I kissed the letter on the lipstick mark by her name and read it again. When I finished the second time I closed my eyes and felt at peace with the world for the first time in a very long while.
The moment was fleeting. I opened them when I heard the receptionist call my, or rather Tokugawa’s, name. Beyond her a beast of fearful proportions, partially contained in a suit, was trying to squeeze its enormous bulk through the entrance door. It wasn’t Kurotaki and I’d only seen one other man in Japan that big. He’d almost ripped my arm from its socket, his accomplice had bludgeoned my face and shortly after I’d gone out the window of a moving car.
‘Hello, Ray-san,’ the monster of the Ginzo-kai called out as his face came into view. ‘Fancy seeing you here – it’s been too long.’
I was on my feet and running down the corridor before he finished – I had no desire for a repeat of my previous experiences with him. A last glance in his direction showed the receptionist gamely stepping across him to block his path.
Out of the reception area the place was a shoji-sided maze. I slid a door open at random and found myself in the toilets. There was a tiny window above the basins on the other side.
It wasn’t difficult getting up to and partway through it, but they hadn’t been designed as emergency exits and I had a moment’s panic before a frantic wiggle of my hips allowed me to drop head first outside. I rolled to my feet with the momentum of the fall and looked around. Normally I’d have appreciated the ornate courtyard with its stone lantern and picturesque pond. At that moment I just felt trapped by the four walls of sliding doors. I ran to one opposite, slid it open and leapt inside.
‘Dōmo sumimasen, gomen nasai.’
I fired a volley of apologies to startled diners as I hurtled through the tatamied room. From there I continued my direct line from the Beast, crossing a corridor and bursting in and out of a room on the other side. I found myself in another garden, just as beautiful and just as unhelpful, this one bordered by a high wall. I cursed with a profanity to make Kurotaki proud.
I didn’t pause long. It was the wall or return the way I’d come for a match-up with Godzilla’s meaner twin. I rocked on my heels then bolted forward, throwing everything I had into the jump. There was a moment of gut-churning fear as my feet failed to get purchase. But then I found traction and managed to kick and clamber my way to the top.
The fall was nothing compared to a first-floor hotel room and I dropped to a crouch, perfectly poised to spring down the alley and make good my escape. But as I was about to, something connected with my head. Something so brain-jarringly powerful that even after a month of cranial impacts it seemed to freeze time and leave my vision surrounded by the jagged edges of a comic book ‘BANG’.
After delivering the stupefying punch, its owner’s other hand caught me as I collapsed to the floor.
‘You dumb fuck,’ he said, far less friendly than he had been when greeting me minutes before. ‘There are two ways out of this place, the front and the back. What the fuck good did you think it would do you running around inside?’
He held me like prey in his monstrous claw and spoke into the phone in his other hand.
‘Yeah, I got him. Meet me round the back.’
His turned his attention to me.
‘Try anything and I’ll stick a pen in each ear and smack them so hard they meet in the middle of your head.’
It was almost a shame he had to be a rival to Kurotaki – they’d have got on so well.
‘I hope you’re not assaulting one of the Takata-gumi.’
As though the gods had gifted me the power to will someone into being, his detestable voice rang out.
‘Or perhaps you’re just helping Ray-san up,’ Kurotaki continued. It was the first time I’d heard him refer to me without a curse.
I heard footsteps from behind and knew the feet would reveal themselves as Knifeman’s. I lifted my head and saw Kurotaki twenty metres down the alley, aggression oozing from every pore. Sumida stood alongside him, looking as perturbed as one might on an afternoon stroll.
‘If that is the case, please accept our thanks,’ Kurotaki said with a faint nod. ‘Ray-san, why don’t you come over here?’
Apart from the fact I wouldn’t have been able to stand, let alone walk, I didn’t move because of the flesh-covered vice that had me clamped by the scruff of the neck. The Beast gave no indication this situation would change.
Kurotaki didn’t say anything else but he started to edge towards us. To my left, Knifeman’s feet shuffled into view. It was at this point, as everyone moved to their starting positions, the man-monster realised he wouldn’t win the impending fight with me in his grip and reluctantly tossed me to the side.
I slumped against the wall and looked upon the scene. It was like a Western showdown picked up from the last century and dumped in the present-day East. Tokyo’s two most-feared men finally facing each other. Two freaks of nature about to discover who had inherited the more monstrous genes. Who would win, the East Asian tiger or the Japanese black bear? Kurotaki seemed confident it would be him.
‘I’ve got this,’ he said quietly, his gaze locked on the Ginzo-kai as he spoke.
Sumida’s posture immediately relaxed. Not that he’d been tense in the first place, but he took a small step back.
I felt far less at ease. I wanted to scream at Kurotaki. I didn’t care about his life, in fact I was sure the planet would be better without it. But his bravado wasn’t just a threat to him. If he was killed there wouldn’t be much time left in this world for me.
But the situation was too tense to make a sound so I didn’t. Kurotaki continued to edge forward. And the two Ginzo-kai readied themselves where they were.
The slow-motion showdown played tortuously on, seconds as minutes, minutes as hours. Kurotaki’s eyes remained locked on the Beast and rightly so. But I was also concerned about the man at his side; the man I knew would be carrying a knife. It was no good Kurotaki taking out his main adversary only to be caught by the weaker link.
Still he inched forwards, now close enough for me to compare him and his double. Two monsters fronting as men, set well above their malevolent peers in meanness and power. It was possible they hadn’t met before. But they would have known the other’s reputation and had probably anticipated this day. Kurotaki would have been looking forward to it.
Still he pressed on, so carefully you could hardly see him advance. He may have been confident enough to stand down Sumida but he wasn’t so stupid he didn’t know what was at stake. His body looked tense, but it was the tension of preparedness without being tight. When the moment came it was easy to picture it transforming, like a predator’s spring from its crouch, like—
Kurotaki exploded into a blur. Blood splattered the wall opposite, accompanied by a sickening squelch and another streak of blood that slapped my face. I wiped at it, disgusted, but more than that anxious, desperate to see. I needed to know what was going on, who was winning, if I’d emerge from the next few minutes alive.
I saw Kurotaki and his nemesis through a film of blood. They were clasped to one another, face-to-face. Both had expressions of frenzied intensity, but it was impossible to know whose was fuelled by adrenalin and whose by fear. Kurotaki’s elbow on the other side was raised unnaturally but his hand was out of sight. I couldn’t tell if his posture was aggressive or if he was disabled by pain.
It seemed an age they stood there, but then the freeze-frame broke with another thunderous eruption of blood. Kurotaki stepped back and I saw its source – spraying from the neck of the Beast where Kurotaki had withdrawn his short sword. The precious blade was coated with human oils now, having been buried hilt-deep in the Beast.
Kurotaki released his hold from its shirt. The Ginzo-kai monster collapsed to the floor like a film-prop filled to excess with fake blood. Beside him more pumped from the throat of Knifeman as he thrashed on the floor in the last throes before death. His hand was still reaching inside his jacket for the tool he hadn’t been fast enough to retrieve.
I wiped at my face again in absent disgust. I was trying to piece together the flash of movement I’d just seen. One second all three had been standing; the next, two men were writhing in a river of blood.
An imprint of memory showed Kurotaki reach inside his jacket and swing out back-handed to the right. The strike that had almost decapitated Knifeman with its razor-sharp, Kunimitsu-bladed edge. He’d used its recoil to drive back, thrusting the dagger into the Beast’s gaping neck. All at such speed they hadn’t stood a chance.
I flinched as he seized the front of my top and hauled me to my unsteady feet. He let go, then grabbed me again as I tottered and started to slide down the wall.
‘Come on, Ray-san, let’s get you back.’
He took a last look behind him and spat at the twitching mass of flesh and blood still struggling against its fate. He dragged me over to Sumida, who gave a brief nod of approval before he turned. We made our way to where I hoped would soon be a car, Tomoe’s letter in my pocket, the file still stuffed down my top. I think I then passed out because I don’t remember anything else.