End of the World Blues: A Novel

PART I

CHAPTER 1 — Friday, 15 August 2003

Later, Kit Nouveau was to realise that his world unravelled in Tokyo, six months after a cos-play stuffed large amounts of money into a locker that could be opened with a cheap screwdriver, had anyone known what it contained. Until then, he’d thought it ended fifteen years earlier, at 10.38 pm, on Friday, 15 August 2003, behind an old barn on the chalk hills above Middle Morton, a small town in Hampshire.

Who knew? Certainly not the nineteen-year-old squaddie leaning against the barn’s wooden wall. He’d come to the party with his latest girlfriend, a high-breasted Welsh girl called Amy who had a filthy laugh and, he hoped, filthy habits. Only she was inside sulking and the girl whose bandeau top he’d just undone was going out with someone else.

Hey, said Kit. It’s okay.

Pushing him away, the girl re-tied a ribbon. No, she said. It’s not. Mary O’Mally wore lipstick, black eyeliner, and bare legs under a frayed white miniskirt…Both makeup and attitude put on in a bus shelter roughly half way between her parents’ house and the barn. She’d cut her hair since Kit last saw her and had red highlights put in.

Under his own waxed jacket Kit wore a Switchblade Lies tee-shirt, with jeans and biker boots. His fair hair had been cropped and the faintest trace of a blond, very non-regulation goatee ghosted his chin.

Inside the hut someone took off Original Pirate Material and slung on Tight Smile, jacking up the volume.

Wait, said Kit, when Mary tried to say something. And they both listened to the bass line, as Vita Brevis thumbed a Vintage five-string. Then came Art Nouveau, splintering Vita’s bass line with a three-chord crash, and Kit found himself fingering fret shapes onto empty air.

Mary grinned.

I’ll walk you home, he said.

Kit…

Undoing her top had been stupid but old habits died hard. Josh was a nice guy, in a rich-boy kind of way, but Mary was Kit’s ex-girlfriend and he still occasionally dreamed about her. Reassuring dreams, at least reassuring to someone who’d puked his way through an Iraqi firefight, put his sniper training into practise, and was on compassionate leave while his Colonel worked out what to do about an incident no one really wanted to make the papers.

I’d better go back.

Okay, said Kit.

You coming with me?

Shaking his head, Kit said, Better not. Can you get Josh to give Amy a lift home? And, you know… Kit stopped, wondering how to put his thoughts into words.

What? said Mary.

You know. If you and Josh ever…

If we…?

If you split up, said Kit, then maybe we could try again? His voice trailed off as he realised Mary wanted to slap him, which wouldn’t be the first time. I know, he said, holding up his hands.

No you don’t, she said, dirty blonde hair brushing bare shoulders as she shook her head, each shake fiercer than the one before. You have no fucking idea.

Mary and Kit went out for five months, right up to the start of last year’s exams. She’d just about convinced her mother that Kit and band practise weren’t about to ruin her grades when Kit broke up Switchblade Lies, dumped Mary, and talked himself into a thirteen-week Army Preparation Course, all in the same afternoon.

Josh was the one who picked up the pieces and walked Mary to her exams and convinced her life could still be good. Josh was the one Mary’s mother liked, though she’d probably have liked him more if his mother hadn’t been Korean.

It was just a thought, said Kit.

Yeah, said Mary. A shit one. And there it might have rested, except the moon chose that moment to slip between clouds, and Mary caught tears in the eyes of the boy opposite.

You broke it off, she said crossly.

It’s not that.

What then?

I don’t know, said Kit. Life, I guess…You’d better go back inside. Josh will be wondering where you’ve gone.

He doesn’t own me.

Hey, said Kit. No one owns you, I know that. No one owns me. No one owns anyone. We just get to borrow each other for a while.

She glared at him. Did you make that up?

Yeah, I think so. Kit thought about it. At least, I don’t think it’s stolen from anybody else.

Kit and Mary ended up pushing his Kawasaki between them, while the moon stretched an elongated couple and bike onto Blackboy Lane and night winds whispered through fields on the far side of the hedge.

The barn was stained black and had been built before any of them had been born, the pub to which the hut belonged and the three farm cottages that made up Wintersprint were half a mile behind. Two of the cottages had been knocked together to make a house. It was his mother’s idea.

What are you thinking?

About Mum.

Anyone else would have left it there. Do you regret testifying?

Kit’s mother had been American, an artist from New York. His father was small-town Hampshire, a Sergeant on the local police force. It would have been hard to find two people more unsuited. Their marriage had been coming apart for most of Kit’s childhood; certainly for as long as he could remember, and Kit had a good memory.

One night, three years before, his parents had argued, which was nothing new. And Kit’s mother had demanded a divorce, which was also nothing new. Only this time she meant it, which was. A jogger found her at the foot of Ashley chalk pit, her skull broken and her ribs badly fractured. She’d been dead for roughly two hours, according to the coroner.

Suicide, said his father.

Kit was interviewed and told the inspector what he’d heard. Which was far more than he’d ever wanted to hear. When asked, It was the first such argument, wasn’t it? He said no. And kept saying no, all the way through to appearing as a witness for the prosecution in court.

Kit’s evidence was tainted, that was the position of the defence. He’d had his own argument with his father, a day earlier. A fierce and vicious argument, that saw Sergeant Newton forced to physically restrain his son. This was the boy’s revenge. A twisted attempt to use the death of his mother to hurt his father, a man who was already heartbroken by the loss. The jury believed the defence, and Kit and his father had not spoken since, not a single word. Although, until Kit enlisted, they’d shared the same house.

You don’t think that maybe…

No, said Kit, I don’t.

She glanced away, moonlight on her face. Kit saw it happen. She glanced aside and bit her lip. Say it, he wanted to tell her. Only Mary wouldn’t and if he was honest Kit wasn’t sure he wanted it said. Being wrong about his father was as bad as being right.

A pity, said Mary, some time later.

What? About my mother?

No, she said, sighing. About the band.

Art Nouveau, Vita Brevis, and Joshua Treece…Kit managed a smile. Not really, he said. We were shit. None of us could even play.

That’s harsh, said the girl who’d briefly been Vita Brevis—bass/ vocals/keyboards/lyrics.

We were worse than shit.

One single, a week’s airplay on local radio, and a final fumble with Mary in the back of a van, while Josh pretended to sleep and Colonel Treece kept his eyes on the road. Kit had bought the Kawasaki with money he got selling his guitar and the only thing he’d kept was his new name, although the Art bit of that had gone the way of his hair.

You want a cigarette?

No, said Kit, I’ve given up. Kicking his bike onto its stand, he took the packet from her fingers and tapped one free, lighting it with a high-chrome Zippo that read, Iraq 2003, the Democracy in Action Tour. He’d borrowed it from an American Sergeant who was still waiting for him to give it back.

Here, he said.

You know, said Mary. We should get out of the road.

So Kit rolled his bike through a gap in the hedge and parked it. In the old days people would have read meaning into the jagged clouds and back-lit sky, the wind that dragged shivers from both their bodies and a moon as cold and clear as a world trapped in the cross-hairs of a gun sight.

Time to go, said Kit, watching Mary grind her cigarette underfoot.

Mary raised her eyebrows.

"Curfew, remember?" As if either of them could forget. One of the reasons Mary’s mother disliked Kit—he had treated her rules as something negotiable.

They’re away.

Kit looked at her.

Yeah, she said. You wouldn’t believe the lecture I got.

I would…no friends back to the house and no staying out all night. Your dad knows exactly how many beers there are in the fridge and the level of every bottle in the drinks cupboard. I’ve had it, he added, when she looked surprised. That time my parents went to London.

Back in the days when my mother was alive.

The weekend you had the party?

Yeah, that weekend.

Clouds continued to scuttle across the sky and eleven o’clock came and went, measured in bells carried on the wind from the village below. At Mary’s insistence, they counted off the bells, but called the first bell two and ended at twelve to muddle the devil.

Don’t ask, she said. Blame my grandmother.

A battered red Mini came by, followed by a taxi. It looked as if those unable to squeeze into Josh’s car had banded together to get a cab. Amy was among them.

When the next round of bells began, Mary and Kit counted them from two to thirteen and then stood up. It was meant to be a simple thank-you for watching the clouds, letting him count bells, and not holding their last argument against him. A farewell to what had been, little more.

Leaning forward, Kit took Mary’s face in his hands. He expected a kiss, a shrug, and to walk her home. A snog for old times’ sake. Something by way of goodbye. Only, something happened.

As Mary’s hand came up to touch his face, his fingers brushed the bare skin of her waist and a circuit closed between them, the shiver of excitement catching them both by surprise. Her lips tasted of cheap cigarettes and expensive brandy that she’d stolen from home. She said nothing when his hand found the knot on her bandeau top for a second time and even less when he reached for the buttons on her skirt. He was her first, something unexpected.

I thought you and Josh…

Mary said nothing, just raised herself on one elbow and stared until Kit looked away. No, she said, into his silence.

Slivers of daylight had begun to warm the chalk hills around them. A maroon Volvo trundled out of the village, headed for Southampton or London. Its headlights sweeping blindly over the spot where Mary and Kit lay.

Sorry, said Kit. Wrong question.

Reaching over, Mary patted his face. You don’t say.

CHAPTER 2 — Friday, 8 June

The bar occupied the second floor of a narrow building in Roppongi, behind a tourist drag of burger bars, clothes shops, and strip joints running south from Almond crossing. The building stood low on a slope in an area full of crooked, dirty alleyways, one of few such areas remaining in Roppongi or anywhere else.

A small patch of cinder-block parking occupied what was once garden, but because the original garden sloped away from the road, a wall had been built and ground in-filled to make space for three cars. This had been done sixty years before, when most of Tokyo was crooked lanes or bomb sites, and US and British soldiers were abandoning Roppongi to the bar owners and pimps who’d kept them so well entertained.

These days the cinder patch was empty by day and home to a row of motorcycles at night. This area, directly opposite the cemetery, smelled slightly of sewage; the whole of Roppongi smelled of sewage in summer. Mixed with the odour of noodles, it was one of Tokyo’s signature smells.

The man who stared from Pirate Mary’s basement window inhaled a deeper sourness, one that danced in wisps of smoke from the heated foil in his fingers. Kit Nouveau kept his habit on a tight leash, limiting himself to one fix a day, but the dragon was restless and beginning to strain against its chains. One of them was winning and Kit guessed it wasn’t him.

Crumpling blackened foil, Kit tossed it into a bin and went to fetch his wife. Come inside, he told her, shrugging himself into a bike jacket. I need to go.

Okay, said Yoshi. I’m leaving at nine.

I’ll be back, Kit promised.

Yoshi Tanaka nodded, not really seeing her husband. She was wearing a blue yukata tied clumsily around her narrow waist with the belt from something else. Her feet were bare and clay splattered, and she’d twisted her sweat-darkened hair into a knot and fastened it with a yellow rubber band. In her hand was an unfired bowl, unlike any work of hers he’d ever seen.

What are you doing? Kit’s voice must have been abrupt, because his question made Yoshi flip her gaze towards him. Her eyes were as glazed as the pots she made.

Getting rid of it, she said.

There were so many things wrong with this Kit barely knew where to begin, so he started with the first thing that came to mind. You never waste clay, he said. I thought you told me it brought bad luck.

Yoshi scowled.

Anyway, said Kit. What’s wrong with it?

He watched her think. And just when he was sure her thoughts had turned to something else altogether, Yoshi glanced at the bowl and began to shake her head.

It’s not me, she said.

This, for Yoshi, was a statement of such overwhelming egotism that Kit was shocked. It’s beautiful, he said. Look at the thing…

She peered at it doubtfully.

Bring it inside, said Kit. If you still hate it tomorrow we’ll chuck it out. He led his wife through the basement door and into the utility room. It was no cooler inside than out, but at least Yoshi was away from direct sun and no longer standing semi-naked in full view of the street.

Sweat slicked Yoshi’s face and gathered in the valley between her breasts. She’d been awake for thirty-two hours and treadling her potter’s wheel for almost fifteen of those. A stranger could have told how exhausted she was from the way her eyes kept sliding out of focus.

Get some sleep, Kit suggested. Before we open again.

Pirate Mary’s was one of five Irish bars in Roppongi. The area still traded on its reputation for seediness and sex but it was rapidly becoming smarter than expats like Kit really liked. Exclusive designers opened as fast as brothels shut. The tiny cemetery behind Kit’s bar had started appearing on postcards, and the prostitutes walking Gaien-higashi-dori now wore faux rather than real fur in winter, so as not to upset their clients’ sensibilities.

One day, the real Roppongi, with its hostess bars and filthy courtyards would vanish forever, like Montmartre or London’s Soho before it, leaving an ersatz theme park of perversion lite. In the meantime, the Irish bars pulled in regular crowds, with Pirate Mary’s gathering one of the largest.

Come on, he said. Let’s get you settled.

Footsteps followed Kit up three flights of stairs and when he led Yoshi into their bedroom he was relieved to discover that she’d left the bowl behind. I’ll set the alarm clock for you.

Her nod was slight.

Lifting the yukata from her shoulders, Kit steered his wife towards a naked lavatory in the corner and listened to her piss. She didn’t bother to clean her teeth in the basin or remove the smear of lip gloss that served as makeup. When she finally moved it was to examine herself in a long mirror.

You can stop, he said.

Yoshi shook her head. No, she said. I can’t.

Rope burns circled her wrists, thighs, and breasts. The knots had been too loose the first time and she’d made him tie them all again. It was a regular ritual, one he still failed to understand.

Outside on the balcony her treadle was sticky with slops and the bucket of raw clay had been left uncovered. So Kit found a cloth, ran it under water, and protected the clay. Having done that, he cut the slops from her table and cleaned its wheel with the edge of a wooden blade, flicking the scrapings on the floor to dry. He could sweep them up later.

Yoshi was asleep by the time he finished.

The new bowl was where Yoshi left it, next to one of the bins on the cinder patch beside the bar. She’d been carrying it clumsily and her thumb had smudged a dark print beneath the rim, the bowl already dry enough to produce a white bloom around the edge.

Kit’s first instinct was to run the bowl under a tap, but its rim was so thin that it looked as if it might bend at the slightest pressure. So he put the bowl on a tray, found some gauze, and soaked this in water and draped it over the bowl, protecting both with a large upturned ceramic cake tin. As an afterthought he put the cake tin in a cupboard by the back door, checked the front door was also locked, and went to get his motorbike.

Noovoo-san…

The old man who tended the graveyard was waiting for Kit by the railings. In his arms, Ito-san carried a long bundle of prayer sticks, stained with age.

Mr. Ito…

Police were here.

What? said Kit. He should have said, I’m sorry, who…? And thank you for letting me know. But all he wanted to do was arrive in time for his language lesson.

Police, Mr. Ito said. From the ward office. One kept trying the door. I said you were probably out…

Mr. Ito seemed embarrassed.

It’s okay, said Kit. Thank you for telling me.

Ito-san gave a brief bow.

CHAPTER 3 — Friday, 8 June

Oniji-chan, said Kit, I probably shouldn’t ask this, but where’s your husband?

Elegant, middle-aged, and happily naked, the Japanese woman lifted herself onto one elbow, revealing a heavy breast. He’s busy.

Kit considered that.

What kind of busy? he asked finally. There were many things about Mrs. Oniji’s life that puzzled him. Including why her husband spent so little time with his wife.

Torturing someone.

God… Kit sat up in bed. Why?

Mrs. Oniji shrugged. I don’t know, she said. I never ask. She smiled. Does my answer make you feel afraid?

When Kit shook his head, Mrs. Oniji sighed.

It should, she said, but then I’m not sure you feel much anything. She paused. Is that correct?

Just about, said Kit. "Much about anything or anything much would be better…"

Ahh, said Mrs. Oniji. I see.

Later, when they’d made love again, rinsed themselves under a power shower, and returned to the bed, Kit put his hand on Mrs. Oniji’s stomach and felt it rumble.

We should eat…

Mrs. Oniji rolled over to stare into the pale blue of his eyes. She seemed puzzled. Is that an order?

No, said Kit. "More of a suggestion. An order would be, We must eat now, or You will eat."

Mrs. Oniji smiled. I’ll remember that, she said. Having understood its meaning and how the phrase should be used, Mrs. Oniji would undoubtedly return to it, probably the next time they met. You know, she said a minute later, there is no food in this house. However, I have booked a restaurant.

Kit’s heart sank.

The bed on which he and Mrs. Oniji lay was a hundred and fifty years old and as uncomfortable as the day it was made. It sat in the upstairs room of a wooden house in the lanes behind Aoyama-dori. The building originally belonged to her grandfather, and if Mrs. Oniji’s husband ever knew his wife owned it he’d forgotten.

Everything Kit knew about Mr. Oniji he’d learned from Mrs. Oniji, relayed to him in increasingly complex and confident sentences. Kisho Oniji had interests in construction and shipping, both of which kept him very busy. Also, fuzoku, the ejaculation industry. He owned a hostess bar in Roppongi, five soapland brothels, a large love hotel in Kabukicho, and Bottomless Kup, a franchise where ostentatiously subservient waitresses waxed their pubic hair and served coffee, without knickers.

He also liked gold watches and ceramics, but hated golf. Which was a problem because he owned a golf course in sight of Mount Fuji. The members, who paid handsomely for their membership, would have liked their chairman to play.

When Kit first arrived in Tokyo it was to work for an exclusive and very expensive language school that catered to the wives of high-ranking executives expecting to be sent overseas.

The job was well paid and secure in the way that only Japanese jobs back then could be. It was also fantastically boring. Although what finally drove Kit out were the classroom posters, one of which read, Talent requires reformatting what you know. Having identified the Japanese as the world’s first post-modern race, Per Sorenson had created post-modern language tuition, ideally suited to a country where people inevitably told you something by telling you something else.

Kit’s second job paid substantially less but catered to a wider variety of students, one of whom was Mrs. Oniji. It was only later that Kit discovered A1 Language Learning was owned by her husband.

When Kit resigned from A1 it was on the understanding he would continue to give Mrs. Oniji her monthly lesson, and that was ten years ago. She’d been thirty-one and he’d been twenty-five. The arrangement had continued happily until six months earlier, when they’d somehow ended up in bed.

Are you happy?

It was unusual for Mrs. Oniji to ask such questions. And the fact she felt able to ask a question quite that personal came as a shock.

Why? asked Kit.

Just wondered, she said.

Pushing her down, Kit pulled aside the sheet and stilled the hand that came up to cover her breasts. I’m not unhappy, he said, positioning himself over her.

Mrs. Oniji sighed. "That makes two of us, I guess…"

Most people when they mention Tokyo mean the twenty-three wards. Metropolitan Tokyo is actually formed of twenty-three wards, twenty-six cities, three towns, one village, and two islands. For Mrs. Oniji the city was smaller still, contained within only three wards: Chiyoda-ku, Chuo-ku, and Minato-ku.

Within these could be found the restaurants of Akasaka, the shopping district of Ginza, and Marunouchi itself, the centre of all things commercial and political. It was in Marunouchi that Kisho Oniji had offices.

Inevitably enough, the restaurant to which she took Kit was in Akasaka, set back behind Hitosuki-dori and separated from the bustle of the street by wooden fencing and a quiet garden. In its courtyard a senior and junior salaryman were finishing one of those clipped conversations that looked—to outsiders—like the verbal equivalent of a punishment beating. Whatever was said, the younger of the two bowed deeply and turned for the exit, standing aside to let Mrs. Oniji pass.

Kit doubted she even noticed.

Walking into the restaurant was like walking into a bamboo grove; dried lengths had been used to divide the low room into waiting area, bar area, and restaurant proper. Not by making walls, because that would be far too obvious, it had been used to suggest where walls might be, as if each upwards stroke of bamboo existed to provide structural supports for a wall that had never been built.

Maybe the lengths were real, or perhaps they were cast from resin. Whatever, the light within each was bright enough to illuminate its skin like neon bars on a cage. There were three dozen such strands, rising from a slate floor and disappearing into the ceiling. The tables were also slate, the chairs wooden. A length of counter was lined with rattan stools, each claimed by someone smart enough to pass muster. The tables might need reservations, but despite complaints Café Ryokan resolutely refused to take reservations for places at the bar.

It was a million miles from Pirate Mary’s in Roppongi, where bozozoku bikers mixed with Western expatriates, Tokyo’s art crowd, and a smattering of Japanese students who believed, sometimes rightly, that they were living dangerously.

Another sake?

Kit shrugged, caught himself, and smiled. Sounds neat…

The Japanese woman opposite repeated the words to herself and Kit could see her think them through, consider all possible meanings to be found in the phrase, and fail to come up with one that made sense of being offered a drink.

Slang?

Nodding, Kit watched her file away the word for later use.

We should eat, she said.

Fragments of sea urchin slid across Kit’s bowl, and even black pepper did little to improve their taste, which was over-rich and slimy to the tongue.

This was, he knew, the entire point of eating ezobafun. Its texture being as important as its taste, maybe more important. He could tell himself ezobafun tasted like Mrs. Oniji at the mid point of her cycle, but still his throat tightened with every fresh piece. No amount of sake was enough to wash it down, and he was drinking a lot of sake.

Slowly, said Mrs. Oniji. "It is best to eat ezobafun slowly."

Kit looked up from his bowl.

Savour it, she suggested.

He nodded doubtfully.

You like this place?

Ordinarily yes, he wanted to say. Only today he was late getting home and Mrs. Oniji and he had at least another three courses to go. The mistake had been in not booking a restaurant himself. Still, Kit understood the compliment she was paying in bringing him here.

It’s very elegant, he said. Very sophisticated.

Elegant, said Mrs. Oniji, turning the word over in her mouth. Sophisticated. She got the stress slightly wrong both times and swallowed the middle of her second word, but her English was still infinitely more impressive than Kit’s Japanese, which consisted of five hundred or so words or phrases and could be reduced to the three that mattered.

Domo arigato, Dozo, Sumimasen.

Thank you, Please, I’m sorry.

There is a difference?

Between…?

He’d been too abrupt. Let me see, he said, pushing his bowl aside, while he explained why the arrangement of bamboo in the rock garden outside was elegant while the American woman at the bar was sophisticated. The weather, clothes, food, Impressionist art, and books, these were the things Mrs. Oniji and Kit discussed during their weekly meetings.

I thought, perhaps, said Mrs. Oniji, we could go late-night shopping… She waited for Kit to nod, his acceptance that this was a good idea. I need a dress for New York.

He could hear the simple pride in that sentence. She was flying to America for a week’s holiday, with her sister, her sister-in-law, and her mother. Her husband was too busy to make the trip—Kisho Oniji was always too busy—but his would be the money that paid for first-class flights, the hotel near Central Park, and, quite probably, the presents that all three women would buy him at the Takashimaya department store on New York’s Fifth Avenue.

Standing up, Kit pulled back Mrs. Oniji’s chair. He had been her English tutor for ten years, her friend for three, and her lover only recently. He was not proud of cheating on his wife, but life with Yoshi was infinitely more complicated than most people realised.

Neither Mrs. Oniji nor Kit noticed the man who watched them collect their coats and it would have made little difference if they had. Hiroshi Sato had been selected for the absolute averageness of his looks, height, hair, and complexion.

He was nearly invisible.

Waiting a few seconds, Kisho Oniji’s personal assistant pushed back his stool, dropped a 10,000-yen note onto the counter, and followed the couple outside.

CHAPTER 4 — Friday, 8 June

Below a cast-iron streetlight that rusted in the shadow of an overpass built for Tokyo’s 1964 Olympics (and scheduled for demolition should Japan win the next Olympic bid), on a corner by Best Soul Burger, and a bit beyond where the Shuto Expressway 3 forks west to Shibuya or south towards the ersatz Parisian splendour of the Tokyo Tower, a cos-play-zoku in a faded red cloak made knives appear and disappear.

The knives came into being between the girl’s first finger and thumb and disappeared at a flick of her wrist. She wore white gloves with the fingers cut away and was watched only by a cat.

At least that was the night’s audience until Mr. Oniji’s personal assistant arrived.

Clever, he said.

The girl bowed, bent quickly to scoop up half the coins the man dropped into her plastic coffee cup, and tossed one of her knives high into the air before catching it behind her back.

He noticed, almost too late, that the girl in the cloak and white-lace wedding dress kept her eyes shut. Isn’t that dangerous?

Not really.

Hiroshi Sato kept watching anyway. Although what he really watched was the alley beyond the girl, where the foreigner headed for home. Mr. Oniji’s instructions had been very clear, Sato was to observe without being seen.

The job had begun five hours earlier when Mr. Nouveau ambled out of Pirate Mary’s, conversed briefly with an old man, and climbed onto a Kawasaki W650, which he rode north. Having paid a Brazilian mechanic in advance, Mr. Nouveau left his W650 at a machine shop on Akasaka-dori, walking the rest of the way, to arrive at a tiny wooden house near Temechi-dori at 4.30 exactly, the time given for Mrs. Oniji’s lesson.

Two and a half hours later, Mrs. Oniji and her tutor had left the house. A short while later they reached a well-known restaurant, where they sat at a corner table. Mrs. Oniji did the bulk of the talking and Hiroshi Sato regarded this as appropriate, since she was the one practising her conversation. After this, they went shopping.

The boss had not asked for a full report. He had merely told Hiroshi Sato where the foreigner lived and when the lesson would begin and ordered him to follow the man. He had not told Hiroshi Sato to write a report or make notes. Although Mr. Sato was making them anyway, just in case. So far as he could tell, nothing unseemly was taking place. Whether walking, talking, or eating, the boss’s wife and the foreigner treated each other with polite respect.

Leaving the cos-play to her knives, Mr. Sato abandoned the corner near Best Soul Burger for air conditioning inside. He nodded absent-mindedly at the sing-song irashaimase greeting from a Korean girl behind the counter and ordered a teriyaki burger. When it came, by itself on a white plate, with a thick soy and plum sauce, he carried it to a table away from a window and began to expand his notes.

Even if windows had let Hiroshi Sato watch the alley outside, it’s unlikely he’d have noticed the tramp who staggered from a Club Kitty doorway. This was the man who’d watched Mr. Sato break off his careful if over-obvious shadowing of the drunken foreigner. It was even less likely Mr. Sato would have noticed the cat, which ambled over to look at the homeless man at a nod from the cos-play.

Trouble? Neku asked.

Think so, said the cat. At least, that’s what she thought he said.

The cat might not be able to name days of the week, but he knew good days from bad, and, until Neku appeared, the cat had been suffering bad traffic, weird weather, and a row of metal bins where plastic ones used to be.

This was a problem, because the cat had been able to lift plastic lids. In fact, since he first stopped to watch the juggling girl two months earlier, those bins had been where he ate every night. The cat wasn’t to know his eating habits had led to a call from the Citizens Recycling Society, suggesting Best Soul adopt metal bins as good practise suggested.

You’re odd, the cat said.

And you’re not? said Neku, twisting her hair into a knot and fixing it in place with two long ivory pins. The blades she slipped into her pocket.

Where are we going? asked the cat. Although, what he actually said was, Now…?

Work.

The cat scowled.

I’ve got this, Neku said, reaching into her pocket for smoked eel. "Unagi set. She added, You eat it." They walked in silence, with Neku taking cold boiled rice for herself and tossing the cat slivers of meat from her bento box, applauding every time the cat caught a fragment before it hit the ground.

All gone, she told him.

Having checked to make sure she told the truth, the cat twisted between Neku’s ankles, almost tripping her.

Sorry, said Neku, I need to be alone now.

So the cat asked, Why? Which he did with a simple twitch of his whiskers and a quarter turn of one ear.

Hunting, said the girl.

At this the cat looked interested. More food?

Neku shook her head. Enemies…

Ahh, said the cat.