by KJ Charles
Either Chanko was a better actor than I’d ever be or he wasn’t a guy to hold a grudge. How could you just forget all that? Was he still angry? Was I?
I took a deep breath. He’s not your problem. Let it go.
When I came out I was fully clad in my jeans and the white top—roll neck, not cleavage. I checked my phone for about the tenth time. There had been one call from a withheld number just after the battery had died, nothing since then.
I dried my hair back into its usual choppy, gamine cut, taking extra trouble to get it right, in the hope that if I started looking like myself again, I might feel it too, then called Yukie.
“Moshi-moshi?” came a faint voice after several rings. That from the girl notorious for snatching up the phone at the first pre-ring quiver.
“Yukie-san, this is your cousin from the country,” I said in a broad Kyushu accent. “Is it convenient to talk?”
“Oh…hello, cousin…I hope you’re well. I’m a little busy, may I call you back?”
“Sure. Use this number.” I hit the off button on my new phone, frowning. “I don’t think she could talk. I wonder who was there.”
I finished dressing while I waited for her to call back, applying eyeliner and mascara to play up the Japanese look a bit, and putting in earrings. I wished I had some proper heels with me, I needed the height.
“How do I look?”
“Fine,” Chanko said. “Planning a night out?”
“Well, I’m going to have to go out at some point. I’m starving, and I don’t think this place does room service.”
“We gotta move anyway. But I’ll get something from a combini. You stay in.”
“Why don’t I go to the combini? I’m a bit less conspicuous, you have to admit.”
“I can take care of myself out there. You can’t.”
“Yes, I know that,” I snapped. “Look, I can’t just sit in a love-hotel room all night, I’ll go mad. And it’s dark, and who the hell knows we’re in Kanazawa? At least let’s get some takeout.”
Chanko started to say something, but the phone interrupted him—the new tone, thank God. It was Yukie, calling from a payphone in the street, judging by the sounds of traffic.
“Kerry-chan, how are you? Where are you?”
“Kanazawa. I’m fine. How about you? What’s happening?”
“It’s bad, really bad. They’re still looking for you, and they’re looking for something they think you have—”
“I don’t believe this. Why can’t they see it was Kelly?”
“Hiroyuki-san says she’s denying everything. He says they think you did it together. He says if it wasn’t that she’d been all packed, they wouldn’t think it was her at all. They think you planned it. She says that you set her up…”
“That bitch,” I said almost automatically. “Who’s Hiroyuki-san?”
“The man who… The one I…”
I groaned inside. “From the family? Oh, Yukie-chan. Are you okay? Is it—”
Yukie’s voice got quieter. I could picture her fingers, white on the receiver. “Yes, it’s okay. Um. He…he likes…spending time with me, and it’s helping, maybe. They tore up the bar yesterday. I think they were looking for something that you hid there, and then they made us clear it up, because they want the bar, and I think they’ll take it, whatever happens.” She sniffed. “They’re not kind to us. But I think maybe they might be more unkind otherwise?”
Yeah, right. I hunched over where I sat on the edge of the bed. “Yukie, do you know what they’re looking for?”
“No.”
“Or if they’re chasing anyone else? Any friend of Kelly’s?”
“She doesn’t have any friends,” said Yukie.
“She must do. Gaijin friends, in Roppongi or somewhere.”
“Maybe, but the family have been asking a lot here, and nobody knows any friends. There’s her flatmates, I suppose, but they were just people from a newspaper ad, they don’t know her. Why does it matter?”
“Well, if Kelly was working with someone else, maybe that person has the bag—”
I saw Chanko wince, too late, just as Yukie said, “What bag?”
“The family called me. They said they wanted a bag back.”
“Oh. They never said anything about a bag to us.”
“You’d better not mention it, in that case. Or they might guess you’ve been talking to me.”
“But you’ve been talking to them.”
“They had my number,” I snapped. “I expect Mama-san gave it to them along with my address. Oh, come on. You know I had nothing to do with this.”
She made a noncommittal noise.
“Yukie-chan!”
“I don’t know anything. They’re taking the bar. They’re here all the time. Lots of the regulars are going already. It’s all changing, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it except wait for them to take over completely. You’re very lucky you aren’t here.”
“Lucky? They attacked Noriko,” I said through my teeth. “Did your boyfriend tell you that? They raped her. They nearly caught me twice. They had guns. I didn’t do any of this and I didn’t start it, so don’t tell me I’m lucky not to be dead when my friend’s in hospital.”
“Oh. Poor Noriko-san,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry for her. But Hiroyuki-san says that if it was really Kelly, she would have confessed by now. He says nobody would hold out against what they’ve been doing. He says if she admitted it was her now, it wouldn’t matter, because most people would admit to anything after what they’ve done to her.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, horrified. “But it wasn’t me, I swear it wasn’t. Yukie-chan, you do believe me, don’t you?”
“It doesn’t really matter. Whatever happens, they are taking us over. Someone did it, you or Kelly or someone else, it doesn’t make any difference to us. And what I think doesn’t matter at all.”
She put the phone down. I sat there with the dial tone buzzing in my ear until Chanko gently took the handset from me and switched it off.
“Not good, huh?”
“Awful. This is awful.” I heard my voice wobble and pressed my lips together. Chanko sat down beside me, causing the bed to dip alarmingly, but he didn’t say anything. We sat together for a few minutes, and I breathed in his mountainous calm and tried to get my voice under control.
Once I thought I could speak without crying, I gave him a précis of what Yukie had said. He listened, frowning.
“I feel sick,” I said at the end. “I feel sick at what’s happening to them, and I feel sick about what Yukie said about Kelly. They’ve tortured her.” I put a hand over my mouth, swallowing hard. “Oh God. I told them, on the phone—”
“Hold up, Butterfly. Kelly was the one started all this. ’Less anyone made her do it, I’d say she’s going to have to take the consequences.”
“I think that’s exactly what she’s doing.” Yukie hadn’t gone into detail, thank God, but the imagination I’d earlier denied having was working overtime.
“You could have kept your mouth shut on the phone,” Chanko agreed. “And then the goons could have come and hit your friend again, and the one thing we know for sure is she ain’t involved. Look, this is like a tsunami, okay? You didn’t start it, you can’t stop it, you just have to get the hell out of the way. Let’s pack up, we’re coming to the end of the time.”
We’d arrived too early to book the room for the night—they are short stay only until evening, for efficient turnover—so we’d just taken this room for a few hours. Chanko took his small rucksack and my big clothes bag in one hand and led the way to the car.
We’d decided to find a different hotel in central Kanazawa for the night. We could have got in the car, headed off somewhere, but where? It was dark, I was exhausted, and though trying to get into a small rural hotel with a giant gaijin was a possibility, so was sleeping in the car because nobody would give us a room.
Noriko wasn’t going anywhere, and nor was Yoshi. If I stayed her
e, out of sight, maybe while we waited, Kelly would tell the truth. Or maybe the yakuza would call me back, but I couldn’t call them.
All we could do was wait. Kill time till morning. In a love-hotel room.
Great.
We found a street with a couple of love hotels, and a cheap and cheerful sushi takeout place nearby. I bought several large trays to take back to the room, which was enough to make anyone lose their appetite. It could have been worse—knockoff Disney cuteness or Gothic S&M—but the walls were black and white zigzags, the ceiling was black and white lines, the bedspread was different black and white zigzags, the carpet was more and larger black and white zigzags, and my vision was beginning to strobe.
On the plus side, there was a small vending machine in the room offering one-cups—foil-sealed glass cups of sake or shōchū—for really not very eye-watering prices. It also held a wide variety of sex toys, plus two microphones, in case we wanted an impromptu karaoke session. I stuck with the sake and threw one to Chanko.
There was just about enough room for us both to sit on the floor, eating nigirizushi off plastic trays with disposable chopsticks. I curled my legs under me, Little Mermaid style, and went straight for the broiled eel, rich and sticky with sweet sauce. It was surprisingly good, and I was suddenly so hungry I could hardly stand it.
Chanko let me plough into the sushi in silence, and waited till I’d eaten my fill—plump, glistening salmon roe, the oily tang of vinegared mackerel, some raw crustacean with a horror-movie look and virtually no flavour—before he said, “We need to talk about what happens next,” and put me right off my food again.
“Do we have to?” I couldn’t help saying.
“Yeah.” Chanko scooped up some pickled ginger thoughtfully. “You need to make some decisions, Butterfly. Lie low and wait for this to blow over, or get the hell out.”
“Do you think it’s going to blow over?”
“Don’t sound like it. Sounds like there’s not much to do but stay out of the way. What we need is your passport. What nationality are you, Swedish?”
“British.”
“Right, you said that. I guess you could go to the embassy, say you lost it, get a replacement.”
“Yeah…”
“But I’d rather know beforehand that the police haven’t got any reason to talk to you. Even just about your flatmate. Embassy won’t get you out of trouble with the local law—”
“—and we’re back to not trusting the police,” I agreed with a certain amount of relief.
It was of course possible that the embassy might simply put me on a plane back to Britain, but I didn’t want to go back to Britain. And what with the whole visa-status/fraudulent-document thing, I wasn’t entirely convinced they’d take my side. Worst-case scenario, they’d report me to the immigration people, even the police, and keep me there, in one place the yakuza would be bound to look…
No, thanks.
“Bit risky to hit your place,” he went on. “Could get Taka to get you a knockoff, maybe. Pretty expensive, though.”
“That’s not a problem.”
“Yeah? You got flights to buy, you said it was you paying for protection and the hospital—”
“It’s not a problem. Chanko, do you think leaving is the right thing for me to do?”
“What’s the alternative? Stay hidden in Japan with the yaks on your tail? Get caught? What else is there?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t seem right. I can walk away—run, anyway—but Yoshi and Noriko can’t, and it’s all come down on them because of me.”
“Yeah, it has. And if it was you who started it, I’d drag your ass back to Tokyo myself and make you put a stop to it. But it wasn’t, right?”
“No.”
“So you want to hear there’s nothing you can do and it’s okay not to stick around till the yaks get you too? Hell, I can tell you that. I am telling you that.” He held my eyes for a second, then returned his attention to applying wasabi to a piece of tuna.
“You’re a real comfort,” I muttered.
“I don’t do white lies. There’s no good way out of some situations. You don’t want to ditch your friends. Well, I bet your mama-san didn’t want to screw you over either. What’s your alternative? Turn yourself in to the yaks? Say, ‘Okay, leave my friends and the bar girls alone, you got me’? You gonna do that?”
I blanched. “Oh, God. I—”
“That was one of those questions, whatever you call them, but the answer’s no. Don’t be a damn fool. You don’t have anything to tell them, and they could go back to your friends anyway to pressure you. You can’t win this, Butterfly, so get out of the game.”
I sighed. “I suppose you’re right. I just wish…”
“Yeah. I bet you do.”
The evening dragged on. I had another one-cup; Chanko stuck with tap water. We’d gone over and over everything we had to talk about, there was nothing on the TV but porn, I hadn’t got anything to read and nobody was ringing me. I couldn’t decide if that was good.
By ten o’clock I’d had just about enough of the day.
“I need to crash out,” I told Chanko.
“You want the bed?”
“And you’ll fit where? I’ll take the floor. You’re driving.”
“Yeah, and we need to sort out where to, but we’ll talk about that in the morning. Right now—” He hesitated for a second. “There’s no extra blankets and it’s cold in here. Look, I won’t jump you if you don’t jump me.”
I contemplated that. It was cold—the Japanese don’t do central heating—and the bed was huge. Mind you, so was Chanko.
“In case you’re wondering,” he added, “I drove half the damn night to get you and I’m not planning on anything but sleeping.”
“Bet I’m more tired than you.”
“Bet you’re not.” He pulled back the quilt and slung one of the pillows into the middle of the bed. “There. Virtue protector.”
It was the sensible thing. After all, if I didn’t trust him, who could I trust? And I was tired. And…
And I wanted to have his solid body comfortingly close, between me and the rest of the world.
I let him have the bathroom first, then spent longer than I needed removing my makeup and slipped into bed in my T-shirt. He was turned away from me, his breathing was deep and even, and it sounded as though he was already asleep, if you didn’t count the slight hitch when my foot inadvertently touched his warm calf. I pulled it sharply away and curled up in a ball.
I was going to walk away. Leave Nori-chan in a hospital bed and Yoshi in the ruins of his life, and trot happily off to Stockholm or Seoul or somewhere.
But I couldn’t do anything else. What the hell would sticking around achieve? Surely, if the yakuza knew I’d gone, they’d leave my friends alone. Maybe I could somehow let them know I’d left the country…
Yeah, and then they could follow me.
I started imagining what would happen to me if I fell into the Mitsuyoshi-kai’s hands, and made myself stop. I’m not brave, I don’t like pain, and if there are people who would offer themselves up for torture to help their friends, good on them, but I’m not one.
I’m the kind of person who runs away, I thought, and the words hung in the darkness as I listened to Chanko breathe.
I woke up lying right against him.
I’m not a natural snuggler. You’re more likely to find me curled up on the edge of the bed, facing away, but Chanko was three times my body weight and the bedsprings had taken too much punishment over the years. He was at the bottom of a dip, and I’d rolled down it, and now what the hell was I going to do?
Turning over wasn’t an option. It meant rolling uphill, and since I was lying against his warm, muscular side, the only thing I had to push against was him. Which rather defeated the object of getting out of this position before he woke up…
Except that he was awake. That wasn’t sleep breathing, and anyway nobody that big could sleep on his back without snoring.
Crap. Did I admit I was awake and face the embarrassment of extricating myself? Or keep pretending to be asleep and just lie here against him, warm and safe? That sounded pretty good, actually.
“Morning.” His deep voice rumbled through his chest and vibrated against my cheek.
Ah, the third option. The one where he realised I was awake all by himself.
“Morning,” I mumbled, and scramble-rolled pretty much straight into the shower before it got any more embarrassing.
Once I’d recovered and washed, I swathed myself in towels and surrendered the bathroom to Chanko. The room looked seedy and just as painful on the eyes in the light of day. It was basically a square shape, with the double bed occupying most of it, the en suite bathroom next to the bed about two thirds the length of the room. The small extra space where the bathroom wall stopped was filled by a dressing table where I had put my makeup bag. Chanko had slung his jacket on top of it. Typical man. I started to reach for my bag, and there was a click behind me.
I spun round as the door opened—unlocked, not kicked in—and they were there, standing in the doorway, my nightmares.
Three yakuza. With guns. Pointed at me.
I opened my mouth, began a scream, but choked off the sound as a black muzzle swung higher. The three men were all staring at me, making urgently menacing gestures of silence.
There was a pause in the noise of the shower. “Hey,” Chanko called through the door. “What the hell was that?”
I stared wide-eyed at the men, who had come in and closed the door behind them. Two were moving towards the bathroom, the third was leaning against the door with his gun trained on me. He nodded at me, gesturing with the gun, telling me to answer. Maybe he’d just heard the question in Chanko’s voice, but there was a chance he could understand English. I couldn’t warn him, couldn’t take the risk—but…
I cleared my throat and put on my sweetest, girliest voice. “It’s only Butterfly, Chanko-san,” I fluted.
Did I imagine a very slight pause, or was time stretching out under me? “Now, how many times have I told you to call me Joseph, honey?” There was nothing in the mock-sexy tone to suggest he wasn’t just playing the fool. The yakuza thrust the gun at me again.
