2:00 AM.
Julian snapped his eyes open in the guest room of the Den-en-chofu estate. It wasn't an alarm that woke him; it was a stench. It was hard to describe like a piece of rusted iron that had been soaking in a stagnant ditch for three years, wrapped in a few rotting crabs for good measure.
He thought groalily: This is Den-en-chofu, the cleanest, most expensive zip code in Tokyo. Where is the sewer smell coming from?
He reached out to flip the light switch, but his fingertips hit something cold and slimy.
"Oh, for God's sake..."
Julian was wide awake now. He hit his phone screen to use it as a light and nearly jumped off the tatami.
Thick, black silt was oozing out of the cracks in the pristine wooden floorboards. The sludge moved as if it were alive, crawling along the grain of the straw mats toward him. He knew this smell all too well it was the specific stench of the mudflats under London Bridge, mixed with centuries-old rot and iron.
Just then, his phone lit up. It was an encrypted recording from Tomasz in London, sent thirty minutes ago.
Julian frowned and pressed it to his ear.
There was total silence at first, save for Tomasz's heavy breathing. Then, a massive CLANG-CLANK echoed through the sound of someone dragging hundreds of pounds of raw iron chain across a marble floor.
Then, a raspy voice, sounding less than human and carrying a terrifyingly ancient accent, whispered into his ear:
"The head in the East, the ledger in the West... the Auditor has come."
Julian felt his skin crawl. He didn't call for help; instead, he opened the live CCTV feed of the London office.
It was 2:00 PM in London, a beautiful sunny day. Emma was walking past her desk, coffee in hand, looking perfectly normal.
But as Julian stared at the screen, his hand began to shake.
"What is wrong with their shadows?"
In the office, every potted plant had withered into a blackened husk. More terrifyingly, the shadows of everyone, Emma, Tomasz, and even the passing janitor, weren't following their owners. Those shadows had stretched out into long, black spikes, all pointing dead-straight toward the East.
Toward Japan. Toward Otemachi.
Julian sat in the middle of that black silt, looking at his oblivious colleagues on the screen, then down at the mud already climbing his ankle. He couldn't help but curse:
"Tomasz, you absolute moron. Could you not have called the police while you were recording? What good is an audio clip now?"
He cursed as he yanked his leg out of the mud, his heart hammering like a broken engine.
The steam in the private bath was so thick that it was almost impossible to breathe.
Julian stripped down and stepped into the massive cypress tub. The scalding water wrapped around him instantly, turning his skin a bright red. The sting made him feel grounded. In a place like Den-en-chofu, a bath like this was a privilege, but right now, the water felt like it carried a faint, metallic scent of blood viscous, like he was soaking in a vat of unsettled accounts.
He leaned back and closed his eyes, trying to shake the sound of chains and those shadows from his mind.
"Damn it, I'm just overworked. I'm hallucinating," he muttered, trying to use a bit of profanity to reclaim his "London boy" ego.
He shifted under the water, and his fingertip brushed something hard and round on the bottom of the tub.
"Does this family not even scrub their own tub?" Julian frowned and reached down to grab it. It was heavy and slick. As he hauled it out of the water and wiped away the steam, he froze.
It was a ceramic model of a human head.
It had no features; the face was a smooth, terrifying blank, but the line of the jaw and the curve of the brow were a seventy-percent match for his own. Most chillingly, a yellowed, damp piece of paper was stuck to the forehead. The ink wasn't even dry yet, scrawled with a marker: his Noruma employee ID number.
Julian stared at his "own head," his heart skipping a beat. The steam in the room seemed to turn into a cold fog. He didn't scream or run. He just stared at that number. In all his years in the City, he'd seen a thousand ways to go bust, but this was the first time he'd felt "audited."
"Using my head as a ledger?"
He let out a cold laugh, his breathing leveling out with eerie precision. He stood up from the tub, stark naked, and reached into the pocket of his robe hanging on the rack. He pulled out the Montblanc pen he'd used to sign his three-million-pound offer.
The nib scratched across the damp paper with a sound like tearing skin. He drew a massive, aggressive "X" over his employee number, the universal symbol for Settled.
"If the heads in Otemachi want to settle accounts with the bones under London Bridge," Julian whispered, his eyes as cold as ice, "then I'm the accountant taking the cut. You want my books? Let's see if you can afford the payout."
He let go, allowing the ceramic head to sink to the bottom of the tub with a dull thud.
After dressing, Julian walked back to the living room, his feet padding against the wooden floor. His hair was still damp, droplets sliding down his neck like a cold warning.
His grandfather was sitting on the veranda, a cup of lukewarm green tea in front of him. The old man looked up, and the cold, "sacrificial" look in his eyes had vanished, replaced by a strange, newfound respect.
"Settled?" the old man asked.
"Down to the last cent." Julian straightened his cuffs, his tone as flat as if he were discussing a minor expense report.
The old man didn't say a word. He reached into his sleeve and pulled out a heavy, thick manila envelope sealed with black wax. He placed it quietly on the tatami between them.
"Since you passed the audit, take this. Open it when you get back to London," his grandfather said, his voice low.
Julian picked up the envelope; it was unexpectedly heavy. He looked at his grandfather and realized the old man's shadow had shrunk back to a normal size. The "tentacles" were gone.
Julian tucked the envelope into his coat.