Missing in Tokyo
Page 20
‘Oh, I think she likes it OK. He didn’t hurt you, did he?’
‘No. Hit two men who bring me, like a mad man … he want you, not me. Jus’ told me “get out!”.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Go to Keiko shop.’
‘I didn’t think I was ever going to see you again. No way of getting in touch, nothing – I don’t even know your surname, Aiko.’
‘Takashi.’
‘What?’
‘Family name, Takashi. What yours?’
‘Mine? Grey, like the colour.’ Adam nodded, pointing his thumb at a man walking by. ‘Like that bloke’s suit.’
‘We say hai-iro.’
‘Right.’ Adam looked across at the nearest Departures board, checking his flight number. Still ‘Wait in Lounge’.
‘You have to go?’
‘Uh, no … not yet.’
‘You find Charlie, Adam … Alice say where she is?’
Adam shook his head and looked away. ‘No … I didn’t find her, I don’t know where she is or anything.’
‘You speak to parents?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Not happy?’
‘Very not happy.’
‘You sorry you came?’
Adam felt Aiko’s grip on his hand get tighter and he looked up, completely focused on her, forgetting about tomorrow. ‘No.’
‘Good.’
‘Yeah, very good … would’ve been a lot better if I was going back with my sister, but nothing’s perfect I suppose, right?’
‘Nothing perfect, no …’ Aiko let go of Adam’s hand and, as she started delving in her small backpack, he glanced at the Departures board again.
‘Shit – gotta make a move, Aiko, my gate’s up.’ He looked at his watch: 8:50. Where had the time gone?
Aiko pushed a spiral-bound pad and a sparkly pink biro, complete with a tiny furry toy attached to it by a chain, across the table at him. Something was written in the top page. ‘My email – you take it, write yours quick.’
‘Right, right …’ Adam tore off the sheet and stuffed it in his back pocket; grabbing the pen he scribbled his email address on the pad, not quite able to compute the reality that it was suddenly time to say goodbye and they hadn’t really said anything, just kind of chatted, like they had all the time in the world. And now there was none.
They stood up, Adam taking both of Aiko’s hands and not knowing what to do next. Lost for words, aware that he was starring in his own soppy, rom-com airport goodbye scene and wondering what Hugh Grant would do in his place.
‘Adam, aishi-té ruwa.’ In a sort of déjà vu-plus of the last ‘last kiss’, Aiko reached up, pulled Adam to her and proceeded to press every button he owned. Then she stopped. ‘You better go.’
‘Yeah … right …’ So pretty, yet so practical. She was some combination, this girl. Completely on auto-pilot, Adam picked up his backpack and didn’t move. ‘Gonna, you know, really miss you.’ This was the absolute pits … so much to say and all the verbal skills of a dim-witted baboon to do it with …
‘I know, but you must.’ Aiko took his hand and walked him quickly across to the passport control. As he handed over his passport and ticket, she stood on tip-toe and whispered in his ear. ‘Aishi-te ruwa …’
Adam looked at her as he was handed his papers. ‘What does that mean?’
Aiko smiled and took a small parcel out of her backpack, giving it to him. ‘You find out.’
34
Store my ducks
‘What time does the flight come in tomorrow?’
Sitting at the kitchen table, having one last go at the crossword, Tony Grey looked up from his paper. ‘Two o’clock. We don’t have to be there really until half past, quarter to three; takes at least that long to get your luggage and go through customs. Are we both going to go?’
‘Don’t you think so? United front, say what we both have to say once and not have to repeat ourselves? Seems like the best way to handle it. At least this way one of us can concentrate on the driving while the other one loses it with him in the back.’
‘He’s going to wish he’d stayed in Tokyo.’
‘Don’t get me started. I want to save my anger for tomorrow.’ Sarah Grey looked at the oven clock. ‘It’s almost one o’clock, I’m going up; you coming?’
‘Yeah … 24 across, “made to eat”, five and three, F three blanks E, blank E blank. Any ideas? All I can think of is “ready meal”, and that wouldn’t fit if you crowbarred it in.’
Sarah stopped as she was going out into the hall. ‘Force fed.’
‘Ah … right … thanks.’ Tony wrote the answer in.
‘D’you think if we put a notice outside saying “no junk mail” anyone’d take any notice?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Yet more take-away flyers.’ Sarah shook her head. ‘I swear they make up a quarter of what we recycle.’
Tony went into rote mode, checking the back door, unplugging the kettle and the portable TV and finally turning off the kitchen lights. When he walked in to the hall he found Sarah standing by the front door, holding something in her hands, tears streaming down her cheeks.
‘What’s the matter? What is it?’
Sarah held out the single piece of card and Tony took it, seeing a picture – trees, the sea – on one side and writing on the other. He looked at Sarah.
‘There was a Post-it note on it.’ She was holding a square of yellow paper. ‘Stupid postman delivered it to the wrong bloody house number … they’ve been meaning to drop it in for days, the note says.’
Tony focused back on the card. ‘“Have been doing the islands, as far away from the cities as we can get. Been to Oki-shoto and Sado gashima – so beautiful! – and are now up north near Russia on the Noto peninsula.”
‘She’s OK …’
35
Life. Hearts. Birth. Seed. Spirits. Wish. Real.
The walk from the passport control to the baggage X-ray, clutching the parcel, trying to keep Aiko in view for as long as possible, had been like a waking dream. Unreal. The saddest thing. Interminable. It was if he was being pulled by an invisible, irresistible force which took his bag and his coat and the parcel and fed them into the X-ray machine and out the other side.
When Adam joined his belongings, having been processed by the metal detector, Aiko had gone and he was alone, surrounded by milling crowds, in bright, shiny, buy-me-now Duty Freeland.
The whole of his journey to the gate was a blur; he felt completely detached from what he was doing, still operating on automatic while he tried to make sense of what he’d been through over the last five days. As an exercise in not thinking about Aiko it wasn’t a huge success.
From the crowded room where everyone was sitting round waiting to get on the plane, they were all eventually herded out through the tunnel and then there he was, in his aisle seat, seat belt on and checking out what movies there were to watch over the next twelve hours.
This was it, then. Next stop Heathrow. Mental parentals, college, Suzy, the whole rest of his sorry life. All the crap to deal with, all at once; it couldn’t really get much worse. And out there, somewhere, Charlie. Who had no idea what had been going on, the trouble she’d caused since she took off with her ex-best friend’s boyfriend. One email, one little bloody postcard, and none of this would’ve happened, everything would be different. Except Alice. Alice would still be a screw-up.
By the time the crew were readying for take-off and the safety vid was running on the seat back screen, Adam still didn’t have anyone sitting next to him. Result! Reaching down to get his backpack and have it by him he saw Aiko’s parcel, which he’d forgotten he’d put on the floor as well.
He picked it up. Wrapped in paper covered in cartoon rabbits, it was the size and flexibility of a small paperback. He carefully picked at a corner of clear sticky tape, pulled it down slowly so as not to tear the wrapping and opened the parcel.
A Japanese/English phrasebook.
Adam cracked a gri
n; very funny. He was trying to remember exactly what it was that Aiko had whispered to him – ashi-tey something? – so he could look it up, when he saw there was a piece of paper tucked into the book. Pulling it out, he unfolded it once and then a second time, expecting a letter but instead seeing a page from a calendar. August.
There was a beautiful photograph of a white-faced geisha, her sculpted hair decorated with silver ornaments and yellow flowers, and underneath it the month written in half a dozen languages. Then he noticed that the 26th was circled in biro and had something written by it in tiny capitals. He turned on his overhead light and read:
HERE I COME TO LONDON, TO STUDY!
THE END/OWARI
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank a few people, without whom this story would have been a lot harder to tell. In Tokyo I had help and assistance from Rei Uemura, Olly Denton, Robin Probyn, David Peace and William Miller; special thanks must go to Laura and Giichi Inoue for unique insights and great hospitality, with a very special mention for Kenichi Yoshioka, who rescued a stranded visitor. Once again, Sarah Odedina and Georgia Murray have been the sharpest and most enthusiastic editors, and many thanks to Yuriko Kishida for making sure I didn’t get lost in translation.
Author’s note
All the chapter titles are genuine examples of straight-up Enganese (or Janglish) which I found in Tokyo. They don’t make any sense in Japan either, and aren’t meant to be relevant to the chapters. They’re just a part of the journey. Make your own sense of them.
Praise for Zoo:
“The novel reads like a homage to [Elmore] Leonard with its rhythmic repartee, underworld characters and action-packed plot. This is a well-crafted, sassy, involving tale of betrayals and misunderstandings and learning to be a man.”
—The Times (London) (Children’s Book of the Week)
“Marks’s precise choice of words and the book’s fast pace … make it a satisfying read.”
—School Library Journal
“Steeped in skillful suspense that will easily carry readers from one bizarre adventure to another. [A] thrilling, multilayered novel.”
—Booklist
“Marks spins a complex tale that unfolds with clue dropping and subtle surprise, using multiple narrators and interwoven subplots that come together smartly as the story unfolds.”
—VOYA
“An exciting, fast-paced thriller with realistic characters and puzzling circumstances that will keep you guessing and turning the pages.”
—Teenreads.com
Copyright © 2006 by Graham Marks
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise
make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
(including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying,
printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the
publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Published by Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children’s Books
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
First published by Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children’s Books in May 2006
Electronic edition published in January 2013
www.bloomsburyteens.com
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, Bloomsbury BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Marks, Graham.
Missing in Tokyo / Graham Marks.
p. cm.
Summary: When his older sister is reported missing,
teenager Adam travels from England to Tokyo, Japan, to look for her.
[1. Missing persons—Fiction. 2. Brothers and sisters—Fiction.
3. Tokyo (Japan)—Fiction. 4. England—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M34185 Mis 2006 [Fic]—dc22 2005057036
ISBN: 978-1-6196-3148-9 (e-book)
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
1 Dream for you
2 Be genteel
3 Keep off the pond
4 Parody market
5 Food/Drugs/Fish/School/Etc.
6 Make you white
7 Beyond image
8 My soul
9 We offer good sense and technique to you
10 Joyful impression
11 We produce it for whole human beings
12 Fooding space
13 I may be passed if you are speednuts
14 Stay real, be sexy
15 It’s a labour of human
16 Unwept, unhonoured and unsung
17 Heaven and hermitage
18 In travelling, a wonder resort
19 The spirited luxury for nice couples
20 Bitter and stupid
21 Flavorous and delicious communication
22 Cute in accessory
23 Nudy boy
24 It’s a labour of human . . .
25 I feel you
26 It’s a friend wholly
27 A happy time on tables
28 Credulity that remark
29 Let’s spend the shining moment on the street
30 Modal shift
31 Have a nice day penguin duck
32 And I got to know the permanence of all things
33 True love why is it shine small like that star?
34 Store my ducks
35 Life. Hearts. Birth. Seed. Spirits. Wish. Real.
Acknowledgements
Author’s note
eCopyright