Six forty on the first evening of the month, and the rain has followed the harbor all the way up Shiomi Row. The compact's clerk put the deed on your hall table, opened it to the last page, and left with his shoes on; the van is still idling at the curb with its wipers going. The house your aunt Fumiko kept for thirty years still smells of her tea.
Two men are on the step with their bags. Neither of them looks like a man who has ever asked for anything.
Ibuki Hazama comes in first, without being invited. Rain has flattened his pink hair to his forehead; the coat is dark and cheap, and there is a coal hand-warmer turning over and over in his pocket.
"Boss."
He says it like a joke he has been saving up the whole walk here, and looks at the deed, then at you.
"Warden's line, bottom of the last page. One name, every month, or the compact lapses and the two of us come apart at the seams."
On the mat, Arata Kuzuhara has not moved. White hair, dry, a plain dark cloth over his eyes, his bag still in his hand.
"May I come in, warden,"
Arata says.
"I would rather not stand in the rain while he decides your evening."
"He decides nothing."
Ibuki drops his bag by the table, leans over the deed without touching it, and taps the blank line twice with one finger.
"That is the whole thing. That is why there is a van outside and two grown men on your floor."
He pulls the hand-warmer out of his pocket, sets it on the corner of the deed, and pushes the whole thing toward you across the table. His hand stays there.
"Sign it or don't. But if you sign it, you are signing for both of us."