All that remained was negotiating with Mr. Akiba.
I simply wasn’t convinced that diverting my company’s margin payments to my bank account was the way to go.
“If you’re calling that a crime, we’re already criminals.” Mr. Akiba was unperturbed. “Imagine if it got out that we pool money to treat our clients. Going to clubs in Ginza. Hot spring vacations with companions. All of it would merit accusations of excessive entertainment. Can you truthfully say that you’ve never spent a single yen of company money on personal enjoyment?”
I could. I always paid out of my own pocket to purchase gifts for my family during those hot springs trips. “Making my company pay for my co-signed debt is corporate embezzlement no matter how you look at it. Please, let me meet with this former chairman.”
“You can’t. He’s recuperating in Karuizawa.”
I couldn’t understand why Mr. Akiba was protecting the former chairman even then. I had to wonder if they were perhaps far closer than any help incurred in progressing Mr. Akiba’s business warranted.
Not bothering to wait for my reply, as the representative of Autumn Leaf he demanded a one-percent increase in the margin from my boss. It was a condition my company couldn’t afford to reject. What they call “dark money” was sucked into Mr. Akiba’s company account, and he asked me for my personal bank info. I couldn’t give it to him. I thought that it would be the end if a single yen flowed in there.
Both my colleagues and my dear departed Chiyoko had called me a “fastidious” person. You could also say that I’m “inflexible.” It may seem ironic given my current predicament, but I instinctively fear deviating from society’s norms.
Ever since I’d graduated high school and moved to Tokyo, I’d been out of touch with my parents in Ichinomiya.
My family sold off their farm and house around the time I began high school. It was the fate of all landowners caught up in the real-estate boom.
Thanks to a major real-estate firm’s plans to create a massive university town, the price of land in the area had skyrocketed. Smelling the potential for profit, yakuza arrived.
Use your land as collateral, borrow from a bank, and manage a condo, or resell the property and profit from the margin. With pretty words, they first convinced the locals to set up limited companies. Being called “president” was the dream of all the old farming men.
My father loved gambling, so it was like stealing candy from a baby for the yakuza. They ushered him to bicycle and horse races, had him win at cards and dice, and he was hooked. Soon, they began asking him to sign one check after another, claiming it was for business operations. They bounced, and the company went under. The yakuza who had flattered him, calling him “Mr. President, Mr. President,” disappeared, and in their place, but no doubt connected to them, came the real-estate people, who snatched away our land.
It wasn’t just my family. Plenty others had no intention of selling their land but were forced into it, committed suicide by hanging themselves, and even took to each other with katana during inheritance battles.
Crazed people running themselves to ruin were etched into my memory, and I must have wanted to break free of the place’s curse. At eighteen, I abandoned my family.
My older brother also promptly left Ichinomiya with a small fortune that he’d squirreled away during the good times. My parents sold their land to make good on the checks, but chased out of their country, they decided to open a bar in Gifu prefecture.
“I like how reluctant you are to betray your company, Mr. Tsuzuki, but is it really worth such loyalty? Come on, be smart.”
Mr. Akiba’s arrogant attitude and amnesia about what he had done reminded me all too much of the real-estate agent who had snatched away our property. Making my father press his seal, the man had said, “Now you can start your life over. You ought to feel grateful to the land.”
Mr. Akiba even went as far as to say, “You know, your uptightness is sometimes irritating to watch.”
He was our company’s lifeline. I couldn’t defy him, and I had to make sure he was happy. If I rejected his redirection of two percent, I’d be crying myself to sleep over the fifty-million-yen rip-off. I couldn’t even report the chain of events to my boss. I was at a dead end and out of breath.
The whole situation was so unreasonable, my sanity was fraying. Every time I looked at the funeral portrait on the altar, my entire body shook with rage at both Mr. Akiba and myself. He had slipped in through a gap in my heart to rob what Chiyoko had chipped away at herself to leave for Miho and me.
I mustn’t forgive the man. What could I rob him of? In time, I began to grope around for a way to take revenge on Mr. Akiba.
What I took away from him didn’t have to be fifty million yen in cash. I wanted something that could compare with the price of Chiyoko’s life, whatever he cherished most.
I knew that Mr. Akiba had a lover who worked at a club in Ginza. I considered writing an anonymous letter to his wife revealing the secret. It would cause unrest in their household. His wife would take his kids and leave. With this plan, I’d be able to take away Mr. Akiba’s treasure, his family.
But only very few people knew about Mr. Akiba’s lover. He would no doubt figure out right away that I had been responsible for the letter.
It was indeed quite self-seeking of me to try to strike at Mr. Akiba without wrecking the relationship between our companies.
That was around when trouble stirred around my apartment building in Tsukishima.
The automobile disassembly plant adjacent to us had promised not to work past seven in the evening. The residents had rallied together against the obnoxious sound of the car press and eventually won an agreement through direct talks with the factory manager.
Now, however, the factory had passed into someone else’s hands, and the promise was just scrap paper. I acted as the residential representative of my apartment building and went to the factory with the neighborhood association directors. The new factory chief said to us, “In this recession, you can’t feed yourself if you stop working at seven. Or are you people going to compensate for the losses?” He had no intention of compromising.
That was when I discovered a new me.
Interrupting the factory chief’s sophistry, I picked up a disassembly hammer lying on the ground and brought it down hard onto the windshield of a decommissioned car.
“Do something about this noise, do something, do something!”
My intensity must have been frightening because when I finally dropped the hammer out of exhaustion, everyone was standing in a circle some distance away from me.
Once the tethers of self-restraint had snapped, something uncontrollable raced through my body, and everything other than myself and my daughter was a potential target for destruction. That was the first time I had ever revealed such a side.
The factory chief let pass my shattering the decommissioned car’s glass. In most cases, it would have counted as property damage, a crime. Perhaps the chief thought that I now owed him one.
After that incident, I kept careful watch over my emotions. Whenever I met Mr. Akiba, I had to make sure that the floodgates to my anger were constantly sealed, as mayhem bided its time beyond them.
Please, don’t anger me any further.
Insensitive to my suffering, Mr. Akiba boasted about securing a major contract with the exam-prep school, which had expanded to Sapporo.
“All you need to do is want it, Mr. Tsuzuki, and in three years you’d be able to regain your wife’s insurance money.”
Even if I had the guts to embezzle, and mountains of dirty money piled up in my bank account, Chiyoko’s “last love letter” was lost for good.
“What’s so funny?”
Mr. Akiba was staring at my face, suddenly serious. I realized that the corner of my mouth was curled. I was smiling.
I can analyze now what I was feeling back then. I was trying to open the canals of my emotions little by little. Still able to exercise self-res
traint, I was deftly controlling myself and channeling destructive energy into the next canal: It’s still too early. Wait, wait for the next rush of anger.
Club girls were grouped around us. Perhaps offended by my sarcastic smile, Mr. Akiba turned to the hostess beside him and said, “You know, Mr. Tsuzuki used his late wife’s life insurance to help someone. I would never. He’s an amazing guy, really.”
“Wow,” the hostess said with exaggerated awe, and this time I laughed out loud. I was cranking the large, rusted handle to open the canal a little more.
I laughed until I coughed violently and tears fell.
“Mr. Tsuzuki, you’re acting weird tonight. What’s so funny about having your late wife used as a conversation starter? You’re a strange one.”
No longer amused, Mr. Akiba told the girl to call him a taxi and left ahead of me.
Like a withdrawing tide the hostesses around me disappeared, and for the first time, I found Hennessy cut with water delicious.
“You should call Mr. Akiba tomorrow to apologize,” the establishment’s Mama warned me.
The next day I took time off from work. As Miho left for school, I told her, “Today I only need to go in at noon. I’ll write my plans for tonight on the calendar like always.”
I lay spread-eagled on the tatami in the living room. Turning around now and then to Chiyoko’s photo on the altar, I talked to her to kill time.
I can’t stop it. I can’t stop it anymore. But you have to forgive me, I repeatedly begged her understanding.
Come midday, I still couldn’t find the will to go to work. That was when one of my subordinates at the company called.
“Vice Department Head, please call him. Mr. Akiba’s trying to void our understanding and switch to Magome Teaching Materials. Unless we raise the current two percent to five percent, he wants to put a halt to supplying our products to the Sapporo school.”
It was like a child’s bullying, I thought. I already knew that our business rival, Magome Teaching Materials, had approached Mr. Akiba. Since he did owe me for the fifty million co-signing deal, I’d felt sure that he’d never partner with a different company.
He was just pushing an unreasonable demand on us. He’d back down if I just groveled to him.
“What’s so funny, Vice Department Head?”
Now my subordinate had said it, too. I was chortling into the phone.
“I’ll do something about it,” I told him, before contacting Mr. Akiba.
“What is this about?” Mr. Akiba asked stiffly, recognizing my voice.
“I apologize for last night. I’m sorry for any unpleasantness you may have experienced.”
“Oh, it didn’t bother me at all,” Mr. Akiba said with a wry laugh.
I decided to be direct about it. “Have you thought about that matter we discussed?”
“What matter?”
“You need to atone for how my wife’s insurance money was tricked out of me. You’re morally accountable. You’ll guarantee at least half of it—twenty-five million.”
“Mr. Tsuzuki, have you finally snapped?”
“Why must I be forced to endure this?”
“Like I said, I’m doing the best I can through the work side. If your company consents to five percent, we’ll have this sorted out right away.”
“I don’t want to become a criminal.”
“Then find a way to bear it. I’m sure you of all people can. You’re good at persevering.”
With that, he hung up on me.
Perhaps lunch break had ended, and the factory next door was blasting away again. I changed out of my pajamas and prepared to head out. A bizarre vitality was welling up from somewhere inside me.
I knew there would be no need for suits or neckties. I put on cotton pants and a buttoned shirt and pulled a light jacket on top. I recall that I had thirty thousand yen or so in my wallet.
At the disassembly factory next door, swarthy foreign laborers were lugging bumpers and doors on their shoulders. There was no sign of the factory chief. When I stepped onto the premises, I noticed a disassembly hammer leaning on the wall and took it in hand without thinking twice. It was the same tool I had swung the other day when I’d gone berserk. I doubt anyone noticed me as I left the factory with the hammer.
I put it in the trunk of my family car and drove out of the apartment parking lot. The gas meter was almost at zero, but there seemed to be enough for a one-way trip to Suginami, so I continued to drive without visiting a gasoline stand.
They say that the battleship Yamato made its last journey toward Okinawa with just enough fuel for a one-way trip. The association put a smile on my face.
I parked my car beside the school my daughter attended. The bell announcing the end of lunch break was chiming, and the children playing on the grounds were running back to the school building.
I had wanted one glimpse of my daughter’s face, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be, so I started driving again.
Goodbye, Miho.
I think I remember whispering those parting words.
I felt sufficiently composed to appreciate the scenery and started whistling for the first time in months. I believe the song was “My Blue Heaven.”
I even enjoyed the congested roads. As people scurried on the pedestrian crossing right in front of me, I knew without a doubt that all of them would know of me by tomorrow, and the thought was unbelievably pleasant.
The rusted handle to the canals turned with amusing ease. A foaming white deluge crashed through the opened floodgates and gushed and roared, filling the waterway. My whole body was imbued with vitality.
When I saw a DIY store located along the main road, I had a notion and turned on my blinkers. The car behind me honked the whole time as I turned into the parking lot.
I had the hammer from the disassembly factory in my trunk, but that was like going in with a cannon and nothing else.
A regular-sized hammer. A nail puller. A cleaver. Gardening shears. Protective goggles and mask. My shopping cart was soon overflowing. I called over a young employee and had him choose a small chainsaw suitable for beginners.
“What do you need it for?” he asked.
“I have to disassemble a home.”
“You should leave that to the pros,” he advised, but I learned how to work the chainsaw from him anyway and didn’t forget to purchase fuel for it, either. I paid for it by credit, though I was a little worried that the card company might not be able to charge my bank account in a month’s time.
Placing it all in my trunk, I opened the packaging so everything could be used right away before returning to the driver’s seat.
I arrived at the Akibas’ in Asagaya at about five p.m. In the dimming residential area ambled housewives who’d gone shopping. I parked on the street and sat in my car for a while, gazing at the Akibas’ home.
I’d take it away from Yukihiko Akiba. I’d shred the man’s pride to pieces. I was shot through with such a clarity of will.
I’d stopped by outside numerous times after golf trips but had never been invited in, so I had no idea how the five family members went about their daily lives or in what room arrangement. By one of the second-floor windows was an Ultraman doll of whatever generation. They probably had a room for the children. I remembered seeing a pair of kid bikes in the garage before, but they weren’t there now. I assumed the two boys were out playing. The family also had a daughter the same age as my own. The pink bicycle was most likely hers.
Their yard was big enough for two kids to play badminton. I could see the light from the kitchen behind the well-trimmed garden foliage. Mrs. Akiba was probably busy preparing dinner. I felt a thrum of excitement picturing the branches in the yard falling to a snarling chainsaw.
I wondered where the house’s supporting pillars were. If I severed them, would Mr. Akiba’s house groan and tip over and flatten?
I didn’t actually manage this, so I have no idea.
I got out of the car. I breathed in the cool Ma
y air deeply and opened the trunk.
Glancing up and down the street, I waited until there was a break in passersby and put on the protective mask and goggles. I slipped on gloves and gripped the regular-sized hammer, testing its weight in my hand. I figured it would do as a weapon for what was just a courtesy call.
I wandered closer to the intercom box at the gate and pushed the button.
“Yes?” I heard his wife’s high-pitched voice inquire.
“I’m an acquaintance of Mr. Akiba’s, he’s been very good to me. My name is Tsuzuki, from Sun Educational Equipment,” I introduced myself.
His wife seemed to recognize me as the person who drove her husband to and from golf and said, “Please come up,” without asking what I was there for. I passed the gate, walked along the stone path, and arrived in front of their doorway.
I heard the sound of someone sliding on slippers, and Mrs. Akiba opened the door. Her eyes widened at shock as she was met with my face, guarded with thick goggles and a mask. As she tried to take a defensive posture, I raised my hammer and brought it down, aiming for the top of her head. There was a dull sound, and she collapsed onto the entrance ledge. Rather than sinking into her head, I remember that it felt like the hammer had bounced back. Closing the door behind me, I stepped up into the hall with my shoes on.
I announced to Mrs. Akiba, who was clutching her head with both hands and letting out a low pained moan, “I’m sorry for being rough with you. I just didn’t want you getting in the way. This might take some time, so please withdraw and rest awhile.”
My words apparently didn’t make it through her ears. She didn’t look like she could move from where she’d fallen, so I grabbed her by the collar and dragged her down the hall. Beyond the living room, around ten tatami mats in size, was the dining room, where chopsticks and plates were set out on a table for a family of five. I laid Mrs. Akiba on the floor of the living room and peered into her face. Blackish blood was oozing out from between her hands, and a stream or two of it dripped down onto her pale face.
I heard a pot simmering on the kitchen gas countertop. I didn’t want it to bubble over while I worked, so I went and turned off the fire.
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