The Bell

When the bell rang, the knife was already sheathed.

There was no one on the rooftop late at night. The news of the advance review had arrived during the day, and the entire store held a meeting about it for half the night, ending after 11 p. m. As usual, Chisa went up to the rooftop to make up for the number of swords she owed herself during the day.

Something's not right tonight.

The sword strikes were a beat too fast. The sword flashed, sheathed, then flashed again—each strike perfectly timed, as if someone had stolen a beat for her from behind. The bell on her wrist couldn't keep up with the sword; its sound trailed behind the movements, as soft as a belated apology.

She stopped, stood still, and looked at her hands.

This isn't her speed today. This is her speed tomorrow.

In the Blazing Cherry Family, this Prefetch isn't called a skill, it's called Withdrawal. Borrowing tomorrow's self in advance—the faster you use it, the more painful the return. The account only says four words: "Pay it back later."

There was some noise coming from the eaves of the neighboring house.

A kitten slid down from the roof tiles, its paws scraping against the eaves, and looked about to fall into the back alley.

Chisa moved.

This time, the bell didn't ring. The man was already in mid-air when he caught the cat with one hand, landed, and finished his move without a sound from the tiles beneath his feet.

The cat, nestled in her arms, stared wide-eyed, its fur bristling like a dandelion.

"So fast."

At the rooftop entrance, Dania stood holding a tray. On the tray were two cups of hot soy milk and a dish of tofu daifuku. She had seen everything from beginning to end just now.

"I didn't hear you move," Dania said. "The bell didn't ring either. It rang later, a beat too late."

"Borrowed." Chisa put the cat on the ground and took the hot soy milk.

"Borrow what?"

"Tomorrow's me," Chisa said, "Will be used once, and will be returned once."

Dania didn't understand and sat down first. The cat rubbed against her ankle and lay down, its tail covering its nose.

"I just felt that the sounds were reversed just now." She gestured in the air with her hand, "The knife came first, then the bell. Like a sentence, I know all the words, but the order is reversed."

Footsteps came from the stairwell.

"My ears are fine." Zhou Yu came up, carrying a folder instead of food. "The problem is with the knife. The knife that Ling couldn't catch isn't the knife from today."

He sat down opposite the two of them, opened the folder, and pushed it in front of Chisa. A line of text on the cover read, "Life's Loan Interest Rate Comparison Table."

"No swearing," Zhou Yu said. "Check your watch first."

The chart was hand-drawn, with neatly drawn grids. The first line read, "Borrow today's strength to repay tomorrow's lifespan. Annualized interest, life."

The following three lines of smaller print read: Lender: Tomorrow's You. Withdrawal Amount: One Day. Consequences of Overdue Payment: No Such Person Found.

"No such person found" is the stamp the registration office least wants to give, Zhou Yu said.

"Prefetch your future is like signing a high-interest loan," Zhou Yu said. "The interest is your lifespan. No other place on the entire Black Shores dares to offer this rate."

"How did you know?" Chisa asked.

"Your knife strike tonight was a fraction of a second faster, and your recovery was three seconds slower," Zhou Yu said. "The slower recovery is your body keeping track. Your body is more honest than I am."

Chisa held the soy milk, having not drunk it for a long time.

"Throughout the history of the Blazing Cherry Blossom Priestess, there has only been one cause of death," she said. "Using the bell excessively during battle, and she's gone."

That's it?

"Disappeared into thin air," Chisa said. "Leaving no trace, nothing behind, like a ledger being crossed off. That's how my sister, Yulu, disappeared."

A breeze blew from the direction of the Rainbow Sound Tower, and the bell on my wrist rang softly, as if in response.

"She said, 'Duty is meant to be burned,'" Chisa said. "I still remember that."

She looked at the soy milk in the cup and said something else.

"She also said something like, 'A bell is for delivering messages to others, not for announcing one's own death.'" She said, "I don't remember that part."

Zhou Yu nodded, took a blank form from the folder, and placed it in front of her.

"Burning is fine, but it has to be reimbursed," he said. "Using the future to burn in the present, who will get the reimbursement slip? To your future self? Did she agree to it?"

Chisa looked at him without saying a word for a long time.

"... My future self will not object."

"Listen to this," Zhou Yu said to Dania, "Is this what working-class people say?"

Dania hugged the cat and thought about it seriously.

"No," she said. "Workers get overtime pay."

"So, from today onwards, the use of the bell will require reporting." Zhou Yu handed over the pen. "One report at a time, I'll approve them. If I can't approve it, I'll try another method. If I can't beat them, I'll run away. If I can't run away..."

"You can't escape. Wake you up." Chisa took the pen and signed her name in the first column of the form. The signature was quick and the pen strokes were sharp.

She glanced at the form.

"The approver wrote an extra field."

"That belongs to Dania," Zhou Yu said. "Her job is to examine injuries. She can tell if a wound is in pain when it's returned after being lent out tomorrow."

Chisa looked at Dania. Dania, holding the cat, nodded.

"I can tell," she said. "If it hurts, I'll make porridge."

"This child is teachable," Zhou Yu said.

It was past midnight when they went downstairs. Dania walked ahead carrying the cat, and Zhou Yu followed behind, as the stairwell lights turned on one by one.

Dania stopped in the second-floor corridor.

"Xiao Yu."

"Um."

"Will Chisa be in pain tomorrow?"

"Yes," Zhou Yu said. "Borrowed items must be returned; that's the rule."

"Then why did she borrow it?"

"Because I feel today is more important than tomorrow," Zhou Yu said. "On paper, this kind of thinking is called responsible, but in reality, it's called foolish."

Dania turned around and looked at him for a moment.

"Will I be in pain tomorrow?"

"You don't need to Prefetch," Zhou Yu said. "I've already scheduled your schedule for tomorrow, by the day. Missing a day will be considered a breach of contract."

The corridor light had a faulty connection; it flickered overhead for a moment, then stabilized.

Dania stood still and looked at him for two seconds.

"Your contracts only count if they're stamped," she said. "This one too."

Then she put the cat down, stood on tiptoe, and gently kissed him on the cheek.

Quickly, very lightly, like stamping a document.

"Then this schedule is approved." After she finished speaking, she smiled, picked up the cat, and went back to her room. She closed the door very quietly.

Zhou Yu stood in the corridor, frozen in place for a full three seconds.

He had broken up hundreds of negotiations, seen tax rates, penalties, and contracts with seven layers of hidden traps, but none of his contingency plans included this.

Three seconds later, he took out the schedule and added a line of small print at the top of the tomorrow column, "Seal Verification".

Chisa's room was at the very back, with its window facing the back alley.

She sat for a while, then took off the bell from her wrist. The bell was small, and the clapper had long been worn round, making a dull sound when shaken. It was a rule in the Blazing Cherry Family that a shrine maiden should never take off her bell, even when she was asleep; this was taught from the very first day she entered the family.

She put the bell in the drawer and closed it.

The room suddenly became eerily quiet. She raised her wrist; the faint marks from the bell strap were still there, and her skin was an unfamiliar paleness.

The cat was perched outside the window, having followed her there sometime earlier, watching her through the glass. She opened the window a crack, and the cat squeezed in, jumped onto the corner of the table, curled up, and went to sleep.

Chisa looked at it for a while, then didn't chase it away.

The bell was in the drawer, and it didn't ring all night. The drawer was tightly closed, so for the first time, it didn't need to answer.

That night, for the first time, she fell asleep without the bell.

In the middle of the night, the mailbox outside the shop chimed softly.

The urgent letter from the registration office, sealed with a red strip, contained only one line. "Review time has been moved up again, to three days later."

On the same night, a resident of Sakuramachi got up in the middle of the night and glanced at the Rainbow Sound Tower through the fog.

The lights on the tower were on, but they were blurred into a hazy mass in the fog.

That night, the lights on the tower stayed on all night.