The doors opened and the bellhop indicated that Katsuro should go first. He did, pausing in the lobby to untie and then refasten his shoelace. Corridors led away to the left and right. The bellhop bid him a good afternoon and made his way left, following the sign for rooms 1402 to 1430. Katsuro followed. The corridor then took a sharp right-hand turn, and Katsuro paused until the bellhop had turned at the junction and disappeared from sight. He picked up his pace a little, slowing again as he heard a brisk knock against one of the doors around the corner.

“Who is it?”

Katsuro recognised Sakura’s voice.

“I have a delivery for you, madam,” the bellhop said. “Flowers.”

Katsuro heard the sound of a door opening.

“Thank you,” Sakura said.

“Would you like me to bring them inside?”

“Please,” she said.

Katsuro turned the corner, just in time to see the bellhop step through the open doorway to room 1428. The door, on a pneumatic hinge, was slowly closing. Katsuro picked up his pace along the corridor and reached it before it could close.

He stopped it with his foot.

102

The bellhop set the flowers down on the bureau. They were lovely, a dozen heads of kosumosu and kinmokusei wrapped in cellophane and arranged with their stems inside a tied pouch of water. Sakura guessed that they were from Milton, and was thinking about the best place to put them when she noticed the door, which was on a pneumatic hinge, had stopped before it could close.

It was pushed open.

A second man stepped inside.

Katsuro.

The bellhop noticed the terror on her face and started to turn back to see what had caused it. Katsuro was holding a silenced pistol and, as the bellhop realised the danger he was in—too late—Katsuro raised it, aimed and fired. The bellhop was close, no more than three metres away, and Sakura knew that Katsuro was an accurate shot. The bullet struck the man in his chest, just below his throat. He stumbled back, blood already running from the wound, before Katsuro closed in on him and fired a second shot into his head.

The bellhop fell to the floor at the same time as the pneumatic hinge closed the door.

Sakura grabbed a paperweight from the bureau and raised it, ready to dash it against the side of Katsuro’s head. He put his free hand against her sternum and shoved her so hard that she fell backward, her tailbone striking the carpeted floor with a jolt that shuddered all the way up her spine.

He leaned down and grabbed her by the wrist, then yanked her back to her feet, his nails digging into her skin.

“Katsuro, please. Don’t—”