Sunday dawned clear and brittle, a perfect slice of late winter sunlight painting Asuta's room in sharp angles of gold and shadow. The memory of the Tanaka estate felt distant, a vivid but inconsequential dream. His focus was here, in the real work. The Lightning-Charged Neural Conduit still hummed in his veins, a constant, quiet song of potential. He could feel the new pathways, the super-conductive filaments that had replaced his mortal nerves, itching for application. He spent the morning in his closet-lab, not on alchemy, but on precision.
He took a single strand of his own hair, held it between thumb and forefinger. With a thought so fast it bypassed conscious instruction, he willed a minuscule surge of the refined bio-electricity from his Layer 6 nerves to the tip of his finger. A spark, invisible to the naked eye, leapt. The hair didn't just singe; it vaporized in a pinpoint flash, leaving no ash. The control was absolute, terrifying. A scalpel of lightning, he thought. Useful.
He was calibrating this fine control when the knock came at the apartment door. Not the tentative tap of a neighbor or the impatient thump of a delivery person. It was two firm, measured raps. Authoritative, but not aggressive.
Ruri, curled on the sofa with a sketchpad, looked up, her brow furrowed. Asuta, his senses already extending, felt no threat—no sterile Foundation signature, no crude Seeker aggression. Just a focused, human intent. He moved to the door and opened it.
A man in his late forties stood on the landing. He wore a perfectly fitted, understated charcoal suit, no tie. His hair was silver at the temples, his face lined with the gravity of a man accustomed to command, but his eyes were sharp, dark, and held a penetrating curiosity that reminded Asuta unsettlingly of Mr. Li, though warmer, less sterile. He was flanked by a younger, slimmer man in a dark jacket who stood with the relaxed alertness of professional security, three steps back and to the side.
"Asuta Kirigaya?" the older man asked, his voice a low, resonant baritone.
"Yes."
"My name is Saito Tanaka. My granddaughter, Yumi, mentioned you had an interesting perspective on my garden." He offered a slight, formal bow. "I was in the neighborhood. I hoped I might borrow a few moments of your time."
In the neighborhood. The Tanaka estate was a thirty-minute drive through the city's most exclusive districts. This was no casual visit. This was a summoning, delivered in person as a courtesy—or a test.
Asuta glanced past him. At the curb, idling silently, was a sleek, black Toyota Century, the ultimate symbol of Japanese understated power. The chauffeur stood by the open rear door.
Ruri had appeared at Asuta's shoulder, her artist's eyes wide, taking in the scene. She knew the name Tanaka. Everyone did.
Asuta met Saito Tanaka's gaze. The man's curiosity was a tangible force, but it wasn't predatory. It was the curiosity of a master craftsman who has heard a rumor of a new, impossible technique. There was also, buried deep, a flicker of something else—not loneliness, but a profound intellectual isolation.
"Of course," Asuta said, his voice calm. He turned to Ruri. "I'll be back shortly. This is Mr. Tanaka. A… gardening enthusiast."
Ruri's eyes narrowed, her bullshit detector screaming, but she simply nodded, a silent communication passing between them: Be careful.
Asuta stepped out, closing the door behind him. He followed Saito Tanaka to the car. The security man opened the front passenger door for himself. Asuta slid into the opulent, silent rear cabin beside the patriarch. The door closed with a hushed thump, sealing them in an oasis of lambswool carpet and hand-stitched leather. The car pulled away, soundlessly.
"I apologize for the presumption," Saito said, not looking at Asuta, instead gazing out the window at the passing, mundane streets. "In my experience, when young people see more than the surface, it is either a parlor trick or a genuine anomaly. I dislike parlor tricks. And I have a great interest in anomalies."
"The garden is not a trick," Asuta said simply.
"No," Saito agreed, a faint smile touching his lips. "It is not. Yumi said you used the term 'forward-leaning energy.' 'A seeking energy.' Those were my exact words to the designer, a man who thought I was a superstitious old fool. He placed the stones as I directed, but he never understood." He finally turned his head, his dark eyes capturing Asuta's. "How did you understand?"
Asuta considered his answer. He could lie, claim a lucky guess from a book. But Saito Tanaka would know. This man dealt in truths, even uncomfortable ones. "Everything has an energy, Mr. Tanaka. A resonance. Buildings, land, people. Most people perceive only the crude physical form. Your garden's form speaks of tranquility. Its resonance… speaks of ambition. Of a will imposed upon nature, not to dominate it, but to collaborate with it towards a purpose. The stones in the west are the compass needle. The raked sand is the path. It's a map, not a picture."
The car was silent save for the whisper of tires on asphalt. Saito Tanaka stared at him, the polite curiosity now replaced by something more intense, more… hungry.
"A map," he repeated softly. "To what?"
"That," Asuta said, holding the man's gaze, "depends on the traveler."
Saito leaned back against the leather, a slow exhale escaping him. "You are a very unusual young man, Asuta Kirigaya. My sources tell me you keep to yourself. You have no notable family history. You excel without effort. And you frighten loud, foolish boys like Kaito Ren with a look." He paused. "You also recently made a significant cash purchase of antiquities from the Yamazaki estate. Items most would consider junk."
Asuta didn't react. Of course the man had done his homework. The true power of old money wasn't in its display, but in its invisible network of information.
"I have eclectic interests," Asuta said.
"So do I," Saito replied. The car had left the main streets, winding now through the wooded private roads toward his hill. "My interests, however, are expensive. And they have led me to… puzzling places. Places where the map, as you call it, seems to have no legend. Where the energy does not match the form at all."
The car glided to a stop not at the grand front entrance Asuta had seen the night before, but at a smaller, secluded side courtyard. A simple stone path led to a detached sukiya-zukuri teahouse, its aged wood blending into the backdrop of pines.
"Join me for tea," Saito said. It was not a request.
---
The teahouse was a world apart from the main estate's modern grandeur. It was small, intimate, smelling of old tatami, hinoki wood, and the faint, clean scent of charcoal. Sunlight filtered through paper screens, painting the space in soft, diffused gold. Saito dismissed his security with a gesture and proceeded through the ritual of preparing the tea himself, his movements economical, practiced, full of a quiet reverence.
Asuta knelt on the tatami, perfectly still, his posture effortlessly aligned. He watched, not just the man, but the space. The teahouse, too, had an energy. It was a vessel of deep, accumulated calm, but beneath that calm, like a heartbeat, was the same "seeking" resonance as the garden, purified and focused here.
Saito finished, presenting a bowl of perfectly whisked matcha. Asuta accepted it with both hands, took the prescribed sip. The flavor was profound, bitter, and clean.
"You move like you've done this before," Saito observed, sipping his own tea.
"I appreciate traditions that understand stillness," Asuta replied.
A comfortable silence stretched, filled only with the distant call of a crow. Then Saito set his bowl down.
"Three years ago," he began, his voice dropping to a confessional tone, "a subsidiary of my group was conducting seismic surveys in the mountains of Gunma Prefecture, looking for stable bedrock for a new data vault. They found an anomaly. A pocket, about the size of this room, deep in a granite formation, where all seismic waves simply… dampened. Vanished. Not reflected, not transmitted. Absorbed."
He looked at Asuta. "We drilled. Carefully. We retrieved a core sample. The rock was ordinary granite. But at the very center of the anomaly…" He reached into his jacket and placed a small, black lacquered box on the tatami between them. He opened it.
Nestled on black velvet was a fragment. It was iridescent, like mother-of-pearl, but with a depth that seemed to swallow the light. It was neither stone nor metal. It was about the size of a cherry pit, and it seemed to pulse with a faint, silvery light that came from within, synchronized to no discernible rhythm.
"It registers no temperature," Saito said, his eyes glued to the fragment. "It is not radioactive. It is chemically inert. It does not respond to any electromagnetic field we can generate. Yet, it emits this light. And living things placed near it for extended periods… change. Plants grow in twisted, beautiful patterns. Mice become either hyper-aggressive or catatonic. My head of research, a brilliant, relentlessly logical woman, held it for an hour. She resigned the next day, citing a 'profound re-evaluation of her life's purpose.' She now runs a pottery studio in Kyoto."
He finally tore his gaze from the fragment to look at Asuta. "What is it?"
Asuta felt his spiritual sense, honed by the Jade Cong and the Seal Stone, stretch towards the fragment. It didn't feel like the Frozen Lightning's violent Yang, or the dragon scale'bestial grief. This was different. Purer. Older. It felt like… a seed. A seed of structured possibility. A fragment of a concept given crystalline form. He recognized the energy signature, not from his first life, but from the theoretical edges of the lore he'd studied—the domain of Primordial Daos and the stuff of creation before it differentiated into the Five Elements.
"It is not a 'thing,'" Asuta said, his voice hushed in the quiet teahouse. "It is a… word. A single, perfect note from the song that ordered chaos. A fragment of a Primordial Principle."
Saito Tanaka's breath caught. The clinical terms of science had failed him. This poetic, metaphysical description resonated with a truth he felt in his bones.
"A principle of what?" he whispered.
Asuta leaned closer, not touching the box. "That, I cannot say without touching its resonance more deeply. But its effect… it doesn't change things. It reminds them. It reminds a plant of all the shapes it could have grown into. It reminds a mouse of the primal prey or predator at the core of its being. It reminded your researcher of the self she had buried under logic and ambition." He looked up at Saito. "It is a mirror for the essence of things. A dangerously pure mirror."
Saito closed the box, the silvery light vanishing, but the presence of the fragment still hummed in the small space. "I have shown this to no one outside my most trusted circle. Not even the government agencies that sometimes… inquire about our finds. Why show you?"
"Because you believe I might read the legend on your map," Asuta said.
"Yes." Saito Tanaka's face was stark, serious. "I am a rich man, Asuta. I have built empires. But this… this is a mystery that wealth cannot solve. It is a door my keys do not fit. Yumi said you saw the compass in my garden. This," he tapped the lacquered box, "is what the compass points to. And I do not know the destination, or if I should even open the door."
Asuta understood now. This wasn't just about curiosity. This was about a powerful man confronting the absolute limits of his power, facing a mystery that reduced his empires to sand. He was afraid. And he was offering a partnership of desperation.
"What would you have me do?" Asuta asked.
"Help me understand," Saito said, his voice firm now, the patriarch reasserting himself. "I will provide you with access to my findings—the geological data, the other… oddities we have quietly collected. In return, you provide your perspective. Your interpretation. Help me navigate this."
It was a more dangerous bargain than the one with the Foundation. The Foundation wanted data. Saito Tanaka wanted meaning. And he was offering a private treasure trove, untouched by sterile bureaucracy.
"The fragment stays with you," Asuta stipulated. "I will not remove it. I will study it here, in this space, where its energy is contained by the intent of this teahouse. And my analyses are for you alone. No records. No samples."
Saito nodded immediately. "Agreed." He studied Asuta. "You are not a teenager, are you?"
"I am what I need to be," Asuta replied, standing up. "For now, I need to go. My sister will worry."
Saito rose as well, a new respect in his eyes. "Of course. My driver will take you home." He picked up the lacquered box, holding it carefully. "Next Sunday? For tea?"
Asuta gave a single nod. "Next Sunday."
The drive back was silent. Asuta watched the city slide by, his mind churning. A Primordial Fragment. On Earth. Such a thing shouldn't exist outside the heart of a nascent universe or the treasury of a Dao Ancestor. Its presence was a louder scream than the dragon scale, a deeper mystery than the Soul Grinding Scripture.
Earth wasn't just a battlefield, a graveyard, or a library.
It was a reliquary.
And the most powerful man in the city had just handed him the key to one of its most sacred, terrifying vaults.
When he arrived home, Ruri was waiting, her sketchbook closed.
"Well?" she asked.
"He's a gardener," Asuta said, a faint, real smile touching his lips. "And he just showed me a seed that shouldn't exist."
Ruri shook her head, a small, exasperated smile of her own appearing. "Your life is so weird, brother."
"You have no idea," he murmured, heading to his room, the silvery echo of the primordial seed already burning in his soul, a new point on the impossible map he was charting.