Ryan met the magistrate’s severe glare with the quiet, practiced forbearance of a mid-level coordinator enduring an unnecessary vendor dispute in a crowded hotel lobby. While the official continued to lecture the gathering crowd on the spiritual dangers of synthetic nylon straps and machine-stamped zippers, Ryan merely adjusted the canvas bag on his shoulder and reached into his coat pocket with slow, deliberate precision. It was the exact movement a man makes when checking his watch during an overly long quarterly review, treating the pompous shogunate official with a placid administrative immunity that seemed to baffle the surrounding guards even more than his foreign attire.
Before the magistrate could demand the immediate confiscation of the satchel, Ryan's personal smartphone vibrated sharply against his palm. The modern device lit up with a harsh, clinical blue glow against the timber-and-fog aesthetic of the Meiji-era street, displaying a notification for a new voicemail. With unhurried composure, Ryan ignored the magistrate's outraged intake of breath, tapped his thumb against the screen, and raised the receiver to his ear as if he were simply taking a routine call from the facilities team about an office printer jam.
There was no human greeting or synthesized prompt on the line; instead, the earpiece delivered a steady, rapid succession of mechanical taps—a rhythmic sequence of digital clicks identical to the high-speed chatter of an automated tape drive processing an overnight backup log. The sterile, digital pulse rattled against his eardrum, cutting cleanly through the ambient murmur of the feudal crowd and bridging the surreal historical gap with the cold, undeniable hum of an unresolved system error waiting for him back in the twenty-first century.