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buildings out there that are even shorter than that.”
    Oki smiles. “I wish I could be on a building less than thirty stories high.”
    “Why?” Basu said.
    “So I could see the ground,” Oki said.
    “There’s nothing great about seeing the ground,” Basu said.
    “I don’t know,” Oki said. “I’ve never seen it before.”
    Basu looked down into the abyss. After a hundred stories, all he could see was a single point. The ground was farther down than his eyes could see.
    “There are a lot of things I’ve never seen,” Oki said.
    Basu didn’t know what to say to him. He lifted his arm to put it around Oki’s back, but changed his mind at the last second and leaned it against the post that held up the green canopy over the shop.
    “Bus?” Oki said.
    Basu grunted.
    “If I have to die,” Oki said. “Can you make sure that I get to see the ground first?”
    Basu grunted.
    The boy smiled up at the giant ninja and leaned against his shoulder. Basu looked down at him and patted him awkwardly on the head. He noticed that the boy’s ticking was beginning to slow, so he wound him up as far as he could.

In the morning, Basu awoke on the floor next to the couch with a tiny blanket on his stomach that might as well have been the size of a washcloth. Oki was not on the couch next to him.
    Basu went into the storefront section of the hover-bus, but it was empty apart from the shelves of holo-games. In the front of the hover-bus, he found Chiya driving. She was steering between buildings, circling.
    “What’s going on?” Basu asked. “Where’s Oki?”
    Chiya looked over at him and blinked her cartoon eyes slowly. Then turned back. “Probably asleep.”
    “In the bedroom?” Basu asked. “He wasn’t on the couch.”
    Chiya shrugged, driving the bus slowly through the open space between companies. Basu looked out of a window. He could see people inside of the buildings, eating cereal, kissing each other on the cheek, chatting with their children. It was the life of the daytime employees. It was a life that Basu, Chiya, and Oki would never know.
    “Is my sword ready yet?” Basu asked.
    Chiya shook her head. “Not yet.”
    “Why aren’t you working on it?” he asked.
    “Looking for a good spot to park,” she said.
    She drove the bus in circles. There were plenty of places for her to park.
    “You’re stalling,” Basu said.
    Chiya giggled. “What?”
    Basu grunted.
    Then he said, “You’re not finishing my sword on purpose. You think you might be able to convince me to sell the boy and run away with you if you had some extra time.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” Chiya said, rubbing her fingers against the sweaty steering wheel. “I am a professional.”
    She looked at Basu with her wide black pupils and then looked back at the sky.
    Basu squinted at her. He saw something in that look. Something he hadn’t seen before.
    “Wait a minute . . .” Basu said. “You’re stalling for another reason, aren’t you?”
    Chiya didn’t say anything. She relaxed her shoulders. Basu knew he was right.
    “You sold us out,” he said. “How could you of all people sell me out?”
    “Look . . .” She exhaled with mock irritation, then looked at him with slits for eyes. “I wasn’t selling you out. I just wanted to sell the piggy bank, so that we would have enough money to run away together.”
    “Who did you call?” he said.
    “I know that you want to be with me,” she said. “If I can just get you away from your job, this city, I know you’ll be happier.”
    Basu slammed his fist into the side window and it shattered into a spiderweb of cracks.
    “ Who did you call?” he said.
    “Gomen,” she said.
    “What?” he cried, shoving his face into hers.
    “They’re the biggest company,” she said. “I knew they’d pay the most money for it.”
    Basu yelled out until his voice became scratchy and raw. Then he turned away from her, rocking the bus back and forth.
    He said, “You stupid, stupid