other five (times two)

  Nina and Emi reached the front of the bus.

  Some girl with a fake smile came to greet them as they reached the front of the bus.

  "Hi, hi! I thought we'd have to gather you two up!"

  She had purple eyes: bright, inspired, artificial. It was a popular trait for the elite to edit into the embryos of their children, wasn't it? Nothing like that was possible in Nina's hometown. Shin Kumamoto drowned in conformity, anyway.

  Her gaze was too heavy. Nina did not return eye contact. She quelled her instinctual dismay, hatred, tried to say: "Hi, I'm—"

  "March Inoue, right? And that's Emiliya Senklerova! It's nice to meet you. I'm Aine Hunlun. Aria, who's just here and Sophie, who's over there call me Anny, and you can too, I guess, but—"

  "Nina. It's Nina. My name is Nina Inoue."

  This put Aine Hunlun off-script. Did she know how to improvise?

  "Not legally, right?" Aine said.

  "Factually?" Nina said.

  "But you didn't get it changed," Aria Beauregard said.

  She sat to the left of where Aine was standing. She had purple eyes, too, and cherry red hair.

  Nina sought to determine something.

  It was determined that Aria had dyed her hair to achieve that colour.

  The established fact trickled into her perception. Nina felt a little ill. Hearing her stupid legal name already made her feel quite ill, so that was okay. It was an easy use of her ability, anyway.

  "I didn't," Nina said. "Injunction."

  "Injunction?" Aria asked.

  "It's of ritual significance," Nina said. There were six girls, born for a given purpose. Five of them were born correctly. The girl meant to seal the loop was not.

  "Wuh-what," Aria asked.

  "Aha, wait! Ari, I know! I know I know," Aine said. "So, basically, some cities have this thing in their citizen registry where they can stop you from legally pursuing a name change if it would cause some kind of disturbance, like if the fact that your name was your name was tied to some sort of spiritual machinery."

  Aine was so bubbly. Maybe shut up about it? This wasn't a light topic.

  "Oh. But it's just like. Words on a card," Aria said. Sure. Words on the card that defined you and your life. "And you could just move to somewhere else and change your citizenship—"

  "There are alliances, aren't there?" Aine said. "Other cities might have to keep the injunction. Hey, Nina, where are you from?"

  "Shin Kumamoto," Nina answered, knowing this meant nothing to nobody.

  "Oh, is that a Japanese city?"

  "No. The Acacia," Nina said.

  Something in Aine grew very hollow. "Oh. Interesting. You're very interesting, Nina. I won't forget that you're called that, Nina."

  She drew closer, Aine, to Nina and Emi. Really just to Nina. Aine wasn't really tall, but Nina was quite short. Emi had as little presence as she advertised. Nina felt imposed upon.

  This nadeshiko of the new era stared down at her. Oh, perhaps April's grandfather would disagree. Her surname was Chinese although her forename was Japanese, if quite rare. Did it matter? It was as if all peoples on all seven continents of the surface of the Earth as well as those who lived outside of it did not intermix and intermix and intermingle after the welter and waste of the Babylon War, until the three billion who had survived official history became thirty billion or sixty billion in humanity's domain, then one hundred and twenty or one hundred and fifty billion if you counted every human that could be reached.

  There was this refrain people repeated ad nauseam. ‘Mirrors and copulation multiplied the number of men.’

  The point was, it didn't matter where Aine was from! She was like April Kauzaki before her, an exemplar model forged to fit the standards of the new world. She easily stood in the top percentile, maybe further up. How many billions was Aine better than?

  Everything around Nina ran too hot. It didn't show on Nina: empty, dead, emaciated. Aine remained certain, and so still.

  Like April, the type of young woman who made others hang on her every word. The kind of young woman whose very word they would all be hanged by.

  Aine backed away from Nina.

  "Hah, was I too close?"

  Nina didn't say anything.

  "Sorry! It's funny. You changed your name from M-A-R. She changed her name to M-A-R."

  "Who?"

  To Aine's right was this blonde-brunette thing. She sat across both seats. She had perched her grey walking boots onto the windowsill, rubbed dirt into them.

  That annoyed Nina. They were all stuck here for six months, weren't they? The driver would clean, if he wasn't too stressed to, but still. They didn't even have beds. Don't make the environment dirtier.

  "Ah," M-A-R said. "Hi."

  Half of her face was obscured by a black facemask: one of the cheap surgical ones Nina had started wearing back home in winter, when her hometown had gotten enough money and enough trade routes had been secured (through the efforts of Nina and the other five girls!) to be able to import them.

  The mask had never stopped Nina from getting sick, or making others much more ill. It was the thought that counted.

  The cords were so easy to snap, too. If Nina just reached out…

  "I'm—Marzena," she said. "Pi?at."

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  "Piwat," Nina repeated.

  "Yes, that's right. Inoue," Piwat said back.

  Oh. Piwat was a last name.

  "I can be called—Marzi, if you want."

  "Mazhena. Martsi..." Nina repeated. She didn't know how the name was spelt, though she could get her phone out to check, so she became a little stuck on trying to relate the weird intermediate sibilant in 'vision' to the ts in tsu. What a jump from name to nickname.

  "You've got it," Aria said. "This is Marzena." Aria's voice lilted upwards. She used the weird intermediate sibilant in 'delusion'.

  "H-hey—Beauregard, fuck off," Marzena said.

  "Huh? Why are you being so mean to me, Marzena?"

  "Y-you know why."

  Aria looked over at Nina and not at Marzi. "She got it from a book, you see. A 'visual novel', if you know what that is, cause I sure don't."

  "I do," Nina said. She had hobbies. Probably.

  "Shut up, shut up—s-shut up..." Marzena repeated.

  "In 2073—"

  "Beauregard!"

  "Yes, Cecily Rowny?"

  "You s-should die."

  "Okay, that's enough. Both of you," Aine said, with a glance to the left, a glance to the right, equal and opposite acts of indecorum.

  Of course she only chose to interrupt then. Maybe Nina missed something, or everything, but wasn't Marzena the one being antagonised? Aine only became angry when she chose to hit back. It was a really April-like act of leadership. They could attack freely; she could not defend herself.

  Wasn't this what Nina ran away from?

  The guillotine would be too quick and painless for April.

  April wasn't here, was she? It was Aine Hunlun, a different girl.

  "We shouldn't needle each other," Nina said.

  "...yeah!" Emi said.

  Aine gave a little smile.

  "That's true."

  She flicked Aria on the forehead. The cutesiest and least sincere sorry imaginable emerged from her mouth.

  Then everything was fine—right?

  Hah. Marzi was obviously still bothered. Not like any of them were fine, anyway. None of them would sign up to this mission if they were.

  Who were they, then? What did they want?

  Nina Inoue knew Nina Inoue better than anyone else, obviously. Things like her habits, what she liked, the way she spoke or looked to others were all blanks to her, but it wasn't as if anyone else cared or watched her. Her wish: half a blank. There were things she wished did not exist. That girl's perfect power. This girl's torment. The world that made things like her as duds and discards. She'd been hurt; she wanted the power to really hurt others in response.

  She already had that power, didn't she? She wanted something greater. The power to keep cutting, or maybe the power to not have to cut?

  It'd be nice, if everything felt just fine. For Nina to feel like being Nina was just fine. That wasn't possible. Nina needed the Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands to make it possible.

  What about Emi? She'd already been transformed bodily by the power of the ritual. Haze House obviously wouldn't give her the only thing that she wanted before the mission even started, otherwise she'd just run away with it? Michiko Kusunoki also wanted to be transformed bodily and integrally into a girl, and Nina knew that Michiko would definitely just run away from Haze House once she got it.

  Not that Michiko would trust Haze House or sign up to anything to do with the 108 in the first place…

  Nina's guess was that Haze House needed them all to be girls for some reason, but the hiring process wasn't actually gender restricted, or Haze House's internal instruments picked up on gender identity, or maybe Emi had some other kind of aptitude, and the ritual then 'normalised' her. Reversing the edicts against the transmogrification of the human body was a feat in itself, even for the Nobility, but Nina was ignoring that. Let her speculate.

  Emi didn't seem broken up about it at all. She didn't want to 'change back,' and actually wanted help becoming a girl. At least it wasn't wasted on her, but Nina wasn't sure what she was asking? Emi was already a girl now; wasn't her task to become a woman? Unless she died a girl. Someone else who sought the Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands could splatter her brains onto the pavement.

  None of this helped Nina get closer to figuring out why Emi had signed her life away in the first place!

  There was a method, wasn’t there? There was something Nina could do to figure out everyone around her. If someone were paying attention to Nina, real close attention—false hypothesis, but bear with her—they would have already seen her do it.

  Nina could use telepathy to 'read' everyone around her. This was considered invasive, and quite rude, and Nina had been punished quite severely in the past for doing this, so she usually refrained. It would allow her to bypass the mystery of other people.

  Nina could also divine truths. Not 'the truth': this was incompatible with the existence of psychic power. Still, she could cheat—see past things without seeing through things, and find partial solutions that represented particular points of view and worldviews.

  This superficially resembled telepathy, and in some respects was worse than it, so people tended to be unhappy if they caught her doing it.

  Nina should refrain, shouldn't she? She should evaluate all of her colleagues with what little was still trickling out of her skull.

  Aine Hunlun was impenetrable. The similarities she had to April Kauzaki totally screwed with Nina's ability to evaluate her objectively.

  Marzena Pi?at was easier, if what Aria Beauregard had said was true. She identified with a character from some fictional work, so maybe she hated this reality, or didn't want to fit in the role assigned to her? That would make her like Nina. Maybe they could be friends, if anyone would let her.

  They could have some things in common, right? They disliked being grabbed and pushed around. Were her thoughts too much to bear, even if they were too little compared to what they had been put through?

  Aria Beauregard was apparently rich, openly attacked others. May and July were always so open with their attacks. They weren't rich. Shin Kumamoto had too little wealth or even societal surplus to have inequality. May and July went after everyone else, though, really prized their social supremacy. April, who was in charge of all of them and everyone, pooled all of her efforts against Nina.

  Wouldn't that make Aria easier to deal with than Aine, then? The other four were easier to deal with than April; living with April felt like drowning, which was why Nina left. Aine seemed like the type of girl who would reach the top, so Aria would cling to Aine, and then... borrow her power?

  Who knew, and who knew what she wanted?

  Nina should ask. She didn't. She let Aine take her through all the girls she and Emi hadn't been introduced to yet.

  Behind Pi?at was auburn Haio Elspeth, also on her own and so lonely.

  She watched Marzi. Her hands twitched. There was a star in her eyes, too, Haio's. Its outline or its fire. They were less inspired. More dead.

  In front of Marzi was Leuce Muricide. She hailed Nina, did a curtsy in a white dress. Nina returned the gesture, empty habit. Had she forgotten how to deny a curtsy? Had she ever learnt to?

  To Leuce's right was Judecca Victoria-Vanagloria, who stared at Sarai Maleficarum's phone from behind her, through the gap in the seats. She didn't pay any attention to Nina, which made sense. Nina was irrelevant, really.

  The seat beside Maleficarum was empty, though. If Judecca was so concerned, shouldn't she put in the effort and really show that she cared? Come on. Get up. Sit next to her…

  Across the aisle and to the left was Tabitha-Danielle McCambridge. She waved energetically to Nina, and flattered Emi. Her eyes were such a pretty shade of blue—or maybe it was teal? No, Emi was totally blue. And your hair: so full. It was getting a little frayed, but that was cute. Emi didn't need a haircut yet, but when she did, she shouldn't waste her salary. Just ask Tabby to do it for her!

  Emi shyly mentioned something about not wanting to cut her hair in the bus. Tabitha said that it was fine. They had a vacuum, they would be serviced, reminded her that their driver was also a cleaner.

  "Who's the driver, anyway?" Nina asked.

  "That guy over there," Aine said.

  "Who's that guy?" Nina asked.

  "Oh, his name is Ovidius Edelman?"

  "Wasn't it supposed to be a woman named Julia—"

  "She's sick!" Aine said. Then she saw something, and dragged Nina and Emi away from Tabby. Possessive?

  Directly to the left of Tabitha was Sophia Ethelsbury, who smiled at some reference book, and then straight at Aine when she saw her. Aine didn't quite return it. Aine had been sitting in front of Ethelsbury, and then in front of Aine and Aria's seat was Maxine Young, who leaned needily into the barrier separating the main sector of seats from the 'staff' set of seats.

  Staff set of seats? They were all Haze House staff, so how did that make any sense?

  The reason was about to arrive. He was late, which Nina was fine, really. Nina was totally fine with waiting even a second longer to no longer be a lost cause, really! Nina was calm, patient, considerate.

  She watched the door. She had given herself to Haze House hoping it would make something of her. Was Haze House neglectful? Careless?

  They idled here, this old guy, Ovid Edelman in the driver's seat. Everything began in some London parking lot. The weight of forty or a hundred million (for who kept track?) bound them, a labyrinth.

  The door did not open. Not yet.

  Nina prayed. Not to the exalted, Noble and Divine Haze House which clasped Nina's little fate in its hands, but aimlessly and selfishly, each prayer for her own sake.

  Please let her start searching, already. Please.