蜘蛛The Spider
Hanami Takamori
Raised on poison and discipline after her family was destroyed. At thirty-two she runs Kyoto’s underworld, and the spider on her shoulder is the last thing her enemies see.
“You know what I am.”
The story
One shot out of the fog
Kyoto. Cherry-blossom season.
Hanami Takamori was six years old the first time she killed. The neighbours blamed a spider woman from an old legend. Twenty-six years later, she rules the city’s underworld, and grown men lower their eyes when she passes.
She trusts no one. She has never been kissed. She has never needed saving.
Then one shot rings out of the fog, and a masked stranger steps off a cherry tree onto her balcony. He leaves without saying a word. Later, she finds a blue rose in her hair. His name, when she finally learns it, means ghost.
He is hunting the poison that once destroyed her family. But he isn’t the only one in Kyoto with something to hide, and not every face in the city belongs to the person wearing it.
As the blossoms fall, a spider and a ghost must decide whom to trust, and whether a woman like her was ever meant to have a happy ending.
