Special District: Harbin: Book 3: Visiting the Tiger's Den by Tim Stickel

Author:Tim Stickel [Stickel, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stickel Publishing LLC
Published: 2024-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

Min arrived at her grandfather’s herbal medicine shop after first having visited her aunt’s tearoom in the morning to gather and disseminate the latest family news. She had reduced her visits to both relatives during her investigation of Segal, as her undercover work had kept her both too busy and too tired. One thing she had learned about undercover work: it involved twice the effort of any normal activity. You spent your time conducting the investigative activities while at the same time performing a pretend role that brought all the added stress of maintaining a facade. Now that she finally had some free time, she wanted to ensure her aunt and grandfather that she hadn’t been deliberately avoiding them. Normally she visited each of them at least twice a week, having long ago appointed herself the official bearer of family news between her siblings, mother, Grandfather Jung’s household, and Aunt Melnikov.

Inside she found her cousin Ae-Cha manning the front counter, who immediately smiled and called back to Grandfather Jung in the room beyond where he was preparing a remedy. Then the bell over the shop door jangled angrily as it only did when the door was opened violently. Min spun around to see Katashi standing in the threshold. What was he doing here? How had be found her? She had passed by Cinema Evaluer on her way from her aunt’s tearoom in Pristan—was he watching the cinema, and then after spotting her there had followed her?

His eyes blazed angrily above dark circles, and his usually sharp, expensive suit looked like he had slept in it. “Did you think you could make a fool out of me, you little slut,” he said loudly.

Min automatically leaned into a left back stance as Katashi took two steps into the shop, still blocking the entrance and keeping her from escaping out past him. But the menace in his voice instantly drew Grandfather Jung from the back room and around the counter.

“You must leave,” Jung said, his voice low and flat. The old man only came up to Katashi’s nose and weighed around forty kilograms less, but his face was devoid of of fear, or of any emotion at all.

“Out of my way, old man,” Katashi snarled, reaching into a pocket of his suit jacket. Min saw only a blur. A minute later Borya dashed through the open doorway to see Min and their grandfather standing over a prone Katashi.

Katashi himself never saw what happened. In fact, he never saw anything again. When he awoke days later, lying in a bed in Harbin’s Municipal Hospital, he discovered his eyesight was gone forever. The only function his eyes ever performed after that day, was to generate tears of regret and self-pity. And he was forever haunted by the recurring image of his last vision—the stony face of a slight old man.

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