by KJ Charles
The rest of my thoughts, flinching away from Noriko, were on Yoshi. He’d loved that job, even with the horrible hours and no time off, even when they put everyone on short-term contracts, in a country where the corporation is still supposed to be a family. To have let colleagues down, made them miss a deadline, wasn’t a work screw-up like it is in the West. It was a betrayal of some of the closest people in his life. It was the kind of thing people used to commit suicide over. That was how his voice had sounded.
Yoshi loved his job, and he loved Noriko, and he loved me. I had to make sure he didn’t lose all of us in one day.
Chapter Three
There was a goon waiting at the bus station. He was standing with a policeman.
The yakuza guy stood out like a sore trigger finger. He favoured the business-suit style, like a salaryman but just a bit too flashy, and if he had the tattoos he was keeping them under wraps, but he had the look. He stood by the big timetable, arms folded, and people leaned away from him as they hurried past.
He was exchanging a few words with the uniformed man next to him. Maybe the cop was working with him, maybe he was warning him off. Maybe they had met here by pure coincidence. I didn’t plan to find out. From now on I was going to assume the worst.
I didn’t go anywhere near either of them. There were paper timetables in the information office, so I took a few of those, as well as a list of local hotels and B&Bs, and wandered casually away, feeling my spine twitch under the pressure of the goon’s imagined gaze, although he was nowhere near me.
It was half past four now and getting colder. It would be twilight within the hour, and dark glasses would become attention-grabbing, so I’d have to stay out of sight as best I could. I knew that logically they couldn’t watch every hotel in town, but the way my luck was running, I’d probably walk into the place they were staying. And wouldn’t a student booking a business hotel room be too noticeable? Or I could go OL again…but I had another idea.
I made my way back to the shopping mall and scrutinised the bus timetable in the toilets, where I was spending more time than I liked. What I needed was for the provincial bus services to be lousy. The odds were against me—this was Japan, after all—but I finally found a destination to which the last bus departed at quarter to seven. Risky, but not impossible.
It was miserable waiting. I wandered around the mall, and lurked in the bathrooms, and thought of poor Yoshi, and poor Noriko, and the guilt choked me. I had brought this on them both, and it did no good to say that it wasn’t my fault, because if they hadn’t known me, this wouldn’t have happened to them.
If I had told Noriko not to go back home last night—it was so obvious they’d have gone to my address, why hadn’t I thought of it? If I hadn’t reassured her—why, Christ, why had I said that, why? To make her feel better?
I dug my sharp nails into my palms, wanting the pain. If I had just thought about her instead of myself for a few seconds. If she hadn’t given me her luck. She’d had that charm since she was a little girl; she’d misplaced it (as she did everything) a couple of times, and had been reduced to tears by its loss, and I’d helped her turn the flat upside down searching for it because of her panicked distress. But she’d given it to me when I was in trouble, and I had taken it without a thought.
If I hadn’t taken away her luck…
No. If I had refused to interpret for Kelly. If Yukie had let Kelly use those electric tongs in the bath. If Noriko had never persuaded me into hostess work—no, not that either. If my father had gone to Russia or America instead of Hong Kong and never conceived me in the first place.
Yakubyo-gami, I thought. Bringer of evil. Jinx.
I stewed in misery and self-pity for long enough that when I started to call minshuku, small B&B places, my voice was convincingly young and tearful.
“Excuse me, but do you have a room for the night? Is it expensive?”
The first two minshuku were full, or said they were, and my heart sank, but I lucked out on the third try—an old lady’s voice. She had a room, she said dubiously, but it was too late for her to prepare a meal for me—
Oh, no, that’s no problem. You see, I have missed the last bus back to (wherever it was, some nowheresville that I forgot the name of as soon as I’d said it), and I just need a bed for the night, I was very foolish, no, please don’t go to any trouble, I will eat some noodles before I come to you, oh, well, if you insist, thank you so much.
I had stopped off at a pharmacy earlier, so now I took out my plasters and cotton wool pads and rigged up step two: an eye bandage. Cotton wool over my left eye, secured with strips of neat sticking plaster. It was probably too dark now for people to notice, but if they did, I hoped all they would see was the dressing.
And there was no way in hell the yakuza could have marked every tiny B&B.
I walked to the minshuku I’d booked and put my dark glasses on when I got there. The obāsan who ran it welcomed me with open arms, and I explained how I had had to visit the hospital and my eyes were very sensitive to light and I would like to lie down quite soon. I spoke in a whisper and kept my head down, knees together and toes pointing inwards, the personification of shyness. She gave me a bowl of curry rice and showed me the bathroom and a small, clean bedroom with the futon all laid out, and there I was.
It was only eight, but I’d been up for thirty hours at this point. I lay down and turned off the light, and my imagination fed me pictures of what had happened to Noriko, and what they might be doing to Kelly right now, and I had to turn the light back on.
The guilt was a solid lump in my chest. I sent Yoshi a text telling him I was okay. I wanted to say that I loved him, but that wasn’t how we spoke.
Let’s not dwell on the dreams I had.
My phone alarm went off at six, and I was out of there by six thirty, and heading for the mall to pick up my bag, and then the bus station. Call me prejudiced, but I didn’t figure yakuza for early risers. I’d decided to keep the bandage for the moment, since the day was very grey still, and the sunglasses wouldn’t look right without it. And if the yakuza saw me, they’d probably think that only an idiot would disguise herself to look really noticeable.
Hmm.
The bus to Matsumoto was pretty busy, and the station itself packed with exhausted commuters, sleepwalking to work. I couldn’t see any obvious goons, and hopefully they couldn’t see me. I bought a ticket at the booth and then hung about, trying not to look interesting, until a serious-looking woman asked for a ticket for Matsumoto.
“Excuse me? I’m very sorry to bother you, but I have to get the bus to Matsumoto too, and my eyes…”
What a nice lady. We had time for a coffee so she got them both and insisted on paying, then helped me carry my bag to the bus and sat next to me. Her name was Ito-san, and she asked me a lot of questions about what was wrong with my eyes, but I’ve been a hostess long enough to direct a conversation and to know what people want to talk about. She had real eye problems, and though she was genuinely interested in me, she was naturally more interested in herself, and that was what we talked about on the long drive to Matsumoto. Or rather she talked, and I used years of practice to look fascinated and ask intelligent questions while I thought about something else entirely.
I had gone to sleep with guilt like an open wound in my heart. When I woke up, the guilt had fermented into anger.
This wasn’t my fault. This was Kelly’s fault for starting it, and the yakuza’s fault for everything they’d done. It wasn’t just their brutality to Noriko, but the other damage. Making Mama-san betray me. Making Yoshi lose his job, making him feel worthless. Making Yukie do whatever she’d had to do. They spread ruin and corruption into everything they touched. And, I had decided, I wasn’t just going to sit there and take it.
But now, on the coach, I realised that was exactly what I was going to do.
What else was there? Yoshi was right. I had nothing to give the police, and I’d only bring down more hell on my head—and may
be Noriko’s—if the yakuza knew I was talking to them. My only hope was for the yakuza to realise I wasn’t their enemy.
I’d spent a couple of years as a hostess, ingratiating myself with people I didn’t like, smiling at unfunny jokes and unwanted come-ons, open racism and mindless lechery. I’d made any number of repugnant people think I was their friend. I’d just have to be the Mitsuyoshi-kai’s friend too.
Though, a little part of my mind murmured, if an opportunity to screw them over did come up…
About half an hour before Matsumoto, I turned up the pitch of the conversation, bringing it on to lively stories and family anecdotes that I borrowed from Noriko and Yoshi, and by the time we arrived, Ito-san was rocking with laughter. I timed a story so that I was still telling it as we got off the bus, and she was chiming in with encouraging noises, with “eeeeh” and “is that so?” like a perfect stooge, and as we trotted away up to the main street, anyone watching would have sworn we’d been friends for years.
I ditched her at a Mister Donut, where I removed the bandage in the bathroom, and changed quickly into a white roll-neck top and jeans that cheered up the brown coat and boots a bit, and my normal-sized sunglasses instead of the awful Yoko Onos. Casually trendy, that was my look for the day. My phone rang while I was changing, but the caller didn’t leave a message. I didn’t recognise the number.
Matsumoto has a gorgeous setting, a flat plain ringed with the distant Japan Alps in a magnificent stretch of white peaks, and it’s a shame they built the town out of concrete and grey tile. There are a few older buildings, one-storey wood constructions and so on, and I guess it’s pleasant enough in a same-as-everywhere-else way, but it’s really just another Japanese provincial town, except for the castle.
Matsumoto-jo is picture perfect, set in a moat amid grounds planted with pines and cherry trees, and I found myself wishing the cherry blossom was out, because this was a castle built to float over clouds of pink sakura flowers. It’s set on a stone foundation, sloping out of the moat, and it’s on about five levels, with dozens of pointed gables and sweeping tiled roofs, shining dark grey tiles jutting over white walls, and it’s just impossibly lovely. I trotted towards the red arched bridge that crosses the moat, checking my watch—a bit past ten—and my phone rang.
A mobile number I didn’t know was showing, and it looked like the one that had called me before. Yukie, maybe, or Taka’s friend?
“Moshi-moshi,” I said.
They hung up. I blinked a bit, and the phone rang again, and as I answered, I remembered that Yoshi had told me to get another phone.
“There, with the orange handbag,” said a faint voice down the line—not directly to me, but to someone else away from the receiver, just before the line went dead again. I swung around, eyes wide and searching, and there they were. Two big men, about thirty feet away. Heading for me with fast strides, one putting a mobile away. Shiny suits, brutal faces, and one of them had a bleached cockatoo crest of hair.
I dropped my clothes bag and ran like hell.
I’m no jogger, and they were always going to be faster than me. I sprinted anyway, heading down a side street, and took a couple of quick turns, hearing feet pounding after me. There were people about, but not enough to help, not enough to put them off. I lengthened my stride, arms pumping, thighs screaming, and headed back up towards the main street. A huge figure loomed out at the end of it, and something in his stance made me change direction, cornering round a side street and feeling my ankle almost twist under me.
The blood was roaring in my ears, and someone was shouting but I couldn’t hear what. The air was too damn cold for running, hurting my chest, and though the fear was giving me strength, it wouldn’t last. Oh God, oh God…
They were gaining on me, and I was running with a desperation I’d never known. I went round a corner and there was a chain-link fence ahead, and a truck blocking the left-hand end of the street with a delivery. I should have gone for it, squeezed through, but I went the other way, and round a corner, and it was a dead end, full of garbage bags and empty boxes and closed-up restaurants and deserted bars.
I spun round, and they were in the mouth of the alley.
“What do you want?” I panted. “Leave me alone. I’ll scream.”
“Don’t make any noise,” said Bleach Job, and he opened his suit jacket and I saw he had a gun.
My legs gave way, just folded under me. I sat down hard on the cold, rough concrete and realised it was over. I’d lost.
“Get her,” said the other man authoritatively. Bleach Job let his jacket fall closed and started to walk to me. There was a taste of blood and rust in my mouth. I shut my eyes.
“Hey.”
It was a deep rumble of a voice from behind the yakuza, and when I looked up, the alley was actually darker, because the gigantic figure was blotting out the light. Bleach Job and his boss turned, and the vast shape hunkered down into a wide crouching stance, and there was a slight but utterly unmistakable side-to-side sway in the motion that made my mouth drop open.
I wondered if I was hallucinating. Bleach Job and the boss were staring, frozen in astonishment. And then, as the boss began to speak, the big man exploded at them.
It’s the only description. He accelerated like a cannonball, nought to sixty in about a tenth of a second, and he literally charged over the boss, knocked him down with an easy slap and trampled over his chest as he came at Bleach Job. I was trying to shout that the goon had a gun, and Bleach Job was trying to draw it, but by the time either of us was halfway there, the big man had swept up Bleach Job with a hand like a ham hock and body-slammed him against the alley wall. He drove his other fist into the goon’s stomach, and the man doubled over, retching explosively, and the giant caught his yellow crest of hair and used it to force Bleach Job’s head down as he brought his own knee up to meet it.
He turned back to the other guy, who was choking on the ground. I had thought the yakuza were large men, but the giant picked him up one-handed, looked calmly at him for a second, and headbutted him. There was a crunch, and scarlet blood flew from the goon’s nose, then the giant gave him a casual slap that sent him ricocheting off the alley wall.
I pushed myself off the ground, shaking, as the giant prodded the unconscious yakuza with a foot. He turned to me, and we stared at each other.
He wasn’t Japanese. He looked Pacific Rim—Hawaii, Samoa, something like that. It was the eyes and the broad nose and the darker skin tone, and the fact that he was the tallest man I’d ever seen, that gave it away.
And he was bulky, really wide. He was too big even to guess, but it had to be way over three hundred pounds. Most of it was clearly muscle, though, and the rest he carried well, and he really wasn’t anything like fat enough for what I’d just seen.
“You Ekudaru Keri?” he rumbled. Japanese order and pronunciation of my surname, but a Western “r”, and Western manners, come to that.
“Yes,” I said. “And you’re Chanko-san.”
I might have guessed. Chanko-nabe is the dish sumo wrestlers eat to maintain their impossible bulk: a massive protein feed of chicken and pork and tofu and seafood in tangy broth, with noodles and vegetables and rice to fill any gaps. He didn’t have the topknot, and he didn’t have the oversized-baby fatness, and he wasn’t dressed in kimono as rikishi, sumo wrestlers, should always be when they aren’t in a loincloth, but the pre-attack sway and the serene expression as he’d stomped the goons flat told their story. He was—he had been—a rikishi.
He crouched down to take the yakuzas’ guns and mobile phones. The guns went into his huge black baseball jacket, and the mobile phones he stamped on, crunching them underfoot like cockroaches, then picking out the SIM cards from the wreckage and pocketing them. I stared at him.
“Know any numbers any more? Or does your phone remember for you?” he sang, answering my unasked question. “Sang” because though his accent was reasonable, his intonation was far too heavy, stressing key words and going up and dow
n in a way Japanese speakers simply don’t. The deep boom and rhythm made him sound like an opera star. He had the figure for it.
“Okay.” He heaved himself upright. “Let’s go.”
I stared up, biting my thumb. “Um. Excuse me, but who are you?”
“Chanko.”
I’d told him that name. “Do you mind telling me who sent you, please?”
“Who do you think?”
I backed away a step. “Look, I just want to be sure you’re not—” I gestured at the slumped yakuza.
He frowned at me. He had the face for that as well: heavy, slanting eyebrows. “What, I’m a bad guy, this is a trick?”
“Well, yes,” I said, feeling just a little stupid.
He folded his huge arms and angled his broad chest forward a little, and I felt like I was standing under one of those gigantic temple Buddhas.
“Right,” he rumbled. “So, what are you going to do about it?”
I set my teeth, then converted the grimace into a tremulous smile and a soft pity-me voice. “I’m sorry to offend you, Chanko-san, but it’s been a very frightening time for me. Please could you kindly put my mind at rest?”
His big face went still, stony, and I was irresistibly reminded of the Easter Island statues.
“Taka sent me,” he said shortly. “That what you want?”
“Thank you. Please excuse me if I was rude.” I offered him an appeasing smile. “Thank you for helping me.”
He didn’t look impressed. “Come on.”
We picked my bag up where I’d dropped it—of course it was still there, I’d have been astonished if it were stolen—and hurried through town to where his car was parked. It was a big saloon, but he filled it.
“Where are we going?” I asked, strapping myself in.
“Away. Drive, get some lunch, you tell me what you want to do. First thing, let’s get out of this place before anyone finds the yaks.”