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40°: E(𝑥)presso
The signage had changed since Neku took over the café and renamed it Mewsic, decorating the insides in lovely rendered tributes to Mr. Mew and all his friends within and without Shibuya—including a tribute to the white and red headphones she wore, apparently, although she had not seen it with her own eyes—but Minamimoto had offhandedly mentioned the original coffee prices, back when the sign had still said WildKat. Mr. H had had the café's offerings written both in Japanese and with Latin characters; one could order an espresso for ¥680 and an e𝑥presso for ¥1680. Mr. H had never insulted the patrons who requested an expresso and had made them a cuppa joe exactly the same as he would an espresso, no tricks, no intentionally worse service or flavour. He merely had had the two side by side on the same menu and had allowed patrons to come to their own conclusions.
If the patrons realised and corrected their mistake, he would refund them the thousand yen. If they didn't, perhaps next time.
The patrons had had the power in their hands to expand their own horizons.
Now, over four years after WildKat's sudden and unexpected closure into Mystery Circle, and several months after its grand reopening as Mewsic, Neku only had an espresso on the menu. Those who ordered an espresso or expresso would pay the same ¥680 and get the same blend. Occasionally, with a smile, Neku would ask if the patron wanted to know a fun fact about the etymology of the word espresso. But, as Neku had explained to Tsugumi the last time she had visited Shibuya to attend a concert with Coco, the patrons knew what they wanted, and he knew what they wanted. No point in making people suffer unnecessarily, not even for the purpose of 'teaching them a lesson'.
On the eve of that concert, while in Coco and Minamimoto's shared base of operations, Tsugumi had noticed the files scribbled-over in red and teal. A series of reports on the events of the second Impurification of Shibuya.
Recently, by chance, she had met the person who had penned the reports.
Today, by choice, she would meet with him again, in a strange and secluded warehouse amongst the older and more run-down parts of the city, out past Dogenzaka, near the thirteen stories of Pork City looming over. She climbed the uneven steps, walked down the dusty hall littered in discarded wrappers and tossed cigarette butts, and knocked on the nondescript door with its peeling brown paint.
It opened.
Immediately the scent of spraypaint accosted her nose. As her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, she found herself staring down a smaller room than she had imagined. Shelves of books—akin to a library—took up the right wall, packed with volumes appearing older than the city itself. Many, many tarp-tents hung over the left side, some over what appeared to be easels, others over unidentifiable three-dimensional structures. Sculptures, maybe? Minamimoto's garbage ensembles? On the very far end she spotted a couch—its bright pink fluffiness suggested her darling Coco had sponsored it—and two tables. One of them sported rows of spray cans in a rainbow of colours and other artistic implements too far away for her to make out. The other one seemed to have jars of some sort. A pot of coffee. Silvery somethings: more artistic tools?
Leaning against the couch armrest she observed the main attraction for which she had come: the tall, lean man busying himself with the coffee. "Care for a cuppa, boss?"
"Please, and thank you." Tsugumi closed the door behind her. "And thank you, as well, for meeting with me."
"Sure. I'm just the friendly neighbourhood barista, after all. Now, what kinda coffee ya want, kid?"
"Hmm...I don't drink much. Why not surprise me?"
Mr. H responded with a musing mmmmm. "Y'know, when folks ask me that, what they're really askin' is for me to read their minds. I ain't too much in the business of that, Phones."
"I meant it honestly. I won't complain about whatever station I pull into." She paused. "Why not just pour me some of whatever you just made for yourself?"
"You got it. C'mon over here. If we're gonna chat, let's do it casual-like, ya dig?"
As she crossed the floor, listening to the boards creak beneath her soles as though threatening to give way, she reached out for the hot white cup he had left on the table for her. She watched him seat himself on the left side of the couch, crossing one leg over the other taking up barely a fifth of the space meant for two people. She perched on the right side. Her weight sank into the plush cushion.
The coffee smelled: good. Flavourful. She dipped her tongue experimentally in. Bitter, the taste seeping into her tongue and refusing to ebb no matter how many times she swallowed.
Yet she found herself taking it down in small sips.
"So, whaddaya wanna shoot the breeze about?" Mr. H raised his eyebrows. "Reckon you didn't come all the way out here just for a sample of my joe. Though it is the best joe in the city." He threw his head back in laughter. "Can't blame ya if ya did."
Tsugumi lowered the cup to her lap and cleared her throat. "'Under ordinary circumstances,'" she quoted, observing how he began to stroke the scruff on his chin, "'Players in Shibuya's Game pay an entry fee upon arrival, through which the Composer offers them a chance to reexamine themselves. This Game has no entry fee. The Shinjuku rules neither encourage nor allow for personal growth or change, making the Game just that—a mere competition to collect points to prove one's worth.'" She gazed at him evenly. "You wrote that."
He kept his smile nice and nonchalant, feathers unruffled. "Guilty as charged. What's on your mind, Phones?"
She had practised these words on the train ride over. She would keep on track. "Did you know my brother?"
"The good Conductor Matsunae? Can't say I did. Knew of him, but I had my hands full herding the crazy cats in Shibuya. Didn't even talk much to Shades—Conductor Kitanji—"
"Yes. My brother was...friend isn't the right word, but they knew each other."
"Sure did. Botha 'em loved their cities. Botha 'em fought to keep 'em from erasure. And I heard from a little birdie that Shinjuku's Composer was so bored of his Game that he barely set the rules."
Her hands had frozen into place around the coffee mug, but she fought to relax her grip. "...yes, that's right."
Mr. H nodded, as if to himself. "So, boss, ya here to defend your brother's honour? I'm not dissin' him. I'm pointin' out the truth about his Game. Nothin' more or less. Buck up, sister. Shinjuku's gettin' itself puzzled back out. Things'll look up."
"No...I'm not here to defend anyone's honour. The train I intend to board is different: I want to discuss what you think is the 'truth' of Shinjuku's Game." She leaned forward. "I'm ready and willing to be convinced otherwise, Mr. H. I'm...musing on what to do if the day comes that I run the Games myself. Rather, that I set the rules for the Games myself."
She studied him studying her for a moment.
"...as a hypothetical thought experiment over a cup of coffee, that is."
"Hmmm. All right, kid." He leaned back into the couch. "Always did love me some beans, so why don'cha spill yours?"
Tsugumi cleared her throat. "Oh, er, I'm not sure where to begin. I guess I'll start at the first stop and move down the rail. Correct me if I misunderstand your argument, but you wrote in the reports that Shibuya's Game is better because it forces Players to give up an entry fee. Because it makes them reexamine themselves. Meanwhile, Shinjuku's Game is worse because it doesn't require an entry fee...because you think it's just a collection of getting points."
"Right on so far, Phones."
"But I don't see the purpose of the entry fee, by itself, being a benefit. It's one way to get someone to examine themself, maybe, but it's not the only way."
"Never said it was."
"But there are better ways. It's really just making people suffer, isn't it? Taking away the core of who they are, the most important thing to them. Yes, they can learn from that, but it won't be from having something taken from them. It'll be from everything else that happens during the Game. The point of the entry fee is to challenge someone, isn't it? But you can challenge someone without making them hurt. Look at the Game that saved Shibuya the second time! And I know about the three Games during the first Impurification of Shibuya. The proxy's second and third entry fees...how did they challenge him? All they did was give him more incentive to win, which he would've already wanted to do for his life. He'd promised his partner, after all."
"Mmm, you've thought a lot about this. I respect it, kid." Mr. H rubbed his chin. "Lemme guess, ya got your info from a certain Reaper in pink?"
Tsugumi pressed her lips together.
After a moment of silence, he shrugged. "Well, it ain't the suffering that makes someone better. It's the figuring out how to live without the thing they thought was the most important. 'Sides, they get it back in the end, 'n' havin' lost it gives 'em more appreciation for it. You take stuff for granted. Never know what ya got 'til it's gone, ya get me?"
"...I don't think that being traumatised for three years in Mr. Mew made a better person." She maintained a smooth levelness to her timbre. "I think, actually, that that made me worse, for a very long time. It took away three years of my life during the invasion of Shibuya, and it's taken away even more time after that as I've ever so slowly recovered. It's taken me...months...to be comfortable enough leaving my room to come talk to you here. And it's going to take away even more time. Even for Coco's birthday party, I couldn't walk the streets of Shibuya for fear of..." She breathed. "You told me not to tell anyone else of the warehouse's location, so I approached Pork City from the outskirts, terrified I'd see an advertisement or run into someone wearing the brand and end up panicking on the street."
He held up a forefinger. "First things first, I gotta hand it to you for not givin' this place away. Thanks. I mean it from the bottom of my Soul, kid."
"...sure."
His middle finger joined the first. "Second, entry fee gets taken for a week, kid. And no one's entry fee is gonna get 'em stuck in torture for three years." Mr. H offered her a reassuring smile. She couldn't tell how practised it was, because it felt genuine, and yet something prickled uncomfortably in the back of her mind, as though she were looking at an optical illusion. "What happened to you was a tragedy, Phones. But the fact that you were able to recover the way you did...that does say a lotta 'bout your strength and resilience as a person. Figuring out how to stitch yourself whole: s'a big deal. And that would'a taught you a lot."
She shook her head. "No...it's not just because I was strong, or resilient. I could heal because I had people to support me. Coco, Hishima, Kaie, Shiba...they were there for me. They are there for me. I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't had them. It's only because I've had such a great deal looking out for me and helping me that I've been able to come all this way."
"And good for ya that you've got a team like that. Ain't lyin' when I say that." Mr. H regarded her for a moment. She had a distinct crawling sensation, as if he were tweezing apart her molecules to peer into the petri dish of her Soul. "When we're talkin' about this kinda stuff, bringin' in our personal histories can make things a little stickier than we mean it to. When we're tryin' to set down rules for the whole city, we can't just do it for ourselves based on what we've had in life. Think about it this way, Phones. When we're making art, we can make it for ourselves, sure. But if we want to reach other people with our art, we gotta take those other folks into account. Can't just sit in your walled garden and expect other folks to hurt 'emselves climbing the fence."
Tsugumi inclined her head.
"Folks wanna think that they're so interestin' to others that they can sit cool 'n' unaffected, lettin' others come to 'em. Nah. You gotta make your art interestin', but still make it yours. See, that's the trick that makes Imagination so key. Balancin' out what you wanna say...with how to make folks listen in. Plenty of people confuse that and think that it says ya gotta say what folks wanna hear. But it's more like, ya gotta say what you wanna say usin' the words that they'll listen to. That's how you get people to listen to you. That's how you get people to change their minds about things, right?"
"...that makes sense," she said mildly.
"Right. So when we're figurin' out the Game's rules, we gotta think about how we're gonna get folks to listen. We want folks to become better people, don't we? Want 'em to understand who they are. If they're stuck with the same things they've relied on, they're gonna be less open to new ideas."
She stopped herself mid-sip. "That doesn't make sense. When people are hurt, they're more likely to close themselves off."
"Don't think so, kid. Folks at their lowest tend to listen more. Desperate to chomp at whatever bit they can get for a way out, ya dig?"
"That just sounds like...manipulation."
He tapped his forefinger against the rim of his cup. "You could put it that way if ya wanted to be uncharitable. But all art's like that. Manipulatin' colours, shapes, expectations to get across what the artist wants to say. What the artist wants the audience to get outta the art."
"I...I suppose that I don't disagree with that." No, Tsugumi could sense herself slipping on the track. She couldn't suppose. She needed to keep her edge against the whetstone. "Still, being in the Game by itself is already so different. I don't see why we need more suffering than the fear of losing their lives."
"Point that I was making, though, is that we've got to set aside our own experiences. Hard part of being a leader is that you can't just do what you want, right? Gotta think of the folks beneath you. Gotta think of what's the best path for the whole team, for the whole city, not just for you. So ya set aside your own experiences and ya think about it from the top down. A good leader doesn't let their emotions or even their bonds get in the way. Sometimes..." She followed his gaze out to the cans of spraypaint on the other table. "...we even hurt the folks we care about the most, because we hafta for the city. You dig?"
She knew. She knew what he was doing, couching his arguments in such phrasing, appealing to what they'd discussed on the Games. Her experiences surely mattered, too: part of what allowed a leader to make the right decisions. And the image of the Angels, looking down, cool, disaffected, toying with the lives and livelihoods of humanity as they pleased...
Yet neither did she disagree. If Shinjuku's Composer had set aside his own experiences...if Shinjuku's Composer had set aside his own boredom with the city, his own desire to follow in the Shibuya Composer's footsteps, his own selfishness...if Shinjuku's Composer had considered what would yield the best future for Shinjuku and not for himself...
Her lip curled. She had seen his game, and he must have seen that she had seen his game, and yet she couldn't disagree entirely.
But Tsugumi could connect them back through the crossroads to what Mr. H hadn't answered.
"I'm listening to what you're saying so far, Mr. H, but...I feel like there's something missing. Because I agree with a lot of what you've said about art, but I don't agree that we need to make people suffer for it, still. Even setting aside my own suffering."
His eyes seemed to twinkle at that, as if Tsugumi had dropped one of her chips onto the table, as though she'd revealed a card from her hand.
She mustered on: "Like I said, if we want to challenge people to help them improve, there are sturdier rails to put them on than asking them to board the pain train."
"S'more than just the lack of an entry fee, kid. The Shibuya Game works in partnerships. Sure, ya gotta learn how to work with other people, gotta learn how to clash and understand, to make your own Imagination that much sharper. At the end of the day, you still gotta be the one fighting in every single Noise elimination. You still gotta be the one completin' the mission. In Shinjuku, though...in Shinjuku, s'not about you or your Imagination. You can have not enuffa that and still skate by if your team does well. Or you could have the highest Imagination in the city and still get erased because your team wasn't up to snuff."
"Wait, so you're saying..." Tsugumi sat up. A feat given the couch's plushness. "You're saying that the teams themselves are the problem? No, Mr. H, with all due respect, the teams are exactly Shinjuku's equivalent to the entry fee. You can't just rely on yourself. You have to put yourself out there, to take shared responsibility with everyone else. A single person can't conduct a train. Only through maintaining communication, building connections, and managing everyone—in leadership and in followership—can we safely make it to our destination."
Mr. H scratched at his chin. "That's a pretty nice speech, kid. Like I said, you've spent some time ponderin' it. And I like that. Makes me wanna pick your brain more, hear more about your opinions."
"Thank you." Tsugumi took another sip of the coffee. When she peeked into the cup, she realised with a start that she had nearly finished it off without noticing.
"So, mind if I ask ya a question, Phones?"
"Go ahead."
"What do you think is the point of the Games?"
With the coffee cup occupying both of her hands, she couldn't rest her palm on her chest as she normally would when faced with such a peculiar query. "To give people a second chance." She watched his expression, but his features remained good-naturedly neutral. "Whether they arrived in the UG by sickness, by accident, by suicide, by murder, they get a chance to turn their lives around and return. If you win the Game, you get your choice. To come back to the RG...or to stay as a Reaper. If you don't qualify for coming back to the RG, you can opt to become a Reaper. And then, if you ever want to, you can try to rejoin the Game and see if you can qualify for the RG after all." Tsugumi cradled the cup in her palms. "I'm...really glad that people get another chance."
"Mmm, that so? And do you think that Players deserve that chance, even if they didn't contribute to their team's victory?"
Her eyes narrowed slightly. "What do you mean? Yes, they were part of the team that won the Game, which meant that they contributed in their own way, large or small. It's not up to us to judge what specific value a Player brings to the team, because that value isn't always evident in something numerical. It's up to us to give people a second chance if they can show they'll reach out. The way that people die...a lot of the time, if they can learn how to reach out and talk to others, how to rely on them and be relied on, they can learn how to live in this interdependent life that humans lead."
His hand went over his chin so evenly that she could tell time by the strokes. "Hmm. That's a pretty interestin' way of lookin' at it. I think you're missin' a coupl'a key connections there."
"I'm missing a couple of connections...? What do you think is the point of the Games, in that case?"
"Sharp question there, Phones. Keen. I'd love to help ya fill in the blanks and hone your sharpshot thinkin' just a little bit further—" He glanced at the door. "—but I think my time's runnin' out before my appointment. Didn't realise how much effort it'd take you to mosey on over here, and didn't think about how much you'd want to discuss. Say, Phones, since you've come all this way, why don'cha hang out near Pork City for a bit? When I'm done with my little appointment, we can keep chattin' 'til the end. Whaddaya say?"
Tsugumi frowned. "Where am I supposed to be? Can't I just stay here while you're busy?"
"Mmmm. Sure thing, boss." When Mr. H unfolded himself from the couch, he stood to his full height for a mere moment before he slouched down, legs bending in an awkward pose, head ducked. "Just don't go pokin' around too much, will ya? I'll know, and I don't wanna know, ya know?"
"...I know."
"Feel free to pour yourself some more coffee while I'm out. I'll be back." Mr. H set his cup down on the table by the coffee pot without rinsing it: a silent promise. His gaze flitted to her, meeting hers for a moment, a thread of curiosity keeping his smile broad. She sank down into the couch's fluff. "Oh, and one more thing. I'm flattered, kid. You've got a whole birthday ahead of you, and you decided to spend it with some scruff-faced old man philosophisin' away. I hope you've got some plans later to celebrate yourself. Know a few shrines around here you could visit, at least, to ring in the year if you don't do much for your birthday."
Her frown deepened. "This was the only day you said you could meet."
He spoke so gently: "And you came."
She stared into her cup of coffee, a few droplets of brown spreading along the bottom.
"I'll return, Phones. Here's to another year of honing your Imagination."
By the time Tsugumi looked up, he'd left, the door closed as though untouched.