Chapter 15: 12

He entered a ramen store in the shopping district. Slurping down lukewarm ramen, he called home. But no matter how many times he tried to call, he couldn’t get through. He threw some coins onto the table and left the restaurant.

The windows of his apartment were curtained off. The doorbell rang at the auto-locking front door. There was no response. He inserted the key and turned it.
No sign of anyone inside the room was to be found. Anger rose in him, and with dirty shoes still on, he went in. The bottle of scotch was still lying on the living room floor, where he had drunk it all.
The bedroom looked as if it had been burglarized. Almost all the drawers had been left open. Clothes spilled out of the closet. He could picture Kiriko angrily stuffing them into her carry-on bag. And there was no sign of her in her daughter’s room either.
Shit.
He knocked off the books on the bookshelf, threw the CDs on the floor, and sent the stereo crashing to the floor. The plastic case rattled and something shattered on the stereo. He tore open the aluminum package of stabilizers in his pocket. One after another, he put the pills into his mouth and crunched them down. A chemical bitterness filled his mouth. White powder danced from his lips.

He made a call with his cell. The other party picked up.
“Kiriko, do you know what you’re doing?” A low, threatening growl.
“You’re one to talk! What did you do with her daughter?” From the phone came the voice of a wrinkled old man. It was Akiba, Kiriko’s father.
“Can I speak to Kiriko? She’s there, no? With you.” Fujishima spoke quickly. In contrast, Akiha was silent for a while. Sweat trickled down into his eyes.
“I knew it was you. I told you to stay away from her and my granddaughter. Are you at her apartment right now, you bastard?”
“I’d like to talk to Kiriko. Just let me talk.”
“My daughter’s still crying her eyes out. What the hell did you do?”
His body slumped into a momentary dizziness. He realized. She had abandoned him. He raped her. He made her get high on meth. It wasn’t a normal realization, but he trusted it.

“This is our business. It has nothing to do with you.”
“Like hell it doesn’t! My granddaughter, Kanako. Where did you hide her? Is she with you?!” Akiba was unaware of everything.
He’d already shoved meth into this man’s beloved daughter. His granddaughter was selling speed to her classmates. How would he react if he heard those things, Fujishima wondered. Akiba had undergone heart bypass surgery four years earlier.
“Tell her this. It’s not too late to come back.”
“You… Do you even have the slightest idea of what you’re doing? You want the cops called?”
“Why don’t you give it a shot? It’s Kiriko who’s in danger here. If you don’t want her wonderful career to be tarnished, you’ll keep your mouth shut.”
“What did you say?!”

He threw the phone to the couch.
His eyes watered and his vision became blurry. He had been betrayed. Only now was it clear to him. He loved her. She was never coming back. As long as he was still here, she would never come back. He only wanted the three of them to live together again. This time, he wanted to build a peaceful life. He’d find Kanako, and continue devouring the dream of becoming their hero from there. He wanted to be a father, a husband, again.

Damn it. A pitiful sob escaped his trembling lips. The sticky summer dusk cast a pessimistic shadow over his mind.
His wife withdrew into a shell, and his daughter lay rotting somewhere where neither the sea nor the mountains could be seen. Tears kept streaming down his face as he thought of the warmth of Kiriko’s skin and the life that Kanako had led. Sniffling, he picked up his cell phone, which kept ringing, and turned it off.
The reflection of his face on the mirror stand caused him shame. Red, double-lidded eyelids. He threw a bottle of scotch at the mirror and broke it. Cobwebbed cracks shattered Fujishima’s face.　

10:45 pm.
He put on a change of underwear and a water-repellent jersey. He was dressed like a backwater yakuza, but considering what awaited him, this seemed like the best way to dress. He left the apartment and got into his Corolla. From 50 to 60, 80 to 90 kilometers per hour. The car plowed through Route 16 in the middle of the night.
The car was parked on a bridge over the Shiba River, just short of their nest. He got out of the car with the special baton, which he had left lying on the passenger’s seat, and tied it to his waistband. Nearby was the slide of the municipal swimming pool. In the distance, the lights of the buildings of Saitama Shintoshin could be seen. The parking lot was enveloped in deep darkness. The silence was overwhelming.
He could hear the chirps of insects coming from the river. There were no fireworks, no exhaust noise, and no sound of the little brats and their charming racket. Wasn’t it still time for them? He stretched his neck as if out of breath. In the parking lot, along with the discarded scraps, there were low riders, large Chevrolets, and Celsiors. There were also several mopeds and mid-size bikes with mufflers tampered with.　

He gasped for breath. Aware that his nervousness was getting worse, he approached the place. Soon he realized that he was in the middle of a bizarre situation. Motorcycles were overturned, lights were smashed, oil was leaking. The sedans and Chevrolets were no exception. As he got closer, the devastation became more and more obvious.
A side window was smashed and the asphalt was littered with grainy pieces of glass. A front window white with webbed cracks. Doors had been dented with what looked like a blunt instrument, and paint was peeling. A car was tilted at an angle, as if the tires had been punctured.
It was like a slap to the face. Fujishima stretched out his baton and looked for them. Assault. A lynching. These violent words brought back memories of that day. Wet, light blue security uniforms. Red lights flickering on and off at the convenience stores scattered in the darkness. Bloodied and gushing entrails, protruding eyeballs. He needed a gun. He wanted to call for backup. The muscles in his legs stiffened with fear. He realized he was no one, and he was devastated.　

He thought he saw a figure in one of the sedans. It was a young woman with long hair.
“Kanako?”
He approached the sedan with a short shout and fast steps. The stiffness in his legs was gone, as if he had escaped from a spell. Leaning forward mid-stride, he peeked inside. Leopard print seats. Artificial flowers covering the car’s garish interior. In the passenger seat was a young woman holding her head, covered in shards of glass. It was not Kanako. Her hair was bleached in a dirty way. Her sunburned shoulders, peeking out from a flower-print camisole, were bruised by shards of glass and oozing red blood.
“Oi! What… what happened?!”
The woman cowered with her head in her hands. He opened the dented driver’s door, reached out and shook her by the arm. Rust-colored hair covered her face. Not Kanako. Damn it. The woman, terrified, wouldn’t lift her head easily. “Oi!” The glass fragments in her hair spilled out.
“Is Munakata here? What do you know?!”

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She raised her face and looked at Fujishima intently. Her mascara had melted, her pencil-drawn eyebrows had rubbed off, and half of her face was stained black, as if she had been smeared with charcoal.
“There… Over there…”

Her trembling fingers pointed to the asphalt sidewalk that led to the park. There was no light except for the cold fluorescent lights of the public restrooms along the way, and the darkness was even greater.　
The wide promenade had no people in it. Eventually, he came to a streetlight with a white light. A swarm of winged insects was buzzing in the air, making him feel sick to his stomach. The tennis courts nearby were already closed. There were human voices. They were high-pitched voices, neither yells nor screams. It was coming from the promenade where there was a small river.
He caught glimpse of a head and looked over. About ten boys, dressed in a variety of outfits, were huddled together, slumped on their backs, leaning against the wire fence of the river. All were dirty and their hair was disheveled. Even in the darkness, one could see that they had been subjected to relentless violence.
In the darkness further in, there was movement. Four other boys and others looked down coldly, as if inspecting the results of an experiment. In their hands were metal bats, taped iron pipes.
One moved. Like a farmer plowing a field, the boy swung something stick-like. The sound was heavy, striking flesh and echoing through bone. There was a cry, like a baby’s.

“Stop! Police!”
Fujishima barked. The boys all looked at him. Their expressions were hard to discern.　
His hand holding the baton was sweating and shaking. With his other hand, he fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a notebook. It was nothing more than a black leather notebook. But he could not help pulling it out. From a distance, it did indeed look like a policeman’s identification book.
The four boys turned to look at Fujishima blankly.
“He, help…”
One of the fallen ones tried to get up and crawl towards Fujishima. At that exact moment, a young man in a black baseball cap holding a bat kicked him in the stomach like a soccer ball, as if to show Fujishima how it was done.　
The man in the cap laughed. He did not look at Fujishima.
“Tamura. In the end, your head is only filled with dick cheese. What a shame.”
“You, stop!”
Sweat streaming from his forehead met his eyes. The boy called Tamura was coughing up blood as he arched his back like a boiled shrimp. It seemed like Fujishima was minutes away from being the same. “Drop your weapons and don’t move!”

The three of them looked at Fujishima and then stole a glance at the man in the cap, their eyes like soldiers waiting for orders. Fujishima realized that the man in the cap was the leader of the group. The man in the cap looked at him and listened to something whispered in his ear.
Then he moved calmly, as if he knew Fujishima was not a policeman. The boys with weapons in their hands nodded at each other. Gangs always fight together. Confronting the blood-crazed brats required a reckless courage.　
The man in the cap slowly raised his arm. The metal bat left his hand and rolled on the asphalt, emitting a high pitched sound.

“Oi.” He spoke to his companions. In the same way, the three of them tossed the weapons they were holding to the floor.
“Your hands. Put them in the air.”
Fujishima got closer to the man in the cap. “You’re Munakata, aren’t you?”

His shaved head was hidden by a cap. Piercings were embedded in his ears, lips and eyebrows. A white tank top and brown cargo pants. A slender jawline and double eyelids. He squinted.
“Who’re you?”
“Get over here!”
“You really a cop? You better show me your badge.”
“I told you to get over here!”
“I’ll ask you one more time. Show me the badge.”
“Shut your damn mouth!” He grabbed Munakata’s arm. The boys’ eyes changed color. Their expressions hardened into rage and animosity.
“Move outta my way!” He swung his baton wildly to scare them off. His nylon tracksuit made a rubbing noise.
“Outta my way! Nobody move!”
At his feet, a boy in a blood-stained T-shirt was moaning. He coughed like an old man with tuberculosis. Munakata shook his head blankly and put his hand in his pocket.

“Who the hell are you, man?”
“I have so many questions for you. Come on, get your ass over here!”
His arm moved. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and held something in it. His brain was setting off a loud alarm.　
Fujishima raised his baton. A small spray can, about the size of his palm, emerged in front of his eyes. With the sound of leaking gas, an orange-colored liquid sprayed from a pinhole-like spout. Fujishima quickly scrambled to cover his face with his hands, but he wouldn’t make it in time.
The skin of his face and hands felt a sore, burning pain. Fine mist invaded his eyes and nose, burning his mouth and windpipe. Coughing unintentionally, tears welled up in his eyes. He couldn’t see anything and couldn’t breathe. In his panic, he was sure he heard the sound of iron pipes and baseball bats scraping the asphalt. Someone clutched his arm and ripped away the baton.

“I got a question for you, too. Just who are you?” He turned away and tried to run. The clinging spice particles attacked his eyeballs. Tripping over a fallen boy, he slammed his body into the road. The impact broadened his shielding arm, and asphalt scraped away his skin. Humiliation burned his body and fear froze his heart.
Damn it!

Something pressed against his waist. At the same time, a cold and hard feeling of an iron pipe jabbing into his neck dug into his jaw and caused him to be jerked back up. Several hands were in his pockets, and his notebook was taken. He could smell sweet cologne.
“What the hell? So it was a lie.”
The iron pipe added pressure to his throat. The trachea was crushed. He spat up stomach acid.
“I’m the one asking questions here, Mr. Officer.”
He realized that it was Munakata himself who was on top of him.
“Wait… I’m, Kanako Fujishima’s father…”
“Kanako Fujishima’s father?”
“I know it was you! Where’d you take my daughter? Where’d you kidnap her to? Answer carefully, or I’ll kill every last one of you!”
He was so riled up by his own words that he coughed violently. What have you done with her? If you’ve so much as touched a finger on her, I’ll kill you!

They gave no reply, and the iron pipe that was squeezing his throat loosened its pressure. He wiped his face with his palm. He endured the searing pain and opened his eyes thinly. The boys surrounded Fujishima, their cheeks twitching and cracking into grins. Slowly, like rippling waves, they started to laugh. Then the steel pipe wiggled and hit his chin.
“Kidnap her? Kanako?”
“What’s so funny?!”
“That’s a riot.”
Once again, the pipe pressed against his throat.
“I’ll ask you again. Who the fuck are you? And where is that whore? Is this a set-up?”
His airway was squeezed shut and his consciousness dimmed.
A white haze covered his vision. In the distance, sirens sounded. A mixed chorus of police cars and ambulances. Suddenly, the force that was being applied was gone. The iron pipe had fallen to the asphalt. The boys were already running without looking at Fujishima. Before long, he could hear the wild sound of motorcycles and car exhausts. Munakata looked down at Fujishima, who was clutching his throat and writhing on the ground.
“My daughter… where. Where is she?”
“Wow, Fujishima’s dad, huh? You?”
Words like gibberish leaked out. Where is my daughter?
“To go so far as to use her own pops…”
Munakata also turned away and ran into the darkness. Fujishima put his face to the asphalt. Across the creek was a residential area. Light leaked from every house, and the sound of open windows could be heard. The sound of a distant car exhaust was soon replaced by sirens.

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