Of all Tokyo's 23 wards, Rei hated Shinjuku the most.

Walking down the busy streets at night made it feel as though she were going to be sick from neon and color. The noise overwhelmed her, swirled around her, filled her up like she'd just eaten too much. Everything buzzed and hummed with plastic energy. People crammed in on wide sidewalks that were still too narrow to accommodate them all. She felt like retching or fainting or curling up into a tiny ball on the ground and thinking of anything else anywhere else.

Shinjuku was the kind of district Minako thrived in - popping from one shop into another and spinning beneath the hot pink and bright green like a ballerina in a Technicolor discothèque. Shinjuku was the kind of district her father preferred. Its buildings loomed, straight and tall and proper, topped with advertisements that supported their economy. Shinjuku was the kind of district Kaidou had fled to when he discovered her shrine and her miko's robes and her soft lips couldn't provide him what he really wanted out of life.

Shinjuku was everything she despised about the modern world and everything she despised about the people in her life, even those she loved more dearly than water and white wine.

When she was in Shinjuku, she drowned in its modernity.