When his team of ten people first gathered there, they didn’t even have chairs or tables yet, just the wide floor, and they all sat in a circle and toasted, Mr. Akiba proudly related face to face with me in a bar corner.
“This must have been what the forty-seven ronin felt like when they went on their raid,” he mused, to which I could only reply, “Please do your best. I look forward to continuing to work with you,” bowing my head.
From the perspective of established enterprises, Mr. Akiba’s business was a guerrilla operation of sorts, and it suffered no little interference. Apparently it took half a year before they started earning profits.
My company was reluctant to partner with a venture that might not succeed. My boss, who had been friends with Mr. Akiba since college, was transferred to the Kansai branch, leaving me as the man’s sole supporter. I had to fight alone. I believed in Mr. Akiba’s sales efforts and insisted in meetings that we should continue to work with him.
It was when the economy started tanking that Mr. Akiba’s company floated to the top.
“Mr. Tsuzuki, you were the only one. The rest of my old business contacts had given up on me.”
This was around the time our relationship was deepening at an accelerating rate.
Still, even when I drove Mr. Akiba home after golf on an off day, he never said, “Please come in.”
It was a new two-story building made of wood and mortar. The house was Mr. Akiba’s pride, a symbol of the success he had achieved in one generation. He told me how he hadn’t needed any assistance, how he’d managed to take out a loan by visiting the bank until they understood the kind of man he was.
I could hear his children’s voices coming from inside. Mr. Akiba had gone from a young corporate warrior to the lord of his own keep, and I was curious to see what kind of father he was at home, but he never introduced his family to me.
As such, the night of that incident was the first time I had ever seen his wife and children.
The rough waves of the recession were crashing on my own neighborhood in Tsukishima.
High-rise apartment buildings had shot up along the Sumida River at one point, and I had felt as though a breeze of urbanity had swept through the old downtown lined with traditional pancake stores. My daughter’s elementary school had increased its enrollment despite the declining birth rate, and the designated routes had been filled with chattering children in the morning.
Thanks to the recession, however, many people were giving up their units in the high-rises, and Miho’s classmates transferred away one after the other.
I tried to tell myself that the town had reclaimed its quiet, but the construction sites of half-finished but abandoned buildings resembled enormous gravestones and were chilling to behold.
That was around when I lost Chiyoko.
The disease called “aplastic anemia” is a kind of anemia where your bone marrow’s ability to produce blood cells deteriorates. It’s hard to recover from the condition, an intractable one according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
The symptoms progress gently, and most people with it don’t notice at first, but it’s too late when they do.
Chiyoko had taken a long view of her propensity to anemia as something she just had to deal with. This served her ill, and one day, while preparing dinner, she bled a copious amount from her nose and gums and dyed the sink crimson.
At the hospital, she was injected with male hormones to increase her count of red blood cells. As side effects, Chiyoko’s period stopped, her voice deepened, and the hair around her mouth thickened.
Miho had been at the sensitive age where her breasts had just started to develop, and I think her mother’s transformation must have been a shock to her.
A characteristic of this anemia was hemorrhaging, so Chiyoko had to avoid suffering external injuries as much as possible. Three months after she had been diagnosed with aplastic anemia, she left this world all of a sudden.
It was my daughter’s eleventh birthday. Having received permission from the hospital to stay at home for one night, Chiyoko went shopping to buy ingredients for a birthday cake.
She must have been in a hurry to bake it before Miho got home. As Chiyoko walked up the outside apartment stairs, she stumbled and hit her forehead against one of the steps, and the result was a brain hemorrhage.
When the person from the floor below found her, apparently streams of blood were coming out of Chiyoko’s eyes, nostrils, and mouth. The blood from the ruptured vessel in her brain had poured out from all the orifices it could find.
Standing beside Miho, who held her mother’s portrait, I greeted the guests as the chief mourner.
I felt terrible for my daughter. She had lost her mother on her birthday and would most likely never be celebrating the occasion again.
Many people came to see Chiyoko off. Mr. Akiba was also there to give his condolences. His eyes red, his face twisted, wiping his cheeks of tears with a handkerchief as they fell, he listened to my greeting.
Ah, this person wept for my wife. I felt simply moved.
A short while after the ceremonial forty-ninth day since her passing, I learned that Chiyoko had purchased life insurance early in our marriage with me as the recipient.
When the payout of eighty million yen was transferred to my bank account, I realized that the amount easily surpassed what Chiyoko and I had set out to save by making do in our daily lives.
A stand-alone house in the suburbs, Miho’s tuition through college, all of it was covered now thanks to the deposit we had from Chiyoko’s death, and I stared at the eight-digit number in my checkbook with a mix of hollowness and chagrin.
I think it was around the time the mourning period had passed. To cheer me up, Mr. Akiba invited me to a reserved room at a high-class traditional restaurant. No doubt because the tears he had shed at Chiyoko’s funeral procession was burned into my eyes, that night I must have told him everything in an attempt to wash it all out.
I hadn’t been able to grant Chiyoko a single luxury since I’d fallen in love with her at the elementary school in Utsunomiya. By cutting down on living expenses, hadn’t she been cutting into her health as well?
Mr. Akiba filled my sake cup, cried with me, and was a good listener. My guard down, I seem to have gone so far as to babble that my wife’s insurance had swelled my bank account.
Miho and I started our life together, shouldering Chiyoko’s absence. Turning down offers to go drinking, I left the office right after hours, went shopping, and returned straight home to where my daughter waited to prepare dinner. She knew more about seasoning stewed food than I did, and each of us helping to cover where the other was lacking, we somehow managed.
Mr. Akiba called me out to town one evening, saying, “I’d like your help with something, and it shouldn’t be a bad deal for you, either,” and I remember, even now, how oddly crimson the setting sun toasting the building windows looked.
It was the color of the blood that had madly gushed out of Chiyoko’s orifices in search for an exit from her brain. When the one-piece dress she had worn last was returned to me, perhaps because her blood hadn’t had enough platelets, the upper half was still thoroughly drenched.
It was at a cafe in Nihonbashi that Mr. Akiba awaited me, and the first thing he did was to hand me a pamphlet for an exam-prep school.
I hadn’t heard the name before, but there was a color photograph of an impressive building on the cover, and within were images of brand-new classrooms, beautiful scenery, and instructors with blinding smiles all printed on high-quality paper. It was apparently an exam-prep school based in Kansai that was expanding to Tokyo and trying to attract students.
A photo of the board chairman graced the back cover. The stout gentleman looked like he could be an executive at a first-rate company.
He had pulled popular instructors from existing schools and intended to establish three branches in Tokyo within two years. He was the exam-prep industry’s game-changer, Mr. Akiba exp
lained to me.
If the man used Tokyo as a foothold and advanced his chain north to Sendai and to Sapporo, he would command a huge market in the future, Mr. Akiba insisted.
“But the board chairman is facing a certain problem. If we’re able to solve it for him, the deal is as good as done…”
According to Mr. Akiba, the boutique that the chairman’s wife had managed had gone bankrupt. In a desperate move, he had involved the school’s accountant and borrowed the students’ tuitions to compensate for the debt. It counted as corporate embezzlement, and if the tax authorities conducted an audit, the chain would no longer be able to expand into Kanto. The chairman was taking out a high-interest loan from an agency catering to small businesses and was in a hurry to find a guarantor.
“If you and I become co-signers together, the chairman would owe us a great debt.”
The loan was for ten million yen. It wasn’t that difficult for me to guarantee half of that, five million yen. According to Mr. Akiba, the chairman was a trustworthy man, and at worst, he might delay in returning the ten million yen but could draw on his next school’s operational funds. There was no risk whatsoever of the co-signers having to shoulder the debt.
“I’m not forcing you. I know that this is precious money your wife left, so please only give me your answer after careful consideration.”
Yet it was obvious that turning him down would hurt our relationship. In contrast to his words, Mr. Akiba stared straight at me and demanded a swift decision.
“I understand. I’ll help.”
Mr. Akiba looked relieved, and he spread the IOU he had received from the chairman. I wasn’t even given the chance to worry over how practiced his movements were. He said, “I’ll sign below where you do,” pointing at a line.
The IOU looked to be the lending agency’s template, and both the amount of the loan and interest rate areas were blank.
“Trust me, I’ll be there when the chairman and the agency discuss this.”
That night, Mr. Akiba followed me home and made sure to light incense at Chiyoko’s altar. He then left in a hustle with the IOU stamped with my seal. The next day, I mailed its certification of official registration to Mr. Akiba’s company.
I actually came to hear about an exam-prep school set to expand into Tokyo, with three schools opening in a span of two years. Hitching a ride on Mr. Akiba’s business, we did receive a bulk order for teaching materials.
I went to visit the first newly established school with one of my subordinates. When we got there, though, the portrait of the chairman on the wall wasn’t of the stout gentleman in the pamphlet.
“Is he the new chairman?” I asked the manager.
He replied, “The previous chairman retired around three months ago.” That was approximately when I had signed the IOU.
That night, I called Mr. Akiba to ask for the reason behind the chairman’s resignation. Due to nervous complications, he had withdrawn himself and currently resided at a sanatorium in the countryside. Mr. Akiba told me that he was calling the former chairman every month to confirm summary repayment to the agency, and that there was nothing to worry about.
“By the by, they decided to expand into Sendai. I’ll call you soon with more details, so please look forward to it,” Mr. Akiba’s voice bounded to me from the other end.
Indeed, a second, then third school was established within the metropolitan area, and the orders for teaching tools did continue. Things were looking good for the Sendai outpost as well. My company’s sales were progressing right alongside Mr. Akiba’s leasing business, so there seemed to be nothing to worry about.
Half a year after I had pressed my seal onto the IOU, I learned that the schools’ financial state and that of the former chairman had no bearing on each other.
Two men who looked like aging biker gang members in double-breasted suits appeared at my home, everything about them screaming debt collectors.
It was a Sunday, I had packed our leftover rice into rice balls, and Miho and I were just about to leave to go to the seaside park.
The collectors brandished the IOU at me and demanded compensation for the debt as the co-signer.
Looking at the contents of the IOU, I was shocked. The base loan was not ten million yen, but twenty-five million, and the interest rate was obscene. What was most shocking, however, was the fact that my name was the only one on the co-signer line. Nowhere did I see my fellow guarantor Mr. Akiba’s seal.
By that point, the debt had already grown to nearly fifty million.
Despite their frightening appearances, the two men gave me sympathetic looks as though to say, What a fool, to be tricked into such a fraud. I told them, “I’m sorry, I need to check to make sure this is real, please if you could leave for today,” bowing and tamping down my confusion.
They went away peacefully, but their expressions made it clear that they had their jobs to do and wouldn’t the next time.
I was unsettled, and Miho watched me worriedly from the kitchen with her rice-covered hands in the air.
I called Mr. Akiba’s number immediately. I could hear the sound of children laughing on the other end; he seemed to be relaxing at home. I began to question him about the IOU that the collectors had shown me.
“Why was the debt amount different, and why was your name not included as a co-signer?”
I tried to speak politely. Mr. Akiba’s company was propping up my sales figures. I restrained myself, not wanting to ruin our partnership.
“I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean to deceive you.” He apologized so sincerely that I almost felt ashamed for doubting him.
He explained that he couldn’t co-sign because he’d taken out a loan from the same agency when he had become independent and wasn’t allowed to double-mortgage his home. Regarding the amount, he, too, had believed that it was for ten million yen.
So his promise to watch the proceedings between the former chairman and the agency had been just talk, and with no better excuse than having been too busy, he had failed to verify the contents of the parties’ agreement. I was stunned. I had basically handed a blank check to strangers.
“What should I do?” I may have been close to tears as I asked this.
“I’m on all fours for causing you such trouble.” Sounding quite serious, he added, “For now, do you think you could pay back as much as you can? After that, I’ll make sure to compensate you.”
At that time, I still didn’t see how he’d picked me as the co-signer thanks to his superior position in our work relationship and my savings from Chiyoko’s insurance.
“After the loan agreement was signed, the chairman was forced to resign, his embezzlement exposed by the accountant. I’ve brought woe on you by being such a poor judge of character.”
We were getting nowhere talking over the phone. We promised to meet the following day and ended the call.
Mr. Akiba arrived ten minutes late to the cafe in Nihonbashi where we always met.
“For now, please just transfer the amount they want. We can take our time to think about how to act after that.”
Unlike the previous day over the phone, he was calm and being businesslike in moving this along. Haven’t I apologized enough already? Mr. Akiba seemed to be making light of me—or was I just being paranoid?
“Mr. Tsuzuki, you said that when your wife passed away, you held off on your dream of buying a house in the suburbs. You were going to save the money for your daughter’s college tuition, and didn’t need it right away.”
“That’s true. Well, how about this. Can you write me an IOU for fifty million?”
“Aren’t you barking up the wrong tree, asking that of me? I didn’t force you to co-sign. I said please reply after taking your time to think about it.”
I couldn’t stay quiet. “Yesterday, didn’t you say you’d make sure to compensate me?”
“Yes. So how about we do this?”
Mr. Akiba shared with me a realistic solution to our problem.
Autumn Leaf would request that my company raise by one percent the margin we were paying to piggyback on their leasing business. We would then funnel the money into my bank account and slowly recover the fifty million.
“You’ll be able to pay it back in full in five years. Of course, I’ll include interest for those five years. I’ll also continue to send work your way.”
I was appalled. He was trying to repay my personal debt with company money. It was what the chairman had done. “Mr. Akiba, that’s a crime.”
“Then, are you okay with your wife’s insurance money covering a stranger’s debt?”
You’re the one who arranged that, I struggled to keep myself from saying. My self-restraint was still at work.
“Fifty million is nothing to you right now,” Mr. Akiba said. “You’re not ending up homeless like some other unfortunate guarantors.”
Chiyoko’s appearance when the doctor had pronounced her dead came back to me. Her face had been sheet white, as though all the blood had been squeezed from her body.
When life insurance was invented in England, it was apparently called a “last love letter.” People who bought life insurance sent their love, along with the money, to the ones they left behind. The salesperson who’d handled my wife’s account told me that story.
I couldn’t stand Chiyoko’s surviving “love” being put to such an idiotic purpose.
I had been a fool. Perhaps, the lingering hollowness in my heart had dulled my judgment so soon after her death. That was why I’d entrusted myself to my unequal relationship with Mr. Akiba. It was also true that after I’d seen the money in my account, five million yen had seemed like pocket change.
The tears Mr. Akiba had shed at Chiyoko’s funeral had left a powerful impression on me.
I went to my company’s attorney. “My friend got into some trouble,” I said, pretending it was someone else’s problem, and sought advice. The reply was that within the law, there was really no choice but to pay.
Some time later, with a heavy heart, I paid in the fifty million to the agency.
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