Holden On To A Blank
[SONG: https://yussefdayes.bandcamp.com/track/rust-feat-tom-misch ]
Rain comes down in countless tiny droplets, more like a mist descending upon the night than like a real storm. Street lights bend and ripple as they reflect off the slick streets. Pale yellow light spills out in sharp-edged rectangles from scattered windows; this part of Kyoto is mostly small businesses and offices and the people that normally fill its squat, efficient buildings have all migrated back home or onward towards nightlife.
One of the flat yellow boxes of light belongs to Holden's private detective agency. It carries with it the image of a large man with the dark, pointed ears of a cat sitting at a heavy wooden desk. He has a tumbler of iced scotch on the desk with him, a full ash tray, and a scattering of case notes. Except for his strangely feline face, he looks like he stepped out of a detective novel set centuries before. All the trappings are there: even his desk lamp is an antique brass number with a green glass shade.
Directly across the street from this window, a dark shape sits perfectly, disturbingly still. It exists in a deep shadow cast by the enormous katakana sign of a different office building. The shape disappears between the characters. Unseen by anyone else, the haze of rainfall further shakes itself apart when it falls against that person's clothing, shrouding them even further in silent fog.
This person has been keeping a long vigil on the private detective across the way. Beneath their black hood, a high-tech mask with red lenses tilt and spin, perfecting the view moment by moment as raindrops and shifting light demand a new focus. The stalker couldn't get a better view even if they were perched directly outside the office window, the enhancements are so perfect. They mouth an unspoken command and the circuitry of the mask responds by taking another photograph of the target. Holden sets down his notes and rubs his temples with tired hands.
The chill of the night means nothing to Blank, the mercenary hiding in the shadows. Unlike the sparse pedestrian traffic down at street level, no fog forms from the warmth of an exhaled breath. When Blank breathes out, all the warm has been jealousy taken back out before exhaling. If they shifted in place, Blank would have made no sound - not that they need to shift in place. Fatigue from stillness is something Blank has never experienced. There is nothing more natural in the world than this shadow warrior spending hours perched in place like a gargoyle.
Blank watches passively as Holden casually reaches over to the desk lamp and turns this window from one of the rare few lighted into just another of the army of dark panels down the street. Moments later, Blank's mask flicks through automatic recalibrations, and reveals a brightly outlined view of the interior cast in artificial oranges shading towards black. Holden is lowering the now-emptied tumbler from his lips, and his whiskers twitch minutely. There is a pause as he looks at, or perhaps through, the glass in his hand. In spite of his looks, his eyes are no different from any other man's. There's no benefit to him sitting in the unlit office.
Blank watches him get up, shrug his full-length raincoat onto his shoulders, and holster a handgun before leaving. They watch as a deadbolt turns itself into place, driven by Holden's key on the other side. And they stay still, just observing, for the entire time it takes for the cat-man to get to the ground floor, exit his building, and stroll to the end of the street. Once he turns the corner, Blank smoothly goes from a balled up perch on metal struts to an acrobatic sprint and leap across rooftops and between buildings. They move efficiently, gracefully, and - above all - whisper quiet.
[SONG: https://yussefdayes.bandcamp.com/track/birds-of-paradise ]
The next day, Holden is standing at a dockyard in front of a prone figure draped in a blue tarp. Seawater puddles out beneath it. The detective is standing in a circle around the body made up of men uniformed as company security. Judging by how the security men jabber and gesture, Holden must be conversing with them. But all Blank can see is Holden's rigid back hidden by the same wrinkled raincoat.
Hand over hand, Blank free climbs the support arm of a cargo crane. Though the wind blows dangerously cross-ways, the mercenary moves without care for their own life. They crawl out along the boom, the hard ground of the shipment dock a dizzying height beneath them. They fetch extended lenses from a sealed pouch among their shinobi tools and fix it with a soundless tactile click to their mask. Lenses swiftly adjust and now the scene far away comes into near focus again.
Holden crouches down with a cigarette in his hand. Using just his thumb, he lifts the corner of the tarp to look at the victim's face and neck. The security men give several different expressions among themselves: discomfort, wariness, frustration, boredom, curiosity. The end of one of his cat ears twitches briefly. Holden turns his head to look directly to his right, between stacks of steel shipping containers. Blank takes another photo, then zooms into his face. Holden has his eyes turned further still. Slyly, he looks directly into Blank's view.
Blank records another image.
Holden looks away.
A few nights later, Blank tracks Holden all the way to a cheap hotel. The neon sign outside is full of dead, unlit glass, but a paper sign in the front window declares it "Still Open" to the foot traffic going by. The neighborhood is full of clothes lines, AC units, wandering drunks, and the apartments of prostitutes. Holden goes in, but there's bars on all the windows and no back door. Whether the fire marshall has been bribed into compliance, or the building has some kind of arrangement with a connected structure, Blank neither knows nor cares. When the shinobi spies Holden rubbing his face and closing the black-out curtains to his bedroom, many wordless suspicions go through their mind.
But even a mountain of suspicions would do nothing to deter Blank from an assigned task. Like a rag, they drop themselves from a fire escape down to the street; like a shadow, they pass into hotel unnoticed behind the footsteps of a patron. Even though they are dressed in anachronist costume, all leathers and belts and black cloth, a combination of a lazy affect and their particular quirk of living beneath notice means that Blank can slip up the stairway and between the halls without gaining attention. They put a foot and one hand on the door hinges before opening the way into Holden's rented room and the unoiled joints jitter without noise.
The cheap room has a bathroom door that won't close all the way due to a swollen frame. It has a lumpy, but clean twin bed, and the kind of high-legged bedside stand that couldn't hold anything more than a single book or maybe the contents of the pockets of one pair of pants. The only light in the room is from the cracked open door. Still, Blank's gear illuminates the gloom for them alone. Night vision without the burden of full color.
Blank sees the large mass of Holden in bed, turned away toward an interior wall, sheet pulled up high under his chin and triangle ears relaxed. The overstuffed pillow swaddles his head so much that he might even be having trouble breathing, but he's still and quiet, as if he passed right away to sleep.
Footfalls come hard and fast, the bathroom door slamming open noisily. Blank turns and lowers their body in practiced reflex, drawing not their blade but instead a strange bludgeon shaped like an iron fan that can't open. Holden takes the swipe of the bludgeon across the belly, but the big man is already barreling into the ninja that's been hounding him for days. They slam into the mattress, scattering the pile of clothing he arranged under the sheets. A cat-eared beanie is flung with such speed by their wrestling that it makes the bedstand teeter on its uneven legs.
Blank gets their feet under Holden's hips and rolls backward, shoving Holden end over end and slamming clumsily against the ground on the other side of the bed. The noise of other people in other rooms beginning to stir and dress can be heard through the walls and floor. Now Blank has their sword out, arm outstretched, point curving down to plunge at the prone Holden like the beak of a diving raptor.
"Wait," says Holden. He has his hands up in a placating gesture of pause. His voice is rumbling, deep, rich. Somehow, there's no fear in the tone. Only an accepting finality.
"Do I get a question before I die?"
Blank looks at him, paused in thought. When they speak, the mask takes the words and splits it into many random overlapping voices, disguising the vocal identity of the speaker but retaining the words. "If this were an assassination mission, you would be dead, and I would not have triggered this trap." They sheathe the blade, and move the bludgeon once again from off-hand to dominant.
"Who do you work for?"
"Anonymous bounty. I have what I need. And you have been given the message."
"Message?"
"Eyes turn towards you once again, detective. Curiosity kills the cat."
He makes a face in the darkness, an easy snarl and a casual disdain for the joke at his expense. Blank kicks a ratty yellowish hoody from the pile on the floor, and shrugs it on quickly. Hiding the weapon and their hands in the big front pocket, Blank slips into the hall just as it begins filling with rubberneckers and other would-be witnesses. They blend into the spreading confusion and disappear into the night.
Holden pulls himself to his feet, rubbing an ache in his shoulders. A sweaty, round-bellied man, naked except for swim trunks, begins commanding him in excited, repetitive Japanese. Someone else is fetching the night manager, and Holden watches a different patron snatch a cell phone out of someone else's hands before they can finish dialing the police.
Holden sighs through his nose. He's got some explaining to do.