The elite. Was that who those people were?
Ryu suddenly heard the shuffling of footsteps.
“Looking at the car again?” Clyde mumbled as he walked by, a can of Red Bull in one hand and a textbook in the other.
Ryu turned his head too quick, then winced at the pulled muscle in his neck. He watched as Clyde took a spot on the floor of the living room and fumble open the textbook.
“Another Red Bull? So that would be… your third. Are you addicted to those now?” Ryu asked, tilting his head from side-to-side to relieve the stiffness.
Clyde shrugged. “Wouldn't be the worst thing.”
True.
But… Clyde was odd. Besides Ryu and Tyler, he was the only one of the boys to claim Japanese ancestry. Unlike Ryu and Tyler, he didn't know Japanese. His attempts at trying to speak it with them were, although brave, pretty annoying. Almost as annoying as his attempts at trying to sound "gangsta." The thing was Clyde was one of the new-waves, and a good kid who decided being good wasn’t good enough. Ryu often wondered why Clyde was even there, though he had told him exactly how it all went down.
Clyde’s father, Thomas Watanabe, had passed away from a debilitating illness, this after he'd been laid-off with a pregnant wife and three boys to raise. Clyde's mother, in turn, worked two, sometimes three jobs to support him and his brothers. Clyde was the oldest so in spite of it all, he always went to school, always did his homework, always did everything he was supposed to do. He was the “man” of the house. But Clyde recounted the one summer evening when no one was home. He was twelve-years-old. School was out, and his mother was at work. His brothers had gone to spend the week with his grandparents. He recalled feeling for once… carefree. He was carefree until he realised he was bored.
“You don’t understand. It’s a kind of boredom that hurts,” Clyde had explained. “You’re so bored ‘cause there’s nothing to do. Just nothing to do. And it drives you crazy to be alone and so bored all the time.”
It was that summer that everything changed. Clyde's mother had had a great education, so eventually she'd managed to land a great job and a great new husband. Clyde's mother's expectations and hopes for her children were great too. But it was the summer that boredom among other things made Clyde decide he hated expectations. It was the summer Clyde went outside and found friends. Friends, who found small joys in everything from scratching crude drawings on bathroom stalls to pocketing and reselling things they'd lifted from the shelves of big box stores.
Those friends gave Clyde some other things also. Weed. Booze. Pills. Occasionally, two at the same time. Sometimes, other things he didn't even remember the name of, though they often left him paranoid or staring facedown and zombie-like at his own sick in a toilet. At best he'd get tremors, kind of like what he’d get from that third can of Red Bull. It wouldn’t be long before everything, most things, seemed less interesting. It wouldn't be long before Clyde's mother could tell Clyde nothing, and the only way to eliminate the numbness partially of the world and partially self-inflicted was to do the unthinkable.
Leave it all behind.
Ryu understood boredom. What Ryu never understood were people like Clyde who could so easily walk away from everything. Maybe the feeling had been mutual. Clyde’s mother never even bothered to report him missing. Where she, her new husband or his real brothers were now was anyone’s guess.
“Glad they’re gone, finally,” Clyde murmured, breaking the silence.
Ryu paused, unsure what he was talking about. Then he remembered the grey sedan, those women and their child welfare inspections. As infrequent as those visits were, they were always a nuisance. Sunday afternoon was a strange time to visit. As expected, there was nothing to see. Just a couple of boys doing chores, finishing homework. The new-waves were surprisingly good at keeping their cool during these times. Yuan Lin, with his socially-awkward ways just kept himself glued to his computer. Bradley Fong had a great way of charming visitors with his bright smile and eccentric personality that matched the peach-blond he'd dyed his hair. Dan Nguyen wasn’t too charming, but he was forgiven because his ineptness was so often endearing. And Albert? Well, he was just a tall, good-looking kid with a great sense of humour.
He was also the token non-Asian one.
Ryu figured Albert must have met some “diversity” quota, but ironically, of all the new-waves, his presence actually made sense. At the age of thirteen, he’d been plucked off the streets. Before then, he had bounced between eight or nine foster homes from the age of three until deciding he’d make a better home out of a tent in an alleyway. Now sixteen, he’d been at Tengoku for over two-and-a-half years and had come the furthest. He learned quickly, was tough but yet, although he seemed easygoing, there was so much about Albert left a mystery. Ryu had once tried to figure out what Nation Albert belonged to. He’d told him “Lakota," a people made famous lately by the herbal ointment Ryu had seen sold at the department store. But the Lakota weren’t even local. That’s when Ryu realised Albert simply didn’t know. So if anyone thought Albert grew his hair for cultural reasons, they'd be at least partially wrong.
"I'm a samurai, don't you know?"
That's what Albert would say whenever someone asked him why he wouldn't just cut it already. He never did look like a samurai, even with his hair styled in a top-knot. But maybe Tengoku at the very least gave him an identity, something he'd been denied from birth.
As it turned out, all the new-wave boys were the by-product of being shafted for generations.
Bradley's great-grands had been head-taxed at the turn of the century, though they'd managed to build a nice life for themselves in spite of it. They still couldn't escape the dance of flames reflected in their irises as they watched the life they had built burn to the ground because some people "thought" they were Japanese. And even though Bradley's family had proven themselves resilient for generations, everything changed with his. A home life that was more battlefield than sanctuary had been the thing to finally end the Fongs' resilient legacy.
Clyde's great-grandfather could probably have reassured him that being in a WWII Japanese-Canadian internment camp was no walk in the park, despite being located in one—Vancouver’s Hastings Park. Clyde’s great-grandfather might have had much to say had he not gone out the same way Clyde's father had.
As far as fathers being absent went, Albert couldn’t remember his father’s face or his own last name.
Dan knew his own father quite well, almost as well as he knew the inside of an ER or a homeless shelter. He could vaguely recall old second-hand stories about post-war Vietnam. Dan's father was a refugee who managed to come to Canada only to grow up and wind up a convict much the same way Yuan's father did.
As if being socially-awkward and withdrawn weren’t a liability enough for Yuan, his mother loved the alluring song of slot machines more than she did him.
So maybe, whether it was a prison camp, a prison-like residential school, or actual straight-up prison that impacted their lives, all of them felt they had a bone to pick. Sure, anyone, regardless of history, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of how terrible their lives were, could have been these kids. But, of course, most wouldn't end up at Heaven Home for Boys. There was just something different about the new-waves. They didn't want to conform, not to anyone's standard. They accepted that they'd been dealt a bad hand. This life they lived might have just been their way of flipping the bird to a society they could never belong to.
For whatever that was worth.
“Good thing… good thing they never check the attic,” Ryu muttered, responding to Clyde ten minutes after the fact.
“Heh? Oh yah, right. Good.”
Clyde had long forgotten their conversation, now well-immersed in his homework. Ryu thought, wearily, it was time he started his, though he figured he’d put it off just a while longer. That was the thing about the new-waves. They were always willing to save face and keep up the lie that they were teens o
n the road to rehabilitation. But Ryu and Tyler, the old-waves—the last of the old-waves—seldom cared. They didn't choose anything. They had no bones to pick. Boys like Ryu and Tyler, their fathers were ninkyo dantai, what yakuza—Japanese mobsters—liked to call themselves. Those fathers were thugs who went out like soldiers. They left their kids with nothing but the clothes on their backs and their reputations. Such fathers passed on proof of eternal allegiance to the underworld in the form of an heir too young to know so much as the spelling of their own name.
Tengoku wasn’t just a dumping ground for kids no one wanted.
It was a training camp for teen gokudo, would-be disciples of the White Flower Syndicate.
Shin Matsumoto was a businessman all right, but real estate didn’t quite sum up his trade. Organized crime—that was his real hustle. Matsumoto's real title? Oyabun. The Big Boss. Meanwhile, Katsuo Kazama who was the house's overseer was also a syndicate enforcer who, along with Matsumoto, had been part of the criminal underworld back in Japan. He was known as Kitsune, the fox. To the boys in the house he was "aniki."
The White Flower Syndicate was something like a satellite to the Yoshinza-kai faction they belonged to back home. But the Syndicate and Matsumoto played by their own rules and code of honour.
Besides, members didn't just pledge their lives.
They pledged their sons.
But who knew?
The house was beautiful, and no one ever saw where they stored the weapons, the crates and crates of counterfeit junk, and safes loaded with drugs and cash. But they would see it…
If they only checked the attic.
Ryu could feel and hear the rumblings of his stomach. Then is when he realised he hadn’t eaten in hours. It was that weird gap between lunch and dinner, where one's hungry enough to eat dinner, but knows it would be foolish to eat so much so early. Ryu figured he’d let himself be a fool today. He slid off the chair and started for the kitchen, hoping something decent would be in the fridge. Even leftover pizza with three-day old crust or Dan's piss-poor attempt at fried dumplings would be wonderful. Maybe Ryu would get started on his own homework as soon as he was done.
As Ryu passed Clyde and rounded the corner, he heard the roll of laughter, then something caught his eye.
Next to the base of the staircase was Claudia in conversation with Tyler.
Claudia Tanaka was their older sister, their aneki, and Katsuo’s girlfriend. Claudia was also the one who ran things in Katsuo’s absence. If one could call it "running." Most of the time she just ignored them and did her own thing or she just wasn't around. Ryu wasn't certain if she was simply lazy, simply evil, or simply unapologetically selfish. Her only role besides policing them was managing one of Matsumoto's massage parlours, which really meant pimping out doped-up White Flower girls at the corner of Red Creek and Main Street. Her nickname was Crane, but Ryu quite preferred to think of her as Onibaba, the witch demon. Especially since they both had evil and tricks in common.
Claudia's flighty, cawing laughter erupted once more.
Tyler wore the widest, stupidest grin. The kind of grin Tyler only reserved for her. It seemed the only one among the boys Claudia could tolerate was Tyler, but it wasn't obvious what it was they had in common besides both of them being insufferable and downright odd. Ryu grimaced, turning his head as though he hadn’t seen them.
It was Monday morning. Ryu pulled into the Shady Glenn Academy parking lot. Bumping in the speakers—Notorious B.I.G.—Hypnotize. Ryu watched like a feudal lord as his crew stopped in their tracks to stare like serfs. Ryu exited the car and, as he hobbled over to them with hands in his pockets, the loud “beep” of locked doors sounded. Picture-perfect. Just like a movie.
Tim gave a low whistle.
“Damn. Sweet ride. Is it the new model?”
“Yeah,” Ryu said coolly.
His smirk faded, and he frowned as they looked ponderously at him. He'd traded his black hoodie for the uniform blazer. A rare event. Since Ryu had driven himself, he needn’t conceal where he went to school as he usually did. Seth seemed to catch this and chuckled to himself. Ryu was pleased Seth hadn’t bothered to comment on it. Ryu looked to the others, Kevin, Cody and Jackson as they traded knowing looks among themselves. Ryu was suddenly reminded of the last time they’d seen each other. He could feel remnants of a tension that hadn’t yet cleared. Jackson smiled, despite a certain hostility in his eyes.
"Bro! I'm so sorry about Friday,” he started.
Ryu stared back impassively. He didn’t like where this was headed. Apologies weren’t Jackson's forte.
“You know you're my boy. I just care about you, that's all—no homo."
“Funny guy,” Ryu groused, showing him the finger as Cody and Tim crowed.
"Yo, careful. You don't wanna piss him off," joked Cody.
"Yeah, he might HA-DOU-KEN!" Tim bellowed, gesturing exaggeratedly with his hands and making the others double over with laughter.
The same tired Street Fighter jokes, again?
Ryu wasn’t ready to start the day with this. He stole a glance at his watch to see a few minutes left until the bell. He figured he might as well light one up when he noticed the ginger-haired girl making her way towards the entrance. Ryu paused. Haruna caught his eye and stared hard at him as though summoning him without a word. Sighing deeply, he pocketed the unlit cigarette and made his way over to her, ignoring the curious mutterings from the guys.
“What's up?” Ryu said casually.
“We’re still meeting after school, right?”
Ryu cussed under his breath, a hand over his forehead pushing his hair back out of frustration.
“I forgot. Sorry.”
“Well, you at least finished your part of the presentation, right? Like the summary? I can’t finish the slideshow unless you finish your half,” she reminded, her expression mysteriously calm.
Ryu shrugged his book bag off his shoulders.
“I have most of it. But meeting today is definitely out.” He passed the papers to her and Haruna took them. Ryu stared intently, waiting for her to scold him. She gave a glance at what he had written, then looked up with a small smile.
“Good enough. We can discuss it later,” she said.
The bell sounded just as she turned and pranced away, her long ponytail and green pleated skirt fluttering behind her.
Ryu gawked, nearly too stunned to notice other students or his friends trudge wordlessly by him to head inside. Had she actually left quietly? No argument? No accusations about bailing on her again or fussing about how much work she had already done on her own? Not even a slight about the sloppiness of his handwriting and how much trying to read it would be like translating ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs? Odd. Did she have a cold or something? Ryu felt an arm brush against his shoulder. He turned.
“Hey, what are you standing around for? We’ll be late for first period,” Seth said, his face as always a huge grin.
Ryu blinked, slowly. He half-smiled.
“Oh, yeah. Right.”
School was just a fraction of Ryu’s life. Those eight to ten hours he spent within the walls of the Academy, day after day, were like being trapped in limbo. Not like Ryu was ever eager to go home, but he hated the unease that came with the wait when a big mission lay before him. When Wednesday had rolled around, Ryu hopped into his car and rushed home. It was rare to have a big job on a weeknight, but if it wasn’t today, it wasn’t happening. After announcing his return and kicking off shoes he traded for slippers, Ryu darted up the stairs for his room. He tossed his shirt, tie, and blazer onto the bed and rummaged through his belongings for his hoodie. About to pull it on, he caught himself in the mirror, his left shoulder and a hint of his bare torso from the side.
The year Ryu had made his first hit, he’d also gotten his first set of ink. It wasn't tebori-style with traditional needles forged from bamboo and titanium, but it was a convincing dupe. Also, a phenomenal work of art with the
pain equivalent of being repeatedly pelted in the back with a live hornets' nest. But it was steeped in tradition, so the suffering was worth the credibility.
The design bore the intricate outline of the samurai, Kumagai Naozane, as depicted in kabuki theatre. He wielded a katana, a proud warrior against a backdrop of cherry blossoms, against a backdrop of ocean waves and flames, against the backdrop of a dragon. At the very top, at the base of the back of his neck were the fine strokes of Ryu's street name, Devil Half, immortalized in Japanese katakana.
For samurai, there was a legend about cherry blossoms that was thought to apply to their lives. A life that was blossoming. Eye-catching. Short-lived. For gangsters, maybe it was much the same, although it was more the latter than the former. No need to dwell on reality because Ryu’s life was theatre, kabuki theatre. Over the top, always playing a role, fulfilling a duty, masquerading to prove his worthiness as a true White Flower. Ryu also acted the part of an ordinary teenager from an ordinary group home—a student by day, instead of a mobster-in-training. An actual hitman.
The flames, they had no real meaning. Ryu just thought they looked cool. Along with the dragon. Along with the black scorpion he'd added to his shoulder earlier that year, trying to one-up Tyler.
Ryu went above-and-beyond by tattooing his entire back. These kids weren’t real yakuza after all, but he felt he’d proven himself to be loyal and tough. While his brothers stuck to low-level crime suited to their basic street smarts, the kind that always got one caught and picked up by the cops, Ryu got the edgier jobs. The jobs only few among their ranks were trusted with. The jobs that would eventually put him in the same league with actual yakuza.
Ryu’s thoughts were cut short as his reflection was abruptly accompanied by another. Ryu rolled his eyes. Tyler.
“Tonight's the big night, eh?” Tyler muttered, a malicious edge to his voice.
Ryu continued to change, not answering Tyler who crossed the room behind him. Ryu could still see the silver-haired boy from the corner of his eye as he grabbed hold of a denim jacket in pastel grey with Ed Hardy etched on the shoulder. Tyler loved to wear Ed Hardy anything. Ryu often thought nothing screamed self-assured prick louder than a kid in Ed Hardy gear. Ryu figured the only one who could rival Tyler for that title was the one or two guys who had enough of it to donate to the house year after year.
Judge by the Cover: High School, Drama & Deadly Vices (Hafu Sans Halo Book 1) Page 15
