by Kotaro Isaka
‘You can go by yourself, right, buddy? I’ll wait right here.’ He gave Wataru a little slap on the butt, then settled down on a bench near the bathrooms. The accessory shop right opposite had a salesgirl with big breasts and a low-cut shirt, and he intended to sit there and take in the view.
‘Yeah, I can go by myself,’ Wataru declared proudly, and went in.
He came back out after what seemed like just a moment. Kimura looked down at his own hands and realised that he was holding the flask. When did I take it out? Don’t remember, but the cap’s still on, so I can’t have had any. It was like he was piecing together someone else’s actions.
‘Well, that was quick. Did you go?’
‘I did go. It was full!’
‘Full? Full of pee?’
‘No, there were lots of big boys.’
Kimura stood up and stepped towards the bathroom. ‘Lemme see.’
‘They were kind of scary,’ Wataru said, grabbing Kimura’s hand. ‘Let’s go home.’
Kimura shook him off. If it was a bunch of teenage boys, they were probably hanging out smoking cigarettes or horsing around, or else planning some shakedown or shoplifting, and he thought he might like to go in and have a little fun with them. He was feeling grouchy from lack of sleep and lack of drink and he wanted to blow off some steam. You wait here, he told Wataru, and left him by the bench.
Inside the men’s he found five kids in school uniform, young-looking. It was spacious, with urinals on two walls and four cubicles on the third. The kids were huddled by the cubicles. They glanced up when Kimura came in but almost immediately turned back to each other and continued their little conference. Kimura casually stepped up to the closest urinal to them and began to piss. He tried to make out what they were saying. Probably some meaningless discussion, planning some stupid prank. Let’s mess with ’em a little. He had retired from the rough stuff he used to do for a living, but that didn’t mean he’d gone off causing trouble.
‘What are we gonna do?’ The kid sounded angry. ‘Somebody’s gotta explain it to the Prince.’
‘Yeah, but who? You were the one who pussied out and ran.’
‘No way. I was ready to do it. It was Takuya who pussied out. He said his stomach hurt.’
‘My stomach did hurt.’
‘Tell it to the Prince. Oh, I had a tummyache, I couldn’t do what you told us to!’
‘No way. I could barely take the shock last time. Any stronger I bet I’d die.’
Then they all fell silent, which Kimura didn’t fail to notice.
Kimura didn’t know the particulars of what they were talking about, but he could guess at the basic contour of it.
These kids had a leader. Maybe a classmate, maybe a senior, could even be an adult, but someone was giving them orders. This person they were calling the Prince. Stupid name. So they didn’t do what his highness the Prince ordered them to. They let him down. The Prince was probably angry. And now these kids were in the men’s room trying to figure out what to tell him, who would take the fall. That seemed to be the size of it. The peasants didn’t collect enough taxes to satisfy their precious Prince, he thought derisively. Meanwhile, his stream of piss just wouldn’t stop.
But there was one thing he couldn’t figure out: the one kid mentioned a shock. Was he talking about an electric shock? Kimura pictured the electric chairs they use for executions in America. Somehow he didn’t think that was what the kid was talking about. But then he had said that if it was any stronger he would have died, and this stuck with Kimura. Teenagers often talk about dying or killing each other or something killing them, without any of the weight that the words should hold, but this felt different. This felt like the kid was actually aware of the possibility of his own death.
He finally finished peeing. Pulling up his zip, he stepped over to the boys. ‘What are you kids doing hanging out in a filthy place like this? You’re blocking the way. So – who’s gonna be the one to apologise to his highness the Prince?’
He reached out and wiped his unwashed hand on the shoulder of the nearest kid, the smallest one.
They quickly changed formation from a huddle to a line facing Kimura. They had the same uniform on, though they all looked different. One was tall and pimply, one had a buzz cut, one was fat and stupid-looking. They tried to be menacing, but to Kimura they just looked like little kids.
‘You guys aren’t gonna figure out anything by talking about it in here. Shouldn’t you just go and apologise to your Prince?’ Kimura clapped his hands once, making all the kids jump.
‘None of your business.’
‘Get outta here, old man.’
Kimura couldn’t help but smile at them trying to look mean when they were still so obviously innocent kids. ‘You guys practise those tough faces in the mirror? I mean, I did, when I was your age. Scrunch in your eyebrows all mean? The fuck you looking at? Like that. It takes practice. But I’ll tell you, it’s not worth your time. Once you’re done puberty and you look back on it, you’ll laugh. Better off looking for porn online.’
‘This guy stinks of booze,’ said the one with the buzz cut. He was pretty well built, but the exaggerated gesture of pinching his nose shut made him look like a little boy.
‘So what were you guys trying to figure out, anyway? Go ahead, you can tell me. Let the old man help with your problems. What did your Prince want you to do?’
The kids seemed confused. After a moment the one on the end asked, ‘How’d you know about that?’
‘I overheard your little conference when I was pissing.’ Kimura looked at each of the schoolkids. ‘How about it, you want my advice? I’m happy to help. Tell the old man all about the Prince.’
The kids were silent. They exchanged glances with each other, like they were having a silent meeting.
Then Kimura bellowed, ‘Ha, did you really think I’d listen to your problems? I was just messing around. Why would I give advice to a bunch of brats like you? Anyway, I’m sure he just wanted you to sneak into a sex shop or beat someone up.’
But the kids didn’t relax at all, they actually looked even more serious. Kimura raised his eyebrows. Why are they so stressed out? He stepped over to the sink and washed his hands. He saw in the mirror the boys re-form their huddle and resume their discussion, more agitated than ever.
‘Sorry I made fun of you guys. Later.’ He wiped his hands on one of their jackets, a different one from the first one he did it to, but they barely seemed to notice.
Kimura emerged from the toilets. ‘Okay, Wataru, Daddy’s back.’ But Wataru was gone. He cocked his head. Where the hell …? He looked down the walkway between the shops, but didn’t see his son anywhere.
He half ran over to the big-breasted salesgirl. ‘Hey!’ She tossed her highlighted hair as she looked up at him with her big eyes, a distasteful look on her face, though he couldn’t tell if it was from the brusque way he addressed her or because he smelled of booze. ‘You seen a little boy, about this tall?’ He held his hand at hip level.
‘Oh,’ she said, a bit dubiously, ‘I saw him head that way,’ and pointed towards the corridor out the back of the store.
‘Why would he go back there?’
‘I have no idea. But he was with another kid.’
‘What do you mean, another kid?’ Kimura’s voice had an edge. ‘Another kid in kindergarten?’
‘I thought maybe it was his older brother. Good-looking kid, kind of fancy.’
‘Fancy? Who was it?’
‘How should I know?’
Kimura ran off without saying thank you. Down the corridor, round a corner, looking around wildly. Wataru, where’d you go, where are you? He pictured his ex-wife’s contemptuous look when she had asked him if he could really take care of a child. Anxiety turned to a rush of sweat, his pulse started to hammer.
When he finally found Wataru by the escalators he was so overcome with relief that he almost sank to his knees. His son was holding hands with a boy in a school uniform.
The kid was about five foot four, on the skinny side, with fine hair that was longish but didn’t seem to have any weight to it. His eyes were large and clear, shining like a cat’s eyes in the dark. Looks almost like a girl, Kimura thought. He felt the thrill of being stared at by an attractive woman and laughed at himself uncomfortably.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Kimura squeezed Wataru’s hand and pulled him over to his side. He had said it to the kid in the uniform, but Wataru seemed to think his father was yelling at him.
‘He said that my daddy was over here,’ the little boy said timorously.
‘How many times have I told you not to talk to strangers?’ Kimura’s voice was forceful, but as soon as he said it he thought about all the times his parents, Wataru’s grandparents, had scolded him specifically for not telling the boy things like that. He turned to look fiercely at the schoolboy with his well-proportioned face. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m a student at Kanoyama School.’ The kid was calm and composed, as if he was just doing what his teachers had told him to. ‘My friends are hanging out in the men’s room, and I thought they might scare this little boy, so I figured I would take him a little way away. Then he said he didn’t know where his father was, so I was taking him to the information desk.’
‘I was in the men’s too. Wataru knew that. Don’t try to feed me that load of crap.’ Wataru seemed certain his father was angry with him and he just cowered and trembled. ‘Well, that’s odd, he didn’t tell me he knew where you were.’ The kid looked completely unruffled. ‘Maybe he thought the way I was talking was too scary he couldn’t speak up. I was worried about him so maybe I spoke a little too roughly.’
Kimura didn’t like it. More than the fact that this kid had walked off with Wataru, it bothered him how calm the boy was, that he didn’t seem the least bit affected by Kimura’s aggressive questioning. It wasn’t that the kid was rude or a smart-ass, no, there was something more unsettling about him, something sly and cunning.
As he was about to leave with his son, Kimura said, ‘Those kids in the toilets kept talking about a Prince. They were having some kind of secret meeting.’
‘Oh, that’s me,’ the kid said lightly. ‘My last name is Oji, spelled with the Chinese characters for prince. Weird name, huh? Lots of people make fun of me for it. Satoshi Oji, but they call me Prince Satoshi, or just the Prince. Um, just so you know, my friends and I might have been hanging out in the loos, but we weren’t smoking or anything.’ Goody two-shoes to the hilt. He walked off towards the toilets.
The Prince re-enters the train car and sits back down, shaking Kimura from his recollection.
Hands and feet still tied, Kimura brings up the episode. ‘What were you gonna do with Wataru that time we first met?’
‘I wanted to check something,’ the Prince answers sweetly. ‘I was just listening in on my classmates in the men’s room.’
‘Listening in? You mean you bugged the toilets?’
‘No, one of my friends hid a device in his coat pocket.’
‘You had a spy?’ It feels a little childish to say. ‘Worried that people are trashing you?’
‘Not quite. I don’t mind if people talk about me. But if they find out that they were being listened to, or if they’re worried about who’s a spy, it’ll mess with them. They’ll stop trusting each other. That’s good for me.’
‘What’s any of this have to do with anything?’
‘Like I said, all I was doing was listening in on their conversation. I was planning to let them know later that there was a spy, which would make them all paranoid. And actually that’s exactly what eventually happened. But when I was there listening I spotted your boy looking at me. He seemed interested in me, so I thought I would play with him a little.’
‘He’s six years old. I can’t imagine he had anything particular in mind when he was looking at you.’
‘I know. But there he was, and I wanted to play with him. I wanted to see what it would do to a little kid.’
‘What what would do?’
‘An electric shock. I wanted to see how a kid that age would react to high voltage.’ The Prince points to his backpack and the taser inside. ‘I thought I would test it out, but you came along, Mr Kimura, and ruined everything.’
Fruit
LEMON BEGINS HIS SEARCH TOWARDS the front of the train, heading first to car number four. He tries to remember what the stolen suitcase looks like.
Back when he was in junior school his teacher had told his grandparents that he only ever remembered things he was interested in. He can recall exactly which gadgets Doraemon used in every issue of the comic, the teacher had said in frustration, but he doesn’t know the name of the school’s principal. Lemon couldn’t understand what the teacher was so upset about. Between the principal’s name and Doraemon’s gadgets, it was blindingly obvious which was more important.
The suitcase must have been around a half metre tall and a little less across. It had a handle. It had wheels. It was black, made of some tough material that was cold to the touch. It also had a lock with a four-digit code, but Lemon and Tangerine didn’t know the combination. ‘If we don’t know the combo, how are we supposed to do the trade with the kidnappers?’ Lemon had been unable to resist asking Minegishi’s man when they got the bag. ‘We can’t show them we actually have the money, so how do you expect us to get the job done?’
It was Tangerine who answered, sensible as usual. ‘It’s not the bad guys they’re worried about, it’s us. They think we might make off with the cash.’
‘Well, what the fuck? If they don’t trust us why should we even work for these assholes?’
‘Don’t worry about it. If you did know the combination, wouldn’t you want to open it?’
Later Tangerine had suggested they mark the case somehow. He pulled a kid’s sticker out of his pocket and stuck it near the lock.
That’s right, the bag had Tangerine’s sticker on it.
In front of the entrance to car four he finds the young woman with the snack trolley.
She seems to be checking the inventory, punching something into a little hand-held device.
‘Hey, you seen somebody with a black suitcase, about this big?’
‘Huh?’ She looks startled, ‘A suitcase?’ The blue apron over her uniform makes her look domestic.
‘Yeah, a suitcase, like a bag for carrying stuff, you know? A black bag. I had it on the luggage rack but it’s gone.’
‘I’m sorry, I really couldn’t say.’ She seems unsettled by his gaze and moves behind the cart so it’s between them.
‘Really couldn’t say, huh? Guess not.’ Lemon moves on, entering car four. The gentle hiss of the door swiftly sliding open reminds him of the inside of a spacecraft he saw in a movie once.
There aren’t many passengers. He moves up the aisle, checking left and right under the seats and on the overhead racks. There aren’t many bags either, which makes it easy enough for him to see that the black one he’s looking for isn’t there. But he does spot a paper bag that catches his eye on the right-hand overhead rack. A paper bag of considerable size, on the rack halfway up the car. He can’t see inside, but he wonders if maybe someone put his suitcase in this bag. Once the thought enters his head he acts without any hesitation, steps up to the row where the bag is. A man sits in the window seat, and the other two seats in the row are empty.
At first glance Lemon figures the man is a little bit older than himself, maybe around thirty. He’s reading a book. Could be a postgrad student, though he’s wearing a suit.
Lemon sits down in the aisle seat, then turns to the man. ‘Yo,’ he says, putting his hand on the armrest next to the man and leaning towards him. ‘That bag up there –’ he points at the luggage rack – ‘what’s that all
about?’
It seems to take a moment for the man to realise that someone is talking to him. He finally turns to look at Lemon, then up at the rack. ‘Ah, that’s just a paper bag.’
‘Yeah, I know it’s a paper bag. What’s in it?’
‘Sorry?’
‘My suitcase is missing. I know it’s still somewhere on this train so I’m looking around for it.’
The man processes this for a second. ‘I hope you find it.’ Then he appears to realise what Lemon is getting at. ‘Oh, your suitcase isn’t in my bag. I didn’t take it. My bag’s full of sweets.’
‘Pretty big bag. You got big sweets?’
‘No, just a lot of them.’
The man looks like he’d be a buttoned-up, timid individual, but he seems remarkably unperturbed.
‘Well, let’s see ’em.’ Lemon half stands and reaches up to the rack for the bag. The man doesn’t show any signs of anger or concern. He just turns back to his book. There even seems to be the glimmer of a placid smile on his face. His composure is unsettling to Lemon.
‘Once you check inside, I’d appreciate it if you put the bag back where it was.’ Lemon brings the bag down to the seat and opens it. Inside are a whole lot of sweets, probably purchased at Tokyo Station. ‘These all gifts for people or what? You sure bought enough.’
‘It was hard to decide so I got a lot of different ones.’
‘Nobody cares that much what you bring them.’
‘Sorry I can’t be of any more help.’ The man smiles gently. ‘Will you put the bag back now?’
Lemon stands and tosses the bag carelessly back onto the rack. Then he sits down again, this time in the middle seat right next to the man. He rocks back and forth in agitation. ‘You sure you don’t know where my suitcase is?’
The man looks at Lemon but says nothing.
‘You know, usually most people would get either scared or pissed off from someone showing up suddenly and going through their bags. But you’re just sitting there all calm. It’s like you were expecting me. You’re like a criminal with an alibi who doesn’t get nervous when the cops are questioning him. Oh no, detective, I was at so-and-so bar at that time. Same thing. You knew exactly what to say when I came. Right?’