Drawing a Circle Takes Years of Practice

“Every mistake we’ve made can be undone, can’t it?”

Arata leaned in closer, mouth a thin line as he examined the bruises on Kira. Her father’s fingers had left clear impressions. Red pinpricks of blood marked burst capillaries underneath her skin. “I should never have left you on your own. You know how much attention this is going to draw?”

“Plenty of stores here will sell me a scarf.” She shuffled to look past his bulk. Too much head movement filled her neck with pins and needles. Cords of orange and yellow police tape blocked off the streets and roads, and officials were directing the flow of traffic, their heads on swivels. Duty would hopefully keep their eyes off the certified evidence for domestic violence collaring her. “I’ll just keep hunched until then. How goes the ritual preparation?”

“Slow. Too damn slow. I have to keep stopping every time I feel the police looking at me funny.”

She’d expected a better answer given how powdered white his hands were.

“But it just so happens,” Arata continued, pointing, “I need you helping out in a place that sells clothes.” Across the way was a shopping complex with a few storefronts still in possession of their lights. Advertisements and billboards were still cold and dark out front, but inside business looked lively.

“What for?” asked Kira.

“You retrieved the amber, right?” She unzipped her backpack to reveal the jar, and he whistled. “Good stuff. To put it simply, rituals have a series of nodes along their circumference that need filling with materials. Amber, in this case. Just go in and sprinkle some in places where it won’t get swept up by cleaners.”

She raised an eyebrow. “That’s all?”

“A ritual circle this size has proportionally massive nodes. Like, massive squared. Dump the amber on the street and it should still be within the bounds, but let’s not put that to the test.”

“Store it is, then.”

“Ah, but before you go.” Rooting around in pocket for a moment, he drew out a crumpled and concerningly used-looking tissue. “Spit in this and wash your face.”

“I don’t know what else you’ve wiped on that.”

“Use your sleeve for all I care but get that blood off your face before the police take interest. Crap’s complicated enough already.”

She did, for him. Her mother’s blood was already dry, so her face was redder than the blood had been by the time Arata deemed it sufficient.

Still, his foot shot out to block her leaving. “Hey, remember – everything that’s happened is temporary. Get free, get a little jiggy with it.” He didn’t so much step out of her path as dance his way aside after dropping that attempt at reassurance, feet sliding on invisible ice to the beat of finger snaps, his shout of “All this will work out! You’ll see!” trailing like a starved dog when she didn’t reply.

Despite the chaos of the previous night, people still thronged where fluorescent tape hadn’t woven a fence to keep foot traffic away from the corpses of vehicles and crews cutting into the belly of the ward, handfuls of pipe and wire laid bare for birds. New shifts were trucked in around the clock to keep fresh bodies on task. Crowds halted for each one that passed, the stop-and-go motion forcing Kira to perform her own dance so to not unwillingly deliver the necessary elbow bump that would instigate hysteria.

Over the electric buzz in her own mind, she barely heard the construction.

The governing body of Japan was nothing if not efficient in directing its workers. Someone, somewhere in the bureaucratic structure had likely compiled a dossier extrapolating on unexplained damages suffered by the country in the last fifty years, signs to look for, petitions for budgets, potential causalities, and the like in their pursuit of their source, seeking diagnosis. Thankfully, Kira reached the store without being the reason for another smattering of reports, an acrid scent of burnt rubber from the complex’s automatic doors easily explained away as poor maintenance.

A mammoth teddy bear statue waved her in. Skipping the escalators for the stairs, Kira proceeded up to the second floor. Tourists were taking pictures, making silly faces, enjoying their socialite butterflies lives while she’d given them a wide berth, face raw, her eye twitching.

Inside the store, a mass of frilly, loose-fit dresses and televisions checkerboarding every wall, Kira was immediately harassed by an employee. Someone who took to the job with vigor and their highest on-sale brands. Someone knowledgeable, who viewed Kira’s grand entrance under flickering lights the first step towards self-reinvention: this dirty, ripe, face scratched raw, hair-at-all-angles creature on the fence between “girl” and “thing.”

That or she was here to rob the place. The backpack would have raised the eyebrows of lesser associates, but this once welcomed Kira with elation one decibel off from breaking glass. Kira waved off their cheer, finding a rack at the store’s far corner that only raised the suspicion factor by a power of three. Ceiling-length windows afforded her a view overlooking the streets while she feigned interest in parkas. Patrons were few and far between today, so that would make the job easier.

No scarves, of course.

Insane styles, though. Who would willingly wear a jacket covered in sparkling blue sequins?

She’d intended to brush them with one finger. One had flipped up to reveal a secondary color on its back end, deluge obscuring a hint of ruby tone. At the associate’s eagle screech of a voice Kira’s hand jerked, fingers spreading as the noise attacked her eardrums and she washed rivers of crimson into the bruise-blue.

A face rose from the sea of brain static, shiny red and gurgling. Eyes pained, dampened by hurt and blood and cruel betrayal.

How much amber did he really need? In a second the bag was unzipped on the ground, the jar in her shaking hands. If the margins of this node were as expansive as Arata claimed…

She thought of his face, that bright look upon hearing she possessed an ample supply. That had to be some indicator of how little this ritual required.

He was a blacksmith, not some jeweler with enormous quantities of material on hand. His stores likely totaled no more than a few grams at most. Amber was not metal. Amber had no use in his arts. He’d never incorporated it before.

I could have pushed her. I could have pushed her and run. Pushed Father if only I’d been afraid.

Her heart threatened to burst, its staccato mirroring the frequency with which the lights of the store had begun to flicker.

The jar’s glass wasn’t all that thick, and the associate’s forehead had been one large slab of bone, not the typically dainty stock of so many other women. It would explode and shower the store no problem. Amidst the violence some amber would get lost beyond the reach of long-handled brooms with green plastic bristles, enough to see this ritual complete. Sticky golden chunks in the corners and held in garbage cans for a few days, depending on scheduled collection timeframes.

No chance to dodge. Girl wouldn’t see it coming.

When did I take Arata’s bloodlust into myself too? She turned the jar of amber over in her hands again and again, trying to focus on the soft clinking of stones, their dappled colors, their stasis, lives held forever in place – forbidden from change – anything to keep down the tide of nausea her necklace could do nothing about. Breathe in. Breath out. Breathe in.

At her side appeared a pair of boots, scuffed to all hell.

She shouldn’t be surprised, given the scene made. Interested parties would come over to assess anyone mumbling with amber jar in hand, if only for their own interests, and less so for her health.

Kira’s eyes tracked up the boots, squinting at the sudden darkness. The lights had died off in her stupor. She continued up the long pants, passed scarred hands rested on their waist, the lengths of grey pipe belted at the hip like one-sixteenth a PVC skirt –

And jumped straight to the grinning face of the Don’s Lieutenant.

On that belt hung another tool: a rod with flanged edges, long as her forearm, lines of esoteric script running its full length.

“Fancy seeing you here,” she said, that gravelly voice sandpaper to Kira’s ears. “Haven’t seen your punk friend around yet, have you?”