For the longest time, Henry Lee had believed that nothing was worse than having to pursue a ruthless trained killer over rooftops while taking fire from irate gunmen. This, he now realised, was inaccurate. The greater ordeal was having to transcribe and translate a full radio transmission of said chase – as well as all fifteen hours of the subsequent interrogation.

They had given Henry a desk. A desk, an ergonomic chair, and a view of Grosvenor Square Garden that Henry frankly didn’t care for. He also had a computer with not two but three screens arranged at optimal angles to each other, the third of which served no apparent purpose apart from bathing Henry in the eerie glow of the CIA desktop wallpaper.

Will would have laughed himself to tears to see Henry penned in like this – sitting through recordings of some whippersnapper with college-level Mandarin floundering through Class B interrogations, spending his lunch hour making small talk in the cafeteria, or – God forbid – tending the potted plant by the window out of obligation. But Will wasn’t here. And, really, that was the root of Henry’s problems. Because if Will had stuck around, hadn’t let something as mundane as a bullet to the chest get the better of him, they would both still be on assignment in Shanghai.

When it was ascertained by the Deputy’s men that the dead man on the hillside was a wanted criminal, Hitoshi the papermaker’s apprentice was declared a hero.

Shuzo, whose life Hitoshi had saved, just wanted to know where he had learnt to fight like that.

But first, Shuzo had a performance to give.

“Will you tell this story when you go back to Edo?” asked the village headman’s youngest son, ignoring the way his older brother shushed him.

“Perhaps I will,” said Shuzo, smiling down at him. The boy had been fascinated by Shuzo ever since the first evening that the villagers had gathered at the grounds of the temple to hear Shuzo perform rakugo. A bit too fascinated, perhaps; enough that his father had sent the boy’s brother along as well now, to prevent his son from being whisked away by this unsavoury entertainer.

“‘The Accidental Killing’ has quite a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”