by A. L. Knorr
He picked his bowl up and took a sip of the steaming soup. His eyes met mine overtop of the ceramic, his eyebrows up high and his brows wrinkling. He set his bowl down. "I am surprised you would ask. As far as I know there is only one thing that could give away a Hanta in human form."
The surprise on his face made me shift in my seat uncomfortably. "I have been excessively sheltered," I said. It was the only explanation I had the ability to give.
"You have a smell like ozone. It's an odor I equate with lightning and thunder. Only creatures of the Æther have this scent, and Hantas have it the strongest. If I had not been saved by a Hanta one time in my life, I would not have known. The few people who smell you probably attribute it to a passing breath of fresh air. But I know better now." He lowered his voice and his eyes got a dreamy look. "It will be a beloved scent to me until the day they put me in the ground."
My skin prickled at the memory of Toshi whispering that I smelled like the air after a storm. My nose and eyes tingled and I blinked to clear them. I hadn't allowed myself to think about Toshi in years and suddenly he was as frequently in my mind as the sword I had come to retrieve. The pain that had dulled down to emotional scar-tissue over the years was once again acute and I steeled myself against the swell of grief that swept over me. "When was the last time you met a Hanta? Can you tell me what happened?"
Inaba nodded. "I have wanted the opportunity to tell someone my story for a long time. The Akuna Hanta is something that has faded completely into myth. No one would believe my story unless they'd been through something similar." He sat back and held out his arms. "Looking around, you may find it hard to believe that I was once a very wealthy and powerful man." He lowered his eyes. "I was. But no amount of wealth or power could possibly be worth what it cost me."
My gaze went up to the shelf where the two photographs sat. I nodded in their direction. "They were your wife and son?" It seemed safe enough to assume something had happened to separate Inaba from his family, for there were no signs of anyone else’s existence in this small house aside from his.
He nodded. There was always the suggestion of a smile about his lips, but his brown eyes were heavy and sad. "I was already a member of the yakuza when I fell in love with Mihu. After we were married and she became pregnant with our son, she begged me to give up my yakuza life. But once you are a part of the organization, it is not so easy to get out. I understood my wife's fear, but we had a nice home and plenty of money, all because of the yakuza. I was not ready to leave. I knew I would one day. It is a violent and stressful life, but first I wanted to put aside enough money that we would never have to worry."
"Yakuza," I said, the word was unfamiliar to me. I broke it down into its three components and their Japanese meaning. "Eight, nine, and three?"
Inaba nodded. "That's right. The lowest score in the game of oichokabu, that is where the name originated. It literally means 'worthless.' The yakuza's roots are low, coming out of the Edo period some 350 years ago. At the time, they were nothing more than a bunch of misfits, peddlers, and gamblers. Now," he picked up his steaming cup of tea, "they are tens of thousands of members strong and operating in plain view of the police, who are too afraid to do anything about them."
I pictured a gang of street brawlers breaking windows and throwing homemade bombs into shops. Somehow, I thought that my imagination was more fueled by American movies I'd watched than reality. "So, they are like a gang? What do the yakuza do?"
"They are more than a gang." He laughed without any real humor. "And what don't they do is easier to answer. Where there is money, they have a hand in the pot—financial crimes, prostitution, drugs, corporate bribery. They are ruthless businessmen," he tilted his head, "and women, too, without any observation for the law. They follow their own laws. They are so much a part of the fabric of life in Japanese cities that they own or manipulate in some way all of the largest corporations in this country."
The blood drained from my face and I stared at my host. My life in a small village all those years ago had never been touched by corruption. The Japan Inaba was talking about was unfamiliar to me.
He put up a hand. "They are not always bad," he went on. "They are often the first to help in a crisis, provide aid after devastating natural disasters, and they even did much of the cleanup after the Fukishima disaster. They like to think they are the protectors of the weak." He shook his head. "I can speak so easily of them as something separate from me now, but truthfully, if Japan's government ever finds a way to bring them down, I should go down along with them. I had a hand in setting up the current regime. By the time my son Hiroki was born, my tattoos were already half complete, and I was losing my grip on reality."
"Your tattoos?" My eyes grazed his sleeves and his collar, looking for a trace of ink. I had seen photos of irezumi before, the Japanese full body tattoos, but never in person. "What do your tattoos have to do with anything?"
Inaba laughed. "Everything," he said, holding his arms out. "They have everything to do with it. And they have something to do with you, too."
My brows drew down in confusion and I wondered where this was going. "When you asked me to come here tonight, I came because I was under the impression that you would be able to help me locate the wakizashi. What do your tattoos have to do with that?"
"I did not mislead you, Akiko. Please," he put a hand out, "let me continue. You are the second Akuna Hanta I have encountered in my lifetime. There must be a reason for that, given that most people think you are a myth. Our meeting at the museum was not by chance. Let me help you."
I nodded. "Sorry to interrupt. Go on." I took three big swallows of the soup and it warmed my belly. I set the bowl down and waited.
"Traditionally, the yakuza choose the designs of tattoos because of the benefit they believe the symbol will bring them. Tigers for protection, koi for good luck, skulls to show respect for one's ancestors, and so on."
"Superstition." I nodded. Grandfather was superstitious, I had seen him salt our entrance and front steps before to dissuade beggars. My parents had been superstitious, too. Only Aimi seemed to be free from the chains of superstition. The irony in that almost made me laugh considering that she was a creature believed to belong to superstition.
Inaba leaned forward. "You could call it superstition, if you wanted. But I have since learned that it is an artfully executed deception."
"What do you mean? By who?"
"Do not make the mistake of thinking that those symbols do not hold power. I am living proof that they do. Rather, realize that the power that they have has been misconstrued. Carefully misrepresented over centuries to make men think one thing, when really the opposite is true. Their survival depends upon this deception holding fast, for if anyone knew what they were really doing when they tattooed them on their skin, no one would ever do so again."
"Whose survival?"
"The Oni."
My mind flashed back to paintings I had seen in my youth of a red-skinned ogre wielding a spiked club. I shivered.
"Ah, I can see from your face that you know what I am talking about." Inaba jabbed a finger toward me. "Am I also correct in guessing that you have not yet faced one of these entities? That your sheltered life has prevented you from doing your job?"
"No, I have never faced one." The idea of actually facing one of these creatures seemed an impossibility. If there were red-skinned flesh-eating ogres roaming the land, everyone would know about them. And if they were real, how was I, as a bird, supposed to kill one? The idea was absurd. There had to be more to it, and apparently this man knew what that more was. "What does this creature have to do with your tattoos?"
He sighed. "My arrogance had me choose the Oni for my irezumi. Most yakuza will allow the artist to choose the design, but I wanted an image that would strike fear into the hearts of my enemies and tell my yakuza brothers I was not to be challenged, so I made my own choice. Two Oni, one on my chest and the mirror image of him on my back. Irezumi are applied by hand
with needles. It is a very slow, very painful process. Only a few yakuza manage to complete the entire body."
My eyes flashed to the fabric of his robe, so high up on his neckline. "And did you?" I couldn't help but want to see what was hiding under his clothing. Was it like the Oni images I remembered from my childhood?
"Yes. But no sooner had I completed the Oni on my torso when my thinking began to change. It was very subtle. There was no moment of possession that I can recall. It was a slow, insidious transition that I was unaware of at first. I no longer had thoughts of leaving the yakuza to retire. Instead I slid into thoughts of usurping the power of those above me, of setting traps for my brothers to remove them from my path and absorbing their income. The yakuza is close-knit, like a family. You swear allegiance to a symbolic father and to the community. There is nothing more important to the yakuza than the yakuza family. But, I no longer cared about these relationships, and even my wife and son came to mean less and less to me. I thrived on chaos, violence, and death. I began to crave the feeling of blood on my skin. It was not constant, you understand. Sometimes the Oni was there, ruling me from the inside. And sometimes its presence was not so apparent. It was in these moments that I became aware of what was happening. But the moment I thought of doing something about it, like praying, or arranging for an exorcism, it would rise up and swallow my intention with its own. I was no longer in control of myself."
"You believe this happened because of your tattoo?"
"At the time, no. It wasn't until after the Hanta saved me that I knew it was the tattoo that started it."
"I'm still not sure how that possible. A tattoo is just ink."
He looked at me thoughtfully, searching for a better way to explain himself. "It's not the ink that matters, it’s the image. Think of the Oni drawing like a brand or a logo. Someone or something, in this case a malicious spirit, owns the rights to that image. By tattooing its brand on my body in such a way, I was essentially giving it permission to access me, to own me."
A chill swept over my body and I shivered. "So how is it that it no longer has this access?"
"Two reasons." Inaba held up two fingers and I was reminded that he was missing the tip of his right pinky finger. I made a mental note to ask him about that next. "One—the Akuna Hanta rescued me. Two—I no longer have the tattoos."
My brows went up in surprise. Tattoos were permanent, and irezumi in particular covered the entire body. It would be impossible to remove them. "You had them removed? But how? I understand a small tattoo can be removed with a laser over many treatments, but—"
Inaba pulled his robe open, revealing his chest. His body from the collarbones down was a thick webbing of raised, scarred flesh. He looked like a burn victim. He had no nipples, for they too had been removed. "I had them flayed from my body."
12
I leaned forward, my jaw growing slack as I took in the horror that was his skin. "You had the entire thing cut out? How did that not kill you?" My eyes roamed his chest. A network of deep crooked lines, like a topographical map or a jigsaw puzzle, crisscrossed everything I could see. Each piece of raised, scarred flesh in between the crevices was roughly the size of a man’s palm.
"I did it in pieces, not all at once. There are lasers that will break up the ink and make them fade, but I needed all of the ink gone. I knew I wouldn't be free of the Oni otherwise. So I went to a specialist and she flayed it off, one piece at a time. When one patch had healed enough that the pain had gone away, I moved on to the next."
"Please tell me she used an anesthetic." I had started to sweat at the thought of a scalpel slowly cutting away pieces of hide, deep enough to take away the ink, while he sat still and allowed it. He must have been suffering horribly to choose the agony of being flayed over enduring his possession.
He shook his head. "It would have been pointless, really. Why block out the initial pain for a few moments when the regrowing of skin takes six months and is just as agonizing? Besides, I needed to feel it. For every piece of skin that was removed and replaced with scar tissue, I felt a little better, a little safer, a little more myself. Until finally," he gestured to his scarred torso, "it is nothing but a memory now. I took no photographs. The scars are more than enough to remind me of who I used to be."
"And the Akuna Hanta? How did he or she save you?"
Inaba closed his robe over his chest. "Earlier today I was hoping you could tell me that, but now I realize you can't." He scratched his chin thoughtfully. "My knowledge of your world is limited. I can only tell you my experience of it, what I can remember. The yakuza faction that I was a part of meets once a year on the island of Tai, just off the coast near Tottori."
I gasped. "I know the place! I grew up not far from there." Tai Island was visible from the clifftop where Toshi had first kissed me.
Inaba canted his head. "You are from the Tottori Prefecture?"
"Just outside. Furano was my home."
"I have never been to Furano, but Tottori is well known to me. I spent time there every year, always with the yakuza." Inaba paused. "When were you last there?"
"1923." The year I had lost my tamashī was a year I was not ever going to forget.
His smile melted away like butter in a hot oven and his face grew long with shock. "How long have you been in this sheltered circumstance?"
"Since then, and please do not ask any more questions about my circumstance. I won't be able to answer them."
Inaba's face took on a slightly gray cast and he frowned at me. "You were there long before Raiden's family bought the fortress. Long before Raiden was even a thought."
"Raiden?"
"The Kyoto yakuza family is led by a man named Raiden Yukimura. His family owns the fortress ruin on the island. It's the perfect place to hide from prying eyes. There is no law there other than the law of the yakuza."
"What do they do there?"
"That part is not important to the story. The important part is that my state had been waxing worse and worse. I was still solidly in the yakuza fold since none of my crimes against them had yet been discovered. My presence was awaited there and I fully suspect that I was to be given more territory and power. My brutality had become legendary. But I was late for the meeting. A job that we needed to finish in Kyoto went badly and myself and the three other men were wounded. We missed our flight so we took a train to the coast and hired a private boat to take us to the island."
He took another sip of tea, and realized that his cup was empty. I picked up the teapot and poured for both of us. "Thank you," he said. "I was standing at the prow as we rode across the waves, when a large shadow passed overhead. Huge." He opened his arms and shook his head with wonder. "Like a dragon. I remember a loud crack of thunder and a flash of lightning. The smell of ozone was strong, so strong. I looked up, but I saw nothing amiss. No storm clouds." He laughed. "No dragons. I turned back to ask my companions if they had noticed, when the most peculiar feeling came over me. I can only describe it like my soul had snagged on something and was being stretched away from me like an elastic, right out the top of my head. The elastic snapped and I remember my neck recoiling, a sharp pain and then nothing."
I held my tea halfway to my lips, forgotten. "Nothing? That was it?"
"That was it," he shrugged. "I lost consciousness. I woke up on the floor of the boat sometime later with a flurry of voices around me. But the most wonderful thing was that I woke up clear-headed. I was thinking as clearly as I ever had before the tattoo. I was in charge of my own faculties once again." He chuckled and stroked his chin. "Then I had a problem. I knew that I had to get out of the yakuza. And that's when this happened." He held up his right hand, showing the missing section of pinkie finger. "It's yakuza tradition." He looked down at his mutilated pinkie. "If a member of the yakuza insults an elder, by way of apology, he offers up part of a digit. It is also done as a sacrifice when a member wants out. You have to cut it off yourself."
I closed my eyes as a wave of nausea passed
through me. "That's barbaric," I said, shuddering as I imagined sending the blade of a knife down onto my own skin and bone. I opened my eyes. "Why?"
"It harkens back to the days of the samurai. A strong swordsman needed all of his fingers to wield a sword with skill. By removing knuckles, you become less effective at defending yourself, and more reliant on the group for survival. If you want to identify yakuza in public, it won't be by the tattoos, for they keep themselves covered. It'll be by what's missing from their hands." He held up his hand. "I am one of the lucky ones. The ones who make a lot of mistakes," he shook his head, "they end up missing a lot of fingers.”
I took a sip of tea to moisten my throat, which had gone dry. "So, that time on the island fortress? You pled your case to leave the yakuza and offered up a," I swallowed down my nausea, "piece of your finger. And Raiden let you go free?"
"Well, at that time it was Raiden's father I was making the sacrifice to. But no, it wasn't as easy as that."
"Easy?" I almost laughed, and my eyes went to the hand holding the teacup. "There was something else you had to do? A toe, perhaps?"
Inaba laughed. "If only." He shook his head. "No. The yakuza do not like it when you leave. If you are lower down in the chain of command, you might be able to get away with leaving for the price of a fingertip. But I was a big fish. I was allowed to leave the island, but I had such unease about it. I knew that it wasn't over, and I was right."
He turned his head toward the shelf with the photographs on them.
I gasped. "Your family?"
"I should have known better." Inaba's eyes turned glassy and he lowered his gaze. For the first time since I had been in his company, he looked truly aged. His voice grew heavy, saturated with regret. "By the time I got home, Hiroki was gone. Mihu said they came for him in the middle of the night. They threw my wife in a closet, destroyed our home, and left with my son."
