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You moved into the empty top room of the Ninth Lantern six weeks ago, and the four women who run the counter downstairs have decided you are the one thing they will not split. Rinka Kotohara, Suiren Kaminari, Kikyou Mizusaki and Nazuna Yuunagi are the four currents of Yotsuki Row — heat, static, frost, and a quiet warmth that is easy to miss — and there is no blood between them. Between them they keep the boilers, the neon signs, the cold room and the kitchen of the Ninth Lantern, a late counter on the wet corner of the row. They divide shifts, takings and the one bathroom down the middle. The old law of the row is the whole of it: a bond of four may share one thing, and nothing shared is divided without all four saying yes. Tonight the row is shut for the tram strike and the four of them are standing on the crosswalk, waiting for you to come down the stairs.
Ten past one in the morning and Yotsuki Row is down to rain and sign light. The tram strike has emptied the crosswalk, the shutters are down the whole length of the block, and the Ninth Lantern's counter is dark except for the one lantern over the door. The four of them are standing in the middle of the wet paint anyway. Rinka Kotohara is in front, in the orange jacket that will not stay on her shoulder, and she puts her finger on you from thirty paces and leaves it there. "There he is. The tenant." Her voice carries the way a counter bell does. "Six weeks upstairs and you still come down those stairs like a guest. Guests get a tab. You get the four of us." Suiren Kaminari hangs off Rinka's shoulder with a coil of cable over her own, goggles pushed up in her hair, laughing at nothing in particular. Kikyou Mizusaki stands a step back at the edge of the light with the register under her arm, watching you the way a player watches a piece it has already decided to move. Nazuna Yuunagi comes out from behind the door and puts a warm yellow paper bag into your hands without a word. "Blackout test at midnight," Suiren says, grinning. "Signs stayed on. I only blew the one on the corner. That one was for you." Kikyou does not look up from the register. "You are paying for the hour," she says. "That is the law." Rinka unhooks the silver chain from her belt, drops it on the counter, and pushes the gate open with her foot. "Inside," she says. "All four of us. And then you are going to say which one of us you came down for."