“Why don’t you go to the hospital?” Masayuki advised.
“I don’t have that kind of money …” Naka laughed, coughing.
Masayuki had grown fond of Naka, who was unfalteringly tranquil even though he’d been living this way for ten years.
“I’ll heat up the egg porridge that I bought you.”
Going into the tent, Masayuki filled the pot with water and heated it over the portable gas stove. He poured the warm egg porridge into a bowl and handed it to Naka.
“Thank you …”
The old man came out of his sleeping bag and sipped the egg porridge.
“May I eat here too?”
Masayuki pulled his fried chicken set out of the convenience store bag and had his dinner with Naka.
“Masaa! Masaa!”
Hearing someone calling for him outside, Masayuki flipped open the tarp entrance to look out.
Sho was shouting outside Masayuki’s tent.
“I’m over here,” he called, and Sho made his way toward him.
“What, you were here all along? I’ve got booze for you, come over to my place.” Peeking into the back, he added, “I’ll give you some too, ol’ geezer, so come on over.”
Masayuki exchanged glances with Naka.
Though Masayuki didn’t really feel like drinking, turning Sho down could cause complications. The guy looked around the same age as him, but here Sho was something of a boss. Masayuki and Naka left the tent together and followed Sho.
Sho’s shack was slightly set off from everyone else’s homes. It was noticeably large among the group of tents and had iron pipe pillars and veneer panel coverings. Masayuki had been inside a number of times, and with accoutrements like a television set and a soft-looking mattress, it seemed pretty comfortable.
Sho was skilled at using people, whether it was acting as a middleman for the open-air bookshops selling magazines on the street or pointing the newly homeless to gigs and squeezing some of their earnings from them. For a homeless fellow, he was quite prosperous.
Opening the door of the shack, he ushered them in. When Masayuki entered, he found Kon sitting there uncomfortably.
Expensive-looking bottles of alcohol were lined up inside. Sho grabbed one of them and poured out four cups.
“It ain’t cheap, so be grateful,” Sho said sitting cross-legged.
Coughing now and then, Naka sipped the booze.
“Shouldn’t you cut that with water?” Masayuki thought to ask him, but Naka laughed and said, “I’m fine. They say alcohol is the best home remedy.”
“Macallan … I used to drink this almost every day. Like at a Ginza club,” Kon murmured with feeling, his cup to his mouth.
“Right, you said you used to be a department head at a large company. And look at you now. Can’t make any sense of the world,” Sho sneered.
Kon’s expression instantly clouded. It seemed that his proud heart had been wounded.
The air in the shack seemed to bristle.
“Sho, why have you kept living like this?” Masayuki changed the topic, eager to dispel the oppressive mood.
“Why do you ask?”
“I mean, couldn’t someone like you who’s so good at handling people easily find a normal job?” Masayuki said.
Sho laughed loudly. “Fuck normal jobs. Look at this pops.” He pointed at Kon. “He was used like a rag, and for all his fawning bowing and getting to a halfway respectable position, he was told he was useless and got laid off. I’d feel like an idiot. You see, I used to ride at the head of my biker pals. It’d be an honest shame for me to serve anyone. I stay because I rule as long as I’m here. In a sense, this place is like heaven to me.”
“Thank you for the drink!”
Kon slammed his cup on the ground and left.
Masayuki had spoken up to temper the mood but instead ended up horribly disturbing the hornet’s nest.
Naka just stared at Sho and indifferently drank his whiskey.
Sho was certainly coarse, but he had even been the head of a motorcycle gang. No wonder he was good at forcing others to do his bidding, Masayuki thought.
He studied the scorpion tattoo etched into the back of Sho’s hand as the guy gulped down whiskey.
“Masa, I’ll show you a new way to make money, so come with me tomorrow,” Sho said.
“Okay, understood.”
“All right, then come to the plaza in the morning at nine.”
Jostled awake by a whooshing roar, Masayuki flew out of his sleeping bag. He looked around in his dark tent. Across the tarp, a myriad of fireworks were flying around and explosions echoed all over.
What on earth had happened?
When Masayuki left the tent, a firework popped at his feet. The fire spread to dry wood, and he hastily put it out by stomping on it with his shoes. From the tents around him, people were also jumping out in bewilderment.
“Get lost, social trash!” Three youths were launching skyrocket fireworks toward the tents and laughing.
Masayuki glared at them and clucked his tongue.
Recently, a lot of people harassed the homeless. It wasn’t too bad when they were just causing trouble, but the previous week, a tent had been set on fire in Shinjuku and a homeless person had died. The culprit was still at large.
“Bastards, you don’t screw around with me!” Sho raged as he got out of his shack and headed towards the plaza.
Masayuki watched to see whether he needed help, but Sho was beating up the three youths in no time. The guy hadn’t led a motorcycle gang for nothing.
The kids desperately begged for forgiveness, but Sho’s rampage didn’t stop. Even if they’d provoked the fight, this was going too far. If it went on and became a police matter, they’d all be in trouble.
Masayuki reluctantly headed toward Sho.
“Bastards, don’t underestimate me! I wouldn’t give a shit if I beat you bloody and killed you!” Hollering, Sho continued to kick the three as they groveled on the ground.
“Sho, shouldn’t you leave it at that. It’d be trouble if the police came …” Masayuki interceded.
Sho turned towards him and then immediately looked down at the three collapsed youths. After thinking for a bit, he pulled the trio’s wallets from their pants pockets. He just took the bills out and tossed the wallets.
“Fees for our trouble. If you tattle to the police, I’ll kill you, got it? Unlike you bastards, I have nothing to lose.”
Even as Sho threatened them, the crying youths picked up their wallets and left the park.
“They go through with this even though they’re small fry. Right?” Sho grinned and sought approval, but Masayuki couldn’t nod.
The next morning, Masayuki ate the rice ball he’d bought the day before and made his way out of his tent to the plaza.
Sitting on a bench, Masayuki lit up and waited for Sho, but the guy was taking forever. Was he still asleep?
Having smoked the cigarette to its base, Masayuki threw it into an ashtray and headed to Sho’s shack.
He knocked on the door, but there was no reply. After knocking several times, he tried opening it.
Sho was sleeping with a futon over his head.
“Morning. It’s nine thirty already.”
Masayuki shook Sho’s body from above the futon. No response. He shook even harder. Still no response. He slowly peeled the futon away, then screamed.
Sho was lying face down, his head bashed into a pulpy mess.
Ten minutes after Masayuki made a report to the emergency number, a uniformed police officer appeared on a bicycle. Then it was as though a beehive had been poked. Several police cars came to blockade the park and to question the homeless, including Masayuki, who were living in the park.
“Your name?” one of the detectives asked Kon, his tone bordering on rude, and his face contorting, probably at the smell.
“They call me Kon,” Kon answered sulkily.
“Your actual name, the real one! Also, you probably don’t have
an address, so give your permanent one.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong, so why do you need my name? It’s etiquette to give your own before asking someone.”
“If you can’t tell me here, you can come to the station.”
“This is a human rights violation!” resisted Kon, getting into an argument with the detective.
The people who lived here had various backstories. No doubt, some balked at revealing themselves to the police.
Masayuki was one of them. What if his wife, Saeko, had put out a missing persons search? But after thinking about it, he silently scoffed at himself. Not a chance. Saeko must have submitted the divorce papers and moved back with her parents a good while ago.
Naka, who was standing next to Masayuki, started coughing hard.
“Are you okay?” a tall man wearing a suit came and asked Naka. “I’m very sorry you have to be in the cold. We’ll be done soon, so please rest over here.”
The man supported Naka over to a bench. He patted Naka’s back. This man also seemed to be a detective, but what a difference from the one who was talking to Kon.
“What might your name be?” the man smiled and asked Naka.
“It’s Yasutaro Nakajima—but here they call me Naka.”
“Then can I call you that as well? Naka, have you always lived in Tokyo?”
“No, Tokyo, I came to recently. I’m from Aomori.”
“Ah ha. I’m from Aomori, too. Where in Aomori?”
“Hachinoe.”
“That’s close to where I used to live …”
Smiling amiably, the man asked for Naka’s permanent address, last current address, and whether he’d seen anything odd in the vicinity the night before.
The man came to Masayuki next. “Good afternoon. May I talk to you?” he said, and asked the same things he’d asked Naka.
Masayuki replied honestly, both about himself and how he’d found Sho’s body.
“By the way, Sho, who passed away … Would you know his real name? It seems that people here only knew him as Sho.”
“Well, he was Sho to me, too. Didn’t you find a license or something?”
“No. We’re searching the shack he lived in, but we haven’t found anything to link him to an identity.”
“I see.”
“By the way, did anything unusual happen in this area recently?” the man asked further.
“Now that you mention it …”
Something did come to mind—the night before, some youths had launched rocket fireworks at the tents and gotten beaten up by Sho. Had they assaulted him in retaliation? Masayuki told the man about this.
“Launching fireworks at tents is just terrible. Did you see their faces?”
Masayuki nodded.
“If you see them again, or if others try that, please contact me,” the man said, handing Masayuki his card.
It said: East Ikebukuro Precinct - Nobuhito Natsume.
Although the blockades were lifted from the park the next day, most of the homeless who’d been living there gathered their belongings and left. Perhaps they felt that the place was unsafe and that the police coming back from time to time could be troublesome.
Masayuki also struggled over whether to leave. But he was reluctant to abandon Naka, who was ill and couldn’t easily move. Masayuki decided to stay with him.
After a few days, the police made themselves scarce as well. With the exception of one man—
“Good afternoon.”
Natsume came by while Masayuki was crushing aluminum cans in front of his tent. Masayuki lightly nodded back and returned his focus on the cans.
“What are you doing?” asked Natsume, watching the process with open curiosity.
“I’m crushing them to sell them.”
“How much do you make?”
“A bit ago, a kilo was worth two hundred yen or so, but now it nets only half of that. Even with this much, it’ll probably come out to just over a thousand yen.”
“Finding so many must be difficult.”
“I’ve gained a dependent.” Masayuki looked at Naka’s tent and forced a grin. “Have to make a living.”
Natsume also turned his eyes toward the tent. “How is Naka doing?”
“His cold won’t go away.”
“I see … This place has become very quiet, hasn’t it,” Natsume said, looking around.
“Because the culprit hasn’t been caught. I mean, the police wouldn’t hustle over one homeless man getting killed,” Masayuki, his eyes fixed on Natsume, replied with sarcasm.
The detective pointed toward the plaza. “Would you like some tea?”
“We ascertained Sho’s identity,” Natsume said, handing Masayuki the canned coffee from the vending machine. “Real name Shota Aizawa, thirty-seven years old. His parents live in Kanagawa prefecture.”
Thirty-seven—one year younger than Masayuki. “How did you find out?” he asked.
“It’s a little sensitive. Could you keep it between us?”
“Yes.”
“He had a criminal record. Seventeen years ago, Mr. Aizawa was involved in a manslaughter case.”
Manslaughter—in other words, he’d killed someone. The moment Masayuki learned this, he felt repulsed by Sho. “Who did he kill—of course, just between us,” he asked.
Natsume spoke with some hesitancy. “The victim was a nineteen-year-old office worker. On the day he got his first paycheck, he was assaulted on his way home.”
“And he died as a result?”
“Yes. Apparently, they’d been in different grades at the same middle school. Mr. Aizawa had bullied the deceased man out of his money and belongings since their school days.”
Hearing this reminded Masayuki of how Sho had beaten up and taken the wallets of the three youths. It seemed Sho hadn’t changed at all since his teens.
“There is something I need to ask you—about the business card of a film production director that was found in Mr. Aizawa’s wallet. Were you aware that he had such an acquaintance? We tried contacting the company, but they’d gone bankrupt so we couldn’t talk to them …”
“He told me that he was on TV half a year ago.”
“TV?”
“The usual stuff. A documentary program, slumming with the homeless. I heard they did blur his face out, though.”
“I see …” Natsume growled, plunged into thought.
“What is it?”
“Well …” punted the detective.
But Masayuki had a vague idea as to what Natsume was thinking. Perhaps it wasn’t the youths who’d come to the park earlier, but rather the bereaved family of the office worker whom Sho had killed, who’d gotten their revenge.
It was a possibility. The bereaved had seen the documentary and learned that Sho, who’d killed their son, now lived in Ikebukuro as a homeless man. His face might have been blurred, but if they knew about the tattoo on the back of his hand, they could have figured out it was Sho.
Masayuki’s heart ached when he thought about the family. He understood the pain of a parent whose son’s life had been stolen away.
Because if he ever ran across the person who’d run over and killed Tomoki …
“Hey, Masa …” Naka called from inside his sleeping bag.
“What, want a drink?” Masayuki came to his side and smiled.
“It’s past time you said goodbye to this place,” muttered Naka.
“The hell are you saying? There’s no way I could just leave you and go.”
“You can leave this old man here. I won’t be living much longer, but you still have many years ahead of you,” Naka said with a fainthearted expression that was rare on him.
“So dramatic for just catching a cold …”
“You can’t just keep living this life!” Naka raised his voice to interrupt Masayuki. “Going on like this will lay waste to your soul.”
“It’s already a wasteland,” Masayuki muttered as Naka looked into his eyes as if to peer into him. “I don’t kn
ow what I’m living for …”
“Masa, do you have a family?”
“I do—no, did.”
In the dim tent, Masayuki remembered his son Tomoki.
Tomoki had passed away seven months ago after he’d just started elementary school. He’d fallen victim to a hit and run at a crosswalk.
Masayuki and his wife Saeko were stricken with grief upon losing their only child. They waited in vain for the culprit who’d run over Tomoki to be apprehended. Masayuki vented his pent-up anger and sorrow at Saeko.
Tomoki had been hit on the way home from running an errand for Saeko. It was by no means his wife’s fault. He understood that well enough. In fact, he should have consoled his wife, who was already tormenting herself. But he could only come to grips with the unjust reality then by blaming Saeko.
Soon their marital relationship became stormy. On his job too, Masayuki didn’t feel like working at all and started arguing frequently with his superiors and coworkers. Once he went home, a chilly evening with Saeko awaited him. Up until then, he’d only worked hard so that his wife and son could live well. He’d thought it had been his own reason for living, but now, he didn’t know what he worked or lived for.
One night, Masayuki got into a shouting match with Saeko over some trifle.
The next morning, she wouldn’t come out of her room even after he got up. They’d been using separate ones since Tomoki’s death. He signed the divorce papers he’d obtained a few days earlier, left them on the table, and stepped out of the door.
Masayuki’s work was in Otemachi. But when the train stopped at Otemachi station, he couldn’t bring himself to rise from his seat. He’d felt that way ever since he’d lost Tomoki, but until now he’d somehow coaxed himself off the train. This time, however, no matter how much he encouraged himself, he couldn’t stand up.
Everything could go to hell—that was his mindset.
Since then, and for the past four months, he’d been wandering homeless and jobless.
“How about your son’s grave?” Naka, who’d been listening to Masayuki, asked. He hit at a sore spot. “Are you going to burden your wife with that?”
“Of course I’ll visit.”
“Living like this, are you going to steal flowers somewhere there to offer your son?” When Masayuki couldn’t reply, Naka added, “You’re a coward.”
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