Go

by Kazuki Kaneshiro

  So anyway, I was standing in front of this young cop in full violation of the law.

  “Well? Why don’t you answer?” the cop coaxed in a disagreeable tone.

  This was long past getting irritating, annoying, and tiresome. Philip Marlowe would have had a snappy comeback and talked his way out of this scrape, but I was no Philip Marlowe. So I decided to hit and run.

  In one efficient motion, I thrust out the palm of my hand and hit him in the Adam’s apple. The cop let out a choked gasp, stumbling backward. With the bicycle parked right behind him, he wasn’t able to get his balance, and he fell backward on the bike saddle. Unable to support his weight, the bike toppled sideways, carrying the cop with it.

  Just as I had planned. As soon as the cop stumbled, I took off running. The plan was to run out of sight before the cop had a chance to recover and chase me. I was confident that I could. I was used to police chases.

  Behind me, I heard an unexpected sound. Thud! Slowing down, I turned around to see the young cop sprawled out on top of the fallen bike, completely still. His police cap had come off, leaving his bare head exposed. I slowed to a stop. He didn’t look like he was faking. My sighs mixing with deep breaths, I thought about what to do. I decided to go back and check on him.

  Crouching next to the young cop, I put my right palm over his nose and my left palm against his carotid artery. The right picked up a steady breath, while the left felt a fast but steady pulse. I felt the back of his head. There was no bleeding. I looked around me. The street was deserted. I thought about running away and then noticed the gun hanging from the cop’s waist. With my luck, there were plenty of ways that this could end badly. Letting out a long, long sigh, I picked up the police cap off the ground and stood up.

  I dragged the young cop’s body to an empty space in the monthly parking lot nearby. I propped him up against the wall. I wheeled the bicycle to the lot, too. Since there was nothing else to do but wait for the cop to regain consciousness, I decided to have a smoke.

  I sat on the pavement with my back against the wall and lit up a cigarette. I took a deep drag and exhaled deeply. I thought I heard birds chirping in the distance. Morning wasn’t too far off.

  When I finished my cigarette, the young cop woke up. He lay there for a while, his eyes darting here and there, and tried to get a grasp on the situation. We locked eyes a couple of times. I smiled at him.

  I lit up another cigarette, and the cop sat up and felt around his body to see if anything was missing.

  “I took out one bullet from your gun.”

  When I said this, the cop smiled at me grimly. He slid his body closer and sat next to me with his back against the wall.

  “Give me one,” said the young cop.

  I gave him the whole pack. He pulled out a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. I offered up the lighter and lit it. The cop brought his head closer and lit the end of his cigarette. He took a deep drag, exhaled, and said, “I’m not cut out for this job.”

  I looked at him, saying nothing.

  The cop continued. “I graduated from a sports science university, you know? I ended up a policeman because I couldn’t find a company that’d take me. Since this is kind of a default job, my heart’s not in it. Look at what you did to me back there. I was a handball player. I’m no good at that martial arts stuff.”

  “That wouldn’t have helped you,” I said. “It’s a close combat move used by the American military.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded and said, “So you shouldn’t get down on yourself.”

  The young cop gave a relieved smile and savored his cigarette.

  For a while I listened to the cop complain about this and that. About being bullied by his senpai, about his slim prospects of getting promoted, about not being able to find a girlfriend, stuff like that. And before I knew it, I was telling him everything about what happened with Sakurai at the hotel. The cop listened to my story intently. After I finished, he said, “Wow, I would’ve done it first and thought about telling her later. You’re a better man than I am.” He said, “Good self-control.” Then he said, “So which celebrity does she look like?”

  When I thought about it and answered, “I don’t know,” the cop got all weird and said, “Come on, help a guy out here. You can’t put the brakes on my imagination like that.”

  “She told me that I scared her,” I said. “To be honest, I was devastated.”

  “I know what you’re feeling.” The cop lit up his fourth cigarette and said, looking far away, “A girl once told me that I was gross.”

  “That’s harsh,” I said.

  “Just thinking about it is enough to make me want to cry, even now.”

  “It’s best you forget about stuff like that,” I said.

  “Can you forget what happened tonight so easily?”

  I shook my head.

  “Right?” said the cop.

  “I really liked her.”

  “So did I.” The young cop blew smoke out of his nose. “Well, in my case I got rejected before we even started dating.”

  I lit another cigarette, took a deep drag, and said, “I didn’t give a damn when someone discriminated against me. People that hate don’t understand anything you try to tell them, so I just got used to hitting them. I wasn’t ever going to lose a fight, so I was okay with it. Even if people like that continued to discriminate against me, I’d probably be okay with it.”

  I took another drag and exhaled.

  “But ever since I met her, I’ve been scared as hell. It was the first time I felt that way. I guess I’ve never met a Japanese person that I really cared about before. In the first place, I didn’t exactly know how to treat her, and what if I told her about my background and she hated me? Once I got to thinking about that, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. Even when I believed she wasn’t the kind of girl to be prejudiced. But I guess in the end, I didn’t trust her. Sometimes I wish my skin was green or something. That way, the good people will come closer and the haters will keep their distance. That would make things so much easier.”

  We both fell silent and each smoked a cigarette to ash.

  Pulling out another cigarette, the young cop said, “I had this senpai three years my senior in university, a Zainichi guy named Kim-san, who everyone called Fearsome Kim. He had the fastest legs on the soccer team and was really strong. One time he beat the hell out of some racists on the karate team, and from then on, he was called Fearsome Kim. I watched that fight—it was incredible. There wasn’t a single wasted motion in his movements. I guess it was what you’d call artistic. He didn’t seem human. One guy took one of Kim’s uppercuts in the chin and lifted off the ground. That image is burned in my memory even now. Ever since I saw that, I idolized him. How do I explain it—it had nothing to do with him being Zainichi. I just looked up to Kim-san.”

  The young cop nodded again and again, muttering, “He was something else,” and lit his cigarette. I told the cop what I suspected might be Fearsome Kim’s full name. The cop looked at me surprised and asked how I knew him. I explained to him that Fearsome Kim came to my junior high school as the new PE teacher during my second year and that he was feared by the students.

  “I had a friend who was horrible at math. Probably couldn’t recite the multiplication table, so he sure as hell wasn’t going to follow the math lectures. One day he ditched the midwinter endurance run in PE class and was taking a nap in the classroom near the stove when Fearsome Kim appeared.”

  The young cop listened with rapt attention.

  “Fearsome Kim walked right up, dragged the kid to his feet by the collar, and gave him a double slap in the face that nearly tore his head off. From that moment on, my friend was a wiz at math.”

  The young cop let out a disbelieving puff of smoke and said, “What?”

  I said, “After those slaps in the face, he went to the hospital complaining of a terrible headache. They found out his brain waves were scrambled.”

  The young
cop muttered, “Kim’s slap will do that to you.”

  “The headaches went away after a week, and all of sudden, he could solve all those algebra and geometry problems he couldn’t before. The same kid that used to say four times nine is twenty-eight.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “It’s true,” I answered. “Not only was he able to solve junior-high-level problems, he could do high-school-level problems and came to be called the biggest genius since the school’s founding. I heard he’s working on proving Fermat’s theorem in high school now.”

  “What is that—is it harder than quadratic equations?” asked the cop.

  “The difference between Little League and the Major League.”

  The young cop nodded like he was impressed. “Sounds like your friend owes Kim-san big.”

  Really? For slapping him silly?

  The cop said I should get going, put out his cigarette, and rose to his feet with his cap in hand. I stood up along with him. After patting me on the shoulder, the cop smiled a bit bashfully and said, “You should be like Fearsome Kim. Then you’d have all kinds of women hanging all over you.”

  I bowed my head and said, “I’m sorry about earlier.”

  The cop brought his mouth up to my ear and said, “Let’s just keep that between us.”

  I nodded, laughing. The cop gave me an embarrassed smile.

  When I returned home, my father was waiting up for me.

  “What were you doing?” he asked.

  I left out the part about Sakurai and told him about hanging out with a cop I’d hit. My father let out a deep sigh and muttered, “Whatever.” Then he asked, “Are you all right?”

  I nodded.

  After a quick shower, I went back to my room. I stacked all the novels, poetry collections, art books, photography books, and CDs that Jeong-il had lent me in piles on my desk. Thirty-four books and sixteen CDs in all. I put Schubert’s Winter Journey—one of Jeong-il’s favorites—on low and began paging through all of Jeong-il’s books.

  Flipping through the pages of Langston Hughes’s poetry collection, I noticed a sticky note on one of the pages for the first time. It was a page with a short poem called “Advice.” I won’t say any more about it. For as long as the poem remains unknown, it belongs only to me. No, it belongs only to me even if it does become known.

  By the time I got done going through all the books, the sun had come up, and it was time to get ready for school. After some thought, I decided to skip school. As soon as I decided, I began to cry. Putting my forehead down on the desk, I cried for almost an hour. It was the first time I’d cried in a really long time.

  I climbed under the covers and wished Jeong-il a good night before going to sleep.

  Good night.

  6

  Sakurai hadn’t called since the night of Jeong-il’s funeral. I hadn’t called her either.

  And then one night about a week after the funeral, I got a call from Kato.

  “It’s been a while.” Kato’s voice lacked energy. “How’ve you been? Good?”

  “Yeah, never mind that. Why haven’t you been in school?”

  Kato hadn’t been in school for almost a month.

  “So you haven’t heard any rumors yet?”

  “Did something happen?” I asked.

  “I got pinched by the police.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Selling acid.”

  “Dumb ass.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And?”

  “I got sent to family court and somehow got off on probation. I’ve been seeing my probation officer every weekend, like we’re dating or something. This dude is as cute as a button,” he joked. “We’re going to get engaged soon.”

  “Dumb ass.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “My old man was fuming that I got kicked out of school. I guess he thought I was a good kid. Anyway, I guess I’ll live like a Zen monk and play it humble for a while.”

  “Okay. Enjoy your ascetic training.”

  “By the way, how’s it going with your snow spirit?”

  “She melted and disappeared.”

  “So you guys are finished?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Oh. Have you decided about your future?”

  “I’m applying to university.”

  “What’s this all of a sudden?”

  “A dying wish of a friend.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell you about it sometime. Anyway, I’ve been studying for the entrance exams.”

  “I’m sure you’ll get in.”

  “You think?”

  “Definitely. But if you’re going to go through the trouble, you might as well get into a really good school. And then you can breathe the air up there for me.”

  “The air up there ain’t nothing but thin and dirty.”

  “That’s perfect. I mean, you’re used to that.”

  We both let out a laugh.

  “I’ll come and see you soon,” I said.

  “Nah, better not,” replied Kato.

  “What’s the matter?”

  After a brief silence, Kato said, “I don’t plan on seeing you for a while. As dumb as I am, I got to thinking after that incident at the club, and that’s what I decided. I’ve been expecting too many people to carry me. I’ve been half-assed and pathetic. When I saw you going down the stairs to punch that kid, Kobayashi, I realized I’d never measure up to you. So until I can stand on my own two feet and get to where you are, I’ve decided that I’m not going to see you.”

  “I’m not the person you think I am.”

  “Look, maybe to you, you’re just being normal. But not to me. I can’t just be the yakuza’s son anymore. It’s not enough. It’s not enough if I want to catch up to you. I have to look good and hard for my own thing. It isn’t always easy being Japanese either.” Kato chuckled sheepishly.

  I said, “When I get into a really great university, I’ll call you. Who knows how long that’ll take.”

  “Hey, when that happens, I’ll throw you a huge party.”

  “Say hi to your father for me.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  I said, “See you,” and Kato said, “Later,” and we each hung up the phone.

  Around the start of November, a new challenger appeared before me. He was a second-year who’d mistakenly gotten it into his head that I’d become depressed without Kato around to back me. I put him away in a minute. That was a personal best. Thus, I was still undefeated with a 25–0 record. But just how long did I have to keep fighting like this anyway?

  With Kato out of the picture, I didn’t have anyone to talk to, so I concentrated on the entrance exams. I spent the breaks between classes and my lunch hour studying. When school ended, I went straight home and did my usual training routine and guitar practice and then studied until morning. Oh, and I picked up Spanish as a breather between studying for the exams. Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, buenos días, muchas gracias, adiós, hasta la vista . . .

  My parents had another fight, and my mother left the house again. This time it was about my mother wanting to get a driver’s license. Whatever.

  There were a lot of rainy days. I focused on my studies, at times listening to the gloomy echo of raindrops.

  On a rainy day toward the end of November, an unfamiliar face approached my desk during lunch hour. The voices in the gallery died down, and everyone around me moved off to the corners of the classroom. I closed the classics study guide I’d been reading and got into combat mode. The kid had a faint smile on his lips as if to show he came in peace.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  He had a soft voice. He was wearing silver-rimmed glasses. You had to be some kind of fighter if you were going to pick a fight with your glasses on. This kid didn’t look like any kind of fighter.

  I nodded, and the kid turned the chair from the desk in front of me around and sat down. The conv
ersations in the gallery picked up again.

  “My name is Miyamoto. You don’t know me, do you?” he asked.

  I answered honestly.

  Miyamoto said, “That figures,” and gave me a broad smile. “We’ve been in the same year for three years.”

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  The smile vanished from Miyamoto’s face. He casually looked around him and said in a flat voice, “I’m actually Zainichi, like you.”

  Miyamoto waited for some kind of response. A positive one, probably. I gave him nothing. A hint of disappointment came over his face.

  “Unlike you, I’ve gone through the Japanese school system, so I don’t know Korean or anything about Korean history or culture. But I’m still Korean. It’s weird. Don’t you think?”

  I said nothing and stared at his face. Miyamoto continued, unbothered. “If I had been born in America, I’d be called Korean-American and would have all the rights accorded to an American citizen. I’d be treated like I was human. But this country is different. If I become a model person, more so than any Japanese, I still won’t be treated like a proper human as long as I have Korean citizenship. The way a sumo wrestler can’t become a stable master while he still has foreign citizenship. Assimilation or exclusion. There are only two choices in this country.”

  “Then why don’t you change your citizenship to Japanese?” I said.

  An obvious look of disappointment came over Miyamoto’s face.

  “Are you saying that I should admit defeat to this country?”

  “What defeat? What are you fighting anyway? What—is your ethnic pride so fragile that it would disappear just by changing your citizenship?”

  Miyamoto sighed and said, “Look, we don’t have a lot of time left, so I’ll tell you why I’m here. I’m trying to get all the young Zainichi together to form a group. We don’t discriminate between North and South Korean or between Chongryon and Mindan. We already have close to a hundred members. I’m asking if you’d join our group. I know we’d be a lot stronger with someone like you on our side.”