“Blitzlicht,” Aki repeated the word to herself as soon as she heard it from the photographer. She let the foreign word roll on her tongue as though she could taste it, could see its physical equivalent again: Flash Light. “It’s incredibly bright,” Temujin agreed, reading Aki’s thoughts. “It’s from a new solution,” chimed in the photographer, who had brown hair, blue eyes, and very pale skin. The photographer also wore a monocle that barely hid the many layers of bags under his eyes. He looked more at home under the black tent of his creation than in the outside world. In Aki’s rich imagination, he evoked the image of a ki-sucking phantom called kyonshī. His assistant, on the other hand, the one who had held up the frying pan during the photo op, looked like a gravedigger in an ill-fitting suit, like someone assembled from stolen body parts. He contributed very little to the conversation so the impression was enhanced. Earlier, Aki had used sleight-of-hand to spirit away the tintype
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