The War of Wind and Moon (Season One)

Chapter Seven

A knock at his office door drew Ryosuke's attention from his reading. Akiko was standing in the doorway, brandishing an email open on her tablet, "You've requested we unbind the Gossip from Tak-kun's friend?' Ryosuke nodded as he waved his sister inside. "Mhmm. Probably should have been done years ago but she seems to have missed assessment somehow."

"Shouldn't you do a proper assessment, then, before we unbind them?"

Ryosuke was taken aback. He couldn't remember when Akiko had questioned a decision that was entirely his to make. "I don't think that's necessary, no," he said. "My staff have marked every one of her Gossip's Memories as 'No Further Action' for fourteen years. I'm fairly confident it'll be fine."

"Sorry," Akiko said, waving a hand and taking a seat in one of the chairs in front of Ryosuke's desk. "I didn't mean to overstep. It's just I'd like to leave the Gossip in place for a while longer."

"Why? Oh." Ryosuke chuckled. "Aki-chan I'm pretty sure spying on Tak-kun via his friends breaches at least the spirit of the promise Dad made Hiroko-san."

Akiko shot him a withering look. "Of course it would. That's not why I want to leave it."

"Why then?"

She sat back in her chair and laced her fingers together, wringing them as she answered. "When we were Witnessing the Gossip's Memory last night, did you notice anything... odd about the other Gossips in Tak-kun's classroom?"

Ryosuke tried to replay the scene in his mind's eye but he'd only been interested in Tak-kun and his friends, he hadn't paid much attention to the Gossips. "I remember there were a lot of them - it took me a moment to adjust my eyes to see through all their bodies. Why?"

Akiko's mouth twisted to one side and she looked down at her now-red fingers.

"Aki-chan?" he asked gently. "What is it?"

At last she looked him in the eye. "I need you to have an open mind." "I hope I always do."

"No. I mean more than usual."

Teetering somewhere between fascination and concern, now, Ryosuke sat a little straighter in his chair, pushed his computer screen to the right side of his desk, and took the paperweight off the scroll he'd been reading so that it rolled itself closed. He clasped his hands on the space he'd just created and said, "You have my full, unbiased attention."

Reassured, Akiko took a deep breath and began. "The incident Tak-kun's school was buzzing about? Mia hitting the big kid – Julian?" She paused to be sure Ryosuke was following. He nodded and she continued. "We skipped past it last night because Tak-kun wasn't involved but after you left I went back to watch it, and..." Another deep breath. "I think one of the Gossips was manipulating Julian."

Ryosuke felt his jaw slacken and it took him a moment to work out how to close his mouth again. Her words barely made sense. Gossips were observers, they didn't act upon the world. "You're going to have to define 'manipulating' for me," he said. "In what way?"

"It whispered to Julian and-"

"No. No. No," Ryosuke stood, holding up his hands and pacing around his desk – fully aware that shouting 'No. No. No.' was precisely the opposite of having an open mind. He forced himself to sit in the other chair in front of his desk. "Aki-chan, Gossips don't communicate with humans."

"I'm not saying it was a full, two-way communication - I don't think the boy was aware of it at all - but at least twice the Gossip whispered in his ear just before he acted. And he acted in ways I don't think he intended to before the Gossip whispered to him."