Malice Hearts Yin Book 1 Part 1

Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

We arrived back at the Little happiness tea house just as the red-light district was coming to life. It looked like an entirely different place than it did during the day. The streets were rowdy; laughter, singing, music, and the buzz of many voices.

The scent of opium, perfume, and alcohol combined into a singular fragrance. The swaying red lanterns reflecting off the milk white faces of starving prostitutes desperately calling out to anyone who'd buy their services had a dreamlike quality. Some of those girls were still children, not even old enough to have entered puberty. They offered their frail, starved bodies in exchange for food, while dolled up courtesans exhibited themselves in brothel windows, dressed in fine silk and jewels.

"Yuki, are you a-alright?" Hibiki patted me on the back, a habit he had formed when I was a kid who got easily sick and had needed his care nearly every other day.

"I'm fine." I brushed off his concern, putting a hand to my mouth. "This kind of atmosphere just makes me feel ill."

"Maybe you are just scared that..." Kenpachiro began, but Hibiki gave him a quick elbow to the gut, making him hunch over with a moan.

"Oh, Ken, why can't you p-pass up the opportunity t-to bicker with him at least once?"

"Because he's an immature dolt." I answered the question for him and shot Kenpachiro an embittered look. "Focus on the case, Fujiwara, and not on ways to antagonize me."

I left him clutching his stomach as Hibiki tended to the injury he had himself inflicted. Haruka and Satoshi were both waiting inside of the little happiness tea house. I had to bite the smirk off of my face when I saw they were actually drinking the tea. They were really such idiots to accept drink from such a filthy-looking establishment. If a place couldn't bother keeping the areas the customer could actually see clean, what of the places that they couldn't see?

I explained to them what had taken us so long; about how Kenpachiro had taken in a street child and, as tempting as it was to allow them to misconceive the situation, I corrected them as to what had actually occurred. Not that I wanted to spare Kenpachiro's reputation, but the truth would find them easily enough and I did not want to become known as a lair.

"So, you're into little girlsss now...? You perverted pig, you." Haruka jokingly mocked Kenpachiro as he and Hibiki came through the door. Such badgering would have me irritated, but Kenpachiro responded to the ribbing with a hearty laugh.

"I was born in the year of the snake, not the pig."

"I know snakesss and YOU are a pig."

"Oink, oink...." Kenpachiro made a rather good animal impersonation all while trying to hold in his laughter, which made him snort for real, which actually added to his act, making the rest of my team laugh like immature children.

"That reminds me that Cold child apparently dislikes pigs..." I remarked, trying to get the focus of our meeting back onto the task and away from stupid jokes. If I allowed them, Haruka and Kenpachiro could carry a joke on for a good half hour and a full hour if Satoshi joined in. "And he's terrified of horses, too. I wonder if we can lure the kid out that way?"

"What a nonsensical idea." Kenpachiro turned up his nose at my suggestion. "We have learned that when given a fright that the child loses their ability to control the cold air, so why, may I ask, would we needlessly increase our chances of frostbite? Furthermore, I see little point in antagonizing the child when they have yet to show any form of hostility. I'd suggest using something that it likes in order to get it to show its self to us."

"Tea lady, do ya know anythin' this kid's fond of?" Satoshi asked the large woman who was hanging back near the tea counter. It had looked like she had been staring at Hibiki and Fujiwara, but then I realized they were both still by the entrance; was she watching the street for someone...?