Borrowed Time

Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, 2025

POV: Makoto Suzuki

The smell of smoke clung to everything. Our clothes, our hair and even our skin. It was the price of hiding in a restaurant storeroom. Fair trade, as far as I was concerned. As long as the broth boiled downstairs and the regulars slurped noodles loud enough, no one came up here to ask questions.

I sat at the low table in the corner, notebook spread open. The pages were crowded with half-legible notes and scrawled diagrams. Street names. Freight company logos. Things that mattered, along with things that probably didn’t but wouldn’t leave my head until I wrote them down.

My hand drifted, pencil tapping against one name I had circled a dozen times.

Malice.

The word had followed us across the ocean. It was the shadow that trailed us from Japan, that wrapped around that orphanage even after we escaped. It was the word whispered in fear, the word that swallowed Vinnie whole.

And it's the word I’ll burn to the ground even if it kills me.

The orphanage we escaped from was harvesting adolescent children and handing them to Malice for experimentation. Angel blood. At least that’s what they called it. I had managed to drag two of the others with me when I ran.

I was only seventeen then. That was six years ago.

Behind me, Aki paced. Her impatience was a drumbeat, steady and relentless. Her pink hair caught the lantern light, restless and sharp as she moved back and forth.

“We’re wasting time, Makoto. Sitting here while Malice breathes in this city. We should be moving.”

Haru stirred from where he was sprawled on the futon, rubbing his eyes. His cyan fringe fell across his face as he muttered, “And where do you want to move, exactly? Mr. Specter’s last tip was a bust. We’ve hit three dead ends this week. You want a fourth?”

Aki’s glare burned even in exhaustion. “Dead ends don’t mean we stop. Vinnie’s still out there. Malice is still out there. You think they’ll wait for us to catch up?”

Her anger bit, but I knew it was aimed at herself more than Haru. She’d been angry since the day we left Japan. Angry at the world, and perhaps angry at me for not being able to save everyone.

I set the pencil down. “Aki.”

Her pacing halted. She met my gaze, still sharp, but waiting.

“We move when there’s something to move on,” I said. My voice came steadier than I felt. “Otherwise we’re just running in blind. That gets us killed.”

Being the oldest meant I had to be the voice of reason, even when impatience gnawed at me too.

Silence stretched. Then Haru chuckled weakly from the futon. “See? Told you he’d say that.”

Aki exhaled hard through her nose and sat, folding her arms. Her knee still bounced. “Fine. But the longer we wait, the longer Vinnie is…”

She wasn’t wrong. She never was. But leadership didn’t mean agreeing with the loudest fear in the room. It meant carrying it until it didn’t crush the others.

I returned to the notebook, flipping back to the page filled with possible leads. Every thread led to the same void. But Malice hid itself well.

That night, the restaurant grew quiet. Laughter below dimmed to murmurs before it went silent. The owners locked up, and the creak of footsteps faded into the dark. We were left with the hum of the fridge downstairs and the faint hiss of traffic outside.

I lay awake, staring at the ceiling.

Sometimes I thought I could hear Vinnie in the silence. The way he laughed back at the orphanage, reckless and too bright, like he’d already decided he was stronger than the world. I should have been the one they took that night, not him.

Instead, I ran. Pulled Aki and Haru with me. And now we’re chasing his ghost across a country we didn’t belong to.

We wouldn’t have made it here without Mr. Specter. New passports, IDs, papers and identities stitched together out of nothing. He hadn’t done it out of kindness. Specter didn’t work that way. But when we slipped through American customs a year ago, and when we easily rented a room here without raising suspicion, I realized how much he had tilted the board for us.

Safe to say I didn’t trust him. Not even close. But I owed him the fact we were still breathing. But debts to Mr. Specter never stayed buried long.

Aki’s voice cut through my thoughts. “You’re doing it again.”

I blinked. “Doing what?”

“Grinding your teeth.” She leaned against the window, pink hair catching the moonlight. “Means you’re thinking about Specter.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“You don’t trust him,” Haru said from the futon. 

I shut the notebook. “I don’t.”

Aki scoffed. “Good. I was worried you were stupid enough to.”

The three of us fell into silence. We’d lived too long without lies between us to start now.

Outside, the street began to glow with neon. Little Tokyo transformed when the sun sank. Lanterns lit one by one, their soft light weaving through alleys while signs blazed sharp red and white. People crowded the sidewalks, laughter carrying over the hum of traffic. From up here, it almost looked safe. Almost felt like home.

But the longer I watched, the more I saw the gaps. Faces that didn’t linger. Cars that idled too long at corners. Men who scanned the crowd instead of the menu. The city of Angels harbored secrets everywhere if you knew where to look.

I felt it in my chest like a clock ticking. We were running out of time.

Haru sat up, brushing cyan strands from his eyes. “Do you think Vinnie’s even here?”

The question hung heavy. Aki turned sharply. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s not blasphemy,” he muttered. “It’s a question. We’ve followed the trail this far. What if he’s not even—”

“He’s alive,” I cut in, my voice sharper than I meant for it to be.

Haru’s eyes dropped, but he didn’t argue.

Aki gripped the window frame, knuckles white. “If Malice has him, then he’s here. And if he’s here, we’ll find him. That’s the point. That’s the only point.”

Her fire steadied me more than my own words ever could.

I leaned back, closed my eyes, let the smell of broth and the hum of neon seep in. For a heartbeat, I imagined the orphanage again, nights when we whispered about freedom like it was a fairytale. Vinnie’s laugh echoing down the hall. Aki daring us to dream bigger. Haru trailing after her with his quiet cynicism. And Viora... I didn't like thinking about her.

We escaped. That should’ve been enough. But freedom without Vinnie felt like theft.

I opened my eyes. “We’ll find him,” I said, softer.

Neither of them argued this time.

Night swallowed the city. The restaurant locked up one bolt at a time, footsteps fading. The loft went still except for the sound of our breathing.

That was when the stairs creaked.

We all looked up.

The owner appeared in the doorway, his shoulders hunched, eyes darting nervously toward the stairwell behind him. He rarely came up here, and never at night.

“Makoto,” he said, voice low.

“What is it?”

He hesitated, then swallowed. “Someone came asking for you.” His gaze flicked toward Aki and Haru, then back to me. “They said Mr. Specter sent them.”

The air thickened. Aki’s fists curled tight. Haru stiffened, pale beneath his cyan fringe.

I closed the notebook slowly, pulse steady but quick.

“Send them up.”