Chapter 23: The Program's Last Subject

The meeting happened on neutral ground because Hana insisted on it.

She had called Narimoto from the school payphone on Monday morning, three days after Io's return, while the others waited at the harbor wall in the sharp early light. She had kept her voice even and her sentences short. She said they had new information. She said they required answers. She said the university seminar room, Wednesday, four o'clock, and she said it in the tone she had been practicing for sixteen years without knowing it — the tone her mother used to use when she was not asking.

Narimoto arrived seven minutes early. Kenji noted this.