Worlds War One

xxiv [Ji]

They parked the Cougar 6x6 in an empty parking lot. This neighborhood was in an old part of Tokyo and mostly deserted as the day wound down into evening. Saanvi led the squad along the quiet streets as the scant locals cast suspicious glares at the group of Misfits. American Military in Tokyo was nothing new, but it was certainly not common in this neighborhood.

Saanvi stopped in front of a storefront that looked like it had been there a long time. Ji's sisters spoke six different languages, and Japanese was on that list. Ji had signed up for a semester of Spanish and flunked out after two weeks. He stared at the sign over the door, and it could have said this place was a Ghost bar serving spirits or a chapel housing real-life Angels. What Ji lacked in phonetic finesse, he made up for in common sense. A picture of stacked books on the end of the sign indicated this was more likely a bookstore or a printing shop.

"Shopping for the new Stephen King novel to pass the time on the trip to She'ol, Princess?" Ji taunted.

Saanvi looked unamused. "Still judging the book by its cover, Seaman Choi?"

She pushed open the door and entered the shop. Lieutenant Robinson next, Drill right behind her. The Misfits looked at each other, and Callie shrugged and went next. The boys followed. Wherever the lieutenant went, the four soldiers would follow.

Inside, the shop resembled a bookstore that had survived a tornado. Softcovers mixed with hardbacks, periodicals, and reference books jumbled on the same shelf. Stacks laid horizontal propped random titles leaning diagonally, fiction and truth smashed together in every single nook and cranny of the small shop. The arrangement was a chaotic cluster, some piles probably not touched since before Ji was born, words without rhyme or reason grouped in great tombs of tomes. Ji might not have inherited his parents' intelligence like his sisters had, but he did share a propensity for organizing with the rest of his family. The illogical clutter of books piled everywhere made his skin crawl, like someone raking fingernails across the plate glass window front.

A small Japanese woman with glasses perched at the very end of her nose, so close to the tip it appeared on the verge of falling farther and acting as spectacles for her nostrils, stood behind a counter. She'd pulled her white hair into a perfect bun, the tidiest thing in the shop. She might have been a statue except for the slightest movement of her eyes as she watched Saanvi stride across the small shop. It took only six steps.

"Yui," Saanvi said in a tone so dry it seemed right at home among these aged parchments.

"Princess Saanvi," Yui replied. Her tone suggested the name was a curse word in her native language.

"You know why I'm here."

"I know," Yui agreed. She seemed preternaturally learned.

"The Wider World is teetering on the edge of oblivion," Saanvi warned.

"You are prone to extreme hyperbole, Princess. Constantly courting drama where your sister stays the course. That is why you will never become queen."

"My sister will sail with the rest of the Illuminati into obscurity if I don't act."

Yui shook her head. "Sometimes, rash action precipitates further crises. Maybe patience and calm are called for in this instance."

"Mot returned, Yui. He will spread rot and ruin across the Wider World."

"You don't know Mot's true purpose, Princess. Perhaps he represents balance."

"Johnny Rotten attacked Macau. He appropriated thousands into his undead army. It was an attack on all the tribes," Saanvi said. "Have you ever known a combatant to attack once and walk away from the war? Does a victor in battle ever say, 'Enough'? Mot will take more. He will strike again. It's what has happened time and time again. It's a cycle as old as Earth itself."

"Time is ancient indeed, Princess," Yui scoffed. "And you are a child. Simply because you are a member of a royal family of the Illuminati doesn't make you an expert on the Way Things Really Are. Mot last roamed this universe long before Earth rose from the ashes of the First World. Almost everyone roaming the Wider World today has largely forgotten his exploits. None but the original Architects themselves could lay claim to being an authority on the subject of Mot."

"The Mongwi of the Ghosts was born around at the inception of All," Saanvi argued, "and the immortal has forgotten such ancient occurrences."

"Perhaps the past was not important enough to remember. And thus, irrelevant to the present."

"If you think what people have forgotten is therefore insignificant, then you are no student of history."

"No," Yui confessed. "I am a product of history."

"Perhaps I'm wrong, Yui," Saanvi admitted. "But what if I'm right?"

Yui had her fingers laced together, hands set on the wood top of the counter. A stack of novels bookended her on left and right. Ji glanced at the titles—A Tale of Two Cities, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Outsiders, A Brief History of Time, Stranger in a Strange Land. He had heard of those. Other titles seemed made up—God the Gypsy, Earth Fail, Horrorfrost, The Predictable Impossibles.

"What if . . ?" Yui fretted. Then she nodded. She sighed. "What if' is a better argument than asserting that you know for sure."

Yui moved so slowly that the small interior of the bookstore seemed as long as a football field, tiny steps shuffling along the wood plank floor like a librarian's whisper, shushshushshush.

Opposite the front door was a backdoor. Ji had learned to never go in anyplace on a mission where you didn't know how to get back out. There had been an alleyway running alongside the back of the row of buildings along this section of Tokyo, but he was sure before Yui had even opened the door that it would not lead to an alley. As the older woman turned the knob and pushed the door outward, it wasn't even daylight on the street outside the bookshop. Gaslights flickered up and down a cobblestone avenue straight out of a Jack the Ripper movie.

Saanvi went through. Lieutenant Robinson was next, with Drill. Ji followed the other three Misfits, hanging back on purpose. He had to ask Yui something.

"What kind of a bookshop is this place?" Ji questioned. "Every genre stacked together. Reference books are on the same shelf as fairy tales. There's no rhyme or reason to it. Fiction and nonfiction are all mixed up."

"There are Ghosts and Angels, as you have seen. Your team rushed off to confront the undead. You are allied with a Demon," Yui said. "Who is to say what is fiction and what is fact?"

Did he say 'Demon'? Ji thought.

"There still has to be rules," Ji said.

"Oh, there are rules," the old woman agreed. "But they aren't the rules you think they are. Nothing is what you think it is. Take your father, for example."

"What does my dad have to do with this?" Ji exclaimed defensively.

"This has nothing to do with Joo-won Choi," Yui said. "I'm talking about your birth father, young man."

Birth father? Ji swooned, the truth staggering. "You lie."

"Truth. Lies. Facts. Fictions. Real or not. That is all muddled. Those things are in the eye of the beholder," Yui mused. "But answers. Those are concrete and firm. And it is answers that you will find in the Lost City, Ji-Sung."

He thought about how different he was from his sisters. They were intelligent and successful and ambitious, and Ji was...different. As he steadied himself against dizzying answers, Yui gave Ji a gentle nudge into the Lost City and closed the door behind him.