The Yakuza Path: Better Than Suicide

by Amy Tasukada

  Kohta shrugged. “We have a bed if you want to take a nap.”

  Somehow Kohta read Nao’s mind, or maybe the yawning gave Nao away. He couldn’t sleep with Kohta turning into Shinya each time Nao closed his eyes. Nao had tried staying celibate to push the memory away. Perhaps if he screwed more people his lover’s face wouldn’t appear in them.

  Nao cleared his throat. “What I was going to say was skip to the ending.”

  “But you paid for a massage first.”

  “Skip it.”

  Kohta pulled his hat off and placed it on the bed.

  “Hurry up.”

  Kohta bit his lip but sank to his knees. He unzipped Nao’s pants, and Nao gasped when Kohta reached inside, pulling out his cock. The seconds slowed, and each breath in and out of Kohta’s mouth prickled Nao’s skin. He forced himself to keep his eyes open, knowing if he closed them he’d slip back into the past.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “Sorry.” Kohta pressed his lips together. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed before engulfing Nao in the warm heat of his mouth. His delicious tongue tantalized him to no end.

  Nao let out a moan and grabbed at Kohta’s long hair. He needed it, another man worshipping him and letting his full power be pushed upon him. He needed the respect of all the members of the Matsukawa.

  Kohta’s hair seemed to straighten, and his long face elongated into Shinya. Nao bit his lip. So what if every man Nao was with looked like his first love. Shinya was dead. Perhaps Nao should consider it a lucky deal that he could see him again. Nao squeezed Kohta’s jaw and pulled him back.

  “How much to go all the way?” Nao asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “How much extra to fuck you?”

  “But it’s illegal.” Kohta bit his swollen lip.

  “Do you even know who I am?”

  “You’re Nao Murata, head of the Matsukawa.”

  “And you’re telling me we can’t fuck, because it’s illegal?”

  Kohta looked to the side. “We mostly have girls here.”

  He hadn’t even touched Nao during the whole warm-up phase in the front.

  “You don’t like men, do you?” Nao sighed as Kohta’s features faded back into his own.

  “Not really.”

  “Not even a little?”

  “I have to do what you paid for. So it doesn’t really matter.”

  Nao felt himself grow soft. He didn’t want to force himself on Kohta. Then he’d be doing what Kurosawa had wanted the female prostitutes to do.

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t have the time for this anyway,” Nao said, tucking himself back into his pants.

  Kohta smiled. “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

  Nao should’ve known better than to think Kohta could help him forget. Everyone Nao loved died. Kyoto didn’t allow him to have any other lover. He didn’t deserve another one anyway. He’d get used to his right hand and patch of remorseful memories that only led to bloody death.

  Nao pulled on his dress shirt and tried to pull the buttons through the holes, but without the sling to stabilize his arm, the finer movements sent a shock through him.

  “Here, I can help,” Kohta said and buttoned up the shirt. “I’m sorry about—”

  “It’s okay. There’s nothing you could do.”

  Nao pulled on his jacket and tucked the tie into his pocket. He walked out of the room. Kurosawa stood on the opposite wall, poking at his phone.

  “What time is it?” Nao asked.

  “Four.” Kurosawa slid his phone into his pocket.

  “With any luck, I’ll get four hours of sleep before the meeting with Sakai.”

  The sun peeked out between the buildings in a fiery summer red, fighting the night blanket of stars. Shinya would’ve loved it.

  NAO DIDN’T KNOW which was giving him more of a headache: his hangover or the mound of paperwork on his desk. Maybe it would be better if he took a nap before Sakai came. Kurosawa had somehow managed to get Sakai to delay the meeting for a few hours, but it still didn’t deter Nao from replacing him.

  The subtle smell of chrysanthemum had followed Nao since he’d stepped into the office. He looked away from the framed photo of his father behind the desk and pushed down the scent plucked from memory. The photo would be replaced with one of Nao once the prints arrived, and hopefully the memory would go with it. The Japanese flag beside the photo would stay along with the inverted arrows of the Matsukawa’s crest, which took up the rest of the wall.

  He plopped in the desk chair and peered over the piles of papers. A crisp leather sofa sat along the back wall, and four chairs faced each other with a coffee table between. Seven could fit comfortably, but he’d never seen his Father talk to seven people at once.

  He needed to make a dent in the work before Sakai came. When he’d been on the pain medication, looking at the papers had made his head spin, so they’d piled up. If the papers had been about ward control tactics or boxing odds, Nao would know it like he knew tea. He used to help in all the street-side activities from dealing with unwanted bodies to analyzing which ward a graduated recruit would best fit into. Yet the flowing text and graphs were incomprehensible jargon. Nao had never finished high school. He couldn’t understand what the papers were about, and even then he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with them.

  A stack of folders leaned over then tumbled to the floor. Nao glared into the golden eyes of Nobu, his black sphinx kitten standing beside the shortened stack on the desk.

  She let out a squeak meow celebrating her victory over the stack. Nao wasn’t sure if she was feeding off his hatred for the task or demanding attention. Her wrinkles rolled as she arched her back and rubbed against Nao’s face.

  “Look at what you did,” Nao said, getting another squeak for a reply.

  Nao collected the papers as best as he could with one arm in a sling. They would be impossible to get back in the correct section.

  Something bounced off Nao’s head, and then a pen landed on the stack to his right. He grabbed the pen and pointed it at the cat. She meowed her innocence.

  “You want to cause trouble, don’t you?” Nao asked.

  Teaching her knocking things over gave her attention was probably not the best idea, but the whole office would be covered in papers if he didn’t meet her demands for attention. The play session went on for ten minutes until Nobu plopped down on a folder and resorted to pitiful swats at the pen.

  “Now be good, and don’t knock over anything when he’s here,” Nao said, scratching Nobu under her chin. Knowing he’d have some peace, Nao opened up another file, but a knock came at the door before he could get even halfway through the page.

  “Murata.” Sakai’s voice came muffled from behind the door. “May I come in?”

  Nao lifted the sling over his head and dropped it in the desk drawer. The long strap caught in the edge, preventing it from closing completely. As long as it was hidden, it didn’t matter. Sakai was the last person in the Matsukawa Nao wanted to show any sliver of weakness to.

  “Come in,” Nao called.

  Sakai opened the door. He was fifty, but his hair remained as charcoal black as his suit. They exchanged bows as another pen fell from the desk. Sakai eyed the cat, but Nao didn’t move her. Sakai handed Nao a stack of folders and ended any idea of small talk.

  Sakai sat in the chair closest to the desk. “Let’s start going over this week’s report.”

  “First, I want to know why you weren’t at the meeting with the Osaka and Tokyo godfathers.” Nao crossed his arms. “As head of the Matsukawa’s business side, it looked bad that you weren’t there.”

  “I told Kurosawa there was an emergency meeting.”

  Nao’s eyes narrowed. “What was so fucking important?”

  “If you must know, the married president of our largest company was caught with a prostitute.”

  “What does that—”

  “She was thirteen. The meeting quietly allowed
things to be set adrift. It saved the company and the Matsukawa an estimated three billion yen in losses.”

  Nao gnawed on the inside of his cheek. He couldn’t argue with Sakai handling the situation.

  “Why did you call Kurosawa’s phone and not mine?” Nao asked.

  Sakai sighed. “I did call yours. It went to voicemail as it did when I called you earlier yesterday about Ikida not being there since his mother took a turn for the worst.”

  “I never received any call.”

  “Are you sure your phone’s even charged?”

  Nao blinked then pulled out his phone from his jacket pocket. It was turned off. Nao couldn’t remember doing it, but he also knew he hated phones so much he could’ve turned it off in his sleep and not realized. He turned it on, and the notifications for two missed calls popped up. He had ignored the blinking notifications when he’d called Detective Yamada.

  Sakai opened the first file. “If you flip to page ten, we can get started.”

  “We’re not done.”

  “I pushed this meeting back for you. I don’t have much time.”

  “You don’t have a choice.” Nao glared.

  Nao had hoped Sakai would remember his place, but he still talked to him as he had done in the past. Sakai had been the only remaining senior member alive at the end of the war with the Korean mob, but Miko had chosen Nao over him to act as godfather.

  Sakai tapped his pen against his yellow notepad. “What else do you want to talk about, Father Murata?”

  The condescending tone made Nao want to point out how Sakai had been ready to sign away half of Kyoto to the Koreans to end the war, while Nao had fought and kept the city whole. He curled his fingers on his injured arm into a fist, using the pain as a reminder to keep his emotions in check.

  Nao cleared his throat. “Kurosawa isn’t working out. I’m going to get a new bodyguard.”

  “Okay. I can pull someone.”

  “No. You picked Kurosawa. I choose the next one.”

  Sakai’s jaw clenched. “Who do you want?”

  “Suzuki.”

  “The Koreans killed him.”

  “Nakamura?”

  “He left the Matsukawa two years ago. Works as cab driver,” Sakai said.

  “Then Kimura.”

  “Remember, he’s a ward leader. Do you really want to pull him from duty to be your guard?”

  Nao bit his lip. Too many Matsukawa had died during the war, and it looked bad that he didn’t know.

  “How about I come up with a list and you can interview them?” Sakai suggested.

  “I’m okay with that,” Nao lied, but it wasn’t like he had a choice.

  A lot had changed in four years. Anyone qualified to be his bodyguard would have been house recruits when Nao had left, and by then he’d stopped coming to the main house.

  “Was there anything else you wanted to discuss?” Sakai asked.

  Nao needed a dictionary for all the business terms, but he couldn’t tell Sakai that.

  Nao shook his head. “Page ten, yeah?”

  Sakai prattled on about projected sales outcomes and the business competition. The Matsukawa diversified in order to survive in the new economy. More than half of their income came from legitimate businesses. They operated everything from security companies to indie movie studios. Nao knew he’d have to learn about each of the near one hundred companies they operated.

  Nao rubbed his temple, it pounding worse than in his arm. He had done the accounting for his tea shop for years, but the wording on the papers before him required years of college studies to understand.

  Thankfully, a knock on the door interrupted Sakai’s speech.

  “Come in,” Nao said.

  A recruit walked in carrying a tea tray. His purple jumpsuit signified he’d been apprenticed for less than a year with the Matsukawa. Once he passed a year, the recruit would drink sake with Nao and then be placed in a ward. Until then, the recruit was considered an underling who scrubbed toilets and chopped cabbage all day.

  He bowed to each of them. His ear-length hair fell over his heart-shaped face. It was refreshing to see someone around his own age since Nao was surrounded by old men all day. The recruit was cute on top of it. The underling poured the tea with precise movements, but hesitated to place the handleless cup on a clear space amongst the papers and Nobu.

  Nao pointed to one of the lower stacks. “Here is fine.”

  The kitten stretched and rubbed the underling’s white hand. He tried to hide his smile, but Nao saw the edges of his mouth curling up.

  “She can be a pain sometimes.” Nao lifted the kitten and put her on his lap, saving the recruit from her mischief.

  He took the cup, letting the warmth radiate through his hand while using the other to keep Nobu from deciding the tea was really for her. Silence came flooding into the room, and with it, memories of his father’s funeral. Nao took a sip from the cup, hoping the warmth would drive away the memory, but it only transformed into the stone he had used to nail his father’s coffin shut.

  A chill ran though Nao’s body. His father might’ve been alive today if he’d told the truth about Saehyun from the beginning, but Nao’s emotions had tangled with his desire. His celibacy had weakened him. When Saehyun had showed him a kind touch, it had completely blinded him. The breath in Nao’s throat thickened. Saehyun had been stupid and not listened when Nao had warned him about—

  “Our stock for the fertilizing company has tripled,” Sakai said.

  Nao’s eyes snapped open, catching the underling before he left.

  “What’s your name?” Nao asked.

  “Aki Hisona, Father Murata.”

  “You’re the first person who has made my tea correctly.”

  Nao took another sip, and Hisona’s cheeks reddened as he bowed. “It was a pleasure to be able to make tea for you. I know it’s a small task.”

  Warmth filled Nao’s chest. The name Hisona did not match Aki at all. Hisona was someone who lived on the streets so long he’d forgotten how to smile. The man before him was just Aki. He knew how to make tea and appeared too innocent to be in the Matsukawa.

  “Tea is very important,” Nao said. “And this is beautifully prepared.”

  “I did some research and learned there was an old tea well by the historic district. I used the water from there to make your tea,” Aki answered, his Kyoto dialect so thick that Nao wondered if it was real or faked to impress him. Either way, it turned him on.

  Nao drew his finger around the cup’s rim. He couldn’t repress any inkling of desire, or else he’d end up like before. Though he knew better than to act on his feelings with a recruit, at least he wasn’t seeing Shinya in Aki’s features.

  “How long have you been with the Matsukawa?” Nao asked.

  Aki answered, “I’ve been here six months, Father Murata.”

  “You’re from Kyoto?”

  “Lived here all my life.”

  Sakai tapped his pen on his files, but he wouldn’t dare interrupt Nao.

  “I feel like I’m back in the historic district. Your accent is so authentic.” Nao glanced at Sakai. “You don’t use yours.”

  “Using Kyoto phrases confuses people at business meetings. I prefer the standard Japanese.”

  “Tokyo dialect.” Nao turned his attention back to Aki and gazed into his almond-colored eyes. “Did your family always live in Kyoto?”

  “My grandfather was Korean.”

  Well, no one could be perfect.

  Nao smiled. “I want you and no one else to make my tea.”

  “It would be a pleasure to serve you.”

  “Thank you, Aki.”

  Sakai banged his teacup down on the table.

  Shit. Nao had said Aki’s first name and crossed the line to intimacy. Nao blamed the hangover for letting his thoughts slip into spoken words.

  “You’re dismissed,” Nao said.

  Aki flushed red. He gave a respectful bow then left. Nobu jumped off Nao’s lap
and back onto the desk, to paw at the papers.

  Sakai cleared his throat. “So like I was saying—”

  “Oshiro is our accountant? I want to talk about these figures with him.”

  Maybe Oshiro could explain things better than Sakai. Sakai had known Nao since he was a child, and Nao wanted to ask questions from someone who wouldn’t get flashbacks to his grade school days.

  “Oshiro had a mini heart attack last week. I told him to take a few days off until Obon was over.”

  Nao raised a brow. “You’re telling a lot of people they can take time off.”

  “People like to go home for the holiday and accounting does fall under the business side. The man is eighty-seven years old.”

  “Eighty-seven, and he’s still working?”

  “He turns eighty-eight on the last night of Obon actually. You know what they say, if you stop working, your health goes downhill.”

  “I’ve never heard the expression.”

  Sakai laughed. “You’re still young. Get another forty years in you and everyone will say it. Let’s get back to work. I like to keep up my health.”

  The meeting continued, and while Nao tried to understand everything Sakai said, most of the words amplified his headache. They were important, he knew, but he couldn’t look like a fool asking for basic definitions.

  Sakai’s cell phone rang. He didn’t respect Nao’s time enough to turn it off during the meeting. And still, even with Nao’s icy stare, Sakai took the phone out and messed with it for a minute.

  “Sakai,” Nao said. The vein in his head twitched.

  Nobu squeaked a meow before rubbing against Nao’s hand.

  “Excuse me, Murata. I need to get going.” Sakai stood. “Make sure you get the rest of the papers checked out.”

  Nao’s muscles tensed. “Where are you going? We haven’t gotten through all the paperwork.”

  “The meeting was moved since you had that midnight parade around Shima. Why not come by the office and see what’s going on in the business end of things?”

  “When?”

  “Over a weekend would be best. No one in the office to see you.”

  Nao crossed his arms over his chest. “I want a specific day.”

  Sakai sighed. “I’ll have to look at my schedule. I’ll get back to you. Make sure your phone’s on this time.”