It was the scent of strawberries that stopped Mika in her tracks.
“What smell? I don’t smell anything.” Her partner sniffed, trudging through a pile of unshoveled snow on the edge of the sidewalk. He paused to clear the undersides of his boots with a whiff of purple magic. Turned to slush, the discarded snow shivered onto the base of a nearby lamppost.
Mika strode on down the aptly-named Drury Lane, sure of the direction she was going. Unlike certain fussy sorcerers who relied far too much on their magic for even the most mundane purposes, assassins only had their eyes and ears. And noses. As one trained to distinguish amongst the subtlest notes of fragrance in every perfume, tea, and poison, hers was not wont to lead her astray.
And there it was—the bakery café at the end of the street, perhaps her favorite one in town, as of just now. “Ichigo daifuku,” she murmured, gazing at the window display. Without sparing a glance at the shop sign, she headed inside.
“Just this once, Armand,” she said in response to her partner’s grumbles. The golden glow of the shop’s interior melted the cold night air from her limbs as they entered. The door closed behind them with a melodious jingle. “Do you want anything? I’ll buy you those Christmas cookies you love so much.”
“What’s got you in such a generous mood?” he asked dryly.
She picked up a cookie tin and a box of two ichigo daifuku, placing them in a basket. “Perhaps I caught a bit of that Christmas cheer.”
“I didn’t know you celebrate Christmas.” His eyes slid to the shop counter, narrowing ever so slightly.
Mika followed his gaze, then returned to perusing the festive donut display. “I don’t.” Not anymore, at least. “Find us a table? I’ll order drinks.” Without waiting for a reply, she brought her purchases to the counter.
The barista was a smiling young woman, ebony-haired, with exactly three piercings in her right ear and one in the left. Mika withheld a sigh. That was exactly what her next target was supposed to look like.
“One strawberry shortcake frappuccino and one crescent cookie latte, please.”
“Here or to-go?”
“Here, thank you.”
“Of course.” The woman’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. She must have noticed something was not quite right.
Mika took her receipt, buzzer, and bag of purchases with a slight smile and retreated to the back of the shop, where Armand was seated by a window looking out to the snowy street. “Did you mark her?” he asked when she sat down and started unwrapping the daifuku.
“Not yet.” She handed him one of the large, plump treats and watched with amusement as he picked the strawberry off the mochi. “Eat it together, like this.” She took a big bite, holding the two pieces together. Powdered sugar and bits of pink rice cake stuck to her fingertips. The strawberry brought a fresh, juicy tang to the soft sweetness of the red bean filling—just like she remembered, like the ones Father used to bring home on Saturday evenings in December.
Home… in a different city, which ran on its own kind of urban magic—not like the kind that Armand used to secure the ichigo to his daifuku to avoid getting his fingers sticky, or the kind that made Mika best suited to her current profession. But that place as she remembered it belonged tucked in the fond spaces of her childhood, too far away to revisit now.
The buzzer rang. She sighed and set down her half-eaten daifuku, wiping her hands on a gingerbread-man-patterned napkin. “Our drinks are ready.”
Armand’s knowing gaze followed her all the way back to the counter, where the barista—the one she had been ordered to kill—held out two piping-hot beverages. One accidental brush of their hands and Mika’s job would be done: once marked, no one could escape her death sentence. As she reached for the drinks, her invisible, silent, hungry magic trickled down into her fingers, like a drop of water sliding along a petal into the heart of a peony.
She met the barista’s eyes. These were the eyes of an enemy, someone involved in some way with the people responsible for Father’s death. The one use of her cursed magic was to rid the world of those people. Just because it was almost Christmas was no excuse to slack off.
And it had been so long since Father last brought her strawberries in December. It had been so long since he’d come home at all.
But her job, as much as she tried to honor him with it, would not bring him back for her. And maybe this girl was going to bring home an ichigo daifuku tonight, or Christmas cookies or whatever it was her family might like; and maybe on a normal day Mika wouldn’t care. But it was always on days like this when she wondered if maybe she should care. After all, red bean paste on her fingers was much preferable to blood.
After all, that first December without Father had been… lonely.
The magic in her fingers wilted and drained away. Mika took the beverages. “Thank you. I hope you have a lovely Christmas,” she said, and walked away.
“You too,” the barista called after her, a smile in her voice.
Armand looked up when she returned, eyebrows raised, but only said, “You got coffee instead of tea.”
She shrugged. “It tastes like strawberries.”
Yello, folksies! Merie here. It’s that time of year again, and I have emerged from the void to present to you my contribution to NJ Rayne‘s Christmas Around the World Scavenger Hunt.
If this is your first post, the rules are simple:
- The Scavenger Hunt is open from December 6th at 9:00 am EST to December 15th at 11:59 pm EST.
- Visit all 4 participating websites.
- On each website, collect the clue at the bottom of the page and click the link to the next website.
- Once you’ve collected all of the clues, go to njrayne.com/2023-christmas and insert the clue as the password to collect your prize! (in order (stop 1-4), all lowercase, no period, no spaces)
This is stop #3!
Your clue for this post is: hope
Next stop: https://debbiecoll.com/2023/12/06/christmas-around-the-world-aussie-advent/
If you”re having any trouble: Click here to view all of the stops on the scavenger hunt.
Have a Merry Christmas, folksies!
Until next time,
~ Merie
Imperial Scribis 
This was so well written!
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Thanks!
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