness. It would have made for a lovely surprise if not for the name in question. Instead, I scowled when I read it. The absolute audacity of the criminal class never failed to astound and infuriate.
The waitress was frozen mid-movement, trembling in her plain kimono, and the room was silent, conversations cutting out. I took a breath and calmed my roiling Qi. The Yakuza were playing with fire. Just because I accepted the necessity of organized crime in the city, didn’t mean I had to accept the necessity of the specific members or organizations. Hm. That thought made me smile. I let the anger flow through and out of me – thinking instead about a brighter future where I got to break a few heavily tattooed backs.
The waitress did her best to discretely wipe the sweat off her palms and cleared her throat. “Excuse me. Have you decided on anything to start? I should inform you that an anonymous patron has decided to pay for your entire meal. They said, ‘Please get everything you could want,’ and that holding back is the same as calling them poor.”
“Wow! Drinks included?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. Dessert as well.”
“I can order anything? Anything at all?”
She bowed again. “Yes, sir.”
“Hohohohoho!” I rubbed my hands together. “Alright! Tell the chef we’re doing an omokase for two! Wait, that’s not enough food. Okay! Let me start with the chef’s sashimi sample platter, the sushi sample platter, the beef fried rice, the chicken fried rice, and three orders of every kind of gyoza and dumpling you offer. And then for drinks…Hm, get me a cup of the best sake you carry from each region of Japan, the second best too, in case there’s contention over that, and a few bottles of sparkling water. How about for you, Maki?”
She just glared at me in horrified silence.
I nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Can we also get a huge bowl of edamame, and two orders of shrimp tempura? A few bowls of white rice too. Anything else, Maki?”
Maki pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Oh, that’s a good point. I can actually order the main platters right now too, if that’s okay.”
The overwhelmed waitress nodded, face frozen in a tight smile. “Yes, sir.”
Regrettably, I hadn’t really read the rules for cooking and nutrition beyond making a note that they were oddly dense and as needlessly complicated as the rest of the ruleset. I figured I’d have the time to familiarize myself with them once the game started. However, the system was definitely designed to be able to run just about any major martial arts trope, and the trope of a martial artist putting back tens of thousands of calories in a single sitting was probably a millennia old or older. I was pretty sure that I could eat like Goku without worrying about it, and probably come out the better for it. Hopefully, at least.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
Even if not, we had hours to kill. It would be fine.
“Great! I’ll do one of every steak you carry, medium rare. An entire roast duck, as well as two of the other duck dishes, whichever is most convenient for the kitchen. Three each of your ten bestselling sushi rolls. Each of your toban yaki. And the chef’s sharing sushi and sashimi platters. No such thing as too much sushi.”
“Anything else, sir?”
I scratched my chin. “Should I get some ramen? I’m worried that it’ll fill me up. Uhhhh, how about a few salads, and by a few I mean, like, I don’t know, one of each on your menu. And can I get a few cokes to chase the sake?”
“I see. Should I leave a menu, sir?”
“No, thank you. Actually, never mind, leave one behind.”
Maki stomped on my shin as soon as the waitress left. “Are you insane!?”
“Ow! What? They said to get everything I could want.”
“We’re exorcising a ghost tonight, you lunatic!”
“A Hungry Ghost, and the best way to fight a hungry ghost is on a full stomach,” I said, nodding knowingly.
“You don’t know that! You don’t know anything about this ghost!”
I shrugged. “That’s why we’re here, is it not? I study better with snacks on hand.”
Maki buried her face in her hands and groaned. “You are the most frustrating man I have ever met!”
“Plus,” I added, picking up the red envelope that had come with my drink, “I was feeling vindictive. Notice anything?” I said, passing the envelope over.
She furrowed her brow at it. “Plum, Will, Stron—ah, this is your name? Forgive me, my Chinese is nonexistent.”
I pointed at each symbol. “Li Zhiqiang. My name, my Chinese name. Not something easily found. All of my documents use my American name. I have genuinely no idea how they came across it, and it’s really bothering me.”
“I see…that’s…”
“Alarming? Threatening? A clear show of power?” My Qi pulsed with every word, partially from anger, partially from a desire to rise to the occasion. Flashing their intimate knowledge of me was the sort of provocation that justified retaliation, and I was eager to establish some firm boundaries with the Yakuza in the only way they knew how – the deliberate application of violence.
“You’re burning up,” said Maki, shuffling away from me. My battle aura had a real heat to it since awakening my Fire nature, but I wasn’t leaking enough of it to push her away. I suspected I was overloading her spiritual senses, like what had happened to me when I tried to sense the supernatural at the shrine.
“Whoops, sorry,” I said with a chuckle. “I’m good now.”
She nodded slowly before sliding back to my side. “Sure. Perhaps now isn’t the time to read this message?”
“Eh. It could be important. You read it first and let me know. Or don’t let me know. But definitely read it first.”
She opened the envelope and pulled out the little slip of paper inside. “Kami-sama, you martial artists are all incredibly strange. It’s an invitation for tea followed by ‘light mortal combat’, or in reverse order if you prefer, and at your leisure. There’s no name given, but there’s a number and it’s signed, ‘An Old Friend’.”
“Oh. That’s fun! Pretty friendly, all things considered.” I took the letter and quickly added the number into my contacts. “Now I feel bad about getting mad.”
“You…you can’t be seriously entertaining the offer. Someone wants to kill you. I was about to apologize for doubting you.”
“No, no, I should be the one apologizing for losing control like that. They were just rolling out the red carpet before asking for a fight. That’s actually pretty classy of them, hm? I mean, you could buy me a few beers, and I’d probably agree to fight you – That’s just the kind of guy I am. Well, not you specifically, but you know what I mean.”
“But you were right! They were intentionally antagonizing you!”
“Maki, if someone fucks with me, but then immediately hands me an opportunity to beat their ass, how am I supposed to stay mad at them? Every great face needs a great heel, and this is some proper petting-a-cat-while-seated-in-an-armchair type villainy right here.”
Her mouth dropped. “James! They. Want. To. Kill. You.”
“He said ‘light’ mortal combat; I’m guessing he wants a No-Limits match. That’s fine. Who doesn’t like a good fight, right? Just because someone gets killed doesn’t mean that they’re dead, Maki.”
Maki rubbed her temples and took a few breaths to center herself. She then pulled up a map of the city on her phone and slid it between us. “Let’s just get to it. The plan is simple, and doesn’t require you to be an expert on exorcisms or ghosts of any kind.”
“Hold on. Before we get to that, I want to know about who I’m avenging tonight.” Her breath hitched. “I’m risking my life for the man, Maki. I want to at least know his name. Or hers. Hell, at least tell me their gender.”
There was a long silence as she stared emptily at the table in front of her. “Yes, you’re right, of course. And it’s relevant to your part for tonight’s plan as well.”
“His name was Ishida Ken,” she continued, “my older brother. We, the Shrine…don’t typically look much further past the bounds of Little Tokyo, unless someone specifically asks us, and then we still may decide not to act on it. But he was like you, a hero, always meddling.”
Her expression grew distant. I waited for her to collect herself again.
“I don’t know much about the man who initially reached out to my brother, nor how they knew each other, but the man died shortly after Ken, in a shootout with police. The particulars of his relationship with this Triad are unclear to me. Much of this is. I had just started college at the time, and my family excluded me from all of this in order not to distract me.”
“From what I understand, after investigating the man who asked for help with the Hungry Ghost, my parents forbade my brother from involving himself further, despite initially giving approval.” She clenched her fists. “If they had—if I had been there, I would have told them that was a fool’s errand. It should have been clear that he wouldn’t back down, especially since he’d recovered a weapon from the Second City capable of injuring spirits. Ken was a total sword fanatic; he was itching to put it to a real use.”
“The Second City?” I asked.
She looked up surprised. “You’ve not heard of it, the subterranean section of Black Harbor?”
“Like the subway tunnels and sewers?”
“No, far beneath those. From what I’ve heard, the Second City dwarfs Black Harbor in terms of size, though its population is completely unknowable. It’s the home of those who cannot, or choose not to live above the surface. My brother described its layers as nearly endless, and as a tangle of three dimensional mazes. He said it was older than the US, and potentially older than mankind. Though, truthfully, I think many of these may have only been tales to scare a younger sister. I do know that Ken cut his teeth exploring it.”
Every kid in the city had heard the spooky tales of a supposed undercity. The legends went that the original sewers had been built by carving out the natural caves under Black Harbor, and that when the first crews were exploring, they found already worked shafts and passages that traveled far beyond what a human could comfortably tolerate. Heat and poisonous gasses had chased them out, but every mayor since had covertly spent a sizeable budget on secret excavations – or so the stories went. This was the supposed real reason that all the Well-Diggers and Shorers Union members lived in the Greenbelt, and not because they were extremely well compensated for their dangerous, back-breaking work and could afford homes in the suburbs.
“Ah, we used to call it Blacker Harbor. Your brother actually found a way in, huh? My friends and I must have spent hundreds of hours down there looking during elementary and middle school. Though, we were mostly just dicking around and doing parkour tricks off the pipes.”
Maki mouthed ‘elementary and middle school’. “Every time you describe your past, it gets harder to believe we grew up in the same century, let alone city. You’re lucky you didn’t find it for real. Never once did Ken return without some injury or another.”
“I believe it. We basically stopped going down after my boy Danny spooked a sleeping homeless guy down there and got stabbed. Pretty shitty for everyone involved – the dude felt terrible about stabbing a kid, and Danny got sepsis and had to drop out of basketball for a year and a half. He was super traumatized too, won’t even take the subway any more, poor guy. And that’s just from regular underground exploration.”
The Second City did answer more than a few questions that had been running in the back of my mind since getting here. Considering the emphasis the nutrition and alchemy systems placed on using monster parts, there weren’t any obvious places to farm for resources, which would cripple a lot of builds.
“Dark depths filled with unspeakable horrors would make for a good place to train. Your brother ever say how he was getting down there?”
“No, he was extremely private about that.” She paused. “Is there something wrong?”
My expression had soured. I had just thought about the only other being in my life that probably knew a way down. “Eh, it’s nothing—unless…you don’t know anything about rats that can do ninjutsu, do you? Like, maybe a really, really fat one?”
Maki’s eye twitched and she took a deep breath. “I must ask that you refrain from making jokes during my explanation.”
“You’re right, sorry. I got excited. Tell me about this weapon your brother found.”
“Thank you. He called it Hakkotsu no Ha, Bleached Bone Blade. He said that it had first resembled a rusted, ordinary wakizashi when he first encountered it, and that he had first brought it with him out of curiosity to see if he could identify its history and origin. When he was cleaning it however, the sight of the blade inspired temporary blind rage in one of the Kami of our shrine. Ken lashed out with it in self-defense and as the weapon tasted the blood of the Kami, the rust fell away, revealing a perfectly white metal underneath. I say all of that—”
She paused as the first round of food and drink arrived. The booth, which was easily large enough to comfortably sit six or more, could barely contain the stacks of plates and bowls. Maki was visibly more and more annoyed as dishes just kept piling up, so I wisely avoided making a comment.
Maki caught my hand as I went to pick up some sashimi between my chopsticks. “Wait, I need to know you’ve heard and comprehended this. I say all of that, James, to clarify that the weapon my brother brought with him to fight this Hungry Ghost was more than capable of harming spirits. The Kami he injured that day spent years resting off his wounds. Furthermore, my brother practiced Aikido since he could walk, and Iaido since he was ten. After seeing your match against Hadiman, I don’t think Ken could have matched you in raw combat prowess, but Ken was a trained exorcist and onmyoji as well. He knew what he was doing, had a weapon that should have worked, and had the knowledge and tools to deal with most spirits.”
I switched the chopsticks to my left hand and shoved a delicious cut of sashimi into my mouth, all while keeping eye contact with Maki. Out of respect for the flash of outrage I saw in her eyes as I did, I refrained from loudly proclaiming, ‘OISHII!’ like I wanted to.
“Right, I get it, you don’t want me to try and literally fight the ghost. This sword, by the way, was it ever recovered?”
“No. Nor was my brother’s body. In truth I suppose there’s a chance he was a simple victim of gang violence, but my heart tells me that isn’t the case.”
“My condolences.” I squeezed her shoulder comfortingly, then pushed her one of the cups of sake. Picking one up myself I raised it to the heavens and declared, “Ishida Ken, on my honor as the Master of Black City Kung Fu, I, James Li, will either avenge you or join you tonight!”
Maki took a sip of her sake while I downed mine in a single go. “Thank you. Though I wish you wouldn’t drink so recklessly.”
“The food will soak up the booze.”
“Do what you will. You certainly know your body’s limits better than me.”