Slow Boat

^{BOAT SIX} YOU? IN BUSINESS?

About my third girlfriend.

Fast-forward six years—to 2000 A.D. Except, well, I wasn’t some boy in a bubble. Things happened in between. So let me fill you in real quick.

A detour before we get around to my third escape attempt and its inevitable failure.

Remember my rival in love? Yakisoba Man? Well, I thought he was my rival, but I guess that was all in my head. Yakisoba Man never made it to Haneda, either. That’s right. My second girlfriend caught that plane to Okinawa, plus none. She was totally devastated when I didn’t show. It makes me want to cry out at a hundred decibels: YOU’RE WRONG!

But how could she know? She had no idea I was blacked out on a train on the Yamanote Line. Typically, I’m the great misreader. I like to think I hold the patent on getting things wrong. Shit, I probably could have sued her for patent infringement.

This is what I get for going behind his back…

I bet she was crushed. Clueless and crushed.

She got on that flight (the seat beside her empty), connected in Naha, and landed in Miyakojima.

Did she find Shangri-La there?

Beats me.

I learnt everything I know—her side of the story or whatever—from a letter. One letter from Okinawa. That’s all she wrote. My second girlfriend quit school (by the time she sent that letter, the necessary paperwork had already been filed with the admissions office) and vacated Casa Komagome (an aunt from Saitama acted as her proxy), never to return from her areolar paradise.

OK, my turn.

I read that letter in my hospital bed. My mom brought it when she came to visit. Yeah, my heart was broken. But that wasn’t the only thing. I was hospitalized for broken bones sustained in the Yamanote brawl. Or, as the episode is known in the annals of my history, TRAGEDY OUTSIDE MEJIRO STATION. All of this bold.

My injuries were pretty serious. Three months to recover—that was the diagnosis. After I passed out on the train, men and women of all ages walked all over me, leaving me with six broken ribs. How many were left? On the bright side, my spinal cord was apparently intact.

Things were that bad.

That was how I learnt that when someone blacks out, they really black out.

They beat the shit out of me. No, they beat a lesson into me. There’s no way I’m ever getting out of Tokyo. Everything went black. Next thing I remember: the white fluorescence of my hospital room. I was looking up at the ceiling above my narrow cot. That was two days after my first procedure.

I was famous. Or—you know—infamous. The other passengers were seeking “damages”. Guess they were told to go after JR, too. The charges were, I went off like a machine gun—assaulting innocent after innocent. That was how the newspapers spun it the morning after: SIGN OF THE TIMES—REBEL WITHOUT A COMPASS LASHES OUT DURING GUERRILLA ATTACKS.

Let me get this straight. It was “innocents” who put me in the hospital?

Why the hell should I pay them anything? Isn’t that a little extreme?

While I was knocked out, the victims sang their innocent tune. Altogether now: “Money money money money!”

Then the media circus jumps in—singing in a round: “La-la-la logic can go fuck itself! Go fuck itself la-la-la-la.”

Justice had left me hard-up.

From my hospital bed, I watched the pile of bills grow. Meanwhile, reporters camped outside my Suginami home and interviewed every housewife in the neighbourhood, asking them what kind of kid they thought would do something so heinous. (My dear neighbours never failed to bring up my dropout past.) Whatever. Who cares?

My mom, it turns out.

“Moron!”

The first word out of her mouth when she came to the hospital.

Then, icy as a freezer: “You’re paying for this yourself! Everything. Your hospital bill, whatever you owe the people you swung at in the train. From now on, don’t even think about asking me for anything. That means tuition—if your school will even have you back. And once you get out of this bed, you can find your own place to live. You’re not coming home. You show your face and the TV crews will never leave. We’re going out of our minds dealing with them. Really, what the hell’s wrong with you? You’re a goddamn train wreck!”

Train wreck… My mom sure has a way with words.

Then what happened?

I worked like a horse—I had debts to pay. I borrowed what I needed to settle up my hospital bills, then paid my “victims” in monthly instalments. I found jobs. Day jobs, night jobs. Sometimes, I had three-shift days: morning, swing and graveyard. Sleep? I wasn’t sleeping much, to be honest. On average, I probably got a little over three hours a night. Maybe four. Just enough to keep a body moving. The only thing I had going for me was my youth—the inexhaustible energy of a nineteen-year-old. Nothing else. Just the stamina to fuel me through the sleepless years to follow.

I didn’t have time for rest, so I learnt to sleep deep. Quality over quantity. Meaning “no distractions”. Everything had to go. Including dreams.

I had almost no dreams in my workhorse years.

Not even enough to fill a short film.

It’s really strange. When I was ten or eleven, I did nothing but dream—now I was totally dry.

Life has a way of doing that—restoring balance. That’s how I see it, at least.

My mom really did kick me out of the house. I moved into a small, cheap place in Shinjuku. Kami-ochiai, ni-chome. The closest station was Nakai, on the Seibu Shinjuku Line. It was in a two-storey building several decades old. It was all wood, so I guess it had to be built after the war. Shared toilet, no bath. The sort of place where people live when they don’t have money—where rent’s stuck in the golden age of Godzilla. Financially, I cut every corner I could, spending next to nothing on food, almost never using electricity, never turning on the gas. I streamlined my bathing routine, which involved trips to the local bath and the coin shower (note: three minutes for the price of a coffee). I made it a priority to find jobs where meals were provided—which had the added benefit of helping me balance my diet. Clocking out of my last job for the day, I went straight home and slipped right into bed. No heat, no lights, no nothing. That’s how I survived. I didn’t have a phone, but my building had a line in the hallway, so I could receive calls from the outside world—as long as somebody was around to pick up. After a couple of years of hardcore work, I bought a PHS. One of my bosses (at a courier company) said I needed to get it, and told me where I could find one for almost nothing. My first briquette of plastic. At long last—the cellular age!

I spent all my time making money. Wages in, damages out. Soon I was twenty—a full-fledged adult. Not that I stopped to celebrate my entry into adult society or anything.

Outside of work, my life was a perfect blank.

My early twenties. Filled with a peace I’d never known.

The calm of nearly dropping dead from overwork.

Click. The digital calendar flips, the century ends. From 12-31-1999 to 01-01-2000. A whole lot of zeros. Some feared the date. Like the Rapture was upon us. Others celebrated. Couples dying to have “millennium babies” sought pharmaceutical assistance to get the timing just right. Still others, partying in high-end hotel rooms, uncorked ultra-high-end champagne bottles. Pop, pop, pop. Even more people burrowed into underground bunkers, waiting to see if the computerized world would descend into anarchy. They really thought that, in one apocalyptic moment, bank accounts would vanish, aircraft would drop out of the sky and nuclear missiles would destroy the planet as we know it. Good old Y2K. The Japanese government didn’t help—telling families: “Be sure to stock up on mineral water and emergency food supplies.” Panic. Sheer panic. The world was in jeopardy—double jeopardy—whether it was God or computers was inconsequential.

OK, my Y2K. For me, the collapse of the world’s banks was the big fear. A matter of life and death, if you think about it. So, on the first of January, I got in line to receive my ATM oracle, like everyone else.

I hadn’t bothered checking my balance in years. What’s the point, right?

Then my turn came, and—what the hell—did Y2K do this?

This couldn’t be right.

But it was. I had been too busy working to notice that I had settled my debts… a good eighteen months back. I was in the black. The ATM was showing me a number I never saw coming.

Seven, almost eight, million yen?

That’s how I entered the new millennium.

All right. Time to face the music. I’ll never make it out of Tokyo. Two massive failures have made that abundantly clear. Guess it’s just my fate. But even if it is, I’ll have to fight fate on this one. Fight against my shitty karma. Granted, I’ve been a shitty person. But, as a human being, I’ve got inalienable rights, right?

At least I have plenty of cash for my third escape attempt.

Let’s think this through. Prior experience tells me that any attempt to exit Tokyo ends in violence.

If I can’t get out, I’ll have to bring out in. Enter the Trojan Horse of Tokyo.

My master plan.

I need a fortress—an impenetrable, impregnable lair. My own stronghold right in the heart of the city. A place with the power to keep Tokyo out—an autonomous region, if you will. A place to fill with all the music and smells and flavours that Tokyo can’t handle. Everything Tokyo can’t have. I need a place all my own.

You might call it a business.

I had to do something, right?

To keep on fighting. With everything I had.

Not like I had anything left to lose.

March, 2000 A.D. The Power of Kate opens in Asagaya, Suginami ward.

Magazines called Kate a café. In reality, I was going for a place that defied definition; I had no interest in opening a “café”—or any place you’re supposed to spell with a cute little accent mark. But why should I care? I had misread the world my whole life. So what if the world misread me back?

All that mattered to me was that Kate had the power to fight against Tokyo. Food and drinks were secondary—just a part of my cover. The Power of Kate. Sounds like a Hollywood romcom, doesn’t it?

Where did the name come from?

From life. I needed a name when I submitted the paperwork to the broker. I clearly wrote: “The Power of Hate (temporary).” But some bespectacled pencil-pusher misread my handwriting—and Kate was born. Why was I trying to call my place The Power of Hate? Because I hated the world with every fibre of my being.

Still do.

But OK. The Power of Kate.

A quick rundown on everything that had to happen before opening. Phase I. Get a public health licence (takes one day) and a fire safety certificate (two days). There were free courses for both. Next, apply for a restaurant permit—which takes nearly a month. Put together tons of forms for the tax office. Then burn through loads of cash on equipment. Interior renovations, dishes, recruitment…

My only job was going to be running the place. Not cooking, not serving. So—Phase II.

Cooking: I know a guy. No worries there.

Serving: I track down a few foreign waiters. Easy enough. Phase II is over in no time.

Phase III. Set up thirty or so cockroach traps on the premises. Cleanliness is everything.

Then Kate opens. On the second floor of a renovated home on Nakasugi Avenue. I give the place everything I have—guerrilla warfare against my shitty karma. Not much later, my third girlfriend makes her first appearance in the chronicle of my life.

She came from the east…

But, wait, her brother came first. I met him at a beef-bowl joint. No, not at the counter—behind it. In the kitchen. I’d been working there maybe a couple of months. Night shift. (It was one of those twenty-four-hour places.)

Watching him wrist-deep in the pickles, I had to ask:

“You been at this long? You’ve got the best pickles in the business.”

“Huh?”

I figured he was two or three years older than me. His close-cropped hair made him look a little thuggish.

He stares at me, picks up a loaded dish and hurls it to the floor. SMASH! Pickles and broken ceramic pieces everywhere.

“What kind of fuckin’ question is that?” he says.

“Wh—what?” I just stand there, stunned.

“Listen to me, you little shit…” He’s looking me right in the eye. “I’m not some grunt making fast food by the fucking manual. Got it?”

“Ye—yeah. I got it…”

“Here. Try this, asshole.”

He grabs something out of the kitchen fridge. It looks a lot like foie gras. When did he make this? He’s been feeding this to the staff? Looks amazing. What is it?

“Angler liver—fresh as fuck.”

This ain’t no yellowtail.

Angler liver and daikon.

“How is it?”

“…”

“Well?”

“Well… damn.”

No other words for this. It’s like an ambush of flavour, so good, really good. My taste buds explode. I look at him and say: “Kaboom!!!”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

I take another bite. That’s answer enough.

He starts explaining: “My family’s been making sushi for three generations. My old man taught me Edo-style before I could read… I was a teenage sous-chef… I can make any dish you can name. Get it?”

Pretty sure I got it.

“But…” I say.

“What, you want more?”

“Um, yeah… But…”

“But what?”

“If you’re this good, why are you working at some no-name beef-bowl?”

He just looks away, coolly.

“Nowhere else I can go. I’ve got a record.”

“A criminal record?”

“Shut up and eat.”

That was the beginning of a deeply satisfying partnership.

From then on, nearly every night, I ate what he made for the staff. Soon kaboom wasn’t cutting it. I had to find new adjectives. Like kablam or kablooey. How did he come up with all of his mind-blowing creations?

This has to be what they call “fusion”.

He was a perfect fit for Kate. I had him on the phone maybe two seconds after I decided to open a place. It was obvious, right?

The first few months went fantastically. Kate drew in plenty of customers, and they seemed pretty satisfied. I know I was. Kate had a potent mix of exotic spices, a regionfree menu and nomadic DJs (who were under explicit instructions to sound like anything but Tokyo). To destroy any lingering trace of the city, I covered every surface with giant ferns. In time, the place started to look like Jurassic Park—minus all the killer dinos. Most critics raved about the excess of oxygen. They loved Kate. Funny. Kate had been misread again—billed as a café ahead of its time.

It was a hit.

Idiots. Tokyo thought my Trojan Horse was avant-garde?

Die, Tokyo, die.

So—did my escape plan work?

Well, Kate hit a bit of a speed bump in June. A slipped disc sidelined my chef (the beef-bowl ex-con). “Ca–can’t move…” his pained voice hissed through my cell phone. “I’m in the hospital.”

“What? Are you OK?”

“Shit no—that’s why I’m in the hospital.”

“Seriously? What do we do?”

“Man up.”

“Huh? You mean like ritual suicide?”

“Yeah, right. Look—Kate has to stay open, with or without me. The doctor has no idea what’s wrong. All he does is giggle like a fucking idiot. I can’t make any promises about coming back to work. Hate to wuss out like this, but I think I have to hang up my apron.”

“CHEF!”

My brain was a total blank.

“Man up, man!”

“Suicide isn’t the answer…”

“Knock it off.”

Chef was hors de combat, but he was going to make sure Kate stayed open for business. He told me he’d already lined up a replacement, someone he trusted. Nothing for me to do but wait for said help to arrive.

Then help arrived.

It was a few hours later. No introductions, no questions. No “Hello”, no “Nice to meet you”. She just made a beeline for the kitchen—like she was ready to clock in.

I mean, she didn’t look anything like the help I had in mind. My first thought was: Strange. Kate doesn’t get that many high-school girls in uniforms—and they almost never come alone. My second thought was: Isn’t it a little hot for a blazer?

That was all I was thinking.

I mean, I thought she was a misguided customer.

“That’s the kitchen! You can’t—” I start to say.

But the schoolgirl just stares me down. Doesn’t say anything.

“You… you can’t be back here.”

I tried to sound like I was in charge, but—on the inside—all I was thinking was: Hey, she’s pretty cute. Piercing eyes. Nice full body.

I guess I was checking her out.

She looks right at me and says sharply:

“Of course I can.”

She whips her cell phone out of her skirt pocket and puts it down on the counter like she means business. There’s a Snoopy figure dangling from the strap. Then, right in front of me, she starts unbuttoning her blazer. Pop, pop, pop. Wh–what is she doing!? She’s not gonna show me her boobs or anything!? No. This was no striptease. Not even close.

She opens her blazer to reveal four streaks of metal in the lining—two on each side. Knives.

“My brother says I’m running this kitchen—starting tonight.”

“Say what?”

“Don’t worry,” she says with a smile.

Holy shit, she’s cute.

“Just leave everything to me.”

Then she heads over to the vegetable stash, grabs a long white daikon and gets to work—reducing it to ultra-thin slices at superhuman speed. Sssh-sssh-sssh. Then, ch-ch-ch-ch-chop. She fills a bowl with water to soak the diaphanous strands.

I’m speechless.

What skill. No movement is wasted.

A sight to behold.

Then, with a cool look that says this is nothing, she turns to me and says:

“You look like you’ve never seen a teenage knife girl before…”

Another smile.

I was in love.

With my chef’s little sister. She moved into her brother’s apartment in Koenji that day. Her folks lived in Hatchobori—a neighbourhood for low-level officials… in, like, the Edo period? Everything happened so fast. Mere hours after my chef’s untimely injury, she was by his side at the hospital. (She had to be initiated into the mysteries of her brother’s menu before making her appearance at Kate.) Living in Koenji made it easy for her to go see him—to drop off fresh clothes, pick up dirty laundry, or ask for help with his more esoteric dishes. Chef’s back problems turned out to be pretty serious—just like he predicted. He was discharged after about two weeks, but he was basically an invalid. Whenever his sister wasn’t at school or on the job, she did the work of a live-in nurse.

What a sister.

All they had was each other.

“No, my dad’s alive,” she says one night. She’d just finished making dinner for the staff.

“He is?” I ask, taking my first bite.

My taste buds go wild for her Kyoto-style sablefish. The others love it, too. The Hindu inhales his helping; the Taoist is literally tearing up; the Romanian Christian cuts his fish neatly, then puts it away with the silence of the Black Sea.

“Yeah, he’s alive but… Hmph!”

What? What is that? Hmph?

Did something bad happen? Sounds like it.

Am I supposed to ask? Probably not. Let it go… She’s a knife-wielding teenager.

But I feel the temptation.

I clear my throat. Then ask—softly:

“Is it… complicated?”

“Nope.”

Right back to work. Sharpening her trusty sashimi knife while humming the theme song from Sazae-san.

Of course, her presence in Kate wasn’t sanctioned by the Governor of Tokyo. She was “unlicensed”. Yeah. Nice ring to it.

Kate had to work around her schedule. We called last order early, so her morning commute to school in Kita ward wouldn’t be a strain for her. Our lunch menu was limited to dishes that could be served cold or heated up in the microwave. But that didn’t mean we lowered our standards. Not with her. She kept her eye on the ball. And she really knew her stuff. Me? I was just technically in charge.

Every day, after school, she hit the kitchen. By five-thirty, everything was ready to go. Then, from six, she was a schoolgirl possessed—by the spirit of the knife.

God. What a sight.

Starting on 20th July—Ocean Day—she worked a full load. No more school. One hundred per cent Knife Girl. Did summer break actually come through for once? Under summer’s suspicious auspices, Kate had its second full-time chef.

During Obon, she tells me, “I was really happy to take my brother’s spot…” She’s wearing goggles and gripping a mini-torch in her left hand. “It got me out of Hatchobori.”

She triggers the flame and brings the surface of the crème brûlée to a crisp.

“You mean—there was something?”

I ask from the double-pump coffee machine.

“A lot of things…”

“A lot of things?”

No answer.

Well—it came days later. Under her breath: “My dad did a horrible thing…” She was standing by the mixer, fine-tuning a dessert of her own creation, a black sesame shiruko we named “Edgar Allan”. (By the way, this was not Kate’s first homage to the Master of the Macabre. We also had a chocolate cake we called “The Raven”.)

Taken aback, I say: “A horrible thing?”

“Yeah… It’s kinda hard to explain. I mean, he never hit me or anything. I just…”

“Yeah?”

She shakes her head. “Never mind…”

“No, never never mind,” says the eavesdropping Hindu.

“Asshole,” she says with a quick back fist.

“You’re the one who’s hitting people,” says the Taoist.

Then she thwacks him with the handle of her sashimi knife. Only the Romanian Christian holds his tongue. A wise decision. Well—he barely understands Japanese, so…

The Power of Kate. One big happy family. Long live the Trojan Horse!

Then summer break came to an end. Meaning my teenage chef was back to juggling school and work—not that there was any drop in the quality of her work or whatever. But, wait, there was something I wanted to say about that summer. It wasn’t cursed. It didn’t come to a grinding halt like when I was ten or eleven. It didn’t drag on forever like when I was nineteen. And that got me wondering. Was The Power of Kate working? It looked like it. I mean, I managed to escape Tokyo’s usual havoc, for once. Without even leaving the city.

We made it through the summer. We did.

The first-person plural refers to me and my Knife Girl. The tale of my third love stands alone in the annals of my history. This time around, things really begin when the summer ends.

It was towards the end of September—more than two weeks after she went back to school—when she filled me in on the Hatchobori drama. It was a weirdly quiet day at Kate. One server had food poisoning and called in sick (eel liver was the culprit); another had to go home early (something about “the vault of heaven”?); the last server left right on schedule—without even saying goodbye.

She and I were the only ones around. She was making the next day’s lunches, and I was—you know—doing the books.

After her knife-cleaning routine, she started to talk.

I was at the counter, facing her.

“I… um…”

“Huh?”

“…”

The only noise in the room was coming from the ventilator.

“You know, I’ve been playing with blades ever since I was a kid…”

“Blades?” Meaning knives?

“Like this.” She lifts up a razor-sharp fish knife, letting it catch the light.

“In my house, they were always around. I guess I liked the way they sparkled. Legendary blades give off a really intense light… and that caught my eye, or—like—maybe hypnotized me. My dad taught me all the basics. He never stopped to think about how I was just a baby. On my third birthday, I pinned down my own eel, slit it open, gutted it, broiled it and made sushi. I had a fish knife that I used for everything until I was like five. Then I branched out into other blades: sashimi, kamagata, mukimono… I was on TV, on Junior Chef Championship, and came in second. They called me ‘Girl Genius’. I was in second grade, maybe third, but I could scale a fish better than any of the middle-school kids.”

“Whoa…”

“It was like child’s play for me. I’ve lived with knives my whole life. I’ve come close to losing a finger so many times I lost track. When everyone else my age was holding a milk bottle, I was gripping my boning knife. This is what I was born to do. That’s why my dream was… going into the family business or whatever…”

“Like, take over?”

“Not really. I mean, my brother was around, so I knew I was never going to take my dad’s spot. I just thought—you know—I could open a sister shop or something. All I needed was the family name… or, like, part of it. I wanted to make my living with knives, with food. And I was serious about it. I was really really really into traditional Japanese cooking… Or, like, Edo-style with a modern twist. That was my dream.”

“Sounds great to me,” I say.

“To you!” she screams. “I was blind as a Bodhisattva. I totally misinterpreted what my dad was doing. I really thought he cared about me. One day, he looks me right in the eye and says, ‘I know what you’re thinking—but forget it. This business is no place for girls. Believe me, you’ll never make it!’ Just thinking about it makes my blood boil. He didn’t want me in the family business at all. Everything he taught me was just… supposed to make me a better housewife! I mean, are you fucking serious!?”

“What the fuck…”

“Right, boss? Maybe he meant well, I dunno, but he swore he’d never let me get behind the counter. I lost my shit. Don’t get me wrong. I know where he’s coming from, I really do. It’s hard for anybody to make it in that world—and the men in this line of work eat women alive… Now more than ever. Before the bubble burst, Hatchobori had it all, tons of places to eat and work—but it’s not like that any more. Now it’s nothing but parking lots. But where else can you go? Nihonbashi? Ningyocho? My dad knew the odds were against me. So he picked me off. Like in baseball. You know? But, but… Aaugh!”

“It’s OK. Let it out.”

“Thanks, boss… Yeah, my dad and I collided, we collided head-on. But my brother was there and he stood up for me. He was, like, ‘Yeah, living by the knife is tough… but you’re no softie. You’re tough, you’re a diehard.’ When my dad heard that, he went apeshit. He beat the crap out of my brother—then he disowned him, which was when my brother started having run-ins with the law.”

Now I get it.

“When my brother called and told me he hurt his back, I didn’t think twice. Of course I was going to look after him. I owe him big, and I hate being at home and… and… and…”

“And?”

She runs around the counter, right up to me—knife in hand!

“…and I love you!” she says, squeezing me tight.

Huh?

“Boss—you cut right through me.”

Say what?

“You believe in me. I mean, I’m your Knife Girl, right? One hundred per cent? It makes me wanna cry. Just me being here could get you in trouble with the law. But you never even flinched…”

She’s right about that. I never gave it a thought…

“I can tell you’ve been fighting too—with everything you’ve got. You’re strong. And you’re protecting me—like my own guardian Śakra. You don’t even know it, but you saved me. Really. You gave me a chance. To fight against this idiotic world. And I’m not gonna give up. I’m not. You know I’m not.”

Knife Girl versus the World. And I thought Kate was my fortress.

She had burnt some bridges, too.

I told her everything I wanted from her. Not as my Knife Girl. As my girl.

Love.

She was my third girlfriend. My schoolgirl chef from the east.

It’s fall, 2000 A.D. We go out. We go places. With phantom 2,000-yen notes stuffed in our wallets. We start in Koenji. We go to see her brother—my first chef. Then we go exploring. We shop for food at Queen’s Isetan, for clothes on Look Street. We buy shirts. A long-sleeve covered in mahjong tiles for me; a short-sleeve with a tarantula print for her. Then we just wander around the area, making fun of all the second-hand stores. Steering clear of Hatchobori, drifting slowly towards the core of Tokyo—Edo? We go east, to eat monja in Tsukishima. The way my grandparents see it, she tells me, this place isn’t Edo… Because it’s reclaimed land or whatever. But the monja tastes great, right? We head back. We savour the view from Aioi Bridge at night. Sumida River, the Harumi Canal. We can see Koto ward in the distance. When we enter Chuo ward, we pick up the faint scent of newly printed books.

So many sluices.

So many bridges.

That’s what we see. When we go out. When Kate is closed. The rest of the time, we’re perfectly happy in our fortress. Kate is our little universe. Our way out of Tokyo, even if we never really leave.

She was the heart of our fortress. The heart of me.

Needless to say, there was no happy ending in the cards. The world would beat me down, like it always does. Beat us down? No. Her future was wide open—I was the only one who was going to lose everything.

Mere moments before everything fell apart, I ran into an old friend. I definitely need to mention him here. Because he wrote the chronicle. He was a really good guy, I swear. But his timing was fucking abysmal—like a soothsayer with nothing soothing to say.

It was a December afternoon at Kate. I was sitting at the counter, racking my brains over potential logos for the place. I guess I thought Kate could use a new look—for the new century.

Something like a flag… A declaration of Kate’s independence.

From Tokyo.

Then things started getting busy. A ton of orders were coming in and drinks were piling up on the counter. I didn’t serve, as a rule, but I did when things got too hectic. So I checked the orders, then took an espresso to a corner table; I didn’t get a good look at the customer—his face was hidden behind massive fern fronds. But I could tell that he was about my age.

Him (looking up at me in disbelief): Huh?

Me: You didn’t want an espresso?

Him: For real?

Me: Huh?

Him: You—you’re… (He says my name. Well, a nickname I had back in high school.)

Now the disbelief is mine. I give him a good look—when it hits me like a piano.

Me: Seriously? Nohara?

Him: In the flesh.

Nohara and I were in the same grade. Remember what I said before? About high school. About being a quiet kid. About Japanese for idiots. We had our own words. Words that will live forever—when the chronicle of my life is finally put into writing.

Him: What are you doing here?

Me: I run this place. What are you doing here?

Him: You run this place? Wow. You? In business?

It bothers me how he seems sort of impressed.

Him: Great work. I guess I’m here for work, too. To cover the place.

Me: What do you mean?

I didn’t keep tabs on old classmates (I was too busy working), so I had no idea what Nohara did for a living. “‘The river flows on, but the water is never the same.’ We read that in high school. Remember?” he asks. (Yeah, I remember. Opening lines from The Ten-Foot Hut. Obviously.) Then he pulls a stack of glossy magazines out of his bag.

Him: I write stuff like this.

His magazines are full of coloured Post-its, marking the pages with his own articles. He’s a writer now. Does some freelance editing, too. I take a look at his prose… Surprisingly readable. Nowhere near as devious as it used to be. “The pen is not the man,” I guess. Speaking of which…

Me: What the hell is this name? Kaku Nohara?

Him: Me.

Me: I know Nohara. Where did Kaku come from?

Him: It’s my pen name. Cool, right? Now my full name means “Heartfield…” Teeheehee.

What the hell is he grinning about?

Nothing’s changed. Almost like there had been no decade-long blank. If we had a deck of cards, we could have played “Poorest of the Poor”—just the two of us. Like we did in high school. A couple of hours after our chance reunion, we meet up at a local oden place. This time, on purpose. By appointment. When we’re done eating, Nohara puts our private patois on hold for a moment—for the sake of business: “If you’re OK with it, I’d love to write a longer piece about your place. It’ll make a great story.”

His face tells me that he means it.

The piece he has in mind, the one he wants me to OK, is tentatively titled: “168 Hours in a Café: Twenty-Four Hours x Seven Days”. As Nohara puts it: a photo-essay on everything that goes on inside a popular café. Yeah, right. Kate’s no fucking café (not to me), and words like “popular” trip my gag reflex… (But, damn… It’s the perfect cover. To help keep my Trojan Horse off the radar. What the hell should I say?) OK, someone just shut me up. I’m way overthinking this.

“Go for it,” I say.

I mean, it’s Nohara. I’ve always trusted him. Still do.

Nohara spent about two weeks working on the piece. I spoke, he wrote. I told him pretty much everything. The truth about Kate. About what Kate meant to me. I was totally honest—on the condition that he left those details out of the final product. Now that I think about it, I guess that was the first time I really told anyone about Kate’s humble origins.

The story of Kate—transmitted in full. Recorded for posterity. Almost like some sort of sign that all would soon be lost.

Like it had been fated.

Why, God?

Why is the universe teeming with random forces of evil?

It was December—probably late December. I can’t remember the date, and I’m sure I don’t have to remind you why I forget what I forget. It was a little after ten in the morning, and I was walking down Nakasugi Avenue. Heading for my fortress… Our fortress. But, from a couple of hundred metres away, I could see that something wasn’t right. Kate didn’t look the same. Is the roof…? From where I stood, the lines looked sort of wrong. Kind of like a badly drawn imitation of the real thing.

Then that old whip cracks. Red alert. Alarm bells ringing. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.

Not a good sign.

I start running.

Then—the epilogue.

I hurry to unlock the door and witness the carnage inside. The city stormed my fortress. The ceiling’s punctured in three or four places—holes around fifty centimetres in diameter. My Trojan Horse has been compromised. The sun shoots down through the holes, pointing fingers of light at the intruders. That’s right. They’re still there.

This is the epilogue. Counter in pieces, ferns in smithereens, oven useless on its side. Among all the debris, the chunks of ice that did it.

They were probably three or four massive ice bricks when they hit the roof—before breaking up on impact.

Our territory was ruined.

I stumble over to the biggest block of ice. Glistening in the morning sun. I make a fist and I punch that stupid block. Over and over and over.

And over… and over…

Until my knuckles bleed.

Give me back my horse… You motherfucker…

Following a two-month investigation, the Suginami police conclude that a large amount of ice broke loose from the undercarriage of an American fighter jet and fell out of the sky. They might even have an eyewitness. Someone who saw the crash.

So fucking what?

My insurance won’t cover this. Looks like the end.