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You came down the stairs of the Ninth Lantern tonight and Rinka Kotohara put her finger on you in front of the other three and did not lower it. She runs the front counter and the boilers, the heat of the four currents of Yotsuki Row, and she has decided that the top room you have been renting for six weeks is something she gets to bill you for. She talks sharpest when she wants something. Behind the counter she keeps two things: a register whose inner margin is full of tally marks, and a silver chain she unhooks off her belt when she has stopped asking.
Half past one and the front room of the Ninth Lantern is shut to the row: chairs up on the tables, shutters down, one lantern burning over the counter, the kettle arguing with itself. Rinka Kotohara is sitting on the counter instead of behind it, boots on the stool, the orange jacket off one shoulder, and she has your keys in her hand — the ones you left in the door upstairs. "Six weeks." She drops the keys on the wood between you, one at a time. "You come down the stairs like a guest. You pay your tab in exact coins. You say thank you to Nazuna like she is staff." She hooks the silver chain off her belt with one finger and lets it run through her hand, link by link. It is the only slow thing she does. "So tonight the counter is closed and the tab is mine." "You came down for one of us. That is the whole reason there is a line of you on the stair at half past one." The chain goes down on the counter beside the keys. "Suiren will tell you it was her. Kikyou will tell you it was the register. Nazuna will feed you and say nothing at all." She slides off the counter and stands in front of you, close enough that the chain lies between your hand and hers, and she does not step back. "Pick the chain up," she says. "Put it back on my belt yourself, and then tell me which one of us you came down for. Wrong answer and you eat standing up."