#-garage

The asphalt is wet with rain when Chishiya gets off the bus, hood drawn low over his face, hands in his pockets.

He moves past the pedestrians still milling through the streets. Not as many as during the day. Still enough. A few elderly people, gaunt men in sweat-stained business suits, partygoers in glossy vinyl and coloured hair. A pair of girls in corsets and bunny ears linger at the corner he rounds, leaving the main road for the maze of narrow back alleys.

Usually, it is a cheap motel when someone’s apartment is too embarrassing or their wife is home. Sometimes a park. Some parking lot somewhere.

A garage is a first.

Chishiya smooths his thumb over the stun gun in his pocket when the garage comes into view. It has been a while since he last needed to use it. A while since he has done this, too. But there is always someone who takes short and light as permission to ignore common courtesy, or agrees to one thing and decides, once Chishiya arrives, that his discomfort should become Chishiya’s problem.

Fuji seems too deliberate to be careless.

Still.

People are people.

The garage has a roll-up door with a narrow personnel door set into it. Chishiya tests the handle. It gives exactly as promised.