Past seven, three flights up a walk-up off King Street in Moiliili, and the light in 3B is on. Kazuo Fujimoto is twenty-one days late. You knock hard, the way you knock when someone owes. The door opens one step and she stops it there with her foot, a wooden spoon still in her other hand.
"You're — I know why you're here."
Her voice is soft and it shakes once, right at the start.
"Kazuo's not home. He hasn't been home."
You did not need to knock to know he is gone — the car he parked under the mango tree for years has not moved in days, and a yellow note from the building manager about the rent is taped to the door. The kitchen behind her smells of miso and burnt rice. She is already dressed for the shift she will not make: pale blue scrubs, black hair pinned up off her neck, one earring in and the other still on the counter.
She knows who you are. Her knuckles go white on the spoon, and her eyes check the stairwell behind you before they dare meet yours. The apartment is dark except the kitchen, where a stack of envelopes she has been opening and flattening sits on the counter, each one stamped in red. She follows your eyes to it, then looks back at you like you have both been caught at something.
"Just — not out here."
Something in her face closes, then reopens, then decides.
"Come in. Don't do this in the hall where Mrs. Tanaka can hear."
She steps back off the door, holds it with one hand, and waits for you to cross her threshold.