The War of Wind and Moon (Season One)

Chapter Seven

"If you're right-" Ryosuke stopped, no idea how to finish the sentence.

"I know. It goes against everything we think we know about Gossips but-"

"Everything we think we know?"

"It's not exactly hard science is it? I mean, sure, we do our best to observe and record and experiment but even adding up every one of us over the past five hundred years, there are still only a very small number of us who can even see them – we can't pretend to have witnessed every type of behaviour."

Ryosuke winced. He couldn't argue with her logic.

"Besides," she went on, "they're living creatures – why shouldn't they evolve like we do?" "Because they don't have physical bodies like we do. Evolution requires DNA and mutation..."

"Alright, maybe not 'evolve', then but what about 'learn'? They live for centuries, right on top of us, feeding from us... most creatures learn to manipulate their food source in some fashion."

"Have you spoken to Dad about this?"

Akiko shook her head. "Not yet. I haven't told anyone. I want to watch it for a bit, make sure I'm not jumping to conclusions before I suggest any of this to anyone. This kind of thing makes people nervous, so keeping the binding on your books instead of mine – just for while - would help me keep it under control."

Ryosuke sighed and leaned back in the chair. "Alright. Consider my request rescinded. Are we going full cloak and dagger? Do you want me to purge my sent box of the email?"

"No need for dramatics but thank you."

"Of course. You'll have to keep me in the loop now, though. You can't present a mystery like that and leave me hanging."

"I will." She rose from the chair and was almost out the door when she turned back. "About the girl, though, I wasn't just trying to manipulate you – isn't it odd for every single report for fourteen years to warrant No Further Action?"

"Not really. You know how many children are bound and we recruit maybe ten a year. Most of their records look like that."

"I suppose, but a Gossip that's reporting in daily isn't bound to a kid living a happy life, that says feast of misery to me."

"Daily?" Ryosuke tapped his keyboard to wake his monitor and double clicked on the report he'd run on Mia the day before. Scanning the date rather than the action column this time, he shook his head, ashamed. "It is almost daily. I didn't pick that up."

"I know it's not my department," Akiko said, "and I know she's seventeen so she might be too old to train but the incident with the bully was pure hyper-vigilance. His hand had barely touched her shoulder when she spun around and swiped it off."

"Okay," Ryosuke said, nodding, "you make a good argument. I'll do a proper assessment. Can you organise a random selection of Testimonies for me to Witness?"

"Of course. I could have the first Vaults brought in by midday tomorrow if that's not too soon - and the Vault the Gossip reported to yesterday is still in my office, if you'd like to take a look sometime today."

Ryosuke looked at his watch but there was no need. He didn't have any more meetings today and he felt bad that he hadn't noticed how often Mia's Gossip was reporting. What if his staff had been missing things, too?

~~

Akiko's office wasn't in the Aviary at the top of the building but in the basement in what was officially called The Hall of Shadows but was known by the staff as simply B2. Like most modern high-rises in Japan, level B1 of Kazemoto Tower housed a vast food emporium which attracted not just the employees of the tower but thousands of people each day who walked through the underground pedestrian streets that connected Nagoya's subway stations. Whenever Ryosuke stepped into the double-car elevator and smelled the sweet vanilla cake of the baumkuchen stall, he couldn't help but wonder what all those hungry people would think if they discovered what was going on beneath their feet.