

Weeds in the Jungle

Stuart Parker

Copyright © 2015 by Stuart Parker

Cover art: SelfPubBookCovers.com/Raffael

1

The young man didn't listen to music; he preferred the sound of the boom gates. Their incessant ringing had been outside his window all his life and since fourteen years of age he had taken to smoking alone in their company.

The boom gates were like the indiscriminate nets of a fishing trawler, scooping up to the surface an inconsequential assortment of comings and goings. Taro smoked his cigarette and looked over this latest catch. On the sidewalk there was a mother on a bicycle, her groceries in the front basket and her young daughter in the rear child-seat. There was a stressed out businessman in a black suit, clutching a briefcase to his chest. On the road there was a long line of traffic banked back on the one lane heading westward. At this time of the afternoon there were mostly mothers taking their kids home from school, or more likely to after-school tuition. Also, there were businesspeople in taxis, tradesmen in light trucks bearing their company names, and university students on scooters. In other words it was a typical Tokyo scene. As the train finally arrived, in a roaring blur, half a dozen members of the local high school baseball team joined the mix, weaving with their bicycles to the front of the queue, their cumbersome bags slung casually over their shoulders.

The train was a Limited Express from Tokyo to Yokohama. Crowded as it was, the evening crush wouldn't begin for a few more hours when the companies and after-schools started to clear out.

It was 5:30pm in mid-July. The overcast sky was basting in a hazy brown film. The beach season had officially opened - if you stayed on one of those trains long enough. One short month before the jellyfish saturated the coastal waters and the temporary food stalls and bars were methodically pulled down again, piece by piece, leaving upon the sand not a single trace. The young man at the boom gates would not be going anyway. His only tangible concession for the summer season was to pack away his jackets. His name was Taro Takeda. He was wearing blue jeans, an unbuttoned red flannelette shirt and a white t-shirt underneath. He was smoking a cigarette and watching the train go by.

There were two very distinct forces he associated with the Tokyo trains: the passive aggressive bumping and nudging that went on with the passengers inside the carriages and the earth shaking power of the wheels on the track. It sometimes occurred to him that the sad people who could no longer bear the soul destroying forces above would harness the pure, brutal forces below to put an end to them once and for all. Such acts were among the few happenings that could knock the trains off their schedules, at least for an hour or so.

This latest train was gone now and the boom gates rose. It was catch and release: the pedestrians returned to their lives with renewed vigour and the punch-drunk vehicles wearily began their advance towards the next set of red lights.

Taro remained where he was. He flicked his cigarette into the long weeds at the base of the wire fence against which he was leaning. Back in ancient times the possession of fire would have spelt summary execution – a punishment to protect a city constructed of paper, wood and straw. Taro would have liked to live in such a time, when even the lowest of peasants had the ability to destroy everything. He ground down on the cigarette butt with his boot heel. Even though the weeds were still damp enough from a morning downpour to not pose a threat, he used some force in ensuring the cigarette butt was completely crushed and extinguished. Then he lit another.

2

Leaving his spot by the boom gates, Taro went on foot to his part time job at a local Domino's pizza store. Hachikawa, the store manager chastised him for being late - or, in real terms, for only being ten minutes early. Taro didn't want to take it, but he didn't want to defend himself either. He bowed an insincere apology and was relieved that was enough to appease Hachikawa. He spent the next five hours tearing around the streets of Tokyo's inner western Nakano ward, delivering warm square boxes with one of the company's zippy little scooters.

The bother of calling on people's doors and ever so gratefully relieving them of their money was more than compensated for by the freedom he felt on the streets. Cops were virtually non-existent. And the company was only interested in deliverers who would do whatever it took to be efficient. At least, that was how Taro perceived the situation to be. And as usual, Hachikawa had only chastised him at the beginning of the shift, not at the end of it. It meant he had done his job satisfactorily.

Taro arrived home at a little after midnight. On weekends it would be later. He lived in a two bedroom apartment he shared with his mother, Junko. His sister, Kaori, had moved out a few years earlier, a wedding band the key to her new life. Taro's father, Yuki, had been the next to go. A heart attack hastened on by eighteen hour work days. Some spouses might have fought for compensation. Junko, however, had just seemed content that her husband had possessed the kind of ability that a company could value so highly. And, besides, she still had monthly pension payments, her administration job and her son's modest contributions from his delivery job to get by on. She had enough to satisfy the monthly bills.

Taro crept through the darkened apartment to his room and he was surprised to find that his mother had left a freshly ironed shirt and pair of black trousers on his futon. She hadn't done that since his days of interviewing for real jobs: Toyota, Canon, Nippon Steel. None of those interviews had been fruitful. Taro couldn't explain why, for he had tried his best. Now he got the feeling his mother had given up on him and turned her sights to the next generation. Taro's girlfriend, Hiromi, was returning from Canada the next day after a one year study-abroad trip and it was Taro she had requested to meet her at the airport. That was something because her parents would have been more than willing. They were even a little disappointed. It was a good family. Hiromi was intelligent and slim and pretty and full of life. The kind of girl a boyfriend's mother could glow about.

That reunion would be the following day. Taro was too tired for a session on his Nintendo DS. Anyway, he wouldn't have been surprised if his mother had locked it away. He threw himself down on the immaculately pressed clothes and was immediately asleep.

3

'Ta-chan. Ta-chan. It's breakfast. Do you need a bath?'

His mother was never going to call him Taro. It seemed she had given him his name only to treat him like he didn't deserve it. Ta-chan was best reserved for a Golden Retriever with a bow around its neck. Too bad this had been his wake up call since before he could remember. And it would have been better if there hadn't been so much excitement in her voice. It would have helped him be more sympathetic.

Baths were for overworked office employees to sweat off their stress. He wasn't going to have anything to do with that. He plucked the shirt and trousers off his bed and dressed perfunctorily. The clothes weren't as crumpled as he had hoped they would be. He was a very straight sleeper.

With his wavy black hair, faint moustache that he only wished could be thicker, athletic body that held his clothes well and sensitive looking black eyes, he always looked better in his bedroom wall-mirror than what he actually felt. His reflection, after all, was only two dimensional. He considerably envied it that.

He didn't like a messy room, so he used some valuable moments to tidy it up. He could hear the morning news on the large dining room TV. That was the first thing his mother did when she became a widow: trade in the small TV for a bigger one. The usual news items were being placarded about: North Korean threats of annihilation, political grafting in the Diet and the overnight baseball scores. There was no surprise either in the breakfast awaiting him: natto, salad, rice and miso soup. He didn't mind it, though he usually ate it while he was still half asleep. Not that he could recall the last time he had been fully awake. Not in this apartment at any rate.

'You've got to hurry,' urged Junko. 'You'll be late to the airport.' She had slowed down her own breakfast so she could be around to say that. She was quite a short woman even at the dining table. She always seemed to have to look up to see Taro. She still had a youthful appearance and wore her long black hair elegantly. She wasn't outwardly religious and probably only stayed faithful to her departed husband because it was easier than blind dates. She always gave his grave a good cleaning in the August Obon period as was the custom. She particularly enjoyed the opportunity this occasion provided to spend some extra time with her granddaughter in Totori, her husband's hometown and where his ashes had been tombed. Only a few more weeks to wait before it was time to go their again.

Junko wore a white blouse and a black business shirt. She spent a lot of fuss over her appearance even though, as a full time book keeper, she mostly only had a back corner in an office and a computer to appreciate her.

Taro wondered what measures his father had taken to win her. Or more precisely, what his father had been willing to sacrifice. It seemed an early death had been a part of it. Nothing so brutal as the female praying mantis devouring its mate, but women controlled their households with a firmness that could even surpass what the bosses were doing during working hours. Every moment accounted for, every task with a deadline. That was the upbringing Taro had known.

'If you'd like to invite Hiromi around for dinner, I'll be home by eight,' Junko said. 'Or perhaps another night this week?'

His mother had invited Hiromi to dinner many times in the past. Hiromi's parents, however, had not been so forthcoming with him. Taro assumed they considered him the weak link in the relationship. He ate his breakfast hungrily and gave her offer only a passing shrug.

'One year in Canada is a long time,' continued Junko in a long standing tradition of dolling out a morning lecture. 'She may find it difficult settling back into the Japanese way of life. Don't you think?'

The Japanese way of life. Taro noticed that she said it as a singular. She was probably right about that too.

Junko left the table and began to clear away her dishes. 'You are not young anymore, Ta-chan. You must question yourself as to whether you are living your life to the full.'

What she meant by a full life was a full time job and a wife and child to go with it. Taro did indeed question whether he was living his life well. The answer until that moment was a resounding no. But it wasn't his fault. His life had been a war without a battlefield.

Now, however, things were going to change. He was sure about that. And all he needed to do first was finish his breakfast.

4

His Nintendo DS and its latest car racing game had sheltered him from any tension over the upcoming reunion during the long train ride out to Narita Airport. By the time he had arrived, the Vancouver to Tokyo ANA 747 had already landed. Despite the empirical evidence to indicate otherwise, Hiromi felt safer at the back of the plane, and she would likely want to find a bathroom to freshen up before presenting herself at Immigration: Taro, therefore, would have to expect he had simply reduced his wait time rather than having spared himself from it. As he stood around the Arrivals area, he took an interest in the comings and goings of people. There were a lot of young, sprightly women. Travel had apparently had a positive effect on them. Taro felt a pang of jealousy, for he had never been out of the country. His father had once proposed a family holiday to somewhere as far afield as New York or Paris, going so far in his considerations as to even bring home a bundle of JTB travel brochures. Inevitably though Junko had vetoed the idea. A friend had told her that taxis in such places were quite dangerous and at the very least would overcharge them. And there were all those other potential problems, such as the sub-standard quality of rice and the lack of Japanese speaking doctors.

When Hiromi finally emerged through the Arrivals gate, a strange feeling swept over Taro. It was like he had only just last seen her a day ago, but at the same time like he had never met her before. Strangeness and familiarity colliding with all the turbulence of rivers hitting oceans. Hiromi's eyes were scouring through the crowd at the same time as trying to coordinate the small mountain of luggage on her trolley. Taro felt slighted that she wasn't looking higher up in her search. Had she forgotten that he stood head and shoulders over the average throng? Still, it bestowed a moment in which to take in all those things he hadn't expected. Foremost was the new found fineness of her cheekbones. It was as though she had been sent away for final touches by a master craftsperson. Then there was the way her hair sat confidently on her shoulders, shrouding her brow in seductive mystery. Her bright red t-shirt was tucked into her jeans in a way that highlighted her slim waist and a pair of sunglasses were hooked onto it. And perhaps most surprisingly there was a whisper of colour on her arm below the right sleeve. It was a tattoo. She had not even mentioned it.

Hiromi was out passed the roped off area. Taro grabbed her shoulder from behind. That was the one part of the reunion he had planned out in advance.

She turned to him, smiled and hugged him.

5

Taro latched onto the familiar aspects of Hiromi, most particularly the voice and the little decisions she liked to discuss, such as the best place to have lunch. They decided on a friendly, local okonomiyaki restaurant in Ikebukuro. They had celebrated a couple of occasions there in the past. A birthday or two and a good exam result. It was part of the familiar. Hiromi's eyes, however, were not. She was wearing shimmering blue contact lenses. But that was only part of it. Her eyes were strikingly alive like Taro had never seen them before. Taking the Narita Express back into Tokyo, he could barely bring himself to look at them.

The okonomiyaki restaurant was the odd one out in a long line of ramen noodle bars. It hadn't changed at all since their last time there a good eighteen months earlier. Taro was comforted to see the friendly old shop master was still behind the counter. It was only on this occasion, however, that he noticed how much Western influence the restaurant contained, from the style of the menus to the Hawaiian surfing posters on the walls. An American radio station was playing, too. The DJs voice was deep and silky smooth.

The okonomiyaki mixture was brought out in a stainless steel pot. Hiromi carefully scooped it out onto the hotplate occupying a centre square of their table. Taro supposed it resembled an American omelette. He heard himself asking her about that.

'Yes, you're right,' replied Hiromi, enthusiastically. 'My homestay mother sometimes prepared it for Sunday breakfast.'

Taro thought it stupid referring to someone whose house you happened to be staying at as your mother. Any kind of mother. During those torturous school camps in his high school days, he didn't start calling his teachers mum and dad. The really terrible thing was some of those teachers probably were the closest thing he had had to a father - at least, he had seen them more. When he had been young, he had actually thought his father lived in a different house. He had imagined a giant house on the top of a mountain.

Taro watched Hiromi cook, cut and finally serve the okonomiyaki. He was disturbed that she did it as efficiently as his mother. This would be a further stretch even than assigning mother status to the old woman you were paying for board and lodging: a twenty one year old girl who had spent a year running wild in Canada, now portraying herself as a homely type. Who was she trying to kid?

Taro took a swallow of beer and snapped apart his chopsticks. ''Itadakimasu,' he said politely before taking his first mouthful.

Sitting with Hiromi in this restaurant, Taro had to admit to himself he hadn't felt this alone since the last time he had been with her. Maybe even more so. Something would have to give. He couldn't take it. He wanted to destroy her. He wondered if it would be better to do it as a friend or as an enemy. The funny thing was that he could already sense that he would have a good chance of doing it either way. How was it she could travel so far and transform so dramatically without having been able to sever the ties that connected them? It was astounding. With a bitterness he couldn't control or very much understand, he felt it more appropriate to treat her as an enemy.

'Delicious,' she said, covering her mouth and wrinkling her nose. 'It's nice to be home.'

'How was the food in Canada?'

'It was okay but the portions were too big.'

'But you are still slim.'

'I joined a bicycle club in Vancouver. It helped a lot.'

'A bicycle club?'

'Yes. I wrote about it in an email. I sent you some pictures as well. Didn't you even look at them?'

'Probably I looked at them. But I've been quite busy lately.'

'Too busy to reply? My brother sent more emails than you and that's saying something.'

'I don't like typing.'

'You could have written a letter.'

'Anyone can open a letter. I would have been too guarded to express myself.'

He ordered from a passing waitress another draft beer even though he had not yet finished his current one. He was not sure why he did that. If it was to diffuse the pressure of the encounter, he would be disappointed. The pressure hadn't even started.

'It's hot,' Hiromi finally said after an uncomfortable pause. 'Your new job is delivering pizzas?'

'Yes. I know it's not much. I needed some space. Some time to think.'

'I worry that it's quite dangerous.'

'There's no space in riding slowly. Not much money either.'

Taro drained the last of his glass with that and was disappointed that the thick walls of the glass had accentuated what was in fact barely more than a trickle. It was embarrassing, for he had wanted to make a statement with his drinking prowess. His eyes flicked about the surrounding tables. The early hour and the heat of the day had conspired to keep the restaurant quiet. The master was fussy with preparations. It in itself meant little in regards to how many customers might be expected. There wasn't a restaurant in all of Tokyo that did not have a master busy with preparations. They were the pulse of the restaurant and if they stopped the restaurant would surely die. To Taro it was so tiring and perhaps so futile when death was inevitable. Death, Taro could say the word a hundred times and not feel a thing. It was only seniors who were afraid of it. Not because of their proximity to it - there wasn't a soul alive who wasn't a hair's breath away from death. No, it was because they had suffered so much more in the name of life that they felt they were owed something in return. Something more than company bonuses or government pensions. With the nicer types, like the master of this nameless restaurant, Taro could even wish that they did receive their grand payouts, whatever that might entail. Their fates, however, were etched upon their faces in soft lines of unspoken despair.

6

Here was some more familiarity: with less than three jockeys of beer Hiromi's cheeks had turned bright pink. She smiled and touched Taro's arm. 'I have a souvenir for you. Would you like it now?'

'No. I have to work at seven. Let's go to a love hotel while there's still time.'

It was a test. The old Hiromi would have frowned at such a forward suggestion. But as she tentatively nodded her head, Taro realised he may have erred in his judgement. He couldn't be sure her assent was really an indication of a new found promiscuousness. Perhaps she just felt that after one year of faithfulness and fidelity he should not be denied any longer. What he should have done was sit on his hands and see if, with a little loosening up from the beer, her touch on his arm had developed to the point of incrimination, a betrayal of experience. Perhaps that would have given him some idea of what she had been up to.

One thing he was certain of was if he made love to her now, he would lose his handle on all those unfamiliar aspects, and their origins would become blurred by the present. Still, he could not back down now. He would have time to think on the way.

He allowed Hiromi to split the bill with him. It was her parents' money anyway and they were both architects. Their building designs needed to conform to strict building codes to minimise earthquake damage, which was a convenient excuse for cloning the same building a thousand times across Tokyo, while still accepting an equal commission on each. Hiromi couldn't slap her money down hard enough on the counter for Taro's liking.

From the restaurant the love hotel precinct was just a short walk. Generally the love hotels were quite expensive, even for the basic three hour "rest", so Taro and Hiromi had only used them sparingly, either when both their homes were occupied or for birthday celebrations. On the latter occasions they might have stayed the night and treated themselves to a high quality entertainment system that included karaoke, video games and more choices on the TV than just free to air and manga porn.

Hiromi hung back on the sidewalk, wanting Taro to make the choice of hotel; her main focus was on concealing her embarrassment from the office workers and university students who plied these streets during the daytime hours. Taro carefully took his time about the selection. A couple of times he left her standing outside while he went into the foyer to peruse the room pictures on the availability boards. Hiromi was relieved when Taro finally waved her into one. The Pink Pink Hotel. There was a turquoise tiled fountain at the entrance that smelt sharply of chlorine. On the availability board almost every room was lit up, meaning they had a lot to choose from. True to the hotel's name, the linen was all pink.

'Any preferences?' asked Taro.

'It's up to you,' said Hiromi.

Taro chose the room with the four-post bed with the pink trimming. That was how the kings and queens must have slept in their palaces. He fed the money into the slot and pressed its button. The key dropped down into the dispenser.

Riding the elevator to the third floor, Taro realised he had not yet settled on a strategy. A quick glance at Hiromi, who had assumed the adjacent back corner of the elevator, confirmed her stunning new found beauty. It was a beauty he supposed deserved some kind of recognition. But what? A compliment that might come off sounding cheap or hollow? It might even sound resentful. After all, he was sure there were plenty of dour old people in this world who would strive to dismantle beauty and take great pride in proving that it was merely a facade. He stared at Hiromi thinking that he would indeed pay her a compliment. But the elevator's journey to the third floor was short and the doors promptly opened. The couple stepped out into a passageway of red linoleum flooring and encouragingly clean white walls. A brass plate bearing room numbers directed them left.

Taro walked ahead, feeling a weird tightening in his stomach as he passed the doors on the way. Love hotel doors were not like other doors. They concealed lust and passion and perhaps even love from prying eyes. And they rarely stayed open longer than an instant. Taro slotted the key card into 311 and held it open for Hiromi. She tentatively stepped inside.

The room appeared smaller that it had in its picture, but such shots were taken with the same friendly lens that restaurants used to capture the fleeting souls of their ideal dishes.

'The first thing you will no doubt want to do is take a bath,' he said. 'You've had a very long flight.'

'That's true.' One of the two shoulder bags Hiromi had left out of the station locker contained a toiletries bag, which she fished out and took with her.

Taro turned on the TV to one of those daytime variety programs. The reporter was on a tour of the seafood restaurants of Kumamoto. She was young and cute but was carrying on like a manic depressive at the peak of her up. Taro peeled off his shirt. It was damp with perspiration. The perspiration still on his chest began to cool. Now there was evident a little change of his own. He had been spending a few afternoons a week at the local community sports centre, dusting off some of the exercises his high school karate coach had drummed into him. There weren't many women in Tokyo who married a man for his muscular body, but a girl who joined a bicycle club would possibly be more attracted than most.

The new muscles were puffing out some old scars. Perusing them in the pink framed dressing mirror, Taro realised his years of karate training had just been another underhand attempt by elders to hammer into him conformity. In some ways he wished they had succeeded. But with the skills he had been taught, he could make them wish that even more.

Hiromi took a shower rather than a bath. It must have been a habit she had picked up in Canada. The water ran for a good ten minutes. When Hiromi appeared out of the bathroom, her hair was wet and she had a soft white towel wrapped around her naked body. Her contacts were still in. The tattoo on her arm was a red barcode. She had no doubt copied that idea from the pop star Namie Amuro. Typical. She sat down on the bed beside him. She smelt so fresh and clean. After a moment she touched his leg.

'There's a new public path in Shinjuku,' said Taro. 'It offers baths in rice wine and milk, and there's also a bath with electrodes zapping through the water – that one is supposed to be good for the heart.'

'You've changed, Taro,' Hiromi said.

'I'm like a virus that's mutated into something new,' Taro replied bitterly.

Hiromi dropped her head apologetically. 'I left you alone too long.'

The voice was heartfelt and deeply moving. The urge to take her into his arms was incredibly strong. So much more than he had ever expected. It was only the image of the packed trains rushing by his crossing that held him back. All those faceless businessmen in their black suits, the rings on their fingers more a promise to their companies than their wives and families, for it was the company that demanded priority, that plundered the man's soul and left behind the most meagre of scraps. Just the way it had been for his father. And there was no way around it. If Taro took Hiromi now, made love to her, the company would not only be gaining him but its next generation as well. And he would be marrying himself a company widow. The endless evenings waiting for him to return exhausted from his office, and to share vacations spent in those thirty kilometre traffic jams that surrounded their ancestors' graves. Faithful or unfaithful, the repercussions had to be the same. He would complete the job on Hiromi that her teachers had only started. He would break her spirit into accepting such a life. With love on his side, he could do a better job than his karate coaches had ever managed on him. But the thought of descending into such a role repulsed him. He would simply not go down that path. The best he could do was turn his demise into something that would fill the silences in the life Hiromi would have without him. He sensed he could do that well. He would be good at it.

'This won't be simple.' He spoke slowly and carefully, as though the edge of each word had to be individually sharpened. 'If we are to be together again, you'll have to do it my way. I can't be the first man you are with.' He paused. 'Maybe you were true to me in Canada and maybe you weren't. But the only way to dispel my fears is to control them.' He had never heard such darkness in his voice. It was like he was being introduced to a guide for an upcoming expedition into a wasteland.

'What are you saying?' Hiromi's voice had a pitiful tone to it.

Taro did not reply.

Hiromi's fingers ran along one of his chest scars. 'You've been brutalised, haven't you?'

Taro hadn't thought about that particular scar in a while. It had come about from a disagreement with a local bosozoku motorcycle gang. Had he been too quick to fight them instead of join them? They had been picking on a friend, so he had had no choice. Anyway, underworld gangs had more rules than the average company - so called tough men who spent their days bowing to tougher men.

'The world is a brutal place,' he replied. 'And you left me alone for a whole year. You should respect my wishes.'

'I don't think I can do that.' Hiromi's voice was strained but to Taro not fully convincing.

Whether it meant she was willing to do anything he asked or just that this particular request was not such a stretch, he supposed would be lurking somewhere beneath the surface. He would explore the latter possibility first and if he was able to discount that conclusively, he would make every effort to set her up with Jun Hanagawa, the friend he had stood up for against the bosozoku gang. Jun had enrolled in a semi-prestigious university in Tokyo and had the temperament to do what a boss asked of him. That had already been put to the test when the boss of his part time job had put pubes into his drink and made him toast his loyalty. Taro had been shocked to hear this confession but not necessarily surprised. Dragging his feet around, his eyes never looking anywhere, it was not hard to see whatever meagre spirit Jun may have once possessed had been all but quashed. The young man that had been forged was burdened with a quiet, defeatist demeanour and a wariness to step out in public – traits unlikely to secure him a relationship anytime soon. And yet he was the type to cherish any relationship he happened to have. He would be the right kind of guy to be with Hiromi. He would keep to himself in the relationship, but at least he would keep himself together. Anyway, it wouldn't be right for Taro to set them up if he suspected Hiromi of a duplicit nature. Taro snatched his shirt off the bed and slipped back into it.

'It's the only way,' he said. 'You'll just have to accept it.' He was fumbling over the buttons, all his force going into his voice. 'I'll cancel my shift on Saturday night. That's when the bars are most active. You'd better be ready.'

Hiromi remained hunched over in her towel.

Taro could still feel pity, but if she made their Saturday night appointment after this, then likely poor old Jun's loss would be another man's gain.

7

Taro had never ridden his pizza delivery scooter quite so recklessly. Even Mr Hachikawa, the branch manager, was startled by the short duration between pickups. He was not the type to question anything that increased production so his displeasure remained solely for the ears of a long suffering cashier.

Taro's tension and aggression were as tightly coiled up inside him as his intestines. And they weren't unwinding on the streets of Tokyo's Nakano ward. Taro was knocking on his customers doors with all the ferocity of a debt collector, unloading his pizza's like a suffocating submarine desperate to release its ballast.

The crash that occurred a couple of hours into the shift was all but inevitable. It was Taro's fault. A blind turn into a dark, narrow intersection sent an oncoming car braking and veering into a beverage vending machine. Taro couldn't get out of the collision's path in time, side swiping the car and bouncing off into a head on impact with a metal power pole. His jaw clunked together as he was scuttled across the bitumen. The pizza storage container at the rear of the scooter came open and the order he was transporting scattered all over the road.

'You idiot! Are you trying to kill someone?!'

The driver ofthe car was out on his feet, screaming at the top of his lungs. He was a businessman, forty something, with an ugly square face and hateful eyes. Someone's detested boss.

Taro had to contain the rage brewing inside him by focussing his attention on his own affairs. He picked up a pizza that had miraculously stayed inside its box. He carefully reclosed the box, thinking that if the bike still went he might be able to make a delivery yet.

'Where do you think you're going?' cried the businessman. 'I'm calling the police. Give me your name'

This was no victim. This was just another tyrant expecting him to bow at the waist. Taro launched upon him furiously. His initial punch in the face was clean and knocked him to the ground. His follow up kicks at the body, however, were mostly fended off amidst a chorus of pathetic whimpers. Still, they softened the businessman up for what he really wanted to do. 'Will a complimentary pizza make you feel better?' Taro bashed him over the head with the box until the pizza fell out. Then he grabbed him by the hair and rubbed his face into it. 'You like it? It's seafood.'

Taro finally stood up and wiped off his hands.

'I'm going to take down your number plate,' he said. 'My father is a cop. You report this and you can expect another pizza delivery. That one, I guarantee you, will be with the lot.'

He returned to his scooter. He realised his left knee was hurting more than it was bending. Kicking the businessman wouldn't have helped. Apparently the businessman's angry screams had scared off anyone who might have responded to the crash. Also in Taro's favour was the fact that the buildings in the immediate vicinity, a day care centre, a community centre and a real estate agency were closed for the day and shrouded in darkness. No one was going to be clearly viewing the scene from the safety of a nearby apartment window.

The scooter restarted with an admonishing high pitched rattle. It wouldn't be half the reaction of the perpetually skulking Mr Hachikawa. Taro didn't care. The move he had just pulled with the pizza on the beaten up salaryman had been rehearsed a hundred times over in his fantasies of finally putting Mr Hachikawa in his place.

Its smooth transition into reality was an encouraging start.

*

'There was a cat,' Taro murmured contritely.

The banged up scooter's arduous return to Hachikawa's pizza shop had given him moment to pause. Beating up some guy and not feeling anything couldn't have been right. Maybe there was something wrong with him. It might have explained why he was not fitting in anywhere. He needed to buy some time to think about it some more. He might not think about it. But he would have to buy the time to find out.

An unusually subdued Hackikawa was making it easier. He was not even frowning. Perhaps, he realised he was only a lion tamer: once the lion had stepped out of the cage, his whip would be rendered useless.

'A cat?' he murmured.

'I swerved to avoid it and struck a pole. The order was ruined. And the front wheel is buckled, I think. But I am uninjured. If you provide me with another scooter, I can continue my shift.'

They were standing in the small garage at the back of the shop. There were three scooters ranked by the far wall, which wouldn't be needed on a quiet night such as this. Hachikawa's attention, however, remained with the damaged scooter. The buckled wheel was the one aspect of the crash that was clearly comprehensible and his eyes were held by it.

'You will need to fill out an accident report form,' he said. 'Then go home. It would be against regulations to do anything else.'

Taro had missed out on a place at the only university he could afford by one measly percentage point. He had sworn that would be regulation's final victory over his life. But, on the other hand, regulations only maimed, they never killed. Regulators were not murderers.

8

The following day Taro went to the fifth day of the Grand Sumo tournament in Ryogoku, Tokyo. He got a cheap seat in the back and waited for the program to work through the lower jonokuchi bouts until, with much ceremony and parading, it was time for the yokozuna wrestlers. As usual, the Mongolian wrestlers were highly fancied in the tournament, but that was not what Taro had come to see. Even from the back bleachers, he could smell the yakitori chicken being served up with sake in the expensive ringside seats. One hundred thousand yen per box of four seats and an additional one hundred thousand yen for the hospitality. Only large companies wishing to entertain important clients would outlay such considerable expenses and that's why those seats were occupied by immaculately dressed, earnest looking businessmen.

For Taro, even the six thousand yen he had been forced to fork out for his seat was a serious blow to his finances. Especially after his contribution to the okonomiyaki restaurant and love hotel with Hiromi. So, had it been worth it coming here?

Taro thought so for two reasons. The first was he needed to draw out an old memory: going to the sumo with his father when he was five – a beautiful memory that had been sitting in his head like some kind of jewel. A moment in time he could be truly sentimental about. One of the very few. The second reason was to prod further the lack of feeling he had encountered while beating up the businessman. Studying those company executives in the box seats was the best way he could think of to do that. They had reached the pinnacle of success. Their companies deemed them worthy of such preferential treatment as ringside seats. Any of the ambitious feelings that would enable him to prosper would surely surface here. Hunger, envy, confidence, determination, their presence would indicate he had a chance of obtaining such a privileged position himself. Sadness, dejection, regret, timidity on the other hand would suggest he inwardly recognised his shortcomings and that it was time to move on.

But this nothingness that he couldn't shake, that persisted even here, he could now confirm it was a sickness. The yakitori entering the executives mouths did not bring revulsion, the cool sake touching their lips did not elicit admiration. Was it a lifetime being treated like a product on a convenience store shelf that caused such malaise? Was it a mother who had been too good at making things just right? Was it a sister who had successfully substituted life experiences with Hello Kitty products?

Taro wasn't going to be one of those nuts who butchered family members and kept their pieces in a refrigerator or bath tub. But the only way to fully identify the disease was

by trying to find a cure.

He stayed to watch the only wrestler who wasn't as soft as the flab around his waist-line: Asashoryu. The Mongolian had lost most of his greatness since being forced by the Japan Sumo Association to apologise for playing a charity football match in favour of one of their meaningless post-season exhibition tournaments. Maybe it was sympathy that kept Taro in his hopelessly distant cheap seat – when sumo wrestlers appeared this small, hopeless was the only word for it.

As Asashoryu began throwing salt around the ring to ward off evil spirits in the pre-bout ritual, it became plain clear to Taro, even from this distant position, that he was merely going through the motions. He had succumbed to the whims of the regulators. To see such a giant have his spirit sucked away merely so that things could be as they should be, was disturbing. Taro realised that what Asoshoryu needed was an opponent so aggressive and low-down dirty it shook off his lethargy and reawakened the killer instinct the coddlers had been suffocating.

Taro was too small to do it himself. But he wasn't too small for Japan. He set himself for the bout. He looked at the other spectators excitedly flapping their fans against the muggy breath in the giant metal lung that was the stadium and wanted them to be spectators for him, too.

9

Taro had gained more time for smoking his cigarettes at the train crossing. But he was missing the thrill of riding the delivery scooter fast through the Tokyo backstreets. The city was even harder to take when it slowed down.

Still, Taro knew things were going to heat up soon. Hiromi had agreed to meet him on Saturday night. She hadn't said much in the process. But the lack of reluctance in her voice had been the most telling aspect of their brief conversation. She had an analytical mind. She was a star at mathematics. She formulated plans.

Smoking was best done on a mountain top in winter when there was the perfect contrast between the seedy smoke of tobacco and the pure air of nature. By the Friday afternoon, the sensation he was getting at the train crossing was just like that. The anticipation he was feeling for the next day was so bittersweet it must surely have been carcinogenic in its own right.

Taro was only halfway through his pack of Swisher Sweet cigarettes when his solitude was disturbed by a frowning man.

'The Diet has voted down a bill to increase tax on tobacco to a level that matched other developed nations. They reason that if there was a price hike on cigarettes they would lose out on tax revenue - because punks like you wouldn't be able to afford them.'

It was Daigo Kuroki, his brother-in-law. Tall and wiry, he was widely considered a success within the family, though Taro could not point to anything in particular that he had done that was successful. An assistant management position in a trading company and a wife who ran her household with unrelenting efficiency. These were considered noteworthy achievements for a man not yet thirty. A man worthy of being a sempai to the likes of Taro.

'Why do you always come around on Friday nights?' Taro darted back.

That needled Kuroki. There would be a reason, but that was with his wife and he had no doubt left it unquestioned.

'Why aren't you out delivery your pizzas?' he fired back. 'Who gets fired from a job like that?'

'I quit.'

'Why? So you can smoke cigarettes and watch trains go by?'

'What's it to you?'

'Your sister asked me to check up on you. And I'd say she's got reason to be concerned. Someone who spends so much of his time staring at trains must have some thought to jumping in front of one. Do you know the fine your mother will have to pay the railway company if you go through with it? She wouldn't be able to afford it. Think about that carefully before you make any unwise decisions.'

Taro had heard the fine was three hundred thousand yen. But it would not be that stopping him from such a drastic action. It would be the humiliation of the final defeat, of throwing himself under the feet of all those lifeless zombies in black suits.

'I haven't even thought about it,' he said meekly.

'Sure,' replied Kuroki sarcastically. 'Why would you? A guy that can't even deliver a pizza has so much to live for. Don't think about gassing yourself, either. You'd probably take out the hapless person who finds you. And hospitalise half the neighbourhood as well.'

'I would never kill myself in a city. Cities are ugly places. So, to die in the city would be ugly, too.'

'There's a nice forest near Mt. Fuji for people who think like that. And I'm not saying you shouldn't think like that. Sometimes when people don't do anything particularly well, their death is the only opportunity for redemption.'

'Sure.'

'I hear your girlfriend is back from her working holiday in Canada. If you let her, she would make a good man of you. She would save you from yourself.'

A train roared by. An express. Taro flicked his cigarette at it.

Kurioki waited for it to pass before he spoke again. 'We're going out for tendon. Would you like to join us? I have been sent to invite you.'

Taro all too easily shook his head. 'No thanks.' If only he had known what was in store for him, however, he just might have accepted the invitation - after all, as irritating as they tended to be, they were the only family he had.

10

They rode the train up to Yokohama. Most young people preferred to go in the opposite direction and spent their Saturday nights amongst the crowds of Tokyo. But the back alleys of the Minato Mirai Port area possessed a dark undertone which Taro found appealing and the adjacent outcrop of love hotels were there if required.

Hiromi was wearing a white t-shirt and tight fitting blue jeans. The outfit was shiny new and highly fashionable. Taro figured she had been getting reacquainted with her old shopping haunts. Probably Shibuya's 109, which was nothing short of group therapy for the legions of fashion conscious young women who crammed into it every day of the year. Hiromi would get dressed up just to return a book to the library, so there was nothing to assume in the nature of her attire. But the same could not have been said for her giant pair of sunglasses. They were covering half of her face, including any facial expressions that might have betrayed the thoughts running through her mind. Not that it mattered. Actions were going to speak louder than words.

Taro and Hiromi arrived at Bar Why Not at 11pm. That was the time when the casual drinkers were starting to head for their last trains and the more serious revellers were settling in for the night. A dimly lit, inadequately ventilated basement bar, Bar Why Not attracted the US servicemen from the Yokozuka Naval Base, and also the women who were attracted to them. There were a lot of African Americans, a few white guys, and they were virtually all head shaved and solidly built. They were outnumbering the women two to one.

Of the women, there was no one even close to approaching Hiromi's beauty. Taro did not mind that all eyes looked past him to her. That was just the environment he had been looking for.

'Do you still drink Heinekan?' he asked Hiromi.

Her reply was probably lost somewhere behind those sunglasses. He went to the bar and bought one for her and an Asahi Super Dry for himself. The bar tender was polite and efficient. It wasn't surprising. The sleaziest bar in all Japan would still offer warm hand-towels.

Taro found himself casing the bar for men. At least, he could be far more objective than he ever was with women. There were plenty to choose from. There was a group of four playing the soccer pinball game. There were three talking over the cigarette machine. Two had cornered the attention of a couple of enthusiastic looking girls at a table. The ones camped around the bar wouldn't even come into consideration, as Taro wouldn't be able to approach any of them without the whole lot getting to hear about what was going on. The candidate most likely was perhaps by the very definition the most difficult to spot. He was sitting by himself occupying a back corner stool and table, smoking his cigarette the way people did when they needed more than just a nicotine hit, nursing the ashes into the ashtray with all the care of someone starved of love. Rusty blonde hair and freckles. He had the build of a sailor but without a killer's disposition. He was approachable.

Hiromi had found a table of her own. Taro went to it and put down the drinks amidst two empty, finger-smeared glasses that were yet to be cleared.

'I've spotted a guy you might find appealing,' he said. 'And he's acceptable to me.'

The head of his beer was too big. After his first long draught, it was almost time for another. The residue on his upper lip reminded him of his high school anxiety attacks, when he would frequently be sporting a moustache of cold perspiration. Hiromi drew patterns in her bottles condensation.

'If you go through with this you may never see me again,' she murmured.

'I don't see you now,' replied Taro forcefully. 'That's the whole problem. You're within reaching distance and I still can't see you.'

'All I did was go away for a while. That's all you need to accept. Why did you quit your delivery job?'

Taro, however, would not be side-tracked. 'Maybe you slept with another guy and maybe you didn't. I'll always be wondering about it. But if what I know is as bad as it gets, I won't need to care about anything else. Don't you see?'

Hiromi brought her beer to her lips. It was hardly worth the effort for the amount she swallowed. The way she slammed the bottle back down on the table might have been the whole point anyway.

'Sure if you pick the right guy, I can do it. I'm young. I've got hormones. I don't know about the guys here, but you couldn't talk to them anyway with your lousy English.'

Taro slipped down off his stool. 'Watch me.'

He took his beer with him. The rusty blonde haired man wasn't so sensitive looking up close. His eyes shot up like the dark spyholes of unoccupied homes.

'Hello,' said Taro. Just the one word dried out his mouth. Hiromi was right that he couldn't put two words of English together. The teachers would make him write one out twenty times and like a tyre with its tread worn out it would promptly skid out of his memory.

The American seemed to conclude Taro was anything but a threat and his face went impassive, like a prodded sea-urchin content to return to the motion of the currents.

Hiromi, however, may have exaggerated her lack of faith in him; she sprung furiously out of her seat, knocking over her beer as she went. It caught Taro off guard. He felt inexplicably abandoned. It was the same feeling he had had the day she disappeared through the Narita Airport international departure gates.

'What is it?' The man was interested now.

Taro shook his head. 'Sorry.' He retreated for the exit. Hiromi was already gone. But all eyes in the bar were now upon him. It put him on edge. He supposed that's the way she had been feeling, too.

11

The Minato Mirai Station entrance was crowded with Saturday night rendezvous, mostly young females happily chatting away while waiting for further additions to their numbers. Those who were alone were earnestly tapping messages into their cell phones.

Taro scanned the area for Hiromi. If she had gone through the ticket gates, it meant she was on her way home and it might even have meant she had passed a test. On the other hand, if she was still on the outside, no matter how agitated, Taro would still be wracked by suspicion. Maybe it was the quality of man that had sent her marching. Perhaps left to her own devices she could come up with someone better. Would that appease Taro? Would it break his spirit? Would they be one and the same thing?

Hiromi didn't seem to be around the station. Taro would give his search the length of a cigarette and if she hadn't turned up in that time, he would poke his head into the surrounding bars that might have attracted her interest - the ones with bright lights and English names.

'Can I trouble you for a cigarette?' The man looked rich and young. The cheeky, confident smile; the long, silky black hair; the artfully tailored shirt and trousers; the tanned complexion that bore the healthy veneer of good living; at the very least they gave the impression of a man who could afford his own cigarettes. Taro was struck by a pang of suspicion. This man had been amongst the group of three at Bar Why Not's cigarette machine, and now he was here. It made for an unlikely coincidence.

Taro got a closer look as he offered out his half used up packet of cigarettes. Beneath the surface layer of prosperity, there was something else. An air of danger. Someone so materially content as this young man was either sheltered or into the wrong kind of life. Taro sensed he needed to be on his guard.

The man wedged a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and lit it with a gold zippo. One long drag and he disdainfully spat the cigarette out onto the street. 'You have an uncle in the tobacco industry you're trying to support? There's no other reason to smoke Japanese brands. We don't make cigarettes as well as our swords, that's for sure.'

Handsome and incredibly self-assured, Taro could not help feeling awed.

The man took out a gunmetal cigarette holder from an inner jacket pocket and busily lit one up in the other corner of his mouth. 'These are French. Take the time to visit a tobacconist instead of a cigarette machine.'

The smoke he exhaled was dark and rich. Scent receptors came alive in Taro's nostrils that he had forgotten even existed.

'Why did you want one of mine?' Taro asked testily.

'I was feeling sorry for you.' The man was more concerned with gripping the cigarette with his mouth than enunciating his words clearly. 'I saw you get dumped flat by that girl in the Why Not bar. She was cute. What's her name?'

Taro hesitated but he knew he would have to give some ground for the conversation to continue. 'Hiromi.'

'Well, forget her. Who needs a girlfriend that humiliates you in public?'

'It was my fault.'

'The bad act might have been your fault but the public spectacle was hers. At least it livened up a stale evening. I was trying to drag a couple of GIs to a party I know about. They weren't interested. Why would they be? The Why Not is a GI hangout. The women come looking for them.'

Taro expelled some more smoke, keeping it to the side, self-conscious of the poor quality of smoke coming out of his lungs.

'You, on the other hand, are a sure bet,' the man continued. 'I can see from the look on your face you don't have any other plans for tonight.'

'I don't have much money on me at the moment,' Taro murmured. He couldn't get his voice to sound as proud as he had hoped.

'I didn't need to be told that. I can see you dress out of the UniQlo bargain box. If you want to get ahead in life, you need to associate with successful people like me. Well, here's your chance.' The man took the cigarette out of his mouth and blew the smoke into Taro's face. 'My name is Koki.'

Taro found himself bowing. He had never before heard a name uttered like it really meant something.

12

Koki drove the latest Honda sports car. 'We make better cars than we do swords and cigarettes,' he said as the engine first came to life. The engine was so quiet the noise seemed to be coming from another car in another row of the dark gloomy car park.

Koki drove to the exit boom gate and paid the parking fee and aggressively sped out into traffic towards the Tokyo bound expressway. Once on the fast, straight, pay-as-you-go roads, the Honda was able to stretch itself out. The power came with a luxurious sigh. Koki liked what he heard so much that he kept the Sony entertainment system down low. Taro recognised the system from his most recent trip to the Akihabara electronics town. It cost as much as another person's car. It was playing a Doraemon cartoon.

They travelled without conversing and before long they were in upmarket Ginza in the heart of Tokyo. It was where Taro had seen the first of these model cars. The streets were aglow with brand name signs.

'Some people are glad the crime statistics are so low in Japan,' said Koki, 'but it just makes me feel alienated. I would've killed to get what I have now. And I'd definitely kill to keep it.'

Taro wondered what he had really done to get what he had. There was still that element of danger and wildness in his manner. Having taken out a salaryman on his pizza round, Taro felt qualified to tell.

They turned off into a side street. The houses were large and mind-blowingly expensive. Koki laughed at Taro's reaction when he flicked on his indicator at one of the biggest. 'You're looking pale. If power makes you feel nervous, it's probably because you haven't been hanging out with the right kind of people.'

The car slid into the garage like it was lubricated with butter. The other spot was occupied by a dark green jaguar. It was so shiny it might have last been polished five minutes ago. There was a man sitting on a wooden chair beside it with his arms folded. The dome of his bald head was just as polished, gleaming under the garage's bright white lights. His bicep muscles were bulging against his chest. His eyes were still and they carried a sadistic bent.

Koki turned off the engine and climbed out. He turned back to Taro. 'I'm going to change jackets. I won't be long. Why don't you talk with Aso. He's an old family friend. He's our driver and man about the house.'

The man did not acknowledge the introduction. He fired the remote control's down button at the garage door. Koki strode out that way before the need to duck his head.

The man named Aso waited a little longer before standing up. He put the remote control down on the chair. Taro was about to undo his seatbelt when he took in the full measure of the man's burly frame and found himself inexplicably hesitating.

Aso walked over to Taro's door. His lips were like thin strips of sliced mackerel. His eyes were obscured by a permanent squint and overprotective lids. Knots of thick veins were crudely protruding around his temples and neck.

'The master of the house has the privilege of saying whatever he pleases,' Aso said with a menacing tone. 'A simple servant like me, however, must always speak the truth. If the truth is too difficult to speak, he must forfeit his life to maintain the secret.'

Taro had always been unnerved by the old Japan, and this man was the very embodiment of it. Taro could not recall having ever come this close to it. Not in school. Not with friends. Not delivering pizzas.

'I am not a driver for the Nagashima family,' Aso said. 'I'm a retired jailer. I was once Nagashima Senior's jailer. Koki's father. We struck up a friendship. Despite being powerful and rich, he accepted my authority and complied with my directions. He knows I am a hard man capable of instilling discipline.' His eyes locked on Taro. 'Parents must fail first. Then teachers. And finally the young man himself. My only task is to not fail.' He smiled thinly. 'Now I'm an old man. Too old to be doing what I should be doing. But Nagashima-san gives me work. He does not disrespect me by asking for actions I may find objectionable. He gives me young men who are only one step away from prison. One step away from where I used to receive them. But what I do is more or less the same.'

Taro felt as helpless as the freshmen being bullied by a merciless prefect. He would have tried to swing across to the opposite door but the interior was too narrow and he was trembling too much. Was the man crazy? Could Taro just wait for Koki to return and shoo the nightmare away? Taro knew that was wishful thinking. He had never encountered a nightmare he could simply wake up from. It took all his strength but he managed to open his door. That was the only solution. To establish that he was simply dealing with some oddball bluff.

Aso stepped with casual nimbleness before the door hit his legs.

'I want to go home,' said Taro. 'I have things to do.'

'You are not going anywhere,' said Aso in a soft command that Taro could feel reverberate under his trembling skin.

Taro forced his rubbery legs to the roller door. He tried to open it but it was closed fast.

'Come back here or you'll be sorry.' Aso's voice had raised a fraction.

Taro tried the door again. It merely trembled the way his body was trembling. Aso moved beside him with a series of predatory strides. His hand was clenched in a fist. 'This is the last time you'll ever doubt me.'

13

Taro woke up after that first beating in a tiny dark room. It might have been in the Ginza house, and it might have been anywhere. There were no clues to be had out the solitary window so small he could not have poked his head through it. Just a neighbouring concrete wall for a view. The glass must have been thickened, for only the rumble of heavy trucks could penetrate it and even then only as a barely perceptible murmur. Certainly there were no voices to be heard – not through the window and not through the door. Not even Aso's. He was silent with the things he brought: food buckets, toilet buckets and beatings. It was the beatings that kept him in the room the longest. Every time they were different, finding new ways to hurt Taro in nerve points he hadn't even known existed. Many a time Taro was certain his nerve endings were being crushed into paralysis. Sometimes he screamed, sometimes he cried, sometimes he was as silent as Aso.

Was it days, months or years? His broken spirit was haemorrhaging lost time. He didn't think, he didn't dream, he didn't move. And then one day, long after he had accepted that this was all there was, Aso spoke.

'Tonight you will attend Koki. You will stay in the room you are taken to and you will do exactly what he orders. If you do your duties satisfactorily, it will be better for you. On the other hand, if you cause trouble, it will bring upon a very bad result. Do you recall that I never lie?'

Taro nodded. Aso left the room then, no buckets and no beatings. He returned hours later with a bucket of water, a towel and a clean yukata robe.

'Step outside when you're ready.'

Taro couldn't move as quickly as he wanted to. It had been so long. Still, in all those countless beatings, no bones had been broken. He could do what he had to. He hurriedly washed, put the robe on and opened the door to a searing white light, which he realised was merely the ceiling light.

Aso grabbed him impatiently by the arm. 'Hurry up.'

Taro lowered his head, shielded his eyes and allowed himself to be led. There was a downflight of stairs. There was a long corridor. He was almost collapsing with the head-rush, his dizziness accentuated by a jasmine fragrance that left no room for oxygen.

A door was opened. He was taken into the room and pushed down onto a stool.

'This is the spot,' said Aso. 'Stay here. Get your head together. There's sake, food, towels and personal products. None of it is for you. When Koki arrives, you will attend him. And you will do a good job. Don't embarrass me.'

Taro was left alone then. His head was on his knees. His eyes were slowly adjusting to the light. There were tatami mats on the floor. There was a bar refrigerator and a hamper basket on the polished wooden benches.

Taro looked around for a phone. Who would he call anyway? His mother? He tried to remember her number. His head dropped back down. She was lost in a mist of arbitrary numbers and thoughts.

Koki found him in that state.

'Hello, Taro,' he said cheerfully. 'It's been awhile. I hear you'll be working for us now. That's great news. I've got an important house guest tonight. Actually, she's very cute. So let's do our best to make a good impression.'

Taro shakily straightened himself up on the stool.

Koki, wearing a white bathrobe, shook his head sympathetically. 'Aso-san said you might not be so good on your feet to start with. Let's work together and I'm sure everything will be fine. How does that sound?'

Taro had not used his voice for so long that he was not even sure if it still worked. He nodded his head and coughed.

'Okay,' said Koki. 'Now a nice bottle of expensive champagne would be the ideal way to start the evening. There should be a bottle in the refrigerator. Let's get it open, shall we?'

By the time Taro had struggled off the stool, Koki had already fetched the champagne and was uncorking it. The chunky bottle was dripping with condensation; the dark green of the glass contrasted with the gold of the ring Koki was wearing on his middle finger.

'Set three glasses,' Koki instructed. 'The first drink I'm going to have will be with my old friend right here.'

Taro used two hands for each of the crystal flutes. Koki handed back the first one he filled. Then he splashed out one for himself and held it up in a toast. 'Here's to a prosperous evening.'

Taro couldn't help himself. He hadn't drunk anything in hours and the champagne hit his throat like liquid heaven.

'Go easy,' chuckled Koki. 'It's probably the closest you've ever been to the south of France. You should at least try to taste it on the way down.' He sipped his own and headed for the door with the bottle and two fresh glasses. 'If my date drinks it down that quick, however, I won't complain too much. Well, wish me luck. I'll be back soon.'

Taro dropped straight back down onto the stool. He had never been much of a drinker but alcohol had never hit his head this quickly before. His head felt lighter than the rest of him and he needed oxygen as the ballast to keep his body from flipping. Long, deep breaths. At some point sleep came.

'Wow, that was easier than I thought it would be,' said Koki enthusiastically, waking Taro up as he marched back into the room. 'It's amazing what a ride in a sports car and a glass of champagne will do to a girl. Better bring the girl back down to earth with a beer, I think. She likes Asahi and we've got plenty of that.' He opened the refrigerator door. 'I'll take care of it. Hand me one of those towels, will you? She really got me sweating.'

Taro was able to stay in his stool. He took the first of a pile of white towels from the table and waited while Koki poured out a glass of beer. He was surprised when Koki handed him the beer.

'You probably haven't had one of these in a while either, have you?' said Koki. 'Aso-san does his training hard, I know.'

He took the towel from Taro, slipped off his bathrobe and began towelling down his sweat glistening body. His physique was incredibly toned and athletic. Large bicep and pectoral muscles that didn't seem cumbersome, and he had a perfectly pronounced six-pack. There was something wildly magnetic about it.

'Don't go staring,' laughed Koki. 'You'll make me nervous.'

He took his time, nonetheless, paying special attention to his genitals. Once finished, he plonked the towel on Taro's shoulder. 'I'll leave that with you.' He departed the room, carrying a couple of cans of beers and accompanying glasses. The bathrobe remained behind on the floor.

14

'You're asleep, too. Well, it is pretty late, I suppose. I'm feeling fresh myself. A fine girl who is not shy in bed. It's priceless. I can't remember the last time I came five times without having to wait till morning. I hope she remembers the morning-after pill because I haven't been holding back.'

Koki was rousing Taro from an uncomfortable sleep against a cupboard with a pincer hold on his shoulder - not painfully, but ensuring his words were heard. He was wearing black silk boxer shorts and his hair was freshly wetted back. 'You seem to be good luck for me. Maybe we should do this more often.'

He helped Taro sit up straight on the stool.

'Share a drink with me to finish off a memorable evening. Whiskey will do the job. If there's one thing a businessman knows well, an expensive drink concludes all important deals.'

The whiskeys were already poured. Stiff doubles with ice.

Taro was still feeling the effects of his earlier drinks. His eyelids scraped across his eyes as he confirmed that he was still in the same room, still in the same stool. He had been deeply asleep.

Getting another drink to his lips wasn't going to be easy, so Koki helped: he put a whiskey into his hand and then lifted the hand until he was drinking.

'I wouldn't have wasted this on her,' said Koki. 'The only way girls can drink whiskey is with cola. If she even suggested it, it would undo all the good work she's put in tonight.' He chuckled. 'Well, maybe not all of it.'

Taro started to lower the glass but Koki grabbed his hand again.

'Don't be bashful. There's plenty more where that came from.'

The ice cubes were pressing against Taro's nose. The whiskey drained out from between them.

'Quite a night cap.' Koki removed the glass and rested it on the table. 'But before you do retire, why don't you come see my girl. She's a beautiful sleeper. Better than you, at any rate, snoring away on your stool. Aso-san would never tolerate such lethargy. I'm not sure the man's even human.'

He hooked a hand under Taro's armpit and effortlessly hauled him upright.

'You'll never have seen a girl sleeping so contently. It might rub off on you.'

Taro felt his legs moving under Koki's guidance. They were out the room and heading down a passageway. Taro's blurred vision left nowhere for detail, and his head was too heavy to get passed his feet.

'Maybe I just want to show her to you out of pride,' added Koki. 'There's nothing that makes a man happier than being able to put a smile on the face of a beautiful woman. That certain kind of smile. But you'll have to promise to be quiet. It wouldn't do to wake her.'

They had stopped walking. Koki gently opened a door.

'This is it,' he whispered.

He eased Taro through the doorway. The room was lit by two dimmed paper lamps. A cream coloured futon was against the far wall, below an open window beyond which an Armani store was dominating the view.

There was a naked girl with a cotton sheet reaching only to her thighs. Her skin was aglow with erotic elegance. Her black hair filled the space between her pillow and the wall with a beautiful chaos. Her breasts moved in gentle breaths in fine shadows. Her perfectly shaped abdomen curved down into barely discernible pubic hair.

Koki grabbed Taro by the chin and guided his eyes up until he was looking at her face.

'Do you see her?' Koki asked and his voice turned to acid. 'I think you've met her before.'

Taro looked into the closed eyes and placid features and his knees began to buckle in a reflex action. The hand at his chin smothered his agonising gasp, kept him on his feet to see her a moment longer. It was Hiromi.

15

'Wake up. Wake up.'

The gruff tone of voice and the accompanying jabs to the side were familiar enough, though the voice itself was not. Taro kept his eyes closed a moment longer, trying to recall what had happened last before subjecting himself to whatever lay ahead.

The image of Hiromi naked on the futon came at him vividly; his heart was pumping a foul, nauseating brand of blood.

What had happened next? A searing pain in his neck. And a blinding flash of white light. Then blackness. Yes, Taro could remember that incredible pain clearly now. These current jabs to the side were almost affectionate in comparison.

'Wake up. Wake up.'

Taro was ready now. He opened his eyes to see that he was being prodded by a policeman's boot. A young policeman. An older one was looking on impassively.

'You're in a public area,' said the young policeman. 'You must put your clothes on immediately.'

Taro was shocked to see that it was true. He was lying on his side and he was naked and covered in insect bites. Clothes were strewn around him, but not the yukata he had been wearing.

He pulled himself off the patchy grass, damp with perspiration. He was in a dusty featureless park boxed in by apartment buildings. Although the sun was already steaming up the earth, he knew it must have been early. He wouldn't get away with indecency in such a public area for long.

A mosquito buzzed at his ear. It was a trigger to a terrible itch that started at his ankles and worked its way upward. He reached for the clothes that had been left beside him: canvas pants and a grey t-shirt.

'You have been drinking,' said the young policeman, observing Taro's stilted movement. 'You will have to come with us.'

The older policeman was already walking away, happy to leave the dealings with drunks and vagabonds to younger members.

Whenever possible the Tokyo police preferred to walk offenders to their stations. Perhaps they did not want vagrants stinking out their cars. Taro did not stink, but he was scratching like a dog with fleas.

It was only a ten minute walk to the police station. Passing the Kameari train station on the way, let Taro know where he was. North East Tokyo. Four hundred yen and thirty minutes on a train would take him back to his old life. Not that the thought of it filled him with any great joy. Hadn't he been planning on ending it at the time anyway? He couldn't remember.

Taro was not unused to talking with the police. They were sometimes useful in his pizza deliveries, being a reliable source of street directions. And there was also the time his bicycle was stolen.

'Sit down here. We will need to see some ID.' It was still the young policeman doing all the talking. The old one stood by the wall with his arms folded. There was a time in every company when age brought the privilege of being a bystander. Taro's father had not made it that far by a long way. Maybe for those that did all that was left of them was the odd indifferent grunt. It was one of these that sent Taro to the holding room on the second floor of the small grey building.

There was a table and chairs, the kind you got in high school. The window was grilled. Basically, the room did not look much different to the one Koki had imprisoned him in.

'Fill in these forms.' It was another policeman who had accompanied him into the room. Also young, there was an aggression and hardness about him that had been absent in the other colleague. Taro guessed this was the man in charge of the room and its comings and goings. And so, although there was basically nothing in it, it was the centre of the man's whole universe.

Taro tried but his hand was too weak and shaky to write. 'I'm sorry, I can't,' he said despairingly.

'Identification,' the man barked, holding out one of his giant hands.

Taro had become well used to the threat of impending punishment. Being asked for something beforehand was more of a novelty.

'I don't have a wallet,' he said sheepishly. 'I don't have anything.'

If he had detected the slightest trace of belligerence, the policeman would have flipped him off his chair and applied one of the half dozen or so choke holds that he usually put to use when confessions were not so readily forthcoming. He knew something about men's spirits and Taro's already seemed well and truly broken. He held himself back at least long enough for one more chance. He snatched up the pen and the forms. 'Name. Address.'

Taro was happy to tell him. It was self-validation. For whatever reason, the nightmare at the hands of the sadistic Aso did seem somehow over.

The policeman wrote what he heard in a rapid scrawl. 'Now, the names of your parents and employer and their phone numbers.'

Taro told him without hesitation. His mother being summoned to a police station to be humiliated by his errant behaviour should have been the catalyst for pleadings and tears. But he didn't feel anything. All the vested emotion that he should have felt in surrendering his identity simply was not there. Perhaps Aso had taught him a lesson or two after all.

16

After the forms were filled in, Taro was left to wait alone in that featureless room a good hour before the door opened again. It was not his mother that entered.

The man was holding a bottle of Dr Pepper and a mineral water. He put them down on the table and waved them at Taro in invitation. He took a chair on his side of the table and once seated put his hands together on the table as though he were about to arm wrestle himself. He was somewhere around fifty and had a big, round head, which the light from the ceiling was gleaming off. His eyes were sunk well back behind his black, circular framed glasses that sat awkwardly on thick bags of puffed up skin.

'I've seen grown men ball their eyes out when they were told their mother was coming to pick them up,' he said.

Taro guzzled the water down to the last. His shrivelled up internal organs exploded back to life with a grateful sigh.

'It wouldn't be your father coming to pick you up,' the man added. 'I've been doing some investigation into you.' He read Taro's hard swallow with interest. His light, loose smirk seemed to be his default expression. 'Don't worry, I haven't called in your mother. Nor your sister or her husband. All I did was jot down the contact details on their files. Any visit from me will be brief and fateful for them. This is a promise that you should take very seriously. But I do not expect it will come to that.'

He took the unclaimed Dr Pepper and popped off the cap.

'My name is Inspector Hakate. Everything I am to tell you must be kept confidential. If you do not, it is highly probable somebody will pay a very significant price.' He sat back. 'I watched you being dumped in the park. I was staking out Koki Nishikawa's residence. He is not officially under investigation, and my surveillance has not been sanctioned but an officer who gave his marriage to the Department should be granted a few liberties with his sleepless nights.

'The way Koki discarded you I cannot say you are his friend. But he did not kill you, so you are not his enemy. You are just an object for which he thinks he may have more use of in the future. Which means you can be of use to me. I need him dead. You're going to kill him.' He chuckled with a mouthful of soft drink. 'I don't expect you to be good at it. Your file tells me you're not much good at anything. But the thing is, you can do a bad job at killing someone and they are still dead. That's what I'm counting on.'

Taro knew better then to protest or to make any comment at all. He sat inanimately.

'Let me briefly explain why this murder will be a worthy achievement.' Inspector Hakate's eyes were even steadier now. 'The top gangsters in Tokyo are smart enough not to do their own dirty work. But their sons are not so reluctant. Indeed, they must get blood on their hands to earn respect amongst the men and women they will one day lead. That is why Tokin Mikoto's son was involved in a simple armoured car robbery. Tokin Mikoto is in the very top bracket of our gangsters here. His son did not have time to develop such instincts or judgement. The robbery was overly brazen and poorly conceived. A foot patrol from my precinct stumbled into it. Gunfire was exchanged. The son was put down.

'The shooter is a promising young officer who I have a particular fondness for. What has happened since the son's death is murky but I have a basic idea. Tokin met the Chief to informally beg permission to avenge his son. Of course, the Chief pointedly turned him down. But I do not believe that will end the matter. The Chief leads a troubled personal life. Gambling and prostitutes and a lack of discretion. I foresee one day him getting into such big trouble that he will need Tokin's help to extract himself from it. In fact, Tokin is cunning enough to ensure it. The Chief will be in debt to this man and will have no alternative but to turn a blind eye to a discreet act against my man. A car crash, an accidental bump onto the train tracks, a regrettable suicide. I must act now and I must act discreetly to prevent this. I believe you are possibly my solution.'

He offered Taro the rest of the Dr Peppers, sliding it across to Taro's side of the table.

'My surveillance has not yet confirmed my hunch that Koki Nishikawa is being groomed as Tokin's favourite nephew. But he is the obvious choice. In fact, there is no one else. This makes Koki his soft underbelly. If Koki is taken out, Tokin will have to focus all his attention in consolidating his standing in the eyes of both the police and the underworld. Any favours he may garnish will not be able to be used in removing my boy. Not for a few years at least. And by then my boy will have risen through the ranks to a position where he will be untouchable.' He leaned forward, pulling out his neck from the tight shirt collar before letting it retract back in again. 'Koki left you naked and beaten in the park. I have rarely seen such humiliation dished out on anyone. Care to explain what you did to warrant it?'

Taro puckered his lips and shook his head. The pain that was wrapped like poison ivy around his ribs was unbearably shameful. He would die before he acknowledged its presence.

Inspector Hakate sensed it and did not force the issue and he said sympathetically, 'Humiliation can be a shard of glass in the blood stream. Eventually it will cut a path to the heart. And death is inevitable. What I am offering you is an honourable course of action. You can kill your enemy and know you will be saving the life of a worthier man than yourself. I can supply a gun if you so desire. You should see the honourable course of action here. The threat against your family should be superfluous. However, if it comes to pass that your mother has raised an honourless son, I will feel no qualms in carrying out my threats. Do you understand me?'

'What's today's date?' a bewildered Taro murmured, barely audible.

Inspector Hakate frowned, wondering if he was being taken seriously. 'It's September 3rd.'

Taro spent a moment calculating. So, he had spent seven weeks in Aso's torture chamber. Seven weeks being beaten and debased. Seven weeks being turned into someone capable of remorseless killing.

'If I need a gun, how will I contact you?' he queried.

17

Taro left the Kameari Police Station with a thousand yen not and Inspector Hakate's phone number on a torn piece of paper. He sat down for a beef rice bowl at one of the ubiquitous Yoshinoya fast food restaurants. His stomach had become unused to such a substantial offering and he left half of it untouched. He squeezed into the restaurant's narrow toilet, keen to see what had become of him.

The mirror showed him to be pale and gaunt - there was plenty of that going around in overworked Tokyo. Taro's face, however, was surprisingly unblemished. It was true that Aso had refrained from facial blows in the last few weeks. Could it have been in preparation for his release?

Taro had been left in no doubt of what the police wanted from him: kill Koki. But he was less sure of what Koki had wanted of him. Had all Koki's efforts been just to humiliate him?

He took the train home. He sufficiently removed from the zombie-faced businessmen on board that he was not as repulsed as usual. He barely noticed them at all.

Without his house keys, he would have to wait for his mother to come home from work. In the meantime, he went to his usual spot at the railway crossing. During his entire detention, he had not found himself craving a cigarette as much as he did right then. But he did not have enough change left from the thousand yen to do anything about it. He had to settle for a can of Boss black coffee. He sipped it slowly and he leaned against the fence pole by the boom gates. He watched the trains pass. It was early afternoon and he was inexplicably starting to miss the certainty of that hot little box he had been confined in.

A car pulled up to the side of the road. So close to the crossing it created a dangerous bottle-neck. But there was not even the briefest of horn retorts in protest. With a car such as this, people knew better. A top of the range Mercedes Benz, black body and black tinted windows. It had yakuza stamped all over it. If a beating was meted out, or a murder committed, somebody would go to jail, but it would be a junior apprentice wishing to prove his loyalty to his masters. The actual offenders could therefore defend the honour of their criminal organisation with impunity. It was the way things were done and everyone knew it.

A man in a gaudy silver suit got out from the passenger side of the car. He was a big man and wore black sunglasses. He walked directly over to Taro.

'Is this yours?'

He was holding Taro's wallet. He opened it to the driver's licence in the clear pocket to confirm it.

'Yeah, that's me,' said Taro, peering at his dour mugshot.

'Then come get it.' The man returned to car and got into the driver's suit.

Taro supposed he didn't need to go that way. He could have run, if only he had the energy and somewhere else to go, but he had neither. So he went to car. The rear window hummed open to a man with a strong scented cigar in his fingers – each finger having a gold ring upon it. The man was fifty-something and had a neatly trimmed jaw-line beard. His eyes were coldly detached. His hard mouth dripped away into a disdainful sneer. He ran his fingers through his neatly groomed light brown hair. He was wearing a Tokyo Giants baseball jacket, the aircon cranked up to make it wearable in the afternoon heat.

'Don't mind the low temperature,' he said. 'I grew up in Hokkaido and that's the way we do summers there. Koki tells me you've been spending time in a much hotter place.' He turned his attention to his cigar as though he was having a simultaneous and entirely more enjoyable conversation with it. He waved at the smoke with the extended fingers of his smoking hand. A conductor with a hit symphony. His eyes returned to Taro. 'Did you tell the police about your recent experience? Of course not. It's not something you'd want to talk about. And we won't talk about it either, suffice to say you've gone some part of the way to redeeming yourself.' He shook his head admonishingly. 'I have heard the recordings. The table you were occupying at the Bar Why Not was bugged with two microphones. I wanted to record for posterity a narcotics negotiation between us and some American marines. It was just by coincidence the participants shifted position to the cigarette machine and you replaced them at the table. In the long run it was probably for the best. Offering your friend out to strangers to test her fidelity obviously indicates you were heading in the wrong direction in life. You don't deserve total blame for this. Modern teachers are only concerned with clumps of test scores that show themselves in a positive light. Ethics, morality and honour are all but considered irrelevant in this kind of education. As you might imagine, our mutual friend Aso is a hard judge of character. That is why, when he has something favourable to say about someone, I am inclined to listen. Of you, he said you did not break.In a sense that is obvious, for he had the authority to kill you if you made a nuisance of yourself. But the fact that he bothered to utter his praise verbally is credit to you.

'As it happens there is a job opening up in my organisation that requires urgent filling. A hardened spirit is the essential characteristic the successful candidate must possess. My man is holding your wallet in the front seat. If you accept the position, he will put a gold American Express card into it. Would you like to know more?'

Taro's curiosity was related to what kind of retribution a refusal would bring. He suspected a humouring smile would be the initial reaction. Inevitably, however, there would be no saying no.

'Okay,' said Taro.

'So let's talk,' the man said. 'My name is Tokin Mikoto. In case you haven't figured it out, I'm the boss. You will do things as they are required. These actions will be varied and will never be linkable back to me. But you can be assured every action will have been approved by me and, more importantly, will be of value to me. Your account balance will tell you that. You will have quiet months and busy months, so your salary will fluctuate. But I will guarantee you an income of two million yen over a twelve month period. No matter what. In other words, you will become one of the very few workers in my organisation who is guaranteed.' He went back to his cigar, though this time his attention remained with Taro as he puffed. 'What you experienced in Aso's hands will be considered one of two things: punishment or training. If you accept my terms as a guaranteed worker, it will have been training. Then your bank balance will reflect the value I have placed on it. But don't get too excited because no training can be placed above actions that bring profit or strength to the organisation.

'If you do not choose to accept my offer, you had better put down the past few weeks as fair comeuppance for subjecting a beautiful girl to such callousness and degradation. We would never meet again and indeed if our names were ever mentioned in the same breath by anyone on this whole planet, it would mean certain death for you.' He glanced at his enormous, glistening gold watch. 'Unfortunately, we are on our way to the mortuary to pay our respects to another young man. Suicide. It seems he was troubled with the nature of the work he was doing for me. Still, he did his family the great service of not mentioning any of his grievances in a note. You have by tomorrow to decide your course of action. Your position will be activated then.' His eyes tightened their focus on Taro. 'Go get your wallet. My man knows better than to reach over the back seat. Get out the car and he'll hand it to you through his window. Inside the wallet you'll find some instructions. Thank your lucky stars that your predecessor's lack of stomach means there's a position available. If there wasn't any urgency, I'd have left you in that room with Aso-san until you really got used to it.'

He dismissively waved Taro out of the car. Taro complied so promptly he was almost riding the back of the hand. The front passenger window opened just far enough for the wallet to stick out. Taro warily plucked it away.

The car moved away then, putting his toes in some danger. He stepped back in time and watched the car muscling its way into the traffic. It was quickly absorbed to become just another drop in the dense flow of metal, glass and rubber. Taro followed its progress until the last of its black roof was lost from sight. He opened the wallet, looking past the driver's licence to the gold American Express card and folded slip of paper. The wallet had never felt so full.

18

Taro decided to take the job for one simple reason: he couldn't bear to face his mother. He put a note under the door which said he was fine and that due to a new job he would be very busy for the foreseeable future.

He spent the night at an internet café in Ikebukuro. An overload of soft drink from the drink machine ensured it was mostly a sleepless night. Sleep was not particularly welcome anyway. Asleep he would not be able to feel the wallet with the gold card was safely pressing against his hip. He wondered if this could really be the stroke of luck he so desperately needed. Rarely had someone with so little money felt like he had so much to lose.

Blurry eyed he did an internet search on Tokin Mikoto. Tokin turned up mostly in social pages: smiling at cocktail theatre openings or embassy receptions. He was particularly prevalent at the functions of the Japan Russian Friendship Society.Many of the shots had him in the company of stone faced burly men cast in the same mould as Aso. It gave Taro moment to pause, for they did not seem like particularly nice people to get mixed up with. But alone in his internet cafe booth with sickening coughs and sniffs emanating from those on either side he could think of no other direction for his life to take other than the place and time on the strip of paper neatly folded in his wallet.

And so it was. Midday at the Yoyogi Park lake in central Tokyo. Taro sat on a wooden bench and nervously watched the synchronised fountains putting on an acrobatic display of jetting water. He hadn't been to the park for several years and had forgotten how big it was. With all the picnickers and exercisers and people just wandering around for some respite from Tokyo's bustle, he would be hard pressed to pick his contact in advance.

The anxiety at the idea of being stood up was another clear indication of just how much he needed this, whatever this might have been. He waited an hour and was set to wait another ten when someone joined him at the bench. A foreign woman.

'Your name?' she asked perfunctorily.

Taro looked at her quickly. She was somewhere in her thirties - probably deep in her thirties - but her olive complexion was carefully looked after and she wore a soft, sweet scent. From her accent he could tell that she was South American. Taro turned away shyly but he hadn't seen enough so he glanced some more out the corner of his eye. Astoundingly deep brown eyes that seemed packed with experience. Strong, lean, tanned arms. Hair pulled back tight. Prominent cheekbones.

'Taro – ' he finally began. He was cut short before he could get out his family name.

'No need,' the woman said bluntly. 'A hundred years ago the peasants of Japan were only ever granted a first name. That system will work well for us now.'

She swung her Gucci carry bag onto her lap and took out a red aluminium Docomo mobile phone. She wafted it in front of him.

'You're probably not a very nice kid, but I'll give you fair warning anyway. You're here to take a job, not negotiate it. The phone is your contact. Instructions will come by text or voice and you'll see them done. You'll earn your money.'

Taro took the phone. He wasn't particularly enthused. He could look around Yoyogi Park and see what he would see anywhere in Tokyo: people's lives mollified by these small pieces of equipment. Still, at least this was a company phone. He turned it on and examined the function icons.

'Don't go downloading music or joining dating sites,' the woman said. 'And if you drop it in the toilet, you better dive in after it.' She stood up, leaving the Gucci bag behind. 'The first message you receive will tell you what to do with that. If there are no hiccups, the money will flow and your life can begin.'

'What is in the bag?' he asked nervously.

The woman shook her head. 'Japanese are not necessarily noted for their intense curiosity and I wouldn't recommend you buck that trend right now. Do what you're told. The solitary piece of comfort I can offer you is that it reflects badly on Tokin if he loses people too frequently; therefore, he's not going to want you wiped out in the first five minutes. He chooses people for their character. All you've got to do is show some. Now wait here. You'll get a message soon enough.'

Taro watched her walk away. She swayed her broad hips with a confidence. Taro put the phone down on the top of the bag and folded his arms. He was not really so curious about what was in the bag. Drugs or money were most likely – what else would it be?

He spent the next few minutes wondering what was wrong with him. People in their early twenties were supposed to feel indestructible, but he felt like he was already dead. If everyone felt like that, Tokyo would be a city of tormented ghosts.

The screen of his new phone lit up in phosphorous blue. It was an incoming message.

19

If it was a drug deal he was embroiled in, Roppongi Crossing was not the ideal place to be. In reality it probably wasn't the heart of Tokyo's drug culture as was widely assumed – Kabuki-cho was a noteworthy rival in that regards – but the cops had to carry out their random drug searches somewhere and Roppongi with its numerous bars and night clubs and eclectic mix of nationalities was invariably the place of choice.

The time of the meeting at least was on Taro's side. Three o'clock on a Monday afternoon; the police were preoccupied at that time of day with issuing parking tickets and telling off high school students for carrying friends on the back of their bicycles.

Taro stood and waited outside the mobile phone shop as directed in the text message. Although it was farfetched that someone in such tatty clothes would be in possession of a Gucci bag, he hoped that standing as still as possible would avoid any unwanted attention.

'You've got something for me?'

In a city where strangers did not talked, Taro did not need to doubt he had made contact. The twenty something man was wearing a smart black suit and green shirt and probably didn't feel as cool as he looked on what was a humid afternoon. His hair curled out at the side and his nose was equine. He was brimming with energy. He was a man who might have one beautiful girlfriend or many.

The message on Taro's phone instructed him to hand over the bag and accept what was given in return. Taro wouldn't have minded if it was a task that involved an exchange of words as well. It might have helped work out what kind of world he was getting himself into.

The transaction was made. Taro came away from it with a smaller, non-designer bag. It suited him better.

He walked with it in the upmarket Roppongi Hills direction for no other reason than it was the opposite direction to which the Gucci bag had been taken. He texted over the red phone that delivery had been completed. The reply was prompt and brought a smirk to his face - so, perhaps that was why Roppongi had been selected for the transaction: he was being given directions to an apartment that was to be his, and it was within walking distance.

20

He was instructed to pick up his room access card at the front desk and leave the bag in letter box in the foyer. Apartment 2.05. He presumed they had already obtained a spare key. It was to happen in Roppongi Garden View Building. The building wasn't hard to find, marked as it was in large black letters in a sign at the top of twelve floors of black tinted glass. It was a new building, luxurious, and no doubt the rent would be a small fortune.

Taro deposited the bag and went to the elevators.

The apartment was better than he could ever have hoped for. Two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, detached bathroom and toilet, plenty of closet space, and a spacious balcony complete with deckchairs. And with each finer point he only liked it more. The soft pillows and bed linen. The superb view of Roppongi and Asakasa. The wide screen, wafer thin television. The impressive array of cooking utensils in the kitchen.

Taro checked the bedroom's closet as he recalled one of the text messages that had streamed in: "Hope they fit." It was signed WM, the same as the other messages. Taro wondered if those were the initials of the woman in the park. His eyes widened as he saw the kinds of clothes that had been left for him. Leather jackets, woollen suits and exquisite black shoes. They all seemed the right size. Taro wondered if Aso had been measuring him as well as beating him. At least he would no longer look conspicuous in a building like this or holding a Gucci bag on a street corner.

He took one last encapsulating look at the apartment and had to concede that, despite the luxury of it all, he didn't even want to sit down. Maybe it was because he was too used to rooms in which he could touch each wall at any given time. Or more likely it was the fear of the images that would flood his head if he did. Koki on top of Hiromi. Hiromi on top of Koki. A thousand such images. Mixed with actual memories. Koki wiping off lover's perspiration from his naked body. Hiromi serenely asleep on the futon. Whatever it took he had to keep them out of his head.

Computer games and manga wouldn't do it. He had seemed to have outgrown them.

He showered and shaved and dressed himself in one of the black suits. He matched it with a blue shirt. He had rarely perused himself in front of such a fine mirror and it made a world of difference. "They fit" he typed into his phone and pressed send.

He walked to the station, checking his balance at an ATM on the way. It caused his heart to quicken. He withdrew eighty thousand yen just to see that the numbers could translate into something real. It was enough to get him to New York or California or Hawaii if things got too much. He had about as much concept of what those places were like as he did the atmosphere of Venus. But with money behind him, he could find out. The old paper notes felt like magic.

Taro took the subway to Ikebukuro.It was late afternoon. The pace of movement around the busy station area was as frantic as ever. It was only when he got into the entertainment district beyond the North Exit did the streets quieten down. Another few hours would make for a different story as businessmen with clients or loveless marriages poured in.

It didn't take long for Taro to find what he was looking for. Under a large sign pointing visitors towards the Rakugo stand-up comedy hall there was a stylish young woman elevated by high heels. Her hair was ginger tipped and her skin was soft and tanned. She wore blue lensed sunglasses and had a Louis Vuitton bag hooked under her arm. She was standing casually, typing into her mobile phone. None of these things separated her from the average teenage girls, but what was different was the pointed glance she sent Taro's way.

Taro wasn't sure how he should go about negotiating a price with her. He had never done anything like this before. Having money in his pocket made it easier. He supposed it would enable him to find out what kind of person he really was. The thought scared him.

21

With her sunglasses off and the sex out of his brain, she was looking younger; neither of these things had happened until morning. She might have been seventeen or eighteen. She looked different with her makeup off, closer to earth, even closer than when she had taken off her high heels.

'Good morning,' said Taro, standing up from the bed, one towel around his waist, one in his hand, and still dripping wet. 'Would you like to take a shower?'

The girl pulled herself up higher onto the pillow and nodded. 'What time is it?'

'Half past seven. Do you have school?'

'Yes.'

'What do you study?' Taro didn't want to embarrass her by asking where: it might have been somewhere prestigious like Waseda or Rikkyo, but probably wasn't.

'Commerce,' she replied. She didn't instil much confidence that she knew a lot about the subject. Or maybe she just didn't want to talk about it with him. Taro didn't care. He was just flattered that she had agreed to stay the whole night with him and still didn't seem in any hurry to leave. She hadn't even counted the money in the tissue paper he had put into that brand name bag of hers. Probably she was unused to being with men who were closer to her age than her father's. And young men with apartments of this quality usually only existed in manga comics.

She might even have required dislodging. There was a gym on the eleventh floor and Taro wanted to do some training before breakfast. He hadn't been one of those inmates who had spent his incarceration doing push ups. Physically and mentally he had been fading away to nothing. He figured that the atoms within him that had endured must have been the strongest.

'I'd like to offer you some breakfast,' he said, 'but we have to hurry because I have some things to do.'

The girl nodded her head. Why wouldn't she believe it? A man who lived in a place like this would certainly have things to do.

Taro dabbed the water off his chest. He felt the towel around his waist loosen and he smiled. 'I have been sick lately and I have become scrawny. I would like to do a workout. Take a shower and get yourself ready. If there is still time, I will take you somewhere for breakfast. Ok?'

Taro would have used her name if he had been sure of more than just the first syllable: Hi. Hitomi? Hirani? Surely not Hiromi. But it had been close enough. His ears had closed with that first syllable. And he wanted those feelings closed as well. It had been a leaking Fawcett and it hurt.

'Yes,' said the girl excitedly. She seemed to be of the opinion she had stumbled into a situation that could only be dreamed of. Taro too. It remained to be seen who was the most deluded.

22

The woman from Yoyogi Park was this time waiting for him. Again the meeting time had been set for midday. At the Hachiko Statue in front of Shibuya Station. The dog that had waited loyally for its master to return from work long after he was dead. Taro was cynical about the story. The dog had probably just wanted to get fed from owners of the station food stalls.

'You didn't screw up,' the woman said. 'So, you get a name. You can call me Waneta.'

She was wearing large circular framed sunglasses that would not have suited the average wide cheek-boned Japanese girl so well. Her lips were glossed red.

Taro nodded. 'I didn't find it a difficult job.'

'That's because it wasn't. But fools screw up easy jobs just as well as they do difficult ones.' She looked Taro up and down. 'You are handsome in a suit. Well, at least more handsome than you were.'

Taro was wearing the same suit as the previous evening minus the jacket, which was too nice to subject to an afternoon of perspiration on such a hot, sticky day. He had instead opted for a white shirt to go with the trousers.

'Thanks.' Taro realised he was yet to utter a full sentence in the presence of the woman, but he found her intimidating. His eyes wandered down her outfit in the search of an appropriate return compliment. A light brown blouse and dark brown skirt. She was in motion before he could think of anything to say.

'Handsome enough to be seen with me at a love hotel,' she said. 'Come on. Let's go.'

A startled Taro found himself looking at the body beneath the outfit with a new perspective; no longer mulling over compliments he was sizing her up as a potential lover. A large, firm behind. A waistline that dipped inwards. The kind of older woman he had always been attracted to.

She held his attention through the mist of cute, fashionable teenagers that perpetually roamed the Shibuya shopping streets.

The love hotels were only a block further up, sharing the street with some well-known nightclubs and a sprinkling of minor bars. The way Waneta was striding it didn't seem like she was on her way to a social even. Most people chose love hotels at least as carefully as they did the partners they were bringing with them, but she entered one, a five floor tiled building named the Silver Moon without even looking up.

She fed ten thousand yen into the key dispenser. The main criteria to the room she selected seemed to be its proximity to the stairs. She got into the thin-carpeted, well-used room and turned sharply to Taro's excitedly gazing eyes.

'They always look at me like that the first time,' she said. 'Before they know what's going on. I'm not saying you won't look forward to coming to love hotels with me again in the future. But I promise you there will be a different look in your eyes.'

The tone in her voice was all business and the room suddenly felt like an office. Taro dropped into the bedside chair that was standard to every love hotel room and was probably the least used thing in it.

Waneta sat on the bed and leaned back on her hands. 'When I take you to a love hotel it means I won't be asking you just to meet someone or pick up a bag. It'll be something that to even utter would be a crime. Love hotels are about the only place in Tokyo where a conversation won't get overheard or a record be kept.' Waneta chuckled wryly. 'You of all people should know the risks of being overheard in public.'

Taro felt his heartbeat quickening. He knew his apartment would not get paid for merely by exchanging bags with people on the street, no matter what was inside. He just hoped the things he had to do wouldn't be too ugly.

'Generally Tokin does not give his guaranteed staff the messy jobs,' said Waneta as though to ease his concern. 'But he does want to see that you're capable of stepping up if required.' She again had a designer bag to rummage through. This time it was a silver Mui Mui bag. She came out with a photograph. It was a close up of a man and it wasn't the kind of face that should come out of such a beautiful bag. Scruffy, gaunt and bearded. The man had an agitated look on his face. He was standing with a brick wall to his back.

'Men can be surprisingly fragile when they get a beating,' said Waneta, handing over the photograph. 'So when all you want to do is hurt someone, you best stick to the extremities. Hands and feet. You can stamp a lot of long term memory in those places. You'd be amazed how many people turn into frenzied sickos once they've overcome their inhibitions with a first punch. Don't try to recreate the good times you had with Aso on someone else. You were such a resilient subject he has not been himself since you were released from his cage.'

'Him?' asked Taro at the photograph.

'He's a homeless bum these days but there was a time he had his own business, before he gambled away the company's capital all the way to bankruptcy. Tokin wants to send a message: some creditors will always get a return on their investment.'

Taro flicked at the man's head. 'Okay, but this is a serious waste of talent.'

Waneta tilted her head mockingly. 'You think you're too good to be beating up a homeless guy?'

'Well, I thought this room was meant to be used for talking. So, I'm talking.'

Waneta's eyes narrowed suspiciously. 'You're joking, right? I wonder if Tokin knows what he's getting himself into.'

Taro shrugged. 'Don't worry, I'll beat up three homeless guys if it's going to get me ahead.'

'I've sketched a map where you'll find him,' said Waneta. 'It's along the railway line from Kanda Station. A hundred metres in the direction of Tokyo Station. There aren't exactly a lot of parks in that area, so it won't be hard to find. This intelligence is current, but homeless people don't always remain in the same place for long. The police might move them on. Or they might get tired of the mosquitoes and heat and front themselves at a shelter. Or they might find a nice new spot under a bridge somewhere to pitch their blue plastic tarpaulin. So, if you're going to procrastinate about this, do it after you've handed in your apartment key. Alright?'

'I'll drop by the park this afternoon.'

'Good.' Waneta slipped across the sketch map. 'There aren't a lot of homeless people in this park but make sure you get the right one or else you really will be having multiple victims on your hands.'

'What's his name?'

'Better you don't know. Tokin wants the attack to at least have the pretence of being random.'

Taro noted the X mark written in red at the back of the park, which was occupying a small piece of land between an apartment building and a business hotel. 'That's where I'll find him?'

'Yes. Remember, keep it simple. Don't turn that cross into a headstone.'

Taro nodded. 'Understood.'

23

The park had a set of swings but in this part of Tokyo children were thin on the ground. The cigarette disposal bins were much more frequently used, the park being mostly a smoke stop for business people moving between their companies and Kanda Station.

The average time spent in the park would have been less than five minutes. Taro had already occupied his bench for an hour. The four cans of beer he had picked up at a convenience store at least made for effective cover: an unemployed lowlife with nothing better to do. The alcohol would also help steel him for the pitiful task of putting a homeless man into hospital.

The man had been easy to find, flitting between rubbish bins and park seats: he was much more active than the average homeless male, who could spend hours at a time hunched over, staring at the ground. Now at last, however, he had retreated to his tiny blue tent nestled behind a covering of vegetation in the back corner of the park, just where the map had placed him.

Taro considered putting the moment off until the dead of night when he and his target would have the park to themselves, but he doubted they would need that kind of privacy. It would take more than a few taps of the hammer to raise a concerted police response in the welfare of a homeless man.

Taro waited for a break in the flow of smokers, his hands rubbing up and down the handle of the small hammer he had purchased on the way. A girl who was showcasing her thin legs in a miniskirt passed by the park and got Taro thinking in different directions. Not just to try harder to remember whether the girl from the night before was called Hiromi or Harumi but to actually call the number as well. Or perhaps he could go for the real Hiromi. Now that he had been with another woman, they might be back on equal footing. The foolishness of the idea had him angry with himself and put him in the right frame of mind to do what he was here for.

He stepped through the bushes into the small pocket of space at the back corner of the park.

'Get out of here!' the homeless man from the photograph yelled furiously, springing out of his blue plastic tent with teeth clenched. 'You don't belong here!'

Taro felt a pang of anger. It wasn't a homeless man he was seeing now, but rather a company president, an employer who had no doubt terrorised, humiliated and belittled his staff into making him rich. He may have fallen down into this but he hadn't fallen far enough for Taro's liking. He punched him hard in the jaw. The pain shot up his wrist.

'I was supposed to hurt your hands, and now you've gone and made me hurt mine,' he gnarled.

The punch, however, had put the old man flat on his back, enabling Taro to put his foot to work. But most importantly the blow had shut the man up.

Taro had the peace of mind to hold back on his kicks. The average homeless body was about as fragile as the average blue plastic tent. Their internal organs could pop as easily as bubble wrap.

Taro had drawn blood from the man's nose and lip but there was no guarantee it was hospital worthy. And the thought of putting a hammer to use now seemed excessively gratuitous. Taro settled for snapping a shot of the felled man with his new mobile phone. On an afterthought he swept open his fly and proceeded to urinate over the man. 'This is such a great spot for a drinker like me to take a piss, you should be willing to share.'

He shook himself off, did himself up and went back to the cigarette disposal bins to light up his first of the afternoon. He smoked his cigarette in the company of a businessman who kept his back turned to him.

24

Taro kicked off his shoes at the doorway and ignored the house slippers. He hadn't decided yet who he would call to try and fill the evening with, but there was time to consider that over a bath. He massaged his tender knuckles on his way into his apartment.

There was a brief rapport of phone. Taro instinctively checked his red mobile. The screen was annoyingly dormant. He had sent word of his success at the park over thirty minutes earlier. No congratulations. No reply at all. He wondered if he should have included a brief mention of urinating on the victim. After all, this might not have been the kind of assignment where modesty was considered a virtue.

'Excuses are more slippery than eel in chopsticks, so I don't want to hear any.' The voice was not raised but was strikingly clear. Taro felt a chill as he realised it was coming from inside the apartment – a man engaged in a phone call. Taro was tempted to turn and run from the apartment, but realised that anywhere else he went in the city it would be him becoming the intruder. And besides, the voice sounded somewhat familiar. So, he stayed and ventured forward. He followed the voice into the living room. Tokin Mikoto was on the other side of its glass balcony door. He was using an earpiece to his mobile phone and was looking out over the balcony railing at the hazy stagnant dusk skyline. He wore a blue silk shirt with the sleeves rolled up. A belt of soft black leather was holding up his trousers and there was a gold watch and a host of gold bracelets and rings lighting up his hands. He took a draft on a thin dark brown cigarette wedged between his middle fingers and turned to face Taro.

'I've got someone here who doesn't make excuses,' he barked into the phone as the only recognition of Taro's presence. 'Do what you have to do to avoid embarrassing yourself with any more.'

He cut off the call and slipped the phone into his breast pocket. He took a final draft of his cigarette and stabbed it into the ashtray on the balcony's outdoor table. He didn't seem comfortable with having his hands free, using both to slide open the door that led him inside.

'I've made a lot of money out of Roppongi over the years,' he said. 'Looking down at it over a cigarette, I'd have to say it's easy to conclude that's its only virtue.' He waved Taro to one of the living room's oyster shell purple sofas. 'It's your apartment but it's my meeting. Take a seat if you don't mind.'

Taro sat down promptly and with a straight back. Tokin sunk gradually into another. His hands lay flat on the armrests, relaxed but primed for movement. His eyes locked onto Taro. Like the wildest of horses, there weren't many people who could ride that stare for more than a few seconds. It seemed Taro was barely even going to get on.

'I hear all your tasks to this point have been completed with favourable outcomes,' said Tokin. 'Your most recent mustn't have been easy. Only a coward would take joy in attacking someone so obviously weak as a malnourished homeless man.'

Taro nodded tepidly, realising that it had been wise keeping the urinating element to himself after all.

'You will find a generous increase in your bank balance when you check it tomorrow morning,' added Tokin. 'Nevertheless, it doesn't quite reflect the value I put on the job you just did. Some of that money is to cover costs for your next job. That is what I'm here to talk to you about.'

He gestured forlornly to the kitchen. 'I would like to make the moment more sociable but I have noticed your refrigerator is devoid of sake. I would normally have my assistant do something about it. Due to the sensitive nature of the job, however, I have left her back in the office. That also explains why it is not Waneta doing this. Life is dangerous enough without the scorn of a passionate South American.'

Tokin smiled charmingly, though a sneaked glance at his watch suggested there was somewhere else he wanted to be.

'Waneta will meet you at Shinagawa Station. She'll be holding an envelope and she won't know what's in it.'

Taro nodded his head.

'You'd better ask me what's in it,' said Tokin. 'There's an important job that needs doing.'

'Okay,' replied Taro.

'That wasn't a question. My son had the same problem. Kids today don't know how to ask a question.'

Tokin stared unblinkingly at the floor a long, hard moment.

Taro wondered he was reflecting on his son. Had he really been shot by the police? That was a question he definitely wasn't going to ask.

'Politeness and stupidity can be as silent as each other,' said Tokin, straightening back up. 'But you know which is which when you see them. I'm opening a new bar in the Kabuki-cho district and I need the right kind of girls for hostesses. More than just the kind of girl you'll find wandering the fashionable streets in Tokyo with shopping lists for IQs. Do you understand what I'm getting at?'

'I think so.'

'Did your mother ever take you to see a Takarazuka Review?'

Taro shook his head.

'Oh, well,' said Tokin. 'A single mother is no doubt hard pressed to even attend a cinema let alone a live musical production. But it would have helped you understand my interest in these girls. Thousands of them audition every year for the forty spots at the Takarazuka Music School.' He stood up. 'The ones that make it might be the most beautiful and talented, but the ones they turn away aren't all that bad, either. In the envelope you will receive from Waneta there will be a list of names and addresses. Girls living in the Osaka area. You'll also find a description of the job I'm offering. I want you to bring back the girl you consider most willing and able.

'Waneta would not necessarily find fault with this course of action, although there is one aspect that would most likely raise her ire.' Tokin paused for emphasis. 'Under no circumstances are you to return to Tokyo empty handed.' His eyes solidified into an intimidating stare. 'This is non-negotiable. And I would strongly discourage any sense of over-confidence or arrogance. The more tactful and alert you are from the start the better your chances will be. But do whatever it takes.'

'What if I bring someone to Tokyo on the back of false promises?'

Tokin smirked. 'At last a question. And a respectable one at that. I wouldn't concern myself with that issue, however. A lot of out-of-towners come to Tokyo with their bags packed full of misconceptions. Most of them successfully adapt to their new reality. If your chosen recruit cannot, you will simply take her back to Osaka and try again. There will be no obligations on anyone's part. The list I am giving you has been carefully researched and compiled. We believe any one of those girls would be well suited to the position we have available. Let us worry about making the successful feel comfortable when she gets to Tokyo. We haven't done such a bad job with you, have we?'

'You have made me feel very comfortable,' Taro agreed, despite feeling a knot pull tight in his stomach.

Tokin glanced again at his watch. 'You'll be thinking so even more in twenty minutes from now. I've sent for a special visitor. As I understand it, you are recently single. Such stress can tax a man's strength and distract him from his work. On a job that involves a clear-headed approach to a dozen extremely beautiful young women, it could even be a recipe for disaster. Therefore, it is nothing more than shrewd business that I take the edge off whatever loneliness you might be feeling. No need to thank me. All I ask is you take advantage of the opportunities as they come. After all, that is the difference between success and failure.'

Taro bowed deeply as Tokin headed purposefully for the door.

25

'You must be Taro.' She was one of the most beautiful women Taro had ever seen. She had large kindly eyes, an endearing button nose and a long slim neck. She was elegantly attired in a white blouse and black skirt and wire framed glasses. She was the office worker the average businessman dreamed of marrying. The fact she was standing at Taro's door now had everything to do with the man who had just departed. Whatever happened, Taro would not judge her. He had been bought by the same man, too.

'Yes,' he said. 'What's your name?'

The woman wasn't interested. 'Everything I have to offer you will be some kind of lie,' she said bluntly. 'A few sips will taste a lot sweeter than if you gulp.'

Taro folded his arms and looked on appraisingly. 'Well, why don't you confide in me about one of your lies? It will help us break the ice.'

The woman was unflustered. 'It is rude to ask a magician her secrets. In some instances the same applies to a liar like me.'

Taro grinned. 'You seem more truthful to me than most.'

'You can call me Mana. May I come in?'

Taro stepped back. 'Sure. I apologise for my poor manners. I still don't think of myself as the head of the household.'

Mana stepped out of her stylishly simple black high heels. Her knees peeked out from under her skirt. They were perfectly shaped. Mana caught Taro looking at them and smiled fleetingly, daringly. 'That's fine. Tokin has asked me to take on the role of girlfriend for you tonight.' She breezed into the apartment and looked around. 'A gentleman allows his girlfriend to be head of the household. He is courteous, gentle and considerate. He doesn't try to rush things. He will watch the television programs and play the video games of interest to his girlfriend. And he will make comments that will impress her with their insightfulness. There is a good chance his reward will come, for if there is one thing a girlfriend must be good at, it is rewarding her man's achievements.'

The way she said that made Taro feel it.

'The apartment has got a nice TV,' he said. 'Are you hungry?'

Mana put her handbag on a chair. She delved into it and pulled out a home delivery pizza menu. 'That was the other thing Tokin was specific about. We are to order pizza. It seems strange to me he would insist on that. Any idea why?'

Taro didn't know what to say but he was somehow moved. He took out his cigarettes and offered her one.

'Thanks, boyfriend,' she said, taking a cigarette in her long, thin fingers. She let him light it and handed over the menu. 'Order what you like. One thing I am sure of is this pizza fetish is not for my benefit.'

26

'Could I leave for Tokyo tomorrow?' she murmured. 'If you're asking me will I be missed, the answer is no. My sister and her husband will look after my parents when they retire. And produce grandchildren for them to mind. My role in life is to not shame my family. Being on the Takarazuka Music School short list was the closest I ever got to doing something more than that. Now I'm back to being a lingerie model.'

There was a sweetness in the girl's tone of voice. Taro guessed she could really sing.

It was a pleasantly cool Friday night. They were sitting on the polished stone seats beneath the landmark Osaka Sky Building. The girl's name was Rie. She had been halfway down the list of girls Taro had picked up from Waneta back in Tokyo more than a week earlier now. Rie was wearing a black t-shirt and pink jeans. She had a pretty face. Her front teeth may have been oversized and crooked but the only reason Taro got to see them was that she was actually opening her mouth, talking and laughing. The other contenders Taro had spoken with had been inanimate objects; apparently they only came alive on cue, and it certainly wasn't to Taro's cue.

But Rie had been different: a friendly disposition from the very first call he had made to her a week earlier. Two dinners at the Dotonburi area, where every night was Saturday night, and now in the gardens of the Sky Building, a renowned dating spot, he was ready to close the deal.

'I'm the youngest in my family too,' he said. 'I know what you mean.'

'But you are in charge of security staff for an exclusive night spot in Ginza,' she said. 'You have done very well for yourself.'

'It was not easy at the beginning. I was lucky to find an employer willing to take a chance on new talent.' Taro felt himself starting to choke on what he was saying. He turned away, made it look like he was interested in what all the other couples were doing in their own little spots in the dimly lit gardens. Mostly they were just talking. Some hand holding and leg touching was the closest thing he could see to physical affection. With the racy women Taro had been associating with in Tokyo, he had almost forgotten the conservative nature of the majority. It wasn't helping him swallow down the lump all the lie telling had formed in his throat. Perhaps the only way to get rid of it was to tell some even bigger ones. He turned back to Rie.

'Tokin has authorised me to offer a reward to a suitable applicant who is willing to relocate to Tokyo on short notice.'

Rie's attention was piqued. 'What kind of reward?'

'A Louis Vuitton handbag of your choice. Tokin stipulated that it should only be on condition you are able to take the evening train to Tokyo. But don't worry, the morning train will do.'

'And if I go to Tokyo but don't like it there?'

'You can take the next train back again. It's an opportunity for you. That's all. A possible direction. Come check it out. A beautiful girl like you will have others, if this is not what you want. But it won't take much to see if this is a job that could be of interest. Just a short train ride to Tokyo. And Tokin is a very friendly man. I'm sure you'll like him.'

Taro was surprised with himself; he rarely spoke so much. But the reaction was pleasantly positive.

Rie smiled broadly with those crooked teeth. 'Okay, I'll try it out. See you tomorrow. At Shin Osaka Station?'

'That's right.'

An awkward silence followed. Business was completed and neither of them had another thing to talk about; Taro also got the feeling that neither of them had another place to go.

'It's your last night in Osaka then,' he said. 'How about I buy you a drink?'

Rie nodded without hesitation. 'Do you play pool?'

'I can point the stick in the right direction.'

'That's good. Playing pool helps me relax when I can't sleep.'

'You mean it relaxes you so you can sleep?'

'No, that's not what I said.'

'Well, how do you know you won't be able to sleep tonight?'

'I've had a dream since I was a little girl and I've lost it, and just to prove it I'm taking a train tomorrow. I don't quite know how the choice became so easy.'

'To go to Tokyo?'

'Yes. To go to Tokyo to be a hostess in a bar. Such girls don't join Takarazuka, do they?'

'I wouldn't worry about it. Only old ladies like the Takarazuka Review these days. Tomorrow at the station I'll give you a really nice bag. That'll make you feel alright.'

Rie went quiet, making it impossible for Taro to know if he had said the right thing or not. He figured it must have been tough growing up with a dream. Life set up for failure from the outset.

He stood up and realised for the first time how hunched over was her posture. 'Come on,' he said. 'Let's go play some pool.'

27

Taro woke up late the next day and spent an hour with the New Otani Hotel's buffet breakfast. It didn't give him long to get his bags together for the eleven o'clock checkout. After a week there, however, he figured he deserved some grace.

His thoughts rarely strayed from the long session at the Balabushka pool room and did not regret that he completed it by trying to coax Rie into his taxi. He had been impressed with how smoothly and good humouredly she had turned him down. Such skill would hold her in good stead in the long Ginza nights to come.

Taro didn't rush through cleaning his teeth. He wanted them to be whiter. Finally he was ready. He left his bags in the care of the courteous reception staff and then set out in search for another kind of bag: Louis Vuitton, and he did so just as carefully as a fashion conscious young girl looking for the perfect accessory for her collection. Taro, however, was not only fussing over which bag he liked best but also which shop he could best steal it from. A shop with lax security on the fourth floor of a crowded shopping mall was one candidate and a street level shop with earnest looking security guards and plenty of room to run on the streets outside was another. Picking danger was like swallowing pills at a night club: you might not know which one would kill you, but it was only when you hesitated did they stick in your throat.

The store at which Taro decided he did not want to look around anymore was the one in which he made his move. He was wearing his cheap reading glasses and expensive cologne and then the single most important item in gaining instant trust with young Japanese women: a tasteful pink tie. The store specialised in brand name handbags, and the attractive sales clerk was too preoccupied with creating the right impression to consider what might happen when Taro got to handle over the counter the surprise birthday gift for his lovely girlfriend. The surprise was for the sales clerk.

Taro sprinted out the store, the Louis Vuitton bag gripped tightly in his hands. Men screamed and alarms rang. Taro suspected it would have been better doing this amidst one of the major sales periods when the sight of a customer running through the store was much less obtrusive. He pushed and weaved his way through the store. The security guards in pursuit were mostly flabby middle aged men and the sales clerks mostly females in high heels; none of them were a matchfor Taro as, with his body topped up on adrenaline, he ran like a spooked gazelle.

He made it onto the street and kept up his pace. It wasn't until he was deep within the grounds of Osaka Castle did he stop to gather his breath. He took to a park bench and waited. The castle may once have been capable of keeping at bay an advancing army of thousands, but now its strength as far as Taro was concerned was its array of exits. It would have taken a small army of police to corral him in.

Taro waited until his heart rate was back to normal and his perspiration was beginning to dry. Then he sent a message to Tokyo on his Docomo phone informing them that a girl cut from the Takarazuka try-outs was on the way.

28

Rie was already waiting when Taro arrived at Shin Osaka Station. She was eyeing off a large advertising billboard featuring a Takarazuka Review actress holding a credit card in various costumes. Taro sensed her regret and hoped the designer bag would cheer her up.

'It's nice,' she said, 'but if this job doesn't work out I may be more in need of ready cash. In that case, will I be able to get a refund on it?' Her voice was very direct, but that's how it usually was with people in Osaka.

'Certainly,' said Taro, 'but I have a special arrangement with the store, so you will need to let me handle it.'

Rie shrugged. 'Alright. I'm ready to go.' Judging by the three large bags at her side, she was not planning to return to Osaka any time soon. Taro helped her with two of them.

They got to the platform ten minutes before the Nozomi bullet train pulled in from Kyoto. Taro was looking forward to getting on board and away from Osaka. It was the closest he would come to an acquittal for the crime of shoplifting.'

'Have you had lunch yet?' Taro asked. 'Or are you one of those skinny girls that doesn't like to eat?'

'If it was a rule that thin girls don't eat,' replied Rie, 'I wouldn't be a thin girl. Nonetheless, I haven't even had breakfast today.'

A line of businessmen and women gradually whittled away with the seat numbers, allowing Taro and Rie to claim their own. Taro gave Rie the window and picked up from where he had left off the previous evening in the pool bar, endeavouring to keep up Rie's spirits with the kind of friendly small talk that hosts made an art of in the kinds of bars Rie was headed for.

'You're going to like Tokyo,' he assured. 'There are plenty of good pool bars and pool halls.'

'I'm not going there to live the same life I've been living here,' said Rie indifferently. The train was starting to pull out of the station and she took out her mobile phone. 'I've been waiting till I was on board before telling anyone I'm leaving. It's too late for them to talk me out of it.'

Taro made way for her as she got out of her seat. She headed for the front of the carriage, where she was able to use the phone politely. Taro meanwhile purchased lunches and beer from the hospitality cart. He consumed his watching her talk. He found she had an intriguing mix of beauty, strength and insecurity. It might not have been what the Takarazuka Review's audience was looking for, but he would buy a ticket to see it. Her lunch was getting cold and her beer flat, so Taro helped himself. He kept watching her. And she kept talking. Whole hours went by. Outside the window, Mt Fuji came and went.

29

At Tokyo Station Taro received instructions over the phone. He was to send Rie off in a taxi. An address was provided. Then he was to go directly to the Hachiko Statue in Shibuya. The message carried the familiar initials WM.

Rie had seemingly talked herself out on the two and a half hour train journey. She was subdued as Taro escorted her to a taxi and assisted the elderly, white-gloved driver with loading her bags into the boot.

'Good luck,' Taro mouthed, waving off the taxi. He wondered if he would see Rie again. He could not say he expected a happy ending to her story. Tokyo was a city where people lived their lives, sometimes they lived them well, but it was not a city of happy endings.

Taro went back into Tokyo Station. There was a frantic pace in the crowded passageways. Taro sacrificed for the sake of personal wellbeing the straight lines he wanted to be taking. He ducked and weaved like everyone else in the great current of humanity, his travel bag in-tow. He reached the loop line platform. The customary announcements and warnings over the loudspeakers marked his train's arrival.

It took another thirty minutes to reach the Hachiko Statue at Shibuya Station. Taro was feeling besieged by how so comprehensively the relentless city had inundated the ever growing space between Rie and himself. The encounter he had shared with her was already descending into a dream-like quality, a fleeting moment in time when he had been armed with something to offer some of the most beautiful and talented girls in Japan. But he was back to reality now.

Waneta was waiting for him at the crowded dog statue. She was wearing a brown and white patterned blouse, a white silk scarf and loose black pants that covered her feet up to the turquoise painted toenails squashed together in high heels. Any congratulations she may have intended to offer for his success in Osaka had apparently slipped down into the cracks of her frown. 'Let's go to a love hotel,' she said.

She strode ahead, not looking back, assuming Taro would be able to keep up. They came together again at the foyer of the same love hotel as last time. Waneta purchased a key. Taro felt flat. He suspected he had spent too much adrenaline in shoplifting the Louis Vuitton handbag. He glanced at his watch without seeing the time. It was the same way he looked at Waneta. They went quietly up the stairs and into the room. It was exactly the same room as last time, lulling Taro further into complacency. But suddenly Waneta spun round, clasping a hand onto his waist.

'Your reflexes are not especially quick,' she murmured. 'Perhaps I won't have a chance to hold onto you long.'

'What do you mean?'

Her hand slipped down to his hand. 'Come with me.' She walked him to the bed, took him down to a sitting position. 'Take off my scarf.' She guided his hand in the act, letting it brush down against her braless cleavage.

Taro sprung at her excitedly, only to be stopped by a hand to his forehead.

'I'm not a teenager,' she said. 'I don't bang teeth when I kiss. And I'm not going to find out what I like when you go to work. In fact, it's you who's going to find out what I like.' She pressed him down onto the bed and kissed him from on top.

30

Taro had thought she had been wearing heavy cosmetics to cling onto a fading youth; but now he could see what existed beneath all the colouring was actually an entirely different woman: relaxed, straight forward and with a sense of humour.

She sat up against the bedhead and released a rush of cigarette smoke through her nostrils.

'Now I see why Tokin holds you in such high regard,' she said. 'You're as malleable as a nervous freshman on his first day at the office. A puppy wagging his tail, waiting for the leash to be put on. Did you even want to make love with me?'

Taro lay on his stomach down around her waist. 'I didn't give it much thought.'

'Well, you may come to think of this as a pleasant encounter which left you as sore as if you had developed a harsh case of genital warts.' She measured up her cigarette as though she was about to cauterise a wound. 'We did come here to discuss a job. So let's discuss it.'

'What's the job?'

'Well, if you thought nice looking girls were the only kind of person you were going to deal with, you're in for a shock.'

'No, I didn't think that at all. What do I have to do?'

Waneta's eyes remained on the cigarette. 'There's a photograph in my bag of the man who has been hired to kill you.'

'What?'

'Tokin has hired him. His name is Akutagawa. He's a skilful assassin based in Tokyo.'

It seemed too fanciful to be taken seriously, so Taro merely chuckled. 'Does Tokin want me to be target practice?'

'No, that is not what he has in mind.' Waneta's eyes seared up at him then. 'What I am to tell you now is between you, Tokin and myself. If it ever comes to be public knowledge, Tokin will kill both of us without qualm. So, you see, we have been joined by more than just passion.'

Taro nodded his assent, wishing he could face this moment with a few more clothes on. 'I will not say anything.'

'Akutagawa is young and very dangerous. He is part of the new breed of Japanese whose only loyalty is to money and whose only interest is the material possessions it brings him. Tokin picked him out from the bosozoku at a very young age and trained him and nurtured him in his deadly profession. Akutagawa is exceptionally talented at what he does, but he has grown arrogant and difficult to control. He has raised his asking price per kill to absurd levels. Tokin intends to bring him back to earth, and his prices along with him. The plan is simple enough. Tokin will hire him for a hit and then ensure its failure.'

Taro frowned. 'Can he ensure failure?'

'Tokin stands to save a lot of money if he can. That should give you some encouragement.'

'Should it? Has Akutagawa ever failed in a job?'

Waneta smiled casually. 'No, I don't think he has, but this is the first time the client and the target will be working in collusion. Also, the contract has a ten day expiry clause, and it commenced at noon today. Warning and instructions will be sent to your phone. They'll help keep you alive.'

Taro sat up and untangled his shirt from the pink bed spread. 'Really? Tokin might save some money if I stay alive but he won't lose anything if I don't.'

'He'll lose the price of the hit. If he was happy to spend that kind of money, he wouldn't be doing this.'

'Can he afford a ticket to China?'

'No, if you disappear like that, Akutagawa's reputation will not suffer sufficiently, nor will his price. You need to stay in range whilst remaining away from his gun sights. A tricky enough task. But you will need to stay in Tokyo.'

Taro's fingers were fumbling ineffectively with his shirt buttons. 'So what do I do?'

'For a start, you'd better stay away from your apartment. Gas, poison, a bullet, Akutagawa's only dilemma would be choosing which way to kill you.'

Taro felt that. 'I just moved in.'

'Too bad. Tokin has ordered the hit on the grounds that you have become unhinged and made wild threats against him and those closest to him. Such a state of mind would certainly keep you away from home, especially if you were on the run from law enforcement. Suddenly Akutagawa would have his work cut out for him. You would be lurking in the shadows with half the police force after you. An assassin's worst case scenario.'

Taro mulled over what he had heard while he finished dressing. He was starting to sweat through his shirt before it was even fully on.

Waneta sucked on her cigarette with pursed lips. 'Tokin devised his plan during a night of heavy drinking. I daresay it's unfortunate for you he didn't drink so much he couldn't remember it the next morning when he put it into effect.'

'I should start drinking too if I want this plan to make sense.'

'That is part of the plan, as a matter of fact, but I suggest you remain very sober as you do it. Tokin uses people and he is using you now. You need to keep your wits about you.'

Taro watched her edgily. 'So what do we do now?'

Waneta shrugged. 'I don't know. I didn't ask you to get dressed.'

'That's right. All you did was set me up against a killer.'

Waneta pulled the white sheet a little higher up on her breasts. 'I've merely dabbed the antiseptic onto your heart. I'm afraid, now it's time to insert the needle. There's a message on the answering machine in your apartment. It's not exactly for you. It's intended for Akutagawa's ears. He may have played it already. He doesn't waste any time. It's the trigger that will explain your dramatic fall into insanity. It's an apology from your girlfriend, Hiromi.'

Taro swallowed hard with the mention of her name. 'An apology?'

Waneta stabbed her cigarette into the bedside ashtray and smiled icily. 'She is pregnant to another man. That man is Koki.'

31

'You must be an excellent singer. Please, sing us a song.' The hostess's tense smile was concealed by the soft light of the karaoke bar. 'You look like the guitar player in the Kinki Kids. Can you sing one of their songs?'

The light couldn't hide Taro's scowl. He snatched the microphone from the offering hand.

'I'll sing a song,' he gnarled. 'But not the Kinki Kids.'

'Which song would you like then?' replied the hostess, who was probably too young to legally drink at the bar she was working at. She edged the song book towards him as innocuously as possible.

Taro's hand, nonetheless, slapped down hard upon it, stopping it dead.

'You choose something.'

The hostess went about the song selection painstakingly, glad to be doing something for her customer that did not involve the pressure of an exchange of words. Although there was more space between her and Taro than with a customer she felt comfortable with, her sweet fragrance was still thick about Taro's nostrils, stirring up his blood more than the whiskey he had been drinking so profusely.

'How about this one?' The hostess excitedly plugged in the song's numbers. 'Are you ready?'

'I'm ready.' Taro leaned back on his barstool and surveyed the smoky hostess club around him. As the music started, he screamed what he saw into the microphone: 'The guy in the corner looks like he was born in a squat toilet. And his girlfriend looks like she was already slopped in there ready to keep him company.' He laughed callously. 'He fell out of an arsehole as big as that fat guy over there. A stinking arsehole that should have been blocked up with cement.'

The hostess shuddered, her smile dissolving into a fit of cheek twitching. Taro took encouragement from it.

'No one's going to make me pay for my drink in this filthy place,' he roared. 'Any glass that this master's grimy fingers have been on is not worth the price of some whore's lipstick smeared across the rim.'

A giant hand enveloped Taro's upper arm. The heavyset man had been scouting for customers out by the train station exit, and now he was here, fulfilling that other part of his job brief: dealing with problem customers. If he had been aware of the extent of Taro's problems, he may have been less polite.

'Your song is finished,' he said calmly. 'It is time for you to leave.'

The man was standing over Taro intimidatingly. A lot of cloth had gone into his black suit.

Taro eyed him coldly. 'The only kind of person that can get me to leave a bar is a lot more beautiful than you,' he said loudly and gestured at the hostess. 'More beautiful than that too. I'm not going to lower my standards just because I'm in a dump.'

The man's grip tightened and started to pull Taro upward. It was the direction Taro was headed anyway. He sprung up into a vicious head-butt, plucking out the man's earpiece and wrapping the wire around his neck. He plonked down with the man, applying enough pressure to prevent the man's fingers sliding in underneath.

'My mistake,' said the master, dropping onto his knees beside Taro with much of his brush-over trailing behind. 'I didn't realise you were a man worthy of so much respect. We don't get many of your type in here. Of course, your drinks are on the house. It is an honour to serve someone like you.'

Taro looked into the frightened eyes and felt stronger. 'I should do something to repay your generous hospitality. How about I teach your man a lesson? You don't kiss someone unless your hope is for getting that kiss back in kind. It's the same with hurting someone. Pain is simply a form of communication. I speak it fluently enough.'

The man in the black suit was starting to go limp. Taro released the choke hold and rolled him onto the master's feet. 'That completes the lesson for today.' He jumped to his feet. 'But I have lessons to give other people as well.' He fetched a pen and notebook from the pockets of his own suit. He scrawled onto a random page "It doesn't matter how big you think you are, you'll fall. Quickly name your baby, because soon I will be naming your death." He tore out the page and slapped it down onto the bar. 'Give this to the cops when you call them.'

'We would never contemplate calling the police,' said the master.

'Yes, you will. Someone has to protect you from me.' Taro kicked the writhing bouncer in the stomach. 'Tell the cops that message is for Tokin.'

32

'Hi. Do you have a light?'

The fashionable young woman nodded. She left her cigarette in her mouth while she fetched it out of her purse. It was a pink stick, the kind sold at convenience stores. Taro leaned into its flame. He held her by the wrist a moment longer, admiring her elaborately painted nails, red and white swirls.

'That's nice work. Did you do it yourself?'

The woman nodded.

Taro let her go and put his cigarette into that hand. He smoked it casually. He felt safe enough here. A designated smoking area at one of the myriad of Tokyo Subway Station exits. There was no reason for him to be there and so there was no reason for a hit man to know he was there. Just another pin prick on Tokyo's convoluted subway map. Somewhere near the Imperial Palace. And it seemed all roads around here led to the Imperial Palace. Or was it just that all no-through roads led to the Imperial Palace?

A rush of people filing past the smoking area meant another train had come and gone in its endless passage through the bowels of Tokyo. Taro stared at them pointedly, hoping to dissuade anyone from stopping there. It seemed to work.

He looked to his new found friend. 'What's your name?'

'Kaori,' she replied.

'I'm Taro.'

She did not respond one way or another.

'It's getting late,' he said. 'Have you been working today?'

After a moment with her cigarette she nodded.

'Where do you work?'

'Jiyugaoka. In a shoe shop.'

'I used to live near there. Now I live in Roppongi.'

'Roppongi is fun,' she said.

'Yeah. Which area do you like best, Midtown Plaza or Roppongi Crossing?'

'Roppongi Hills?' she said.

'Oh, yes. A nice place to shop. I live quite close to there.'

Her cigarette was smoked done now and she lowered it beside her. But she was still standing there. Taro smiled. 'Which shop in Roppongi Hills is your favourite?'

She mused over this question carefully. 'There's a spaghetti restaurant I go to with my sister. Its lunchtime set is very nice.'

'Is that so? I'm not sure I know it.' Taro spat out his cigarette and stamped on it. 'I'm really glad I had this conversation. It's probably the most boring conversation I've had in my whole life and it's been the right tonic to get me calm and cool headed. Boredom has never been so effective.'

He chuckled as he pulled out a folded up advertising flier and a pen.

'If you're writing down your number,' said the young woman sorely, 'you should know I already have a boyfriend.'

'No, that's not what I'm doing, but if all you're getting in your life are these sorts of boring conversations, my number is probably what you need.' He scrawled out a message on the back of the flier and showed it to her: "Your home is mine to enter at will. Koki, you dog, you would be a fool to feel secure."

He walked to a parked bicycle and began threading the note between its front spokes.

'I can't give you my number because you might prove to be a hostile witness.'

He straightened up and turned his attention to a Community Education Centre on the street corner. Without a second thought he picked up the bicycle, ran across the street and flung it at one of the centre's windows. The bicycle bounced off, leaving a large crack in the glass. Taro picked it up and flung it again, grunting with the added exertion. This time the window shattered. There were loud gasps and screams from inside the centre: old people in a panic.

Taro walked back to the stunned young woman, shaking his head. 'Maybe you calmed me down too much. That didn't feel half as good as I hoped it would.'

'That was my bicycle,' the young woman murmured.

Taro saw in her face that she was telling the truth. He smirked. 'It still is your bicycle. It's just hit a small bump, that's all. Still, I'm sorry I did it. As you can see, I'm not in a good place mentally at the moment. Tell the cops I'll be happy to confess to my crimes. All I ask is that they catch me first.'

The street was getting crowded with bystanders and people rushing out of the community centre on earthquake footing. Taro had the urge to hit someone, especially one of those ageing businessmen who always looked upon him with judgemental eyes. That would be the best reason to smash a window: to draw out those judgemental eyes, just so that Taro could lay them straight with a hard fist. But he had to keep moving. If the police really did get hold of him they would keep him in custody at least long enough for an assassin to catch up with him.

Taro patted the young woman on the arm and ran. The wall of gathering bystanders was easily negotiated. Their jaws were so limp a dentist could have gone straight to work.

Taro ran for an exhausting ten minutes before he dared check behind him. There was no sign of pursuit. The police would be getting tied up at the crime scene, for the witnesses would be feeling even more insecure if they didn't take the time to listen to them.

Taro flicked his phone open to a message: "If your unannounced houseguest is being neglected, it might mean you're still alive. Good night wherever you are. WM."

Wherever he was.

Taro sunk his hands idly into his pockets and started walking. He soon came to a main road and a sign pointing towards Ueno. Ueno Park was one of the biggest in Tokyo. And a well-known spot for homeless sleeping rough. That would do him.

He lent into the cool wind as he headed that way. As lonely and outcast as he had become in the world, he was not given to feeling dejected about it, perhaps because he simply couldn't imagine a life that better suited him. It wasn't much of a life, so no need to fret that it might soon be over. Any pain he felt in the meantime was just a consequence of buying a little more time.

33

Taro awoke in the same position on the wooden bench in Ueno Park as he had started. The crispness in the air and the small sprinkling of exercisers told him that the morning was still young. That was not surprising, it was not the kind of place where someone would sleep late. A manga comic book omnibus and his folded up jacket had not stopped Taro's neck from getting sore. He stiffly hauled himself up into a sitting position.

'Good morning,' came a voice to the side.

Taro did not like the idea that someone was looking at him while he was in this kind of a state. The voice was strong and direct. And steady. It couldn't have been one of those health-nut early bird joggers doing laps.

'Sleep well?' the man added. Obviously he was not going to be ignored.

Taro turned with his shoulders.

'How are you?' said the man. 'I'm Shimizu.' He was a smiling, chirpy young man. He was occupying the next bench along the row. He looked about Taro's age. He had short black hair, a square jaw and a long neck. The curvature of his back suggested he had spent his life trying to be shorter than he was – not a trait of the average assassin.

Taro relaxed a tad. 'Good morning.'

'Couldn't afford a taxi?' Shimizu said.

'What?'

'You're wearing a suit so I don't figure you as a regular Ueno Park resident. I guess you were out drinking past the last train.'

People were usually not this talkative with strangers unless they had been plying some bars themselves.

'I didn't miss the last train,' said Taro. 'And I don't have a train to catch today.'

'Well, it probably wasn't you using the public toilets. I've never seen such a mess. Would you like a coffee?'

Taro glanced at his watch. It was six o'clock and there was a mosquito bite next to the watch face. He had slept four hours, more off than on. He would have to live another day before he got another chance.

'Ok. Sounds good.'

Shimizu maintained his stoop on his feet. They walked against the flow of joggers down to the 24 hour McDonalds. Shimizu ordered coffee to go.

'Take out?' said Taro. 'We could have got something out the vending machines and saved ourselves a walk.'

'It's worth it. It's good when you can see your maker in the eye. We can't do it with our lives so at least we should do it with the food that keeps us alive. For me, that means McDonalds.'

'What about your parents?'

Shimizu didn't reply.

They ambled through the market streets around Ueno Station that in a few hours would be a hive of activity. Taro used his teeth to open the packets of sugar. Shimizu looked at him with surprise, as though he expected more civility from a man in a suit, even one who had spent the night on a park bench.

'You really don't have a home to go to?' Shimizu asked.

'Not one worth going to.'

'I've heard of homeless men who hide the shame behind a suit.'

'I thought all businessmen hide their shame behind their suits.'

Shimizu's eyes lit up. 'If that's the way you feel, there's a night bus to Shikoku Island. You can come with me. I've got a friend with a surf shop there. He's asked me to go help him out.' He pulled out of his baggy trousers a ratty-paged notebook. 'The address is in here. It's the only possession I've got left.'

'I can't surf,' murmured Taro.

'Don't be stupid; it's the customers that surf. You can suntan, can't you? Get a good suntan and everyone will assume you're a surf king. There won't be much money but he has some bungalows out the back where we can sleep. I've been there before. It's right up against the beach.'

Taro drank his coffee and frowned. 'I don't think I can.'

'Why not? Don't tell me, you're a little bit homeless but what you're really doing is looking for a home for that suit. Is that it?'

'No, it's not like that.'

'Well, what is it? People's lives end with heart attacks all the time. So, be your own heart attack. Go in a new direction.'

Taro finished off the rest of the coffee. 'I don't know. I have to think about it. Can I call you?'

'That's a nice idea but my notebook doesn't take calls. I sold my phone to pay for my bus ticket. Never mind. The bus is departing from the JR terminal at Shinjuku Station. If you decide to come, you can meet me there at eleven o'clock tonight.'

A message came through Taro's phone. 'I've still got my phone,' he sighed ruefully. He flicked it open to the message: "You haven't made the morning news. You'll have to try harder. WM."

The message held his attention for a good while after he had finished reading it.

'Whatever you think is keeping you in Tokyo will flow under any surfboard you ride,' urged Shimizu. 'Trust me on that.'

Taro picked up his pace, leaving Shimizu behind. 'I've got to go. I will see you tonight, if I can.'

Shimizu waved a farewell with his notebook.

34

She was wearing a white mini-skirt and black high heel boots. Her legs were long and slim. Although her face was less than symmetrical and her jaw was jutting, Taro did not even look. He stopped behind her, put his mobile phone under her miniskirt and snapped a photo. He stepped away smirking.

Even if she had not realised what he had done, there were other eyes upon him. Harajuku Station would not be busy until shop opening hours, but there was a sprinkling of people waiting for their morning trains, and some of the businessmen had been admiring the woman for themselves. Taro brushed aside their glares with a taunting kiss to the phone.

He walked further along the platform in search of another addition to his collection. It would not take long, for in such a fashionable part of Tokyo there were miniskirts aplenty. More admonishing eyes emerged upon the platform, however, and this time, with their accompanying police uniforms, Taro paid more attention. They had come down the stairs in a group of four; Taro knew how they work: they patrolled in pairs and made their arrests in packs of four or more. And if he was in any doubt as to their purpose, there was also a station attendant trailing behind the police, his eyes also boring into Taro. Probably he had called them in. The station was interwoven with cameras, and Taro's performance was inevitably going to draw this kind of response.

He took another couple of steps towards them, taking comfort in their chubby physiques, telling himself that soft bodies equalled soft minds and that he for one could not afford either. He turned and ran.

The automated announcement of an impending train came onto the speakers. Taro set himself to beat it to the end of the platform. A train line geared towards carrying five million passengers a day moved swiftly and relentlessly and he would have to sprint at his fastest to beat it. The police were shouting for him to stop, which worked to his advantage for at least everyone else on the platform obeyed, giving him a clear run. He passed the woman in the white miniskirt. She had her head bowed and he suddenly felt sorry about involving her. He wanted to stop and tell her the pictures weren't going anywhere, but that would have meant certain capture. He reached the end of the platform and did not even stop to check the progress of the oncoming train. He could feel the shudder, he knew it was close. He jumped down onto the tracks and ran across them, making a despairing lunge onto the wire perimeter fence at the end of the platform. He had eluded the train by a split second.

He climbed the fence and carefully straddled the sharpened points at the top. He waited for the train to clear the platform. The police would be hoping he was under the wheels, for they would be able to clear up the case as quickly as it took to clear up the mess and they could bill his family for the effort. Taro stayed on the fence to meet their eyes. The train slowly moved away and he found the police had gathered at the end of the platform. He gave them a taunting smile and retrieved a note from his shirt pocket. It read: "Women cannot prevent my advances. Let them try to spurn me." He stabbed it onto the wire fence. He was relieved that this was the last note Waneta had instructed him to leave. He was fast tiring of making himself worthy of an assassin's attention. But there was still work to done. He was yet to make the news.

35

Taro had breakfast at a corner café in downtown Tokyo. Spaghetti and black coffee. As he ate, he scrolled through the pictures on his phone. Only a couple of them were clear enough to even catch a glimpse of underwear; there, however, had been a perverse pleasure in taking them that he did not much like. Waneta's instructions had not included what to do with the pictures, so he took it upon himself to delete them. He felt better then. But a bitter aftertaste remained. He recalled Waneta's warning about Tokin's unscrupulous use of people. He knew he was being used now and he could think of no other course of action than to trying seeing it through to the end.

After breakfast he went looking for a knife. Japanese cuisine with its slithers of fish and vegetables required the sharpest knives in the world, so he knew he would be spoilt for choice. As he browsed through the shops, he recalled Yasahiro, the pizza maker at Domino's Pizza. The man had been a renowned sushi chef until the pressure of having to please discerning customers night after night had finally overcome him. Now all Yasahiro had left were the knives. And the only reason he had continued to work in any sort of kitchen was so he could justify keeping them. 'Air and water belong to our maker,' he would say as he effortlessly cut through the ingredients of his toppings, 'but steel belongs to man.'

Taro bought the kind of knife Yasahiro would have approved of: long bladed, heavy, exquisitely balanced and supremely sharp. He threw out the box and slipped the knife into his jacket's deep inner pocket. He took a train to Tokyo Station.

One company owned all the land around the station and charged exorbitant prices for the exclusive leases. Many of the major companies in Japan were only too willing to base their headquarters there, to demonstrate their power and importance. It meant that standing on the station corner he could see many of the kind of cars he hated most: the chauffeur-driven ones. Sitting behind drawn silk curtains with the world at their feet and legions of unquestioning workers at their disposal were Japan's business elite. They were the target Taro wanted. He waited for a red light before running at a line of them, slashing their tyres in a frenzy. The knife performed beautifully, slicing through the rubber with all the ease of the raw fish it had been intended for.

Taro ran off then, leaving the intersection in chaos. This, he knew, would certainly make the news. Perhaps it was owing to its old samurai past that the people in Japan were more concerned about someone running amok with a blade than what carnage a firearm might cause. It seemed to strike a nerve.

36

'I don't know what's come over me. I wouldn't usually give myself over to a pervert like you. Taking pictures up young school girls' dresses is deranged.' Waneta smiled and kissed him. 'I suppose I'm not too angry. After all, I've taken you to one of the best love hotels in Tokyo.'

Taro was lying on his back on warm silver satin sheets in a queen sized bed next to her, enjoying the stunning view of Shinjuku's skyscraper district outside a large golden framed window. The bed certainly beat for comfort the park bench he had been lying on the previous evening. If only he had actually been able to sleep here awhile. Even if it was just an afternoon nap. He glanced up at himself in the ceiling mirror. It seemed that the dark mood swirling through his mind had not leaked out to the rest of him. His body looked strong, fresh and perhaps even innocent. It occurred to him that some tattoos would have helped to describe what kind of body it really was. He mulled over this. He hoped he could find the time to get something done. Something to look at when he looked at himself in the mirror.

Waneta reached over him to check the time on the bedside clock radio. 'It's almost three o'clock. Would you like to hear what the radio has to say about you?'

Taro shrugged. 'As long as they don't have a name, they can say what they want.'

'They only have a description. Tall, short hair, around twenty. I had trouble finding you in Shinjuku Station, and I had a lot more to go on than that.' She reached even further across the bedside table to her handbag; while he was preoccupied trying to kiss her breasts, she fished out a hand gun. 'Akutagawa is still the one you should be worried about. Remember, he has that nasty habit of never failing a job.' She put the gun down on his belly. 'Tokin wouldn't approve. But in Brazil, when our life is threatened, we make sure we have an answer prepared for every question.'

'I've never fired a gun before,' said Taro, taking hold of it.

'Have you ever played shooting games on your TV?'

'Of course.'

'Well, that's all the practice you're going to get. Anyone with a gun in his hand has a chance to kill someone; that's what makes guns so dangerous.' She dropped down on the bed beside him. She gently stroked his chest. 'With every cop in Tokyo now keeping an eye out for you, all you'll have to do is lie low. I've got a place in mind. A friend of mine has gone back to Brazil for a few months. She's asked me to keep an eye on the place. A nice, traditional double storey home, stocked up with a week's worth of groceries. Sound good?'

Taro nodded, his mind wandering to the previous evening in the park and waking up to Shimizu and his offer. He was in Shinjuku now. Not far from the bus station. All he had to do was wait a few hours and walk down there. A new life in a surf shop. One cramped night on the road would take him there.

Taro glanced at Waneta. Her makeup was off, just the way he liked it. She was beautiful and fascinating but would never really be a part of his life. He had grown up with Hiromi, she was the one who had comforted him when his father died. He regretted how poorly he had treated her and he could not deny that her departure had left behind a gaping wound. Stitching it up, no matter how crudely, was all he could think about. If it took more days like this one or a lifetime's scrubbing the floors of a remote surf shop, he would do it. All he knew was he couldn't go home. That was the life he had lost.

'Alright,' he said. 'Your friend's house will do fine. I will appreciate the chance to rest and think about things. Are we going there now?'

'Yes,' whispered Waneta. 'But don't stress yourself out thinking too much. Remember, by the time you've been called in to do something, the thinking has already been done, and by experts in their fields. That's why everything has been running so smoothly.'

Taro did not reply. He did not tell her that what he wanted to think about was whether now was the right time to get out or not. And he did not tell her that the gun in his hand didn't feel much different to his hairbrush.

37

It was ten o'clock in the evening and Taro still hadn't made his choice. He would have to go soon. The double storey house, his sanctuary until there was no longer a price on his head, was a half hour walk out of Shinjuku. Taro would have to decide if he was going to settle in or head for the bus station and a one way trip to Shikoku and its beautiful surf beaches.

As he procrastinated, Taro glanced around the house from a very comfortable recliner chair in the living room. The open plan revealed much. There was a TV with satellite channels, there was a well-stocked kitchen, and there was the biggest bed Taro had seen outside a love hotel. Waneta said she would drop by when she could. There was a considerable porn collection to keep him preoccupied in the meantime. Some of the covers were quite eye catching. Although they were all Portuguese, he doubted there would be much talking to be had anyway. But something to while away the hours.

His phone rang on his lap and Waneta's name came up on the screen. He wondered if the porn collection might be a topic of conversation. Waneta had shown him the television but neglected to mention what was in the cabinet underneath. Now would be as good a time as any to make amends.

'Hello,' he said as smoothly as he could. 'I found something we might want to watch together.'

She didn't even hear him. 'I've betrayed you.' The voice was choked up and barely decipherable.

'What did you say?'

He heard her swallow hard, and her voice came with a pant. 'He took someone close to me, put a gun to her head. I told him where you are. I gave him your address.'

'Who?' Taro felt cold beads of sweat roll down ribcage from his armpit.

'Akutagawa.'

Taro stood up from the living room sofa. He closed his arms to stamp out the flow of sweat. 'When did you tell him?'

'Around forty minutes ago. I've been pacing up and down not knowing what to do. I've tried to call Tokin, but I can't reach him. You're on your own. Get out of there.'

'Do I have time?'

'I think he's already there.'

'Can you call the police?'

'That's not a choice. If you call the police, Tokin will kill you.'

'What can I do?'

'If you stay in that house, you're dead for certain. You've simply got to get out.'

'But he's waiting for me.'

'The way he took me, used me, I understand now why they say he is the best.'

The line went dead.

Taro was going to throw up. With half a bottle of whiskey inside him and his heart pounding with the tension, he couldn't think straight. The gun was still in his pocket. He pulled it out and felt it in his hand. He would walk out waving it in front of him; if he caused a panic, it might put the assassin off. Or maybe it was a sniper's bullet that was awaiting him. That wouldn't be so bad: death without a face.

Taro turned off the television and picked up the house keys. He wasn't going to run. For the most deadly hit man in Tokyo, he was going to walk.

He didn't make it to the front door. It flew open. A man charged in. He was tall and wiry and there was a gun in his hand.

Taro pressed against the wall to steady his aim. The eyes that flashed on him were burning with a raw fury. Taro knew he couldn't let the gun come onto him as well. It would mean instant death. But it was already moving, so quickly it was just a blur. Taro's eyes slipped off it to the man himself. He was wearing a ubiquitous black suit and white shirt. After he had shot Taro, he could ride a train home like everyone else. He could while away the journey reading a newspaper or surfing the internet on his phone. Taro's death would merely be an obligation fulfilled, a name on a daily schedule that could be ticked off. Taro would do anything to avoid such an ignoble fate. A mix of repulsion and determination shook him out of his malaise and he pulled the trigger. His good fortune was where his gun happened to be pointed. The man's head whipped back. Blood and brain matter spattered across the wall. The body dropped limp, like a pile of dirty laundry.

Taro did not fire a second shot. He knew there was no need. He did not look down as he walked past the body. He went straight out the house and down the street, moving in a daze. He walked for blocks and blocks and still he did not look up - the weight of killing another person.

He took a taxi to Shinjuku. It was not until halfway through the trip that he realised the gun was still in hand. The taxi driver had been too unobservant to even notice it. Taro slipped the gun into his jacket pocket, checking that the stone-faced taxi driver's eyes were still on the road.

He turned his attention to the people going about their businesses on the narrow footpaths outside the taxi. There was more than glass separating them now.

The head had exploded with the bullet. It may have only been a hit man's brain, but it was on lease from a superior being, and Taro had desecrated it.

He stared fixedly at his hands as he paid the taxi driver. There were ten fingers that had suddenly become strangers to him. He worked hard to get the money across and didn't wait for the change. He got out of the taxi and didn't look back, skipping across the road to the bus station. The bus station's entrance hall was a hive of activity. Overhead screens were listing pending departures to Nagoya and Aichi. The people milling around looked about as homeless and lost as did Taro.

'I want a one-way ticket to Shikoku Island,' Taro said at the ticket window.

'That bus has already departed,' replied the attendant earnestly. 'The next departure is at seven tomorrow morning.'

Taro backed away to a wall. There were a couple of unkempt young men, backpacks on shoulders, who reminded him of Shimizu. Perhaps Taro could ask them where they were going and get himself invited along; another life in another faraway place.

Taro snarled at himself for being so squeamish. All he had done was solve a problem. Tokin had been suffering a hit man with an overinflated opinion and value of himself, now he wasn't. Akutagawa had disrespected him too, barging into the house like he had been late for another appointment. No strategy, no tact; without the element of surprise he had not been much of a hit man at all.

Taro spat on the concrete floor of the bus station. He couldn't get out of this decaying, depressing building soon enough. He strode onto the street. Probably it would be safe to return to his Roppongi apartment. Or at the very least he would stay at an expensive hotel. No more sleeping in parks. He was moving up in the world.

The Central Hotel was closest. It would do. Taro was walking that way when a message sounded in his phone. He snapped open the phone, wondering if it was Waneta in one of her check-ups to see if he was still alive. He did not know how he would feel about that. She had both betrayed him and saved his life in the one moment, so their relationship was complicated. But the message turned out to be from Tokin himself. It was instructions. And there was nothing complicated about them.

38

'You did what you had to do. No hard feelings. You simply proved that he really was being overpaid.'

Tokin hadn't shaved. And he was wearing dark sunglasses and a black leather jacket. He was looking just the way those old late night movie stereotypes said he should.

There were three black Mercedes Benzes parked in a row in the downtown Shinagawa street. Tokyo Tower was looming large over a crush of office buildings jostling for height like trees in a forest striving to claim the most sunlight. The tower was also directly behind Tokin. Tokin firmly grabbed Taro by the arm and steered him through his bodyguards to the last of the cars.

Taro's heart was pounding again - almost to the level he experienced with Akutagawa's visit. He wasn't sure if it was reservation or excitement he was feeling with Tokin's decided look of approval.

'I've still got the gun,' Taro said. 'Should I ditch it?'

Tokin frowned. 'Why would you do that? It's expensive, and it seems to work.' He slapped a heavy white envelope against Taro's chest. 'This can keep it company. Forget anonymous deposits. I want you to see what those numbers on a cash machine really represent. And I want you to see clearly the hand that feeds you.'

The envelope was unsealed. The amount of money may not have actually allowed it to be sealed – though the denominations were small. Mostly one thousand yen notes. Taro's eyes widened upon them.

'Hard times require hard currency,' said Tokin. 'Are you ok?'

Taro nodded.

'Are you sure? You've come a long way in a short time.'

'I really am fine.'

'That's good. All the same, it would be best if you went away awhile. All those warnings to the police have worked them up into quite a state. I doubt even I can protect you from them. I will leave this car at your disposal. The tank is full. And I guarantee you'll appreciate the handling.' Tokin gestured to the backseat. 'You've got a passenger.'

Taro tried vainly to see into the tinted glass.

'It's the young woman you brought to us from Osaka,' said Tokin.

'Rie?'

'It didn't work out for her at the Takarazuka Music School and I'm afraid to say it hasn't worked out for her here, either.'

Taro bowed in apology. 'I'm sorry to hear that.'

'Never mind. These things happen. Really your choice of girl was quite understandable. She has a lovely smile. It is just unfortunate that the pressure of being away from home proved too much. She has been given a mild sedative to relax her on the journey back to Osaka.' Tokin glanced at his watch. The diamond encrusted gold band shimmered with the street lights. 'I would like her to wake up and find that she is home. That will be my present to her.'

'May I stop off at my apartment?' asked Taro. 'I would like to change clothes.'

Tokin replied with a barely discernible shake of the head. 'Your apartment might not be safe. There might even be booby traps. I'll have to send my boys to check it out. It will be ready for you when you get back.'

'I understand.'

'I am happy with your work, Taro. I have made money on failures and lost money on success. It is a quirk of life. Go now. It is getting late but after an evening like this I doubt you will fall asleep at the wheel any time soon. Am I correct?' He chuckled.

Taro noticed the deadly cold faces of the two bodyguards. Would Taro one day work his way up to such a level and such a constitution?

'Yes, I'm sure you're right,' he said and bowed again.

'The keys are in the ignition and your destination has been inputted into the navigation unit. We'll contact you when you get back. Have a safe journey.'

Taro got into the car. The luxurious interior had a plastic smell to it. He looked over his shoulder at Rie. She was slumped in the backseat, her head tilted awkwardly back against the window, in a similar manner to Akutagawa's head just as it was losing its contents to the wall. She was pale and her eyes were shut in a tight squint. Her fake eyelashes were jutting out sharply. She was unseasonably dressed in a heavy green suede jacket with a black scarf around her neck. Her Louis Vuitton bag was beside her. It looked like it had gotten some use. In fact it was quite dirty.

Taro turned back to the front, taking hold of the steering wheel and looking over the sleek dashboard and all its controls. He suddenly realised the engine was running: it had been idling so quietly he hadn't even noticed. Beyond the front windscreen, Tokin and his bodyguards were in a huddle. Taro could only wonder at what they might have been talking about. He put the car into reverse and an alarm reminded him to fasten his seatbelt.

39

The enraged truck horn drew Taro's attention back to the road. He battled frantically to realign the car with the lane it had been drifting from.

'Wake up!' he screamed at himself.

It was 3am and the port city of Nagoya was being pointed to by the expressway road signs; it was a halfway point on the way to Osaka. The Mercedes Benz responded superbly to Taro's touch, gripping the road and effortlessly accelerating away from the truck it had been tangling with.

Taro himself was not regaining control with the same vigour. The numb shock he had been feeling had dissipated into a deep fatigue. He still liked the idea of meeting the new day several hundred kilometres from the place where he had just murdered a man, but it would require the most potent of energy drinks he could buy. The next roadhouse would take care of that.

He checked on Rie through the rear-view mirror. Although her head had shifted position from the window to a headrest, she was still sleeping soundly. Taro, however, thought he noticed something new. He wasn't quite sure what but he was stuck by an icy sensation. It was just a hunch. He turned on the interior light. Then he realised what was wrong and the car was drifting across the lane again. Bruises covered her neck in flaming shades of purple and scarlet. The scarf that had been covering them had fallen away. Taro turned off the light again. He put a cigarette into his mouth without any particular urge to light it. His senses became attuned to everything and he took in nothing.

He took the next exit ramp and came out at a two lane local road: he turned from that onto another road and then another. He started to notice the night sky. He had forgotten how dark it could be and how many stars there were to pierce the darkness. He had reached a road without streetlights. It was narrow and the edges were muddy and crumbling. Taro pulled into the side, up against a large rice field. He turned off the engine and the cicadas roared in after it, filling the night with their melancholy rhythm.

Taro got out of the car. He spat out the cigarette as though it was already spent and replaced it with a fresh one: this time he lit it, and he smoked it slowly and deliberately. There was one light visible, coming from a distant farmhouse. There was a rustle of trees as a breeze rose off the fields. Even with the cigarette in his mouth, Taro could tell this air was much fresher than the Tokyo variety.

As he neared the end of the cigarette, he scratched the stubble on his chin and opened the Mercedes Benz's back door. Rie was still motionless inside. Taro spat out the cigarette and climbed in beside her. He used his lighter to take a closer look at her. He pulled down on her blouse: the bruises ran all the way around her neck. He looked over the rest of her and noticed that her fingernails were cracked and bloody and there were abrasions on the knuckles. He lowered the lighter below her waist. She was wearing a black miniskirt and the skin of her thighs was soft and silky smooth and exquisitely beautiful. Taro found himself staring despite himself; it was the same feeling of forbidden excitement he had got at Harajuku Station when he had been not so stealthily taking shots of teenage undergarments at the behest of his deranged lover, Waneta.

The cigarette lighter's flame was flickering out. Taro relit it and leaned further over. From his new angle he could see that what he first thought were shadows were in fact bruises about the inner thighs. He felt a sickly repulsion and realised there was no beauty here.

From behind a hand grabbed him by the belt and yanked him powerfully backwards. His teeth smacked together as he hit his head on the roof and he was flung out the car and onto the ground of stone, grass and dirt. A blinding flashlight shone into his face and a boot heel clamped down on his chest.

'In the years to come teenagers will dare themselves to stay out at night here,' said the icy male voice from behind the flashlight. 'The scene of a notorious murder-suicide. The cop killing homicidal gangster and the beautiful Takarazuka Review hopeful, kidnapped, raped and shot.' The man chuckled coarsely. 'The teenagers will hear your death screams in every gust of wind.' The man turned off the flashlight. No need to waste batteries as well as a bullet.'

Through the dense cloud of afterglow clogging Taro's vision, all he could make out was a fragment of a silhouette - tall and thin, and the gun was a clearly discernible extension of a very long hand. The assuredness in the voice was unmistakable: it was Koki Nishikawa.

'You want to know why I called you a cop killer?' said Koki.

'Yes.' Taro was repulsed by how feeble his own voice sounded in reply.

'Too bad. I'm not going to waste a conversation on that. You're going to shoot yourself and I get to decide how clumsy you go about doing it. Maybe you blow off a nose and an ear before you get down to the serious business of blowing out your brains.' There was a pause. 'Or maybe you put a bullet in your throat and drown in your own blood. The police will not worry about the details or bother with the forensics. They will not let a bloody crime scene get in the way of clean paperwork. Sweet Rie of course will get hers mercifully quick. She deserves nothing less. A psychopath like you, on the other hand, would be in the eyes of the law a likely candidate for self-mutilation. I think I am going to take advantage of that.'

Taro tried to get upright, but the foot compressing down on his ribs did not waiver. Koki drew the gun closer to dissuade him from any further wriggling.

'Alright, I'll give you a chance of a quick end too,' said Koki. 'I'm having a baby girl with your beautiful girlfriend. It wasn't planned but what in life is? Tell me what you think is a good name for a girl. If I like it, I'll kill you quick and then suggest it to her. That's the deal.'

Taro looked away to the stars in a parting gesture - not being able to see them clearly was disappointing, for it was going to be the last time. He closed his eyes.

'Hiromi,' he said.

'Yes, that's a very good name,' replied Koki coldly. 'Too bad it's already taken. Never mind -'

What started as a final taunt descended into a gargle. A warm, sickly sweet liquid sprayed onto Taro. He cringed away, fearing it was spit or vomit or perhaps he was being urinated on again. But then the gargling became hideously more pronounced, a desperate battle for life. Finally it began to ebb and Koki collapsed across Taro's legs, his hands continuing to grasp desperately at his throat. Taro could feel the life draining out of him. He reached up to one of the hands at the cut throat and knocked it away. The hand started to return and he knocked it away again. It was becoming too weak to resist.

Taro realised there was someone standing where Koki had been. The person squatted down beside him. It was Rie.

'You should thank him,' she said in a low, flat voice, 'for saving your life.' She held up the large pocket knife's bloody blade. 'You were a second away from getting this yourself.'

The grotesque gargling had ceased at last. Rie knelt down and wiped the knife clean on Koki's body like it were some kind of primeval ritual. Taro kicked Koki away from him and picked himself up. The spilt blood was still warm on his face. He dubbed at it with a handkerchief.

Rie was staring at him.

'Did he give you those bruises?' Taro asked sombrely.

'You sent me to him,' said Rie. 'He turned me into a prostitute. He gave me drugs to keep me awake and then he gave me drugs to put me to sleep. He was supposed to also give me drugs to make me dependent, but he took those ones himself. He was a fool.' She kicked the lifeless body. 'I want to have more feeling when I cut someone's throat. But a prostitute doesn't have feelings. Maybe that's one area where he succeeded quite nicely.'

'I'm sorry.' Taro gently reached over and took the knife out of her hand - he was somewhat surprised that she let him. He squeezed the handle tightly so that his prints were upon it and tossed it away into the grass. I'll tell the police I did it.'

He felt around the grass until he found Koki's gun. It was a large silver automatic pistol. It probably had its origins in the military. It hung heavy as Taro placed it in his jacket pocket.

Taro stepped onto the quiet road, eyeing a low lying black sports car parked thirty metres further along. 'That's his car,' he said. 'If you want to be alone, I'll take that one.'

Rie came over to him, hugging herself for warmth. 'Do you want to return to Tokyo?'

'I can't. Because I don't know why they wanted to kill us.'

'Well, you can take me home then. I have this in case you fall asleep again.' She dangled the pocket knife before him. 'It wasn't yours to throw away.'

40

Taro had kept the slip of paper bearing Inspector Hakate's phone number. The public telephone he was using was in an out of the way corner of Umeda Station in central Osaka. The morning rush hour was passed and the department store clerks were bowing in courtesy at the entrances to the first shoppers of the day.

As the Inspector's mobile phone rang, Taro tried to stretch out his sore knees and elbows. He had ditched the Mercedes Benz one maddening traffic jam too late. As nice a car as it was, he would be happy never to see it again.

'Inspector Hakate here.' The voice was abrupt and brimming with an intimidating intelligence.

'This is Taro Takeda. I need to talk with you.' The voice smacked of desperation.

'I know it was you. I can feel it in my bones.'

'I heard about it on the radio news. Was he the one you mentioned? The cop who shot Tokin's son?'

'Are you going to plead innocent? You don't shoot a policeman and plead innocent. You get the death penalty.'

'I want to talk with you face to face.'

'Are you in Tokyo?'

'Osaka.'

'I'll go there. Do you have a number?'

'Call me again in the afternoon.'

The line went dead. Taro retrieved his phone card from the slot and rejoined the flow of people in the station's myriad of passageways. He bought a Daily Yomiuri newspaper at a kiosk by the ticket gates and rode an escalator down into the basement shopping level.

Rie was where he had left her in the quiet Doutor coffee house. She was pecking at the corners of an omelette on toast.

'You were gone a long time,' Rie said.

'The newspaper kiosk was a long way away,' replied Taro as he sat down.

Rie looked around to check for any potential eaves droppers. 'If they've only found him recently, it would be on the internet, not in the newspaper.'

'I suppose you're right.' Taro didn't mention that what he really wanted to read was occupying most of the front page. He ordered a coffee and a bagel from the softly spoken waitress and his eyes scanned over it again. "Policeman Shot in Tokyo" was the headline. It told of a policeman gunned down while conducting a raid on a Tokyo address. The policeman was named as the decorated officer Koichi Okada. Married with a young child. Residents heard shots at approximately 10pm. No arrests had yet been made. The police currently did not have a suspect. It had been over twenty years since a policeman had been murdered in Tokyo either on-duty or off-duty. The exact location of the murder was not mentioned. The article concluded with an assurance from the Chief of Police that a quick arrest would be of the highest priority. No resource would be spared.

The coffee and bagel arrived and Taro put the paper down.

Rie had discovered her appetite and was making large inroads into her omelette. She was prettily made up with the high-end cosmetics she had purchased back in Tokyo. Her appearance did not reflect the time she had had.

'What will you do now?' she asked.

'There's someone I have to meet in the afternoon,' replied Taro guardedly. 'How about you?'

Rie shrugged. 'The life I had before seems better to me now than it did. Maybe because I might not be able to get it back again.'

'You'll have it,' said Taro. He slurped at his coffee. 'I'm sorry about dragging you to Tokyo.'

'It's made me a stronger person,' said Rie coldly.

'Yes, I can see that.'

'Takarazuka was my dream. Everything else that remains is just the stinking world I have to contend with.'

'You could try again.'

'Maybe I will. I'm never going back to Tokyo.' Rie used her mobile phone to snap his picture. 'If I ever have a bad dream about what I did, I'll look at your picture. I saved your life and that will hopefully make me feel better.'

'Yes,' said Taro half-heartedly.

'I heard what Koki said about your girlfriend. Did he steal her from you?'

Taro's eyes shied away. 'I wasn't much of a boyfriend.'

'I've seen worse. I think your girlfriend will say that now, too. I feel sorry for her. The life of a single mother is not easy. Maybe she will decide to terminate her pregnancy. Or maybe she will name her daughter Koki and try to take care of her.'

'Koki is a boy's name.'

'Yes, Koko would have to do. And she would see Koki every time she looked at her. The way I see my dream when I look at Takarazuka. Maybe you could help her by pretending to be the father.'

Taro stood up bitterly. 'That would be unwise. Not many girls have lost two fathers before they were even born.'

Hurt came into Rie's eyes as he walked away.

41

Inspector Hakate was waiting at Osaka's Dotonburi Bridge. He was wearing a dark brown suit, a white shirt and had a steel-capped briefcase tucked under his arm. He was perusing the colourful Glico sign, just like most of the tourists taking in and wandering about the famous bridge.

Taro had been watching him from a distance, building up courage. He was wearing a grey suit he had bought in the shopping arcade on the way there – the peril of fronting himself to a policeman with a murder victim's blood stains on his clothing came to him almost as an afterthought. As he approached Hakate, he wondered if there was backup lurking in the backdrop and if he would even have a chance to speak with him before a battalion of police descended upon him. It might well have depended whether or not Hakate really believed he was a cop killer. This meeting would be a definitive way to find out.

Hakate did not turn with Taro's proximity. It seemed unlikely that the sixth sense of a decorated detective could be so dull. A more likely explanation in Taro's mind was that a clutch of snipers on the rooftops was watching Hakate's back for him. Surely, it couldn't have been because he considered him harmless.

'Thank you for coming so far to see me,' said Taro, officially announcing his presence.

Hakate turned gradually to face him, revealing an expression of dour detachment. 'Not many criminals are this inviting or glad to see me,' he murmured.

'Shall we go somewhere to talk?' said Taro. 'A café?'

'Sip tea in a café?' Hakate was incredulous. He shook his head. 'Don't underestimate my anger.'

Taro shied away from the eyes boring into him. He looked out across the narrow Dotonburi River passing under the bridge beneath him. The river was banked by concrete walls alongside which pathways ran on a course marked by takoyaki and ramen restaurants. The river water was a polluted brown and sat heavy with a meandering current to carry it along.

'So tell me,' said Taro. 'The shot policeman, Okada, was he the one that shot Tokin's son?'

'Yes.'

'I think I was tricked into shooting him.'

'So you admit it?'

'And I think he was tricked into trying to shoot me.'

'Do you think he was lured into loving a Takarazuka dropout? Did you even know that you were in her residence when you shot him?'

Taro's eyes widened.

'The Police Chief may also have been introduced to her pleasures,' continued Hakate. 'This is shaping as a very ugly case. But the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. You deceived the girl into going to Tokyo and then forced her to provide sexual services – services taken up by certain senior members of the police force. You had a run in with one of those members, quite possibly as you attempted blackmail and extortion, and the end result was the bloody carnage that occurred last night.'

'That's not the way it happened,' urged Taro.

'Perhaps not. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that this version is so compelling it may well scare away a deeper police investigation. Instead, the powers above will construct a swift, publicly acceptable closure. Tokin may have orchestrated this but he will never have to answer for it. He has left that to you.'

'Yes, I'll answer for it. I understand that. It's my mother I'm worried about.'

Hakate nodded. 'I made a threat, didn't I? Well, the key participants are now dead and your mother will soon have the knowledge her son is a cold blooded killer of policemen. So, my threat is just a thin film of oil on a very dark ocean. She will die from this one way or another, you can count on that. If I do not touch her, it will be from shame and guilt. It will be a slow, agonising demise.' Hakate looked at Taro carefully, seeking to read his reaction. 'You do know the other key participant is also dead? Koki Nishikawa was found this morning with his throat slashed. A poor farmer got the shock of his life. Forensics is on the scene now.'

Taro lit a cigarette, straining hard to keep his hand steady.

'Let's go,' said Hakate. 'You're not going to answer all my questions with your cheap cigarettes and a view of freedom to enjoy.'

'I didn't come here to give myself up.'

'That's fine. Now that we've come together I can just arrest you.'

Taro shook his head and edged a step back. 'I know the system. If I'm on death row, my mother won't know which will be the day of the execution. It will be withheld from her. She won't know which day she will be called in to collect the body. She'll be living every day for years in expectation of receiving that call. You're right, it would finish her.'

'As you say, that is the system.'

'She's my mother.'

'You've realised your responsibility too late.'

'I still have my own life and I'm going to end it myself, on my terms.'

'Your life belonged to Officer Okadi the moment you took his. You can tell your mother that. It's the best you can do.' Hakate straightened up. 'Let's go.'

Taro did not move. 'I'm going to the Aokigahara Woods, the suicide forest. You can call up every cop in Japan to try and apprehend me if you want, but it won't matter. I can guarantee you you're not going to have the Okada Memorial execution you want so badly.'

Inspector Hakate ran his teeth over his top lip with a moment of consideration. 'It's difficult to stop a determined young man from killing himself,' he mused. 'It's much easier to see that he does the job properly. Very well, that's the way it's going to be. The suspicion that you may have fulfilled my request regarding Koki, however, clumsily, and that you were tricked into shooting Okada means I will grant you some latitude in settling your affairs honourably. But you had better act quickly. You're about to be the most hunted man in Japan. You're last known location will be right here. That is the best I can do.'

'I understand,' said Taro.

He met Inspector Hakate's hard, uncompromising eyes and walked away. He pulled out his mobile phone. His mother would be at work now so he could leave a message.

'I told you I wouldn't be running pizzas forever,' he said. 'My new work is important but I can't say too much about it. Don't listen to anything the police or anyone else might tell you. They really don't have any idea. And don't try to call me back on this number. I only use this phone for work purposes.' He ended the call and flung the shiny red Docomo phone into the putrid Dotonburi River.

42

'Tattooists sometimes need to ask more than once.' The tattooists frown was of the scowling variety. His tight white t-shirt left plenty of his heavily tattooed arms on display. There was a three headed dragon wrapped in barbed wire. And there was a skeleton wrapped in a python.

The tattooist had a short cropped beard. His jet black hair was wrapped in a ponytail. His name was Shion. He looked even more intimidating in the large picture on the studio wall. In that picture he was posing with all of his chest tattoos visible. Taro looked at the picture and knew that despite his anxiety, he had come to the right place.

'I want a geisha sticking up her middle finger.'

'Like this?' Shion lifted his middle finger hard and angry.

'That's right.'

Shion frowned. 'I don't know about that. It seems disrespectful of our culture. Geisha's only purpose now may be keeping corporate presidents amused but back in the day they were there for the working man. They put smiles on people living hard lives. I respect that.'

Taro returned the stare from his lower position in a loose-jointed office chair. 'I won't be wearing it for long.'

Shion smiled. 'Do you have cancer?'

'I'm on my way to the Aokigahara Woods.'

The smile sharpened. 'And you're not going there for hiking?'

'I'll find a quiet spot deep in the forest. Your geisha can decompose away in a slow goodbye.'

Shion was impressed. 'A death tattoo. That might change things.'

'Thank you.'

'You're the police killer, aren't you? I saw you on the news last night.'

'I was tricked into it. I thought it was self defence.'

Shion laughed. 'Self defence isn't grounds for shooting a cop. Otherwise there wouldn't been any left.' He hacked and spat. 'I'll give you the tattoo but I can't guarantee I won't call the cops when it's done. The idea of having one of my works dangling from the hangman's rope is very appealing to me. Either way I'll want to do a good job. The branding of a criminal is a rite of passage for a tattoo artist.'

'How long will it take?'

'For you, I'll do it in one session. It will be a long painful session but I couldn't let you meet your maker with an unfinished tattoo, especially if it's intended to be your last big statement. I'll use the irezumi method. That's the style most befitting a criminal.' He nodded his head approvingly. 'I do a lot of work on the Yamaguchi-Guni syndicate and they tell me their bosses are giving them tests on the law. What they can and can't do. Kind of trying to tame them. But you just see in the eyes of some people that they simply cannot be tamed. Because all they are is a burning rage. There is not much else. They tattoo themselves with deities and symbols hoping there is some reason they were created this way. I do the work and send them on their way, and I hear later how they have been killed or imprisoned and I fear the closest they came to a creator was me.'

He hadn't shifted from his position on the bed. His eyes faded away, perhaps with the memory of those people he had been talking about. And then his eyes came back again. 'Let's drink some warm sake before we begin.'

43

'I don't know what you really needed, a tattoo or just a good night's sleep?' Shion gave Taro a hard nudge. 'I've already cancelled two days' worth of appointments because of you. You've turned my studio into a hotel. But I've been feeling sorry for you, the condemned man. I wish you could go on dreaming forever. You had better know, however, that your tattoo is done. And the police are still advertising your face on TV. I've been watching a lot of TV.'

Taro lethargically sat up. The tattoo studio bed was still comfortable, even after so much time spent on it.

'What time is it?'

'I don't wear a watch. It's afternoon. Of the next day. The first time you slept I could put it down to the sake. But this time I'd have to say it's a remarkable resistance to pain. There aren't too many people who sleep through irezumi.'

Taro rubbed his eyes and looked down at his bare chest.

'You'll see it best in the mirror,' said Shion, pulling his black t-shirt further down on his skinny waist.'

Taro swivelled to the full length mirror. His chest was enflamed but the tattoo centred within the swelling was deep, rich and superbly detailed.

'I think I was inspired by your plight,' said Shion. 'It is work I am proud of. I took a photo of it while you were sleeping. For my own protection I did not include your face.' He handed Taro a bottle of beer. 'Take this with you. And put on a shirt. It is not something that ought to be seen in public.'

A horn tooted outside.

Taro stiffened. 'Who's that?'

'It's not the cops I called. I considered it for the reward money. It's just that I have grown attached to your tattoo and if the cops turned you into a bag of bones, your body simply wouldn't do it justice.'

Taro put on his shirt and jacket; his chest hurt to the touch. Street level was down a flight of stairs. A furniture delivery truck was parked out front.

'It's a friend of mine,' said Shion. 'Sort of a friend. His name is Ryota. He used to be a furniture removalist until he got tired of backbreaking work. Now he'll carry anything so long as it's light and pays well.'

Taro unscrewed his beer for what he intended to be a sip but which fast descended into a ravenous gulp that left the bottle all but empty. He wiped his mouth and caught his breath. 'Did you meet him here?' he queried.

'You meet all kinds here,' said Shion. 'Including, it seems, cop killers. Ryota won't know anything about that. He listens to hip hop and he plays video games. The cops are looking for you all over Osaka. But they would never suspect a furniture removalist van. We've smuggled things before in them and you can trust me, cops just aren't interested in that kind of vehicle.'

'How much will it cost?'

'You can afford it. I've seen that envelope of yours.'

Taro felt his jacket pocket. The envelope was still there and seemed reasonably thick.

Shion grinned. 'It was the object in the other pocket that persuaded me to keep my hands to myself.'

He was referring to Koki's pistol. Unless Shion had exchanged it for a brick, Taro could feel its presence in a jacket pocket as well.

'He has been told he's taking you to Aokigahara Woods,' Shion continued, 'but he would take you all the way to the Okinawa Islands with the kind of money you've got.'

'Aokigahara Woods will do,' affirmed Taro.

'Well, I'll always be your friend,' said Shion, reaching out to shake Toki's hand. 'Or at least I will be friends with the woman on your chest. She's stunning and she will never let any man hold her hand. She will be the perfect guide into the suicide forest.'

44

There was a warning sign: "If you are contemplating suicide, please reconsider." The sign was by the walking track and the words were in bold print. At the bottom of the sign there were details in smaller print, including a hotline to call. Taro walked right past it on his hike with barely a glance.

The forest around the track was dense, dark and cool. Mosquitoes and leaches were ready to pounce at the slightest opportunity and there were numerous other more patient bugs lurking in the dense forest that would feast on Taro given the chance. And they would get their chance. Aokigahara Forest was littered with the skeletons of lost souls who had been just like Taro, looking for a way out when all was lost. At the base of Mount Fuji was where they had found it. Sometimes the bodies were discovered quickly, sometimes they remained hidden until the annual police, volunteer and journalist search picked them up.

Although there was a haunted silence emanating through the forest, Taro's ears were ringing from the hip hop music Ryota had been blaring all the way there. The man had barely spoken to him during the whole journey. He had barked at him to take off his business jacket on account of its conspicuousness in a removalist van. And he had told Taro where to get out on the edge of the forest.

Taro had gone along with everything. Shion was right that he couldn't have reached Aokigahara Woods without this kind of assistance. Now he was here and at last he felt back in control of his life - even if it turned out to be merely to find a quiet place to put to work the belt around his waist.

'Excuse me. Have you seen a man in a red jacket?'

Taro shuddered with surprise. The man came from nowhere. He was middle aged with large glasses and a bald patch. He had on a backpack and there was a water bottle attached to his belt. The man possessed the stern demeanour of officialdom but he was certainly too awkward to be a cop. Taro relaxed ever so slightly.

'No, I haven't.'

The man dabbed his perspiring forehead with a large piece of square blue cloth. He continued walking up the track towards Taro.

'I thought he may have come this way. I saw him back down at the picnic area. He was behaving suspiciously. I thought he might have been contemplating suicide.'

'Really?'

The man reached Taro. He sighed and put his hands on his hips, looking around the forest. 'I called after him and he ran. That might mean he was up to something or it might just mean he was jumpy. There are plenty of people who think this place is full of ghosts.' He looked at Taro more intently. 'You didn't see him then?'

Taro shook his head.

The man held up an unlabelled bottle of pills. 'He dropped these. They might have been his intended method of suicide. Then again they might be legitimate medication which he depends on. I'm just a volunteer here. I'm not a doctor.'

He didn't see the punch coming. He fell to the ground, blood streaming from his nose.

Taro picked the bottle out of his hand. 'He might depend on them but I want them. Don't worry, if I see him out there, I'll share the bottle. As for you,' he kicked the man in the stomach, 'you don't even have the decency to let someone who's been hounded all his life do something about it. If your only reason for living is trying to give other people a reason to live, I should kill you right here.'

The man pulled a phone out of his pocket and fumbled over it in a desperate attempt to call for help. Taro stomped on it and the fingers holding it. The subsequent scream did not quell the usual chattering of the forest - this was a place that had grown well used to screams.

The man tried to talk to Taro, only for the air to be kicked out of his lungs.

'You think I'm being cute?' Taro yelled. 'You think your will to live is bullet proof. It's people like you that have made this world so empty and all you've left for people like me is to rehabilitate or else.' He extracted his gun and brushed the man's cheek with the barrel. 'I could blow your head off right now and people would just think you'd decided to join the fun of the forest.' He straightened up and unscrewed the medicine bottle. 'Let's see what one of these tastes like.' He plucked out one of the powdery white pills and bit down on it with his back molars. 'Not bad at all. It fizzes off the tongue. You must want to try one.' Taro pried open the man's jaw and tipped some of the pills into it.

The man was too oxygen deprived to spit them out. He started choking. Taro unclipped the water bottle off his belt and tapped a couple down the man's throat. He grabbed onto the man's forehead and held it still.

'If it doesn't kill you,' said Taro, 'at least it'll put some revenge in your heart. You'll know that buried away in the suicide statistics are a few like me. Better to forsake the lot.' He dropped more pills into the man's mouth. 'Wow, there won't be any left at this rate.'

There came the cracking of twigs and the pounding of feet. It sounded like a charging animal. Before Taro could turn, two large hands pushed into him. He was flung away, landing heavily on a bed of rocks and branches to the side of the track. He didn't relinquish his grip on the pistol; he took aim at his attacker.

It was an old man. His white hair and beard contrasted sharply with his darkly suntanned skin. He was lean and lithe despite his years. He held out his hands in surrender. There was a thin smile on his face.

'I bleed, son,' he said. 'Be careful.'

The hands were strong and calloused. They had thrown Taro a long way. Not since Aso's room had Taro been dealt with so comprehensively. The only difference was now he had a gun to call on.

'Yes, you do,' said Taro, 'and maybe I'll blow a hole into you just to prove it.'

The man's smile widened, the corners of his mouth disappearing into his beard. He casually undid the buttons of his short sleeve shirt and pulled it open. Amongst the chest and stomach muscle was a shockingly long, contorted scar. 'You don't need to prove anything,' he whispered, his eyes searing with life. He set about rebuttoning his shirt. He glanced down at the Good Samaritan on the ground who was frantically coughing and spitting pills from his mouth. 'I'm going to help your friend over here,' he said to Taro. 'And then I'm going to help you.'

'You got of lucky the first time,' Taro said as he picked himself up. 'Try saving me again and I'll blow your head off.' He sprinted away deeper into the forest.

45

Taro was sitting back against a tree in a quiet patch of forest; he had just put the pistol into his mouth when a large blackbird swooped overhead and landed on a branch. It was so black it might have been dipped in oil. It hopped and settled into its perch on the nearest tree to Taro's.

Had it seen this before? Perhaps it knew what he was going to do. Were blackbirds some kind of vulture? Was it waiting to feast on his corpse? Taro was repulsed by the thought.

'You'd better talk a walk,' he said menacingly. 'I don't want you near me.'

The crow seemed to look away a moment but its near eye soon came back to Taro. Taro carefully aimed his pistol at it and fired. Despite the sharp recoil, there was an explosion of feathers and blood as he hit his target. Taro walked up to where the crow had fallen. The body was decimated but the head was still intact. Taro picked it up and returned to his position. The eyes were still staring at him.

'Court is now in session,' said Taro. 'The charge is murder. Crow, is this the man that shot you?' Taro nodded the head. 'Did you do anything to provoke this action?' He shook the head. 'So, you were an innocent bird sitting on a branch? You didn't have a mind to eat his dead body? Or to call in your friends to share the feast?' He shook its head. 'Well, the court's verdict is clearly guilty. Would you like to have the death penalty applied?' He nodded its head. 'That's understandable. It was a very callous crime. Would you like the bullet to go in the head or in the stomach?' He pointed the beak at his neck. 'In the neck? That would be very slow and messy. You're a very nasty crow, aren't you? The neck is closer to the head than it is the stomach, so the head it will be. That will be the court's decision.'

Taro noticed drops of blackbird's blood running down his wrist. 'Disgusting.' He tossed away the head and wiped his hands on his silk handkerchief. The same pounding feet came at him again. It was the old man with that snow white beard. Incomprehensively he was back. The man kicked away Taro's gun with a vicious force.

'You think you're so tough you can just walk out of this world,' he said, 'but I bet you can't even hit an old man.'

Taro sprang enraged to his feet, punching the man flush in the jaw. The man crashed back into a tree and slid down dazedly onto his knees. It had been a hard punch. With a flash of pain, Taro realised one of his knuckles was pointing the wrong way. He was clicking it back into place when the old man got up.

'Good for you,' said the old man, tasting the blood in the corner of his mouth. He spat out the rest. 'It's a better way to meet a stranger than worrying about who bows the deepest. Knock him down and see how fast he gets up.' He brushed the leaves off his grey cargo trousers. 'I'm not ashamed to admit I've lost my share of fights. The only reason I'm still alive is that I've always won the really dirty ones.' He sent a brutal knee up into Taro's stomach.

Taro groaned as he keeled over. The man laughed. 'No need to tell me how painful that was. The bad news is there is still plenty of that to come. I came to this forest to walk in my hiking boots and that's exactly what I'm going to do.' He lashed out with a kick to the kidneys, another to the head.

Taro was left in a daze, trying to roll out the way. He spotted a cave in the distance and forced himself to crawl towards it. The cave entrance was a beautiful pure white and he lunged into it. It was a soft, warm marshmallow cloud. Taro dropped into it, feeling both free and helpless. He reached out his hands but there was nothing to grip onto. Was it the effects of the pills kicking in?Or was it the kick to the head? His whole body was becoming terribly numb. All he could feel was the descent. The marshmallow was transforming into an icy cold blackness. A blackness that engulfed him completely, and then, like it were the most potent of acids, he dissolved into it.

46

Taro's tightly wound nerves had him reflexively springing upright, his limbs flailing. A fierce jolt of pain gripped him in the ribs and at the same time something went smashing against the wall. He realised that he was on a double bed. Small, spotlessly clean and devoid of any warmth in its appearance, it must surely have been a hotel room. He eased himself back down into a lying position and took in a little more. There was a television, wall mirror and on the bedside table a telephone and a room service menu. The airport mustn't have been far away, for there was a jumbo jet flying overhead with a real kick in the engines.

The toilet flushed and a man stepped out alongside the bed. Taro realised it was the old man from Aokigahara Forest. He wasn't looking quite so old now, however. His slicked back hair and stylish black suit were helping considerably in that regard.

'Good morning,' the old man said. 'You've slept in. I'm ashamed to say, however, you haven't slept in so late you're seeing me with my first drink of the day.' He held up a glass containing a gold liquid. He must have had it with him in the toilet. 'Whiskey on the rocks. I'd offer you one but you've just broken the other glass in the set. My fault for leaving it so close to the bed. Never mind, it only had ice cubes left in it.' He sipped the drink in his hand.

Tarowriggled up onto his elbows. He was expecting to find himself tied up. There was a cord around one leg but it was not attached to the other. His legs were bare. He was wearing a black and white striped yukata bathrobe and was naked underneath. The stray cord was merely a result of being loosely tied.

'It wasn't me who changed you into that,' said the old man, following his gaze. 'I've got an assistant with me. She shaved off your moustache and did a little hair trimming and colouring as well. Hope you don't mind. We all need a little image update from time to time. Especially when we're in the crime pages.'

'Where am I?' Taro queried.

The old man shook his glass to engage the ice cubes. 'Near Itami Airport. The airport hotel. Best place to take someone unconscious. Many of the guests are asleep or dazed when they check in. I would have brought you here even if we weren't catching a plane. My name is Nobunaga. What's yours?'

'Taro Takeda. Taking a plane?'

The old man dragged closer a plastic chair of modern design and sat down. 'No, I'm sorry but that name will no longer do. When a name gets too soiled and worn, it is time to cut it loose. Your name now is Ichiro Sato. I hope you like it. I just came up with it now in the toilet.'

'Are you some kind of social worker?' murmured Taro.

Nobunaga grinned revealing two gold teeth and shook his head. 'People consider Aokigahara to be the Suicide Forest, but that is only half the story. To me it is a recruitment hub. There's no better place to find disaffected youth with the fortitude to go all the way, who have already made peace with their mortality. The average aspiring gangster will join a bosozoku bike gang to prove his or her metal, but all they're really proving is a knack for following the pack. People like me go looking in Aokigahara Woods for the bright sparks of Japanese youth. The protruding nailheads that refuse to be hammered down. It's a well-kept secret with police and gangsters alike. If word got out, the forest would be overrun by a flood of pretenders. No one wants that.'

'The other guy – ' started Taro.

'The one you hit? The do-gooder? The forest has plenty of those as well. I generally endeavour to keep away from them. You were right to fatten his lip. You're better off with me.' He lifted his glass and let some more whiskey drain in through the gaps in his teeth. 'You're looking at me like I'm your jailer. I had a wife who did that. But it's an inaccurate assumption. If you're suddenly feeling reattached to the life you were trying to end a few hours ago, be my guest. On the other hand, if you're interested in taking a plane ride, I'm taking the next flight to Okinawa. In about one hour. The nice young woman who undressed you will be on the flight, too. Want to come along?'

'Did you pluck her out of Aokigahara Woods, too?'

Nobunaga nodded. 'Some time ago. The poor girl has her moments of darkness. You could say she knows a thing or two about pills. Fortunately for you it includes how to cleanse a stomach of them. Fortunate for the fat man too seeings you force fed him most the bottle. That was somewhat excessive, I thought.'

Taro remembered the kicking he received and probed his head for lumps. It didn't take long to find one and it was tender to the touch. Seeing how old and wiry the man was, Taro's pride was hurt as well.

'You can't dress me up in a yukata like this and say I'm not a prisoner,' he snapped. 'Where are my clothes?'

'With the girl who saved you.'

'Where is she then?'

'Off to find a recycle bin. Both you and your clothes are heading for a fresh start.'

'Those clothes were expensive.'

'What's that got to do with anything?' The old man left his chair, put the whiskey glass on the bedside table and with a couple of steps was at the door. 'I am going to wait for her in the foyer. The bartender on duty has worked in several countries that I am interested in. He is an engaging conversationalist.' He yanked open the door and paused. 'Ichiro-san, you are not a prisoner. But I fear you may not live very long if you endeavour to prove it.'

47

The suit delivered to Taro by room service was a similar cut and soft black cotton to Nobunaga's. Nobunaga did not broach the subject until they were twenty thousand feet in the air when, are double checking that the seats around them were still empty, said: 'The only thing more inconspicuous than a man in a black suit is two men in black suits.' There was a gin and tonic in his hands. With that customary jingle of the glass, he woke up the ice cubes. 'That also explains why we are in economy class and my assistant is travelling first class. She is a little too beautiful. A fugitive really shouldn't draw attention to himself.'

Taro thought the better of clarifying if it was only him he was referring to when he talked about fugitives. He shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. He hadn't yet ordered any drink himself, but whatever painkillers Nobunaga had administered him with were starting to wear off, a dull throb building somewhere back behind his ear. The flight attendants patrolling the aisles of the twin prop plane were particularly charming and friendly. Taro looked to catch their attention.

Nobunaga slapped him on the arm. 'Let's talk a little business. I've spent more nights than I care to remember camped out in that forest and I can assure you I didn't save everyone I ran into. Let me give you my terms and if you don't like them, you can throw yourself off one of Okinawa's many suitable cliffs that unfortunately have had too much history with such deeds. Whether you do or don't, I'll go on enjoying the best seafood and finest whiskey Naha has got to offer. Get my drift?'

'Yes.' Taro scratched his cheek self-consciously. 'I may have had similar offers in the past. I worked for Tokin Mikoto. Do you know him?'

Nobunaga was agitated by the question. 'No one has heard of the people you'll be working with. And if you join us, no one will have heard of you either. Failure might lead to a funeral as lonely as the one you planned for yourself at Mount Fuji.' He gulped his gin. 'Tell me what kind of work you did for Mikoto.'

'He would contact me with a task and I would do it.'

'Hired muscle? Did you hurt people? Did you get blood on your hands? Is that why you had a gun barrel parked in your mouth?'

'He set me up. I was out of choices. But I'm not sure I would have pulled the trigger.'

'Well, don't feel bad about it. Smokers put deadly little things in their mouths every day. Anyway, it's remarkable that I should meet someone like you in the forest. I must admit I am aware of your friend Tokin's existence and if he ever becomes a target, I'll give him to you. That in itself is a good reason to keep away from the cliffs, don't you think?'

'Yes,' said Taro.

Nobunaga detected his doubt. 'Tokin talked just as tough, right? Well, I'll stop talking then. Tomorrow I'll show you something. Namie will be coming too.'

'The girl in first class?'

'Yes. Namie is her name. Pulling her out of the forest felt like a fatherly action. I sense you two will be a good influence on each other. I could even picture you together. Why not? Two people with the curse of wanting to die might just not have met each other yet.'

Taro didn't say anything but despite the pain, he felt good inside. He wondered if he really would have pulled the trigger in that forest. He simply couldn't be sure. He had just been going through the motions until that point, heading towards what seemed an inevitable conclusion. But wasn't it at the end of the world that you found a sunrise? Wasn't it a poet that said that? Of course, probably many. Because that was what poetry was all about. And Taro was certain he would never go back to that forest again. Something had changed. He was becoming something different now.

He held up a hand and it was the flight attendant with the bunned hair that came. He ordered a beer, gazing into the glassy blackness of her eyes.

Nobunaga noticed his reaction and admired her form as she walked away. 'Apologies, but it's the other flight attendant I've arranged for you to have dinner with tonight. I didn't want you being left in Naha entirely to your own devices. And it may be too soon to attempt sipping cocktails with Namie. Her last encounter with you was pumping pills from your stomach while you were kicking and squirming. Let's give that moment an opportunity to fade before we consider formal introductions.' He slipped an envelope into Taro's seat pocket. 'This will get you through the evening. Don't go saving your affections for a bank account. That's not how we live in Okinawa. There's an address and a business card in there as well. Is this the kind of thing you were doing with Tokin Mikoto?'

'Pretty much,' said Taro. 'Without the business cards.'

'I believe in business cards. It gives people a purpose. To see their name on a quality piece of paper with a title to go along with it.'

'Can I show it to her?'

'To whom?'

'The flight attendant. At dinner.'

'You can but she already knows your position: you're with me.' Nobunaga smirked. 'And do not ask me whether or not she would consider that a good thing. What I have learned about astute women is that no matter how much you tell them, they will still know more than you.' He idly gazed out the window across the beautiful topaz waters of Okinawa.

48

Taro was enjoying his quiet moment alone in the bar: it was a final opportunity to wonder why he was still alive before the flight attendant arrived. He was feeling fresh. At the airport he had changed the grey shirt under his black suit for another grey shirt, and he had brushed his hair. A dried leaf had come away onto the comb's bristles - it must have been from Aokigahara Woods. Taro still had it with him at the bar, and he twirled it in his fingers over and over. He would never need another souvenir in his life.

The flight attendant with the short hair sat down in the next barstool to his. She was dressed young in a black miniskirt and immaculately ironed white t-shirt. She wore heavy black eye shadow and glossy pink lipstick. Taro was starting to suspect she was in disguise; nonetheless, her smile was disarming.

'Did I keep you waiting?' she said. 'A girl wants to look her best when she drives a corvette.'

'A corvette?'

She dangled the keys. 'Nobunaga's car. He likes American. Are you going to be offended if I tell you that's why I'm here? I'll show you the island if you like. It'll be the first class flight you missed out on in coming to the island. And this time you'll know your flight attendant's name.'

'What is it?'

'Mia.'

'I'm Ichiro.' It was the first time Taro had used the name and he realised it would take a lot of getting used to.

'Nice to meet you, Ichiro.'

'Would you like a drink before we start?'

'That's kind of you. You could be a flight attendant yourself. But no, thank you. And I don't want the peanuts either.' She touched Taro on the arm. 'Are you ready?'

The bar was in a downtown side street. The elegantly contoured blue corvette was parked out front. Taro figured driving it on Naha's busy roads would be akin to trundling a greyhound in a one bedroom apartment. The intense look on Mia's face, however, prompted him to put his seatbelt on. In the next moment they were flying. Weaving a hair-raising path through Naha's traffic, the corvette aggressively muscled its way onto the first stretches of open road; it hugged the south coast before tearing westward. Mia's touch on the steering wheel was light and precise and her gear changes effortless.

Taro was comfortable and relaxed. If there was any kind of life that was truly carefree, it surely belonged to survivors.

'You're not worried about the cops chasing us?' he queried, letting the tone of voice assure her that he was merely making conversation.

'The cops wouldn't bother chasing a car like this,' Mia replied invigorated, 'because they know they can't catch it. And besides, there's only one blue corvette on the island and they know who it belongs to. The tough new laws have pushed the yakuza further underground, which means the police rely more than ever on them policing themselves. The police keep the law. And Nobunaga keeps the order. Everyone seems happy enough with the arrangement.'

Taro let the conversation die. He left Mia to the road. She used it to lap the island, hugging the coastal roads wherever she could, but otherwise tearing along any road that presented itself. The lights of houses came in clumps and were separated by long stretches of dark, shadowy landscape. The sky above was clear with the stars and moon beautifully aglow. Somewhere amidst the hills of volcanic rock at the northern tip of the island, Miha looked contentedly at Taro. 'The village I'm to drop you off at is a few kilometres back down the road. We can u-turn or wait for the next road that goes that way.'

'I'm in no hurry,' said Taro with a shrug.

49

'Counting the clicks on the tachometer I'd say you really did get to see the island,' said Nobunaga. 'Every square inch of it. I'm glad to see you're still in one piece.' He swivelled the fine china coffee cup in its saucer. 'With those kilometres and our speed limits, you should technically still be driving.'

'I wish I still was,' said Taro.

Nobunaga nodded in understanding. 'But roads alone don't take you anywhere.' He waved a hand at the superb view out the coffee house window: the pier lined with fishing boats, the placidly rolling waves of the harbour, the white sand glaring under a hot sun. 'Like the fishing boats and yachts you have found shelter here. This is our village. If you choose to stay, you will be given a new identity and a place to sleep. Not an old inn like last night but a real home.'

'Last night I slept very well. Ryokans have a charm to them.'

Nobunaga shrugged. 'When you are old, you will be welcome to retire here. If you need a rest, you will be able to work on board one of the fishing boats. Such a simple life will keep your head straight. If you work for us and do a job well, you will be helping this village as well as yourself. We work together, just the way life used to be in the old feudal days. That's okay, isn't it? This is not an ugly city like Tokyo. People die in Tokyo but they do not die for Tokyo. Here is different. We get sun and we get storms and there are poisonous snakes in the grass.'

'And there are no trains?'

Nobunaga gave Taro a curious glance. 'There's a monorail, my young friend. It's not much to speak of.' He sipped his black coffee.

Taro looked at him speculatively. 'Were you born in this village?'

'Or was I once rescued from a forest, too?' Nobunaga returned his cup to the saucer and spun it some more. 'It is hard to be young. To be valueless, unwanted. When I saw you in the forest, I saw something of how I used to be. There is a feeling within me that I will never reconcile with. When I was young my spirit was a blazing fire, but now it just smoulders down deep.' He smiled and slapped Taro on the arm. 'But in that forest the fire was ablaze again. You were quite a handful. Did you enjoy my great kicks?'

'Not really,' said Taro, rubbing the lump on his head.

'You were contemplating worse.' Nobunaga jumped up to the window, gesturing at the harbour view with a flourish. 'I have this to offer you, Ichiro. So, it was my obligation to hit you as hard as I could.'

'If I am to be this Ichiro you keep calling me, I will need more than just a name on a business card to prove it.'

'That is being taken care of. Everything will be ready soon. Rest a few days here and then I will put you to work. Hiroshima will be your first stop. Our village has business interests there I would like you to straighten out.'

'Alright,' said Taro tentatively.

'Don't worry, I have faith,' said Nobunaga, coming back to the table. 'To straighten out one young person, is to straighten out the whole country.'

50

Namie Otani was a little older than Taro, twenty two or twenty three. She had long straight black hair and was tall and thin. She a little ungainly in her movements as though she still hadn't quite grown into her body. But she was intelligent and good looking and Taro felt bad that she had come to know so much about pills.

Taro had needed to go all the way to Hiroshima before he finally met her. It was midnight in a peeping-tom bar. Taro had heard about them but this was his first time to actually visit one. All the bottles were on high shelves, which compelled the female bartenders, who were wearing miniskirts and skimpy underwear, to climb ladders to pour their customers' drinks. Taro couldn't help but join the rest of the male patrons at the bar in looking up. He noticed that Namie was looking at him unimpressed.

'It was your idea to meet here,' he murmured.

'I wanted to bring you back to reality,' she said. 'Nobunaga likes to fill a person's head with postcard images of Okinawa but this is how he makes his money. Sleaze and greed. And we're here to defend it.'

'Nobunaga owns this bar?' asked Taro, surprised.

Namie nodded. 'A large chunk of it. And he has his toes in many more like it all over Japan. And he wants us to make sure they're running smoothly and without gangster interference. Do you know what that means for us? The Okinawans may have one of the highest life expectancy rates in the world but that's because none of them have a job like ours.'

'Nobunaga spent a long time camped out in Aokigahara Woods looking for the right people. If he wanted us dead, he could have gotten that by staying at home.'

'We have both been given new identities and in case you didn't notice they do not connect us to his village, not even to Okinawa. If we die, it will not come back to him. It will upset some other region's life expectancy averages.'

Taro shrugged. 'My ID card says I'm from Fukuoka.'

'Whatever.'

'Well, we do this job or we run.'

Namie's voice darkened with the wisp of a smile. 'You're right, Nobunaga did find the right people.'

'So, what brings us to Hiroshima? Nobunaga said you would have the details.'

Namie stabbed her mashed up chewing gum onto the bar top and lit up a cigarette. 'He wants the local cops here to like us, so we're going to do a little favour for them.'

Taro felt his throat tighten. 'A favour for the police?'

'There's an ultra right wing group in town making too much noise in the campaign bus they tour around the city in. Screaming from their loudspeakers to close the U.S. military bases and for foreigners to leave Japan. Those kind of things. Such groups have been around for ever, but the problem with this group is they're doing it in the main shopping areas around town and they're taunting the police to do something about it.' Namie pulled a face. 'Basically, they're skinheads getting paid to be angry by rich benefactors - yakuza bosses wanting to incite trouble, most likely. No hairdresser is ever going to miss them.'

'What are we going to do about it?'

'Pay their clubhouse a little visit. We've borrowed a certain politician's car for the purpose. He won't miss it. You see, he always takes a taxi when he cheats on his wife. The car is parked out on the street. There are tools in the boot.'

'You've been busy then. What's the rush?'

'The group call themselves the New Japan Guard. Tomorrow they intend to disturb a United Nations congregation at the Peace Park. That would embarrass the police too much. So, we're going to make sure they never get there.'

'Alright. Tonight is fine by me. Who's the politician?'

'Yuki Amasaki. Heard of him?'

'No.'

'Well, he's only a politician. He's been accusing the police of incompetence and corruption. We do the job and leave his car out the front of the clubhouse.'

'I get it,' said Taro. 'If those ultra right wingers suspect Amasaki, he will be in need of some serious police efficiency. His life will depend on it.'

'Nice plan, right? Sink two ships with the one torpedo. Or in this case we'll be using sledgehammers and baseball bats.'

'Sledgehammers and baseball bats?'

'Absolutely. It's going to be messy.'

51

The two Rottweiler dogs patrolling the compound finally dropped. It could have turned out differently, for one of the strips of baited meat had got caught on the top of the razor wire. Fortunately, the dogs had been willing to share.

Namie cut through the base of the fence with wire cutters. She had kept her black slacks from the bar, but had changed her t-shirt for a darker colour and her high heels for military boots. Also, she had tied her hair back in a tight Chinese tail. She crawled on her elbows through the hole she had created and sprinted into the compound. Taro was impressed with her athleticism. He had to settle for a more cumbersome effort himself, weighed down by the sledgehammer and baseball bat in his hands and the gun tucked into his belt.

The sinister looking black bus with the old imperial Japanese flag on the side was parked facing a chained gate. Its windows were black tinted and there were two loud speakers set up on the roof. Behind the bus the fibrocement clad single storey clubhouse was a faint outline in the darkness.

Namie reached the front of the bus and edged along to the back wheels where she knelt down. Taro figured she was slashing tyres. He meanwhile dropped the baseball bat and started hammering the bus with the sledgehammer. He put deep dints into the side panels and pounded the window grills with enough force to crack the glass. He worked his way down the bus, hitting harder and harder, gaining confidence that the New Japan Guard clubhouse was either empty or the ultra-nationalists inside were particularly heavy sleepers. By the time he had reached the back of the bus Namie was no longer there. What air had been in the tyres she had slashed was now well and truly gone. Just as Taro turned to see where she might have gone, the bus engine roared to life. He hopped back quickly as the bus reversed sharply, slamming through the front of the clubhouse. The cheap quality cladding offered little resistance and the bus buried itself almost all the way within. The engine cut out and Namie emerged with a sly smirk through the gaping hole the bus had created.

'Whoops, I don't think that was a garage,' she said with a chuckle. 'But it will suffice.' She noticed Taro's surprised gazed and added, 'I was slashing tyres when I noticed the keys stuck to the undercarriage. My father taught me how to drive a truck. He didn't teach me how to use it to abandon a family with one, but what I just did must have felt somewhat similar. Well, I hope he felt something.'

'I can see it works better than this,' said Taro. He tossed away the sledgehammer. 'But you've left me with nothing else to bash.'

'So, let's go get a drink.' She tossed away the keys after the sledgehammer. 'And don't fret, there's other work for us to do tonight.'

52

'A double bourbon whiskey,' ordered Taro, 'and not so much ice that I can't see it.'

'And I'll have a Black Russian,' said Namie. 'Same goes with my ice. And you should know we have no intention of paying for our drinks.'

The waiter, who was having trouble filling out his shirt, hurried away. Billy Holiday was playing on the stereo - a modern day version had been performing on the small, corner stage with a backing guitarist but had just finished her set. The Night Glow was an intimate blues bar in a basement in downtown Hiroshima. The lights were down low and so were the voices of the patrons, who were lightly scattered amongst the dark wood tables and the bar. The walls were decorated with an eclectic mix of memorabilia and the staircase leading up to street level carried photographs of celebrity visitors including a newsreader and a television comic.

The drinks arrived in the hands of a much older man. He had shiny silver hair and an embarrassed smile. He was smartly dressed with a white vest over a black silk shirt. His trousers were also black and his shoes were an immaculately polished brown.

'I hope you are comfortable in my establishment,' he said with a cultured, sophisticated air. 'May I join you a moment?'

He set the drinks down on the table before dragging across a chair from another table. Proximity brought into focus the deliberateness of his brush-over hairstyle and the sparkle of the diamond stud in his left ear.

'Is this your place?' asked Namie curtly.

'Yes, it is. My name is Ohara.'

Namie looked him over. 'Do you run a bar so you can dress like that?'

Ohara shuffled uncomfortably. 'Customers expect me to dress a certain way. Class brings taste to a drink just the way a clean glass does.'

Namie picked up her Black Russian and swallowed a significant portion. She nodded approvingly. 'Nice glass.'

'Would you like another?'

'Yes, another just like it.'

'My waiter informs me you're not intending to pay. Is that correct?'

Namie finished off her drink and slid the empty glass his way. 'That's absolutely correct.'

Ohara signalled to the bartender, who nodded and immediately went to work on the drinks. Ohara's attention returned to Namie. 'May I ask who you work for?'

'Nobunaga. He asked us to pay the Night Glow a visit. He said the only way to distract you from your backroom poker games was to hold out on a bill.'

Ohara nodded tensely. 'When you are here with his blessing, it is not my bar to deny you.'

'Do you work for Nobunaga, too?' asked Taro.

'I have a partnership with him. And a lifetime debt. Let the reason be a respectful secret between himself and me. But a lifetime debt buys a lot of drinks.'

'It is not for the drinks that Nobunaga has sent us here,' said Namie. 'And that's just as well 'cause there's a bar where the bartenders wear miniskirts and climb ladders and that's more our kind of place.' She watched the bartender arrive at the table with her follow up Black Russian and shook her head as he shyly returned to the bar. 'Completely disappointing.' She pressed the glass against her cheek and sighed. 'Nobunaga has not told us everything about why we're here. He's polite enough to have left that to you. So, no more respectful secrets. We prefer ugly truths. If it's extortion, gambling debts, till skimming or just a slow few months, we need to hear it straight. Your bar has stopped making money and that is a concern.'

Ohara pulled a strained expression. His embarrassed smile had nowhere left to go and slowly faded away. 'I would appreciate a couple of days to gather my thoughts. Is that too much to ask?'

Namie slapped her pistol onto the table. 'Be careful,' she said icily. 'Your silent partner has a voice. You really don't want to hear it.'

Even in the bar's dull light, Ohara went visibly pale. 'Please,' he said urgently, 'there is no problem here that warrants such measures.'

'Really?' replied Namie. 'Nobunaga didn't send a couple of tax advisors. He sent us. That tells me something. It tells me that to straighten out this bar we're going to have to deal with something pretty crooked.'

Taro draped a napkin over the gun. 'A couple of days isn't too much to ask for a true friend.' He got up out of his chair. 'We'll be back on Monday and you'd better be ready for us.'

'Thank you,' said Ohara breathlessly. 'I appreciate your thoughtfulness.'

Taro stood tall over him. 'But that's as far as that friendship thing is going to get you. What we'll take instead of that is honesty. Your business may only live by night but we're about to shine a big bright light into it. Don't hold out on us. The Night Glow is not earning its keep and we're going to find out why.'

Ohara nodded. 'I understand.'

Taro turned and marched out of the bar. Namie caught up to him on the way up the stairs.

'What do you think you're doing?' she snapped.

'I've just got us the weekend off,' Taro replied.

They reached the narrow street above the bar. Taro looked one way and then the other and saw that there was nothing much about with a scene of apartment buildings, lines of parked cars and a huddle of vending machines on the corner. Namie still had her Black Russian in hand and was struggling to tuck her gun away in its spot against the small of her back.

'You've got us the weekend off,' she muttered, 'but you've also given away the element of surprise. Who knows what Ohara will have cooked up for us by Monday?'

'Surprise is a two way street,' replied Taro. 'Ohara could just as easily have spiked our drinks or found a gun of his own.'

'Surprise is a two way street?' said Namie incredulously. 'Go back to the New Japan Guard clubhouse and see how many more bus tyres you can slash. I'd like to see that.'

'I'd rather not.'

Namie eyed him intently and sipped her drink. 'I liked the way you talked to Ohara back there,' she said with a smirk. 'You sounded like a real player.'

'Thanks.'

'So, what are we supposed to do now then?'

'We'll take a look at the Night Glow's set up. Find out if Nobunaga really is getting ripped off with his investment. You could see in Ohara's face that he probably is.'

'The face I was about to crack?'

'We're only going to crack faces when it's necessary. We might not be tax accountants, but I don't want us to be just mindless thugs, either.'

'Are you sure that's not why Nobunaga picked you? All that previous experience. I hear you needed a new identity more than most. A very bad boy.'

Taro shrugged. 'The one thing I've learnt is that crooked operators get their throats cut. It's not something I'm keen to experience for myself.'

Namie leaned in closer. 'Well, I suppose I could do with a calming influence. No matter how much I'm liable to hate it. But what I was trying to ask is what are we supposed to do now that we've got the weekend off?'

'I've got a place in mind,' said Taro. 'It's a little way down the road, but if we leave now, we'll be there by dawn.'

Namie turned and smashed her glass against the nearest wall. 'Alright, Ichiro, you win. But Ichiro isn't even your real name, is it? Tell me what your name is.'

Taro started walking in the direction of their rental Mazda sports car parked by the vending machines. 'I'll forget it more quickly if you don't bother asking,' he murmured.

53

Taro had finally made it. He was squinting with the glare. Even with the sun still low, there was sunshine enough to dig the shadows out of the sand at his feet. He needed a pair of sunglasses. He supposed he wasn't wearing any now because he was concerned they might make him look like a gangster.

The beach season had ended on Shikoku Island but the surf season was never ending. The surfers in their colourful wetsuits were using the small waves the way farmers utilised their tiny fields, trying to draw everything possible from what little was on offer. Taro was watching them from the seaweed strewn beach, wondering if Shimizu was amongst them. Had Shimizu really found a destination in his friend's surf shop? It would be a long journey from the hard benches of Ueno Park but it was possible. Taro had run into some luck when he needed it most and maybe Shimizu had too. Best not to go looking for him, though. Taro had a new identity to protect and that meant forgetting everything about the old. It would take some time, but he would do it.

Taro was walking along the beach with Namie. He had left his boots beside Namie's on the roof of their car. His jacket was slung over his shoulder and his shirt sleeves were rolled up. Namie had put her gun back into her handbag and she was setting a slow pace. Her hair was down and was fluttering about in the sea breeze. She was wearing a summer polka dot dress; she looked like she belonged on a beach. Not that she couldn't survive anywhere. Her defiant nature reminded Taro of a voodoo doll: whatever was stabbed into her would be someone else's pain.

Namie tilted her head to Taro, her eyes hidden behind her oversized Police sunglasses. 'I don't want you to become sexually attracted to me,' she abruptly said.

Taro laughed with the shock of the comment.

Namie was unfazed. 'The best way for a guy to pick up girls is to have a female friend to do the ground work for him. She'll have ease of access and won't be putting her foot in her mouth with stupid comments. Let's put it to the test tonight. I'll be getting you so many girls your head will be dizzy.'

'Why would you want to do that?' Taro asked.

Namie shrugged. 'I'll pull a gun on the owner of a bar, I'll get my partner sex drunk, I'll take a hike in the suicide forest. What can I say? It's a bitch of a world to control.'
