by Chris Ward
Jun sat up and rubbed his head. He wanted to shout back at Ogiwara, but the lingering memory of the dream was still fresh in his mind, and he felt like Ogiwara was shouting at him from the other side of a pane of glass.
That had been such a good day, so peaceful, so relaxing. What had happened after that?
Jun groaned. He remembered now.
‘What’s the matter, Matsumoto? Having a wet dream again?’
Jun felt a thread inside him snap. He stood up and shoved Ogiwara back against the door. ‘Why don’t you shut your mouth? I know Akane dumped you—’
Jun felt his arm twisting away from him and then the room was spinning as Ogiwara shoved him face down onto the bed. A knee pressed into his back and Ogiwara’s breath tickled his ear.
‘Try that again and I’ll do you,’ he said quietly. ‘And for what it’s worth, she didn’t dump me, we broke up.’
Jun, hearing the failure in Ogiwara’s voice, couldn’t help but laugh. Ogiwara scowled and pressed down harder on Jun’s back, but Jun cried out and a moment later a hard rap sounded on the door.
‘What’s going on in there?’
Ogiwara snapped back upright, pulling Jun up with him as Kirahara-sensei opened the door.
‘Matsumoto was just having a little trouble getting dressed,’ Ogiwara said, snapping a military salute at Kirahara-sensei, which made the teacher scowl. ‘I was just helping him.’
‘Out,’ Kirahara-sensei said, flicking a thumb back over his shoulder. Ogiwara hurried for the door.
Kirahara-sensei turned on Jun, who was brushing himself down. ‘Why did you miss the last class?’ he asked. ‘You’re here for your own benefit. Not mine, not anyone else’s. You’re here to do something different and refreshing, not just waste everyone’s time. Especially not your own.’
‘I’m sorry, I fell asleep.’
‘Ogiwara said he couldn’t find you.’
Jun shrugged. ‘The guy’s a clown. He probably looked in the wrong room. It was a long journey, and that first class was kind of boring … I only lay down for a moment during the break, but I must have nodded off.’
Kirahara-sensei sighed. ‘I’ll let it go, Jun, but make sure you show up for classes. Continual bad behaviour will count towards your final report.’
Jun felt his anger rising. ‘What does it matter? You know I’ve got nothing to look forward to when I leave this goddamn school. I’ll be making lunchboxes in some factory or working in a convenience store. What’s the point?’
Kirahara-sensei smiled. ‘Well, Jun,’ he said, ‘if that’s all you’ve got to look forward to, you’d better get enjoying this school trip while you still can. Next class is British sports, isn’t it? I played cricket once. Stupid game. Far too many rules. Hurry up now.’
As Kirahara-sensei went out, Jun sighed again. In a sense his teacher was right, but that didn’t make things any easier to deal with. But it wasn’t the thoughts of his post-school career that were bothering him. He had been thinking about what happened later that summer, when both he and Akane were ten years old. Even now, almost eight years later, he didn’t like to think about it, but whenever he looked at Akane he was forced to remember. That was part of what had pushed them apart, but more so was the affect those events had had on her – turning a bright young girl with a love of piano into a dark, brooding teenager who rarely smiled and slept with bad boys as a form of passive rebellion.
Jun shook his head, grabbed his bag, and headed for class.
5
O-Remo finds the lookout
‘Hey, bartender! I’ll have three more of these!’ Dai said, holding up the pint glass. ‘He turned to Ken, sitting on a stool beside him in the quaint, British-style pub. ‘One thing I do love about the British,’ he said, ‘is the way they drink out of big glasses. None of these little schooners like we’re used to. It’s just a shame their beer’s so piss-weak. You have to drink fifteen glasses of it just to get drunk.’
‘Remember that gig we did in London?’ Ken said with a wistful smile. ‘On that showcase tour for the record company? We didn’t expect anyone to actually show up for a bunch of Japanese metal bands so we all got tanked beforehand. And the place was packed!’
‘Yeah, and do you remember the state of the toilets? Jesus Christ.’ Dai slapped his knee. ‘I guess that’s the consequence of having crappy beer.’
As if on cue, the bartender brought three full pints of Bass and put them down on the countertop. Dai held out a note. ‘Fucking expensive in here, isn’t it?’ he muttered to the others as the bartender went off to get his change. ‘I guess that’s what happens when you have to ship the booze to the top of a mountain.’
‘At least they have some,’ Ken said. ‘We could be stranded here with nothing to do but listen to O-Remo talk codshit.’
‘Where is he?’ Dai said.
‘He went for a ramble.’
‘A what? Like a walk?’
‘In the forest. On the nature trail around the site.’
‘You mean he’s gone to shoot up where he’s sure there aren’t any cameras?’
Ken nodded. ‘That’s about it.’
‘And talking of being missing, where’s all the high school pussy? What happened to that army of chicks we saw earlier?’
‘They’re students, Daichi,’ said Bee, standing quietly off to the side, holding his pint in two hands in front of his chest as if it was a baby someone had impolitely left him with. ‘It might have slipped your attention, but we’re in a pub. Our country’s licensing laws are relevant even here, on the top of a mountain.’
Daichi grinned. ‘They have to come out and play at some point.’
‘Don’t get your hopes up.’
Ken grinned. ‘And they’re probably in some stupid cultural class right now, like gingerbread making.’
Dai sniggered. ‘Or how to suck at soccer.’
Bee rolled his huge eyes. ‘Or how to absolutely rule at classic rock.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, you moron,’ Dai said. ‘If they were doing that, we’d have heard them.’
O-Remo cried out as he slipped on the snow, but he managed to grab a nearby branch just before he crashed down onto the slushy earth.
‘Phew.’
He moved on, stepping over the lumps of fallen branches and rocks covered by a few inches of wet snow. The path angled away from the main complex of British Heights, heading towards a lookout point a few hundred metres distant. Around him a snow-covered forest floor stretched away. Behind him through the trees was the back of the dining hall, but in front the trees sloped gently away to the left as the path meandered along the top of the rise.
Every few seconds O-Remo nervously glanced back over his shoulder, looked left and right, stopped and listened. There were bears in the woods, so the sign said, but O-Remo wasn’t worried about them. There were too many people around in the study centre for his liking. He had been about to spike up in the dorm when a group of kids had come prancing down the stairs right next to his room. The doors only had the flimsiest of locks and if one of the kids happened to burst in and see him…
Well, it would be the end of their career.
The band was merely in a short-lived slump. O-Remo knew without any doubt that within a year or two they’d be playing arenas again. He’d be dating actresses and he might even get around to kicking his junk habit.
For now, though, the less people who saw the better.
Plus, always one for adventures, he found the idea of shooting up in a forest quite exciting. Find a nice view, jab that spike, maybe even write a song.
He turned past a thicket of dead vines and saw the lookout point up ahead of him, at the bottom of a slight slope that rose up again to a small peak. It was a wooden hut, about the size of their van, and it looked out on a panoramic view of the Japanese Alps. O-Remo gasped.
‘Well, how delightful.’
He headed down the slope and up into the little shelter. It had an open window space on one side for viewing th
e mountains and wasn’t exactly draft-proof, but it was dry inside and there was a wooden bench for him to sit on. He pulled out his pipe and the little bag of goodness he’d bought from a mate of a mate in Tokyo a couple of days before, and loaded it up.
It might have surprised the others to know that he had been quite the student of Japanese geography as a boy. There in front of him he recognised the flat, bowl-shaped peak of Takeyama, the spiky head of Goryu, and behind it the twin peaks of Kashima with the needle of Yari-ga-take, the second tallest mountain in Japan at 3192 metres, poking up behind the others further to the south. From where he sat, an immense alpine valley stretched away in both directions, a patchwork of lumpy, forested hills and crystal, ice-covered lakes. There was nothing to suggest humans had ever made it here, as if British Heights and the lookout point were the very vanguard of civilization.
Except that down there in the valley, perhaps five kilometres away, was a square shape. O-Remo frowned. Perhaps it was a concrete dam or a buttress erected against an unstable slope. Evening was drawing in, draping everything in a grey hue, so he couldn’t be quite sure what he was looking at. Plus, he was starting to get that wonderful little buzz.
Despite the smack dancing its little jig through his veins, O-Remo was getting chilly. He’d brought a thick duffel jacket and was encapsulated in a hat, a neck-warmer and thermal underclothes, but when the sun went down the temperatures dropped quickly in the mountains, and with a looming dark smudge heading in from the north it was unlikely the sun would be showing itself again for a while.
He stood up, and headed back toward the Grand Mansion. He didn’t have to guess where he would find the others. If they couldn’t play music there was very little they were interested in other than drinking and girls, in whichever order came first.
The pub was in a mock-15th century farmhouse at the end of the east wing of the Grand Mansion, so when he reached the main loop of the nature trail he turned left towards the pub rather than taking the other fork which he had come by, heading slightly downhill again, around behind the dining hall, the souvenir shop, and the pub. It angled out a little, back towards the ridgeline, skirting around several buildings behind the Grand Mansion that were roped off and labeled with signs reading STAFF ONLY.
Spotting a narrow alley between two of the buildings that would save him a few hundred metres of walking through slush, O-Remo climbed over the rope barrier and waded through a pile of heaped snow until he reached a cleared section of concrete path that encircled the nearest of the staff buildings. With the gloom now thickening and the temperature beginning to dip below freezing, the concrete had iced over, so he stepped gingerly across it towards the front of the building.
He had just reached the corner when a door opened not ten feet away and a woman stepped out. Dressed in a long winter jacket and with her hair tucked into a woolly hat, she looked like an elegant snow queen as she closed the door and stepped neatly down a set of steps. As she reached the bottom, the sound of an engine being revved came from the courtyard outside the Grand Mansion. O-Remo and the woman both turned to look at it, and when O-Remo saw her face he shrank back out of sight.
What the hell was Karin Kobayashi doing here?
Ten years ago they had been the darling couple of the media, but he hadn’t seen her since she’d jilted him at the altar on their wedding day. Of course, he’d heard about her since. He’d followed her fall from singing star into public disgrace with a bitter sense of satisfaction, but he’d heard nothing about her for years.
Karin tucked her hands into her pockets and stepped out across the street, heading for the Grand Mansion. I need to talk to her, he thought, pushing away from the wall and starting to follow.
The world turned upside down as he cartwheeled over, one foot catching on a loose piece of stone, the other slipping on a patch of ice as he tried to correct himself. He tumbled forwards, bounced down a couple of stone steps, and came to rest in a heap in a little hollow cut out of the slope. He heard Karin stop and call out, but he kept his head down in the shadows, out of sight. After a few seconds the sound of her shoes began to move away.
O-Remo stood up and brushed himself down. Darkness had descended quickly, and Karin was just a silhouette as she climbed the steps and went through the main door into the reception area.
Suddenly he didn’t feel like going to the pub to meet the others. He wanted to be alone in his room for a while.
His side, just below his ribs, was aching from the fall. He patted himself there, and gasped. Muttering curses to himself, he thrust a hand into his pocket and pulled out the two broken pieces of his pipe. The little bag of his stuff had burst, and he dropped to his knees to scoop up the granules where they had fallen.
‘Shit, oh shit, oh shit…’
He pushed what he could salvage back into the remains of the plastic bag and put it into his jeans pocket. His heart had begun to race, the fear of running out of stuff on top of a mountain with no way to get more … but it was okay, he had just enough to get him through until tomorrow and they would be in Toyama by then, where he knew someone who could sort him out. And he didn’t need his pipe – he was adept at making things on the fly if he had to. It would be harder to hide … but ten years as an on and off junkie had made him pretty resourceful.
Cursing his luck, he hurried off towards his room.
Rutherford Forbes nodded slowly as he watched the footage of the junkie former rock star on the CCTV screen. All around him, a bank of TV monitors displayed almost every part of the complex.
‘Hmm … this one could be interesting,’ he said, tugging on a saggy lump of fat hanging from his chin. He turned to the man sitting with his back turned, bony shoulders hunched forward over a computer screen. ‘Professor, do you think we could arrange for this one to get … startled?’
The hunched figure in the white coat didn’t turn around. Forbes winced at the ghastly rustling sound as the professor’s head nodded up and down in affirmation.
‘A pleasure…’
6
Preparations for dinner
‘Haven’t you wondered why there are no other students here?’ Ogiwara said, leaning close to Akane. She grimaced and arched her head away, but Ogiwara wasn’t about to be put off. ‘Seriously? It’s weird, don’t you think? While I personally believe these lessons suck giant rat’s balls, I can see how they’d be popular for nerds.’
‘Just leave me alone.’
He grinned. ‘Why?’
‘We broke up.’
Ogiwara sneered and leaned closer to her ear. ‘We break up when I say we break up. Got that?’
Everything all right back there?’ the teacher, a tall, bearded Australian whose nametag identified him as MATT asked in English. ‘Do you have something to share, Mr—’ Matt leaned closer, squinting at Ogiwara’s name tag, ‘—Ogiwara Yohei?’
‘Go eat out a minke whale’s pussy, you upside-down country tosspot,’ Ogiwara said in rapid fire Japanese that made the class burst into laughter.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I’m fine, thank you. And you?’ Ogiwara said. The class erupted again.
Matt gave a slight shake of his head and returned to the front of the class. ‘Well, if you have anything to add, please feel free,’ he said, turning back. ‘And now, for our next activity…’
Akane groaned as Matt put her into a group with Ogiwara and two of his judo club minions, Shin Nakamura and Riki Mishima. As they played some stupid board game, Nakamura spent more time leaning around the side of the table to look at her legs than rolling his dice, while Mishima and Ogiwara traded stupid jokes like two kids at playschool.
‘Seriously, though, don’t you think it’s weird that there are not more students here?’
‘It’s nearly Christmas,’ Akane said. ‘It’s winter. What do you expect? I bet it’s packed in summer.’
‘Exactly,’ Ogiwara said. ‘It’s near Christmas. There should be loads of people here. I hope there’s turkey on the menu tonight.
I want some proper English food, goddamn it. If all we get is spaghetti and fried chicken I’m going to toss a plate of it all over one of the stupid foreigners they have working here.’
‘Oh, just shut up.’
Nakamura sniggered. Ogiwara looked at him and grinned. ‘And by the way, are you going to dress up as one of those cute little Santa’s helpers for me this year? You know, my Christmas present? Mishima said they sell maple syrup in that stupid gift shop. Perhaps I could get some and pour it all over you.’
‘You’re a disgusting pervert. You have a dick the size of a needle, but even that’s much bigger than your brain.’
This time Nakamura and Mishima sniggered at Ogiwara, who glared at them until they shut up. He turned back to Akane. ‘And how big is Matsumoto’s dick, then? So small it’s practically inside out?’
‘Shut up.’
‘Come on, you must know.’
A hand fell on Ogiwara’s shoulder. ‘It’s big enough,’ Kaede said, giving Akane a snide grin. ‘You morons still playing in the sandpit, are you?’
‘What do you want?’
‘Just found out something that might interest you. Ever heard of Plastic Black Butterfly?’
Ogiwara frowned. Mishima looked up in surprise. Nakamura gave Akane’s legs one last glance, then turned his attention to trying to see down Kaede’s top.
‘Yeah, course I’ve heard of them,’ Ogiwara said. ‘I downloaded one of their CDs for free, but it was shit so I deleted it.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ Mishima said.
‘And me,’ Nakamura said. ‘But Ogiwara said it was shit, so I deleted it.’