Hiro, you’re alive!” Larry said. He rushed forward to hug his friend, but Hiro slammed his palm into Larry’s chest, sending him flying back onto the floor.
“Of course I’m alive,” Hiro said. “I was never in any danger of NOT being alive.”
Neil ran over to help Larry, who was struggling to regain his breath.
“What did you do that for?” Neil yelled. “We’ve been trying to help find you!”
“Don’t be an idiot. I didn’t need any help . . . Well, not any help being found. I did need help finding the treasure and you two did a wonderful job. Arigato.” He bowed.
“You were the mastermind behind this whole operation,” Neil said.
Hiro grinned. He snapped his fingers and two ninjas rushed in with mats and a low table, followed by a tray of tea. Hiro waved for Neil and Larry to join him.
“It’s not a request,” Hiro said. “I have some questions to ask you and custom dictates that I show you hospitality first.”
Neil could smell that the tea was wonderful, and not drugged by anything he could detect.
“It’s not poisoned,” Hiro said, sitting down and taking a sip. “That’s more your friend Nori’s territory. Thank you, by the way, for not mentioning the treasure to him. It would have complicated things. Now please, come to the table or I’m afraid my guards will have to force you to come, and that will not be quite as . . . comfortable.”
Neil helped Larry crawl to the table. Hiro poured them some tea. They sipped in silence for a few moments.
“Good, now that the custom has been fulfilled, the questions. First, where is the treasure now?” Hiro picked a piece of imaginary lint off his suit coat.
Larry seemed too shocked or winded to say anything. Neil turned to Hiro angrily. “It’s at the bottom of the bay, you idiot. It was on the deck of our submarine when your sub attacked us. It slipped off and floated away. Good luck finding it now.”
Hiro frowned. Clearly he didn’t like this answer. He lifted his hand and summoned one of his guards over and began speaking to him in Japanese. Then he saw that Larry was listening. “Ah, I forgot that my good friend understands us.” He stood up. “I will return in a few moments.” He bowed and disappeared behind the screen.
“What did he say?” Neil asked.
“He wants to see the submarine pilot. I don’t think it was to offer him a pay raise.”
Neil looked around the room. “We’ve got to get out of here. I don’t see any exits.”
Just then they heard a muffled yell, followed by a splash, coming through the rice paper windows. Hiro walked back in a few seconds later, wiping his hands on a towel.
“Yes, well, it turns out that part of what you say is true. Some of the treasure was lost. This is unfortunate. My new submarine captain”—Hiro nodded toward the guard who had opened the door—“will go searching for the treasure that fell into the bay. But my former captain insists—sorry, insisted—that most of the treasure had been transferred to your submarine. It seems he arrived a bit too late. Now, tell me where the treasure is.”
Larry rubbed his chest. “I thought we were friends.”
“Be careful whom you trust on the Internet,” Hiro said, sitting down and sipping his tea. “We’d only met once, you may remember, at the comic convention in Seattle.”
“That’s when we worked out the idea for The Chef. Koko was there too,” Larry said.
“Yes, Koko always seems to be there.” Hiro frowned. “And The Chef was the perfect start of my plan.”
“Plan? It was just a manga, for crying out loud!” Larry said.
Hiro chuckled. “It was, first of all, a manga about food. For years I had pored over the secrets of the scroll, at least the copy I was able to finally track down. I knew the key had to do with food but could never figure out how.”
“How did you know it was about food?” Neil asked.
Hiro paused, thinking. “I had seen the original scroll only once. There were turtles in each print.”
“Turtles?” Neil asked.
“Yes, there were turtles on the original prints, not rice or fish. Very odd, don’t you think?”
“Yes, you are,” Larry said.
Hiro ignored him. “Why turtles? I always wondered, and why replace them with food? I thought about this a lot. It was actually my sister who gave me a clue. She was inspired by my mother to become a marine biologist, and one day she was telling me that Japan’s turtles were dying off.”
“Killed by loonies like Nori,” Neil said.
Hiro nodded. “Koko said that Japan once boasted hundreds of species of turtles, each with a different name depending on where it lived. Then it struck me. The turtles in the original prints were tied to specific places in Japan. But as the turtles vanished so did any hope of figuring out the secret. My father suspected the geography was important, without knowing why exactly, so he had a copy made without the turtles.”
“So future generations of nutbars like you could try to discover the secret?” Neil asked.
“I will ignore that for now.” Hiro smiled. “I thought I might persuade Koko to help me determine the location of the turtles, so one night, I tried to see the original again. I triggered a trap my father had set. The fire destroyed the original and then our home.” Hiro sipped his tea calmly. “I remembered the copy, and bided my time until I could discover its location. My father let it slip that the artist was from the far north, on Hokkaido. It took me years to track him down, but I did.”
“Why didn’t the artist use the scroll to look for the treasure?” Larry asked.
“My father chose well. The man was a monk, unconcerned with earthly things. He was very talented, as I’m sure you could tell by looking at the beauty of the copy. It was a shame to kill him, but I don’t like witnesses.”
“Funny that you became an artist yourself, considering how your family deals with them,” Larry said under his breath.
“After I left his home, I looked at the copy he had made of the scroll. Where I had once seen turtles, there were now rice bowls. Why? I asked. Why that change? What was the geographical clue?”
“It wasn’t obvious?” Larry asked. “Neil figured it out in two minutes.”
“No. It wasn’t obvious. I asked a number of chefs to help me break the code. None could. They paid for their failures. Then, when you told me about your cousin’s incredible ability for cooking and solving mysteries, I knew I would have to lure him here. That’s why I invited you here first and then used your death to lure your precious cousin. I knew he would come looking for you, or your body. I have had to be very patient, but it will soon pay off.”
“Why not just ask me to come?” Neil asked, feeling his anger rising.
“Well, I had my reasons for setting up this charade.”
“You needed your sister to think you were dead so she’d stop chasing after you,” Larry said.
Hiro put down his tea. “Enough exposition. I feel like a villain in our manga! I always loved the villains. Didn’t you ever notice how well drawn they were?”
“You can definitely draw. Too bad you’re such a jerk,” Larry said.
Hiro slammed his fist into the table, smashing the teapot. “Enough! The treasure. Where is it?”
“You know it’s on the sub!” Neil yelled. “It’s Nori’s sub. Maybe he’s got it! Then Koko can get it back for you. She’s probably already taken over his yacht.”
This seemed to surprise Hiro for a second, but he quickly regained his composure. “Koko was on Nori’s yacht?”
“Wasn’t she there working for you?” Neil asked. He instantly realized he’d drawn the wrong conclusion because Hiro gave out a long high-pitched laugh.
“Koko, working for me? You must be kidding. She has done nothing but work against me for her entire life. Always hovering around the edges, in the shadows, trying to stop me from stealing the scroll. Then she tried to stop me from killing our parents. . . .” Hiro stopped for a second as Neil and Larry gasped.
His face twisted into an evil grin. “I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way. And look what the insurance money for their deaths got me.” He raised his hands to indicate the golden room. “That’s why I needed Koko to think I was dead. So she would stop following me! I knew she’d send her friend Aki out to search for my body. I made sure she’d find Larry alive, and Larry would find the scroll.”
“How did you know I’d survive the explosion?” Larry said.
“I didn’t trigger the explosion until I’d seen you jump in the water. I was in the submarine right underneath you.”
Neil remembered Koko’s words into the periscope. I will get you. Had she meant that as a threat or a promise? Would he ever find out?
Hiro gave a small snicker. “So Koko is attacking Nori. This is good, very good. It means you’ve somehow convinced Koko that Nori was behind all this. He’ll likely wipe her out along with her little group of followers. Then I can use the treasure without risk of interference. It would be nice to be alive again. As you can see from my bruises and cuts, I’ve been horribly treated by my kidnappers.”
“Is that what you’ll tell the police?” Larry asked.
“Yes. And you two will be killed in the rescue attempt here on Hashima island where I’ve been held prisoner,” Hiro said. “Sounds like the real final chapter for The Chef.”
Neil clenched his fists. “If you’re so wealthy, then why do you even need the treasure?”
Hiro leaned forward. “Do you have any idea what the treasure is?”
“Coins? Statues? Gold?” Larry said.
“I expected so much more from you,” Hiro said, leaning back and shaking his head. “There are coins and statues, of course, but the real treasure is a collection of documents—scrolls and tablets and contracts and the real history of our family and our country. The true treasure is evidence!”
“Evidence of what?”
“Evidence that my ancestor was the true husband of the Empress Okiko. Evidence that I should be Hiro, Emperor of Japan!” Hiro stood up with a crazed look in his eyes.
Just then Neil caught the faint scent of cherry blossom. A millisecond later a tremendous explosion sent them all flying across the room.