GHOST

Please note that this is a work in progress which I began about a year ago. As such, please excuse author's notes, which hopefully are all in grey italics. Any suggestions appreciated, especially for character and plot development.

Evidently I watched too many ninja action films as a kid - what follows gets quite bloody. (But it's also good! ) You have been warned.

GHOST

ooo

I know that the spades are the swords of the soldiers,
I know that the clubs are weapons of war,
I know that diamonds mean money for this art,
But that’s not the shape of my heart,
That’s not the shape of my heart.

ooo

In a pent-house somewhere in the Gion district of Tokyo, a man weighed up the options and, in a second or two, made a decision that would mean death for the girl he had thought of as his daughter for more than sixteen years.

The man known only by the alias Gosuto, a mangled translation of the English word “ghost” into Japanese language, felt a great sadness fill him for a moment, and then he pushed it away and replaced it with the hardened equanimity that had seen him through over twenty years of the job he did. It had saved his life many times over, and he reflected briefly that it was a pity that the same attitude was going to be the emotion he held as he signed Musume over to a fate he knew would likely be terrible and terribly painful. Gosuto adjusted his sweaty grip on the twin guns his black-gloved hands were grasping, and mentally prepared for what he was about to do. He honed his focus to a sharp point and, with some difficulty it has to be noted, evicted Musume from his thoughts and cares. She had to be no concern of his now, or he would not get himself out alive, and that was his chosen course of action.

His heart felt leaden in his chest. A lesser man might have cursed himself for doing that to a young teenage girl, felt remorse or guilt, or both, but Gosuto had considered all the factors, and having done so, he was square to it. He had faced up to it and he knew that he could shoulder the responsibility in the time to come. He just hoped that she would understand.

ooo

Under the concrete beam upon which her teacher and guardian had sought refuge from the shower of bullets aimed at him, the girl he thought of as Musume stood mired in sickening apprehension of what would happen next. Though part of her mind naturally refused to credit it, the clinical, business-like part of her mind that always came to the fore in situations like these, knew what would be the logical thing to do, for him. For her it would not bring a promising future, but that was to be accepted. She only hoped that he had the courage to pull it off, to do what he had to do to keep with the priorities in this dilemma.

Inter-mixed with this, the feelings of fear, or horror at the awful fact that it had come to this, and her parent figure and guardian, her father, would leave her. There is nothing quite so crushing and lonely as being abandoned by one you love and thought might actually stand by you, come what may, and the betrayal is especially hurtful and unfair if that one happens to be your own parent. Although she could not pretend that there had ever been any doubt about what he would do if something like this came to pass. She was under no illusion that he would choose the path that went in line with his ideals and his principles, with the things that were important to him, but she could not ignore the needling thought that spiked its way into her consciousness. It was a pity it had to happen like this.

In the hands of her foes, her arms relaxed and her body sagged as most of her optimism drifted out of her into the stale night air. Outside the luxury apartment, high up in one of the district’s high-rise blocks, the sky was black velvet with sequin stars, a material far too glamorous for the short and darkly intense life that she had led since being taken in by him up there. In a moment of ugly realisation she faced up to the abrupt and honest truth, that this had happened before and perhaps, just perhaps, she had been waiting for it all along. There had never been anyone previously who had kept with her, so it should come as no surprise that it would be the same way with him.

Flanked by her numerous enemies, her eyes were drawn to the angel of death on the beam above, and her senses heightened in awareness of the particularly twisted and dangerous man beside her. She awaited her destiny and only hoped that Gosuto had the integrity and grit to carry it through. He had to, for the others’ sakes if not hers, he had to finish the job.

ooo

Resplendent in up-dated ninja-wear, the man beside Musume glanced momentarily at the girl who, to him, meant no more than an object he could use to gain some leverage over his opponent. Not necessarily even a tool, but a counter or a token that he could play away, a something he could waste in order to get something he wanted back from the man he was competing with. She was about to die, and yet, she looked all at once so fierce and so afraid that he marvelled at the human ability to withstand whatever the future has to hurl at us and whatever the world does to try to get us down and destroy us. A pity then that he was about to destroy this example of human endurance and spirit in order to kill another soul that was so corrupt and warped his own foibles paled in comparison with it.

The man’s eyes flicked up in turn to the warrior ensconced on the ledge above him and, after allowing a moment of annoyance for the trouble this affair was causing him, he turned his attentions back to the matter at hand. He kept his eyes on the bumps of black clothing that he could see on the ledge above him, the traceable outline of shoulder and hip and knee that he could see which belonged to Gosuto, a spectre he had been hunting for years.

He had all the advantages, all the chips to bargain, and even without them, Ginjo never lost. He always got what he wanted, and he always showed his enemies that he was boss. You messed with him, you might as well mess with the devil for all the good it did you. Gosuto had been killed once and now he would be killed again. Ginjo just hoped that this time he would stay dead. His fingers went unbidden to the spot, to the scar on his neck which was a constant reminder that last time, even though he had won, even he had not escaped unscathed. Neither, he thought angrily, had the lovely Raiki. He scowled, not knowing that up there on the beam a ghost was planning a major life changing decision for more than one person in the room. Ginjo gave a harsh bark of laughter and spoke to his cornered rival.

ooo

“You up there, Gosuto? Are you listening to me?” He flung the questions up at the man lying on the beam that stretched across the room. The underside was pitted with the marks of bullet holes. Lead-black bullets embedded in the concrete loosed crumbs of powdery concrete which dusted down and settled on the over-coats of Ginjo and his hench-men. The body on the beam shifted and the grudging reply came floating down, sounding disembodied in the tall room.

“I’m listening.” Gosuto’s voice was calm and level, and his rich and slightly gravely voice sounded like he was in control of the situation when, thought Ginjo, he blatantly was not. He hated that about him, so unperturbed, so confident when all might be lost and he sure was not going to walk away from here alive. Ginjo hid his annoyance and carried on with the ‘negotiation,’ the outcome of which he at least was already certain of.

The dark-haired girl next to him was surprised at the tension in his stance. The man had his teeth clenched and his hands were balled up in fists. Musume examined his stance and did not approve. He was too involved. He would make a mistake if he got any angrier. In the next second she noted that he was in control enough to force himself to relax. His hands fell to his sides and his neck bent as he took a deep breath to calm himself. The scar on his throat flexed as he did so. For some reason she was fascinated by it. It curved and arched as he spoke and moved, twisting and writhing almost like a snake.

She was so engrossed by it she was startled to find his large, watching eyes suddenly boring back into her own. He smiled a wry smile and took a step nearer.

“What did you say her name was, Gosuto?” He had seen the look on his masked face as she went down in the brawl that had occurred once both men realised the other was here and intruding upon their business and territory. Even though his face was masked in black cloth, the eyes had been testament enough to the pain he felt as she tripped and fell, and only he made it to the relative safety of the beam up there in the roof. It was quickly hooded, but Ginjo had had a lifetime of exploiting his enemy’s weaknesses, and this opportune snatch of the man’s girl-warrior was proving to be a lucky one.

There was no answer from the ledge up on high, but Ginjo could sense Gosuto’s fury and anger. He repeated in a whisper, “Her name, Gosuto, her name.”

Gosuto bit his lip and, suppressing his temper, answered just as calmly, “Her name is Yourei.” He gave her operations name rather then the name she used openly in Japanese society. It might protect her identity for a bit, and once her identity was compromised, she would be unemployable by him as well as by others in the game, and that would destroy her future career prospects. Nobody can employ a mercenary who is known by the police and society at large. Once her private alias was matched with her public identity, she was useless. So he gave her alias.

Ginjo murmured “Yourei?” and chortled. The girl twitched at his unexpected reaction, and broke the eye contact between them, casting her eyes down to the tatami mats underfoot. His eyes were very large and a tawny brown. He reminded her of a lion, or a panther, lethal and lithe and wicked. For a second she was ashamed of the alias Gosuto had bestowed upon her. No one had ever laughed at it before. Her name meant spectre, or ghost, in Japanese, and thus was a very well matched twin name to Gosuto’s own alias. It joined them and labelled them with the truth of their relationship as ‘family,’ even when they were in guises where nothing else was true.

“Yourei,” Ginjo repeated, and then, “What is she, your whore?”

Gosuto heard him spit the word, and then he heard a yelp from Ginjo as his Musume lashed out in a blaze of anger. Her heavy-booted foot connected with the man’s shin, but just as swift, he struck back, hitting her across the face. She cried out briefly, and Gosuto hoped she had not under-estimated his rival down there. He was one of the ones he had never really informed her about, and at this moment, he had to admit he was slightly regretting it. If she did not know, she could not know what to do. On the other hand, he had not told her precisely because knowing too much can also get you killed, and he had wanted to protect her from some of the darker shadows of his past, ones he thought would not come back to ever haunt him. Even the best make a mistake sometimes, he reflected; “Even monkeys fall out of trees” as the old proverb went.

At the same time, he was glad because she had not let the ugly, strained situation get to her and had retained her fighting spirit, her ki, this far. He grinned and said nothing. Below, Ginjo insulted the girl with words he could not hear, but doubtless were obscene and very graphic.

“Alright, Gosuto, so it comes down to this. I have your- girl, here, and you have something I want, yes?” They all knew he omitted one other fact. It would afford him the greatest of pleasures to be able to kill his archrival slowly and very painfully indeed. Ginjo skipped over this. It was a fact of their relationship. It did not need re-stating after all these years buried history again came to life. Ginjo continued.

“I will let go this… girl of yours, if you come down here and give yourself up to me. But you must also first hand over that which I need, that which is currently in your pocket and which is very…valuable to me.” Here Gosuto heard a catch in his voice. He grinned. “You know what I mean!” Gosuto nodded to himself. Of course he did, and of course it was. If Ginjo did not hold on to the item that he at present had about his person, he would not be very popular with his employer. Loss of the said item, which was much treasured by his current master, would mean some very unpleasant things would shortly be occurring in Ginjo’s sorry little world. Fines perhaps, or a couple of additions to Ginjo’s collection of scars and old wounds. He had risen up in standing over the years since Gosuto had first met him, but he was not quite independent yet. The higher you got in his job, the higher the stakes. The better the prizes if you won, but the worse the punishments if you screwed up.

Gosuto already knew what he must do, but his mind began to run through his options, checking that he had not missed any and reaffirming his choice of path as the correct and most logical one. Human emotions should not come into this, he reminded himself. This slight sadness of heart was the most he had ever felt about any job in many, many years, and it slightly surprised him. Even so, he was too professional to let it affect him, and he squashed it down and dismissed it from his calculations.

Ginjo’s deal, as ever, omitted the important things. If Gosuto handed over the item in his pocket, there was no guarantee Ginjo would let Musume go free. Same again for giving himself up as well. It was likely Ginjo would have her shot anyway, just to spite him. Besides, Gosuto was famed for always finishing the job, come what may. Come blood and peril, storm and death, his team always did what they were paid for. As such, Gosuto and his clan were significantly less handicapped by the punishments inflicted upon them by less-than-satisfied previous employers, financial or otherwise. Success had its own natural rewards. The better you were, the easier it was to carry on working at the top. The worse you were, the harder it got to pick oneself up again and try again, and claw your way out of the black hole that society seemed to have assigned to you.

Gosuto continued to run through his options. He could try to kill Ginjo, but it was unlikely he would succeed. It was very unlikely he would manage to rescue his Musume before she was shot in the head by either Ginjo himself or one of his pathetic hench-men, hence the quandary that Gosuto found himself in now. He could kill himself. Unseen to any but himself, the mercenary’s lips curved in an almost perverse smile. It did to consider all possibilities, but that was funny. There was absolutely no point in that whatsoever, except that it would be a hell of a surprise to everyone down below when his lifeless body tumbled from the ledge he had been lain on for the last five or so minutes.

As he had known he would from the very moment that he saw his protégée go down, Gosuto would finish the job. He always did. It was what his team was famous for, after all. His decision made, Gosuto scanned through all the possible exits he could use, and settled on the open window up above him. This high-ceilinged from was built on the corner of an expensive Gion pent-house, purely to advertise the fact that it was there, and the owner had enough money to do things like that. Buildings in Tokyo do have a tendency to go up, rather than out, due to lack of space, and so the millionaire owner had been forced to demonstrate the money that had gone into his home in this manner. Quickly, the black-clad man formulated a plan for causing some confusion to help get him out alive. Anything he did by way of a diversion would only serve to increase his chances of making it out in one piece.

ooo

Down below, on the bloodstained straw tatami mats, Ginjo continued talking.

“Hurry up, Gosuto, I’m getting impatient. And your girl here has a gun held to her head.” He gestured, and on cue, a hench-woman brought her pistol up to bear, pointing it at the side of Yourei’s head. Gosuto did not move, but he imagined the scene all to vividly. “If you don’t answer me, Gosuto, I’ll blow her brains out. Hurry up.”

Gosuto replied, to placate the Japanese warlord. “I know what you mean and…” Here the warrior-for-hire cleared his throat. He was going to have to lie, and it was a lie that might well dupe his Musume as well as the opposition. He spoke it. “And I agree to your deal.” Yourei started, despite the gun by her left ear, wondering if he meant it. In the next second common sense prevailed, and she knew that probably did not. At the movement, the hench-woman jabbed Yourei with the barrel of the gun, indicating without words for her to damn well stay still. So she did, but the movement had been enough to boot her out of the frozen state she had entered when she went down and he went up to the ledge, and relative safety. She remembered the feeling of anger and frustration at herself. She had screwed up. She had let her master and father down, and she hated herself for that. More than anything she wanted Gosuto to love her and need her as family, and above that, to value her as a competent and disciplined warrior. One who was good at what she did. One who did not screw up. She had screwed up before, but this probably counted as the greatest of her mistakes, and the most dangerous to her own health.

She had messed up, and so she had to cope with her own feelings of failure and self-criticism and cope with the more immediate situation at hand. As he had taught her, she filed those emotions away for future release and analysis, putting guilt and humility on hold for the moment. She would say sorry later.

“I agree to your deal,” Gosuto was repeating, “and I will come down and give myself up in a moment. You must release Yourei first.” The three chief players in the room each felt different emotions at that statement. Yourei was elated. At least he was trying to save her. The loyalty was not all gone. Gosuto felt pitiful. He knew it would not work, but as a gesture of his devotion to her, he had to test it out. Ginjo was scathing as he snapped, “No. I want you and the item first. After that I will let her go.”

Gosuto’s mouth twitched into an expression of grim determination. He argued back, bargaining for lives and wealth here. “I cannot trust you, Ginjo...” The man with the scarred throat interrupted “Nor I you. And I hold the power here. You know that, Gosuto. You know you have to agree to whatever I offer. I’m in charge.” Yourei almost rolled her eyes. The man was on a power trip. Her head was leaning over to one side, but she hadn’t noticed she had moved. Even sub-consciously, her body wanted to get away from that gun, that weapon of death and slaughter in the woman’s hand.

Her father figure responded straight away to the man’s boasting. He let traces of annoyance show through into his voice. “As you wish, Ginjo, I will hand over the item you need, but I will not surrender myself until you have let my Musume go.” Gosuto used the Japanese family term for ‘daughter,’ hoping to convince Ginjo of the emotion he must be feeling. “No!” the warlord shouted, his temper finally beginning to get the better of him. “I do not have time for this, Gosuto, and you know it! I will not release the one I have here until you give yourself up. Unconditional surrender! I want it, and I want it now. Don’t play around, Gosuto, you know I am an impatient man!” He shook out a red silk handkerchief and wiped the beads of sweat off his brow. It was a close, muggy night in Tokyo, with the rainy season almost upon them. Not one of the men or women there was not sweating in the heat, for they were all in tight-fitting body-armour and all their bodies instinctively stressed out from the long period of suspense as the hostage negotiations were carried out. Gosuto watched him in the windows of the room. They were almost as good as mirrors.

Ginjo dabbed his brow with the handkerchief while one or two of his henchmen stared at him in disgust. It was a peculiarly Western habit he had picked up from his time abroad, and one they abhorred. In Japan it is normal, and is seen as more hygienic, to use paper tissues for such things. Their boss returned the square of red silk to his pocket, and their eyes and concentration went away from him. Before they had quite re-focussed on the man on the concrete beam, confusion exploded in front of them.

ooo

Time to move. Gosuto threw himself into his routine, not missing a beat. As he cast a canister of blinding and irritating gas down onto the floor by the feet of the nearest hench-men, he flipped himself over onto another of the room’s support beams, landing on his palms and well-padded knees. Pausing for a split second to locate the crowd of coughing, spluttering employees, he swung down from the beam and fired several rounds into the melee. It might give Yourei a chance, but it would probably get her killed. Perhaps it was for himself, his own conscience, that he did this, and not for his daughter’s sake. He turned and, with practised ease, fired himself up into the air. I’m getting too old for this he thought, as his gloved black fingers hooked over the window ledge and he hauled himself up with little problem. His muscles were used to such exertions. Descending on a cord to the swimming pool on the floor below, he left the bright, violent room behind, with its spluttering occupants. He left his daughter and ran into the night.

ooo

As the canister of irritating gas landed on the straw-matted floor, Yourei took a breath, jerked her arms free and dived into a forward roll. Her captors relinquished her arms with no hesitation, being now more concerned with protecting their skin and eyes and trying to fight for breath. All this, despite what their boss might say afterward. At that moment in time, nothing else seemed to matter. The only other one with the sense to throw himself clear was their leader, although he was a split second too late. Eyes streaming, he was in the opposite corner of the room to the girl to witness her desperate bid for escape. She tried to follow her father. It was good, but not good enough.

Ginjo pulled his gun, and the first bullet ripped into the tatami mats an inch or two to the right of her right foot as she came up from her forward roll. Barely slowing to gauge the distance and the height, the acrobatic mercenary-girl leapt upwards and executed a wall-jump, pushing off first one wall and then the other. A spray of bullets tracked her legs as she climbed the wall, but with his eyes watering, it became apparent that Ginjo couldn’t sight properly. She guessed it wasn’t an example of his best shooting, as she had the feeling that a man such as him would be a much better shot. As it was, he was off target and off the mark.

Ginjo cursed, and wiped his eyes with his hands. He was shooting completely wildly and he knew he could do better. Not pleased with himself, he swallowed and tried again. This time he would get her. He would not fail, he would not lose to a half-trained teenage girl, Gosuto’s daughter or not. His jaw set and he sighted again.

Twisting her body in the air, Yourei aimed for the beam. It was quite a long way, and she had not quite managed to bounce herself far enough from the corner of the room. Her arms landed across it, and she scrabbled for purchase to swing the rest of herself up, but as she did so, something happened.

Ginjo’s slightly more accurate bullet ripped through her Achilles’ tendon. She remembered thinking that it shouldn’t be able to. Nothing had ever penetrated her thick army boots before, but then those who can actually shoot more often go for the chest than the limbs. It was a lucky shot, and unluckily for her, it knocked her off balance. She heard herself cry out as she lost her hold on the beam. Her legs rocked forward, and the momentum took her body with it. She was slung to the floor. It was a couple of metres down, and the impact forced her breath out of her.

Ginjo was fast, but Gosuto’s student was even faster. With her eyes shut in a blaze of pain, she suddenly became aware of a shadow that was in front of her, bending over. She hit out as she opened her eyes, and had the satisfaction of seeing Ginjo’s affronted expression as she punched him on the nose. Behind him, most of the hench-men had evacuated the room for a more breathable one with a glass door. They watched the unfolding brawl through the dispersing smoke of the bomb. It was quite undignified as neither of them could see what they were doing, and Yourei felt as she fought that her movements were entirely lacking any of their usual grace. But they were still effective. The older man’s head went back, but the downside to that was that his foot instinctively lashed out forwards. Being Ginjo, he turned it into a powerfully vicious kick that shunted her backwards across the tatami. She cried out sharply, finding herself with her shoulder against the wall.

Instantly, he was upon her, but now she was furious as well as frightened. The niggling thought that informed her that she could not win was there, but she suddenly didn’t care so much. So what if there were six or seven more assailants waiting in the other room, she had no teammates, no weapons of her own and no back up or way out. She was in the mood for a scrap, and this was it. Ginjo grabbed her by the collar and yanked her forward. Her good leg arced in a kick destined for the man’s head, and he only just half-blocked it with his elbow and upper arm as he ducked. He yelped as the toe of her boot impacted with his ear hole and Yourei smirked.

She used her uninjured leg again, but went for his side instead. Her leg never got there as he jabbed a knee in her stomach. It winded her, and in a second, her high spirits slipped away. Something in her mind clicked. His minions had finally had the sense to switch the air conditioning on, and the smoke from the bomb had cleared from the room. The cool air wisped over her skin and banished some of the rainy season mugginess from the room, although it wasn’t very effective. Breathless, she made one last try. Desperate now, she made a fist and went for his head, but a suddenly capable, large hand stopped it. He had recovered, whereas she was still incapacitated from his winding of her. As with all the men she had ever fought, he seemed impossibly strong. Her mind switched to even dirtier tactics, but before she had selected he next move, she screamed out in pain.

Somebody had stepped, or rather, deliberately stamped, on her wounded ankle. The minions were back in the room. Whoever it was mashed her bloody ankle into the floor, just to be sure she was hurting, and she screamed again. Pain shot up her leg as she felt bone and tattered tendon shift, and she writhed even as Ginjo picked her up off the floor. Dimly she heard him giving orders. Voices replied and bodies rushed past her.

“Gin- Ginjo…” Her voice trailed off. His attention attracted, the man glanced down at her. Now she was neutralised, he indulged her. She could do nothing. “What is it?” he questioned. The hench-men and women listened too. Eyes half-closed, she smiled and spitefully offered “You know… you’re a real lousy shot.” Ginjo just stared at her, incomprehension evident for a moment, and a drop of spit hovering on his chin.

The man who was the archenemy of her beloved adopted father briefly hugged the form of the unconscious girl to him as he awkwardly passed her onto one of his men. Bodies are very cumbersome and don’t like being carried. She left a smear of blood on the floor.

ooo

Later that night, as one cycle blended with the next, the man known only as Gosuto even to his daughter, was to be found in one of his many homes, sitting in the kitchen at the splintery wooden kitchen table, with his head in his hands. He has a small shot glass of clouded crystal tucked between one thumb and finger, pressed against his forehead. The whiff of alcohol pervades the air around him, and three cigarette packets lie within arms reach on the table, two closed, one with its contents coming out in a cluster of tar and nicotine. He hasn’t smoked in ages, but tonight, there is little he would not do if it were to help him forget the night’s earlier happenings. There is, of course, a lighter with the cigarettes. It’s a novelty one, in the form of a lucky fish, a koi carp. It mocks him with its happy, thoughtless tackiness, its orange colour too bright for his sorrows and his headache.

There is no ashtray, and the butts of the cigarettes have been allowed to drop onto the cheap tiled kitchen floor, scarring the floor wherever they land. Here and there, the still glowing red fag ends have burned through the grey old tiles, adding to the pockmarks and holes caused by years of neglect. Dirt is enshrined between the tiles, and only one light is on in this chamber of hideous guilt and regret. And anguish too. The man seated at the table is having to come to terms with the raw emotion that he’s tried to smother underneath a layer, a veneer, of professionalism and the callous thick skin he has reserved for nearly all other human beings he has ever met, but which will not deflect the feelings this time, not with this one.

He speculates on whether his adopted daughter realised at that moment in the Tokyo pent-house, how deep his dedication and his link to her goes. He suspects not. He himself did not even know it this morning, but sometimes it takes a bitter blow, a huge and abysmal failure, an upset, an explosion or even a loss, to wake us up to what we already knew but refused to understand. Gosuto is a highly intelligent man, but we all have these spots of self-blindness somewhere within us. Gradually though, many of them are obliterated, and painful though it may be, we understand ourselves somewhat better and therefore we can perceive the motivations of others more clearly, and comprehend the world at large a bit more.

The mercenary killer did not think of the word love to himself. It was not in his nature to do so, and indeed, there are some who would question the use of the term for the particular relationship that coupled him and his adopted daughter together. It did not fit into the categories and did not have the qualities that some, or even most, would associate with a relationship that involved love. Their relationship was corrupted in parts and twisted in others, but the few have relationships that are not at all tainted or tarnished. Few have relationships that are wholly and utterly pure. So Gosuto and Yourei’s companionship was what we could call colourful.

He and she shared a bond endorsed by the passage of time. It had lasted a long time, which had probably strengthened it, and with that concession its superiority was affirmed. Certain things could be relied upon, things such as unquestioned loyalty, joint agreement on friends and foes, and a willingness to stand up for the other, in spirit and in combat. It was more an alliance than a companionship at times, and always more that than a link based on love, in doing so he had hacked at the tie that bound them. Even if she understood, that did not prevent it from being a hurtful and sorrowful betrayal that would, in all likelihood, change things for both of them, between both of them.

A wine bottle, ivy green, stood on the table, in the vicinity of the cigarettes and their paraphernalia , three-quarters empty. A trio of empty brown beer bottles kept it company, two stood up like the funnels on a steam ship, whilst the other languished rolling on its side. A couple of other cans of drink, all alcoholic, decorated the tabletop, their paper-thin aluminium sides bent and warped and shiny. He had started one of Yourei’s alco-pops, grape-flavoured and a fizzy pale lilac in colour, before abandoning it. He had placed it reverently on a pile of leather-bound books on the corner of the table, a shrine to the girl who he did not know where she was. It gently released its gas into the room, belching softly now and then, and hissing slightly. Gosuto’s stomach swished in unison, replying to the drink and creating a chorus with it. He shrugged in his fatigues and combat gear, hot and sweaty on this summer night, but too weary and too sorry for himself to strip it off. The man’s shoulders sagged. It’s strange, seeing a fighter alone at home, defeated.

The fridge hummed out the back in another room, and his mind informed him that he would have to stagger out to it again soon, to fetch some more drinks. The fridge was well stocked, but its white paint flaked off, peeling back to display the rusted metal beneath. At times it choked ad whirred as it struggled to continue to do its job. Like me, the man thought, then I have to get another drink. He had gone straight away to surrender the item that could have brought Yourei’s freedom, her health and her life, to its rightful owner, a fat toad of a money-grabbing leech who collected antiques, otherwise known to society as the head of a colossal and very well respected pharmaceutical company. He was pleased to have it back. His stubby short fingers had curled around it like the legs of a beetle, and he had looked up, thanking Gosuto for its return and promising the mercenary’s fee would be delivered as soon as possible. The mercenary had merely nodded, disgusted and repelled by the man’s face. Tears seeped down his cheeks for what, for an antique that didn’t breath and eat and sleep and affectionately taunt him, that didn’t laugh and swear and shout and comfort him when he was got down by his job. Antiques can’t throw a mean motherfucker of a left hook either, he contemplated bitterly.

That fat rich man had his precious treasure back, why couldn’t Gosuto have his? Fuck this the greying mercenary thought. He rubbed his hand through his hair, wiped sweat off his pockmarked face, downed his shot and lit up another cigarette. He proceeded to punish himself through the drink, drugs and smoking, for the loss of something very special to him indeed, berating himself all the while You did this to the other too… and where is she now?

ooo

The jewel had spent most of the rest of the night being lugged across Tokyo in the subway by Ginjo’s men, in an effort to shake off any of Gosuto’s men who might have been ordered to try and track her. But Ginjo had, for once, over-estimated his archenemy. To his credit, if it were anyone else but his Musume, that is what Gosuto would have done. Immediate action would have been taken in a last ditch attempt to prevent Ginjo from disappearing into his hide-out with her, for once there the chances of getting in and then getting a whole team and Yourei out alive, diminished tenfold. And Gosuto had not even tried! How very surprising.

Ginjo’s hench-men had travelled all over Tokyo in various modes of transport, and then, after having whizzed round the circular Yamanote line a couple more times for luck, they had made their way directly but warily, to Ginjo’s secret underground home. Once inside, they breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed. Gosuto had missed his golden opportunity. Ginjo’s household, the girl included, slept for a short while until daybreak. There is that short period just prior to dawn, during which in every city or town around the world, everything does actually stop, does actually put on hold its life and business and movement. Musume slept well because she had a head wound on the back of her head, inflicted when she tried to claw her way out of her captors embrace, as soon as she had woken up on the tube to find that the nightmare wasn’t over.

ooo

Some hours later, as the sun began tentatively to ascend into the sky in accordance with its depiction on the Japanese flag, the Hi no Maru, things started to move again. The girl known as Yourei woke up in the dim, pre-dawn light, to find herself with a violent headache that darted through her head as her eyelids tried to flutter open to greet the new day. The cruel surprise caused her to cry out, something which she berated herself for immediately. Better to wake up silent and still in order to get a feel for one’s surroundings, than to alert any enemies also in the room to one’s return from that land. That time, those few short seconds before someone notices you are awake, can be spent adjusting to the situation, whatever that may be. One can gather oneself, scramble one’s energies and resources together and scheme. Peace is rare in the enemy’s camp, and even a few moments left alone uninterrupted can benefit one’s spirit.

So Yourei allowed her eyes to gum shut again. She assumed that because there had been no reaction to her brief cry, no one was in the room with her, but that was not a given. Here, nothing was. One could only make tentative guesses on enemies weaknesses, lapses in concentration, rivalries and loyalties, anything that can be used to get you out of there. Yourei understood that in Ginjo’s castle she was more blind than she had even been before. It was frightening to have no team to back her up. She felt horribly, stomach-churningly exposed. She knew that she could do little to protect herself and that she had nobody to depend on but herself and her own training, courage and ingenuity. There was nobody to be in contact with via some sort of communications link, no one there to help her, saying “At 12 o’ clock the guards on the west stairs change over” or “The boy who works in the kitchen is an ally, He can be trusted.” Tactical help, general intelligence, planning, and of course, nobody to come in guns blazing and rescue her. No power behind her. She was utterly, completely and wholly on her own, and in this place that meant she was probably doomed. Bitter, she could not help but speculate on the supposed allegiance that had snapped like a rope, dropping her into this. It soon tired her aching head out, and she dozed lightly as the sun climbed in the sky, but the wind blew outside, and it did not warm the day.

ooo

Somewhere else on the outskirts of Japan’s capital city, Ginjo sweated and attempted to maintain his cool whilst trying to explain himself to his immediate boss in the organisation in which he had become dangerously, irretrievably, wrapped up. On a walkway overlooking an aqua swimming pool, he sweated in the smart sarariman suit he had changed into. Feet shoulder width apart, he tried not to shift about and fidget, for that would show impatience and fear. Usually he had no trouble appearing nerveless and levelheaded, but usually he had not done anything wrong. Usually he hadn’t failed his master, and pissed him off by the manner in which he had done this. So he sweated, licked his lips, and continued. His boss watched him unblinkingly, black eyes locked on his figure. He leant forward across an expansive executive desk, and looked frighteningly interested in what Ginjo was saying. The superior was also fifteen or twenty years senior to the man in front of him, and he was known for being malicious at times, but mostly fair, although harsh with his employees.

His expression did not give away how annoyed he was with Ginjo, and that worried Ginjo almost more than the two thuggish hench-men places a few feet away on either side of him. Instinctively, his mind worked out the angles and power required for the few cuts and thrusts he would need to dispose of them, first one and then the other, and measured the distance he would have to cover very quickly in order to also wipe out his boss, before the alarm was raised. As a mark of trust and respect, he had been allowed to carry his sword into the interview with him, but he had had to hand it over to his boss before the interview commenced. It lay now on the tabletop, gleaming in front of him and enticing him to pick it up and use it. But that would not do. He needed the security and the money the old fool could offer him still, and so he stood unarmed and deferred to his superior’s whims and desires. He hated going through the pathetic ritual of scraping and begging as he tried to defend himself, even though he knew horribly what was coming. And all the while his boss squatted there and nodded and made sympathetic noises as though he might yet be forgiven if he just grovelled hard enough.

When he had stumbled to the end of his account, the man in front of him nodded once, more decisively, and suddenly the two goons stepped forward and encircled Ginjo’s arms in their ham fists. Ginjo cried out angrily, and threw his arms up, making a token gesture at trying to free himself, but then his arms returned to his sides and he gave himself over to whatever his boss wanted him to do. Boss spoke in rapid Japanese, and one goon disappeared. Nothing was said while they waited. Ginjo psyched himself up for what he was about to endure, burying his fear and sharpening his focus to exclude anything other than the time he was in now. If he could just live in the moment, he would get through this again, like he had before.

“Ginjo, you know you have let me down and you know what that must mean. You know I do not tolerate anything less than success, and that I must punish those who are not good enough as an example to my other servants. You have let me down, but I hope that this will serve as a useful deterrent to your failure in the future.” His boss broke in on his thoughts will a formal, warning speech, which Ginjo largely ignored. He had heard it before it must be, two, no, three times, and it did not make any more of an impact on him the fourth time round. Ginjo simultaneously cursed his boss and braced himself for his test, his punishment, as the goon re-entered the room bearing a thick-coiled whip.

ooo

Ten minutes later, a much weakened Ginjo clambered to one knee and, clutching the remains of his blood-stained fine white shirt in one fist, gasped his feverous apology to his superior. Chest still heaving, furious and yet also in terrible pain, Ginjo staggered from his superior’s office where it was, suspended above the turquoise swimming pool. His boss watched him go, eyes glittering, then dismissed him from his mind and moved on to other business. It took a supreme effort from Ginjo to ignore the red blood streaming down his back and lurch from the building, but it was worth it in terms of face and the admiring, grudging look of respect he got from his boss’s servants and superiors alike. With the self-discipline to do that, he walked out of there with some few shreds of his dignity intact, but he collapsed as soon as he was in the sleek, polished black car that would convey him to his own residence.

The couple of close and trusted girl-servants who sat waiting in the back of the car exclaimed at the severity and depth of some of the whip-marks and made soothing noises as the car drove away. Ginjo gritted his teeth and began to think again. Having put his life on hold for a few minutes, he once again began to plan and scheme, and he knew what he intended to deal with as soon as he got home and had his injuries seen to. It is true that in this world, when one person is mistreated by another, they often then go out looking for another being whom they can have power over, and re-inflate their egos and self-esteem by mistreating them, thereby proving that they are not a worthless specimen of the human race, and they are not as powerless and wretched as some. It would be the perfect remedy to the man’s resentful feelings, it would make him feel that much better. A pity it wouldn’t do the same for Gosuto’s slut of a Musume.

ooo

The dark-haired girl woke a little later. It was mid-morning and she still felt ill. Her head throbbed, less than it had done but still enough to prompt her not to move and get up. With her eyes closed, she first of all analysed herself. She was propped up in what felt to her skin like a velvet-covered armchair. Her neck had gone very stiff from the way she had been half-sitting, half-lying in it, and she had a soft blanket that smelt of mould tucked over her as tight as a strait jacket. Her legs were stretched out in front of her, supported on a velvet-covered stool with her feet poking out over the edge. Someone had removed her chunky, military-style boots and a current of air wafted past the soles of her feet, tickling them. It went without saying that all her weapons were gone, but her outer armour and all the other gear she usually carried with her, mostly nasty and unpleasant tricks and gadgets inspired either by the Japanese ninja or the secret services, all had been confiscated. The person who had put her to bed knew what they were doing, and she had been stripped down to basically the underclothes of the outfit she wore during operations. Clad only in rumpled black combat trousers and a black vest top, she felt less than herself.

In addition to the grieving loss of her equipment, her stomach was growling and she was thirsty. Furthermore she needed to use the bathroom, and she wryly pondered that a shower would not have gone amiss. They had done some of the things necessary to demoralise her, but whatever they did to her, nothing would shatter her world so much as the turn of her adoptive father. Or at least, that’s what she hoped.

ooo

Finally, the morning sun penetrated Gosuto’s dusty attic. Dust motes danced and shimmered in the air around the sleeping man, his head down on the table, one arm out-flung which had knocked a couple of sticky bottles onto the floor like skittles. The sunlight was pale yellow-white. Cold and unassuming, it lit up the room and threw things into relief, sharply outlining furniture and the figure of a man sprawled across the wooden table. It cruelly showed up the fine lines incised on his face and neck, the pockmarks of a childhood disease. It showed the man’s true age. Despite looking much younger than his forty-two years, with his wiry body and tough, athletic build, Gosuto’s age was hinted at by details such as these. Slight crow’s feet by his dark eyes, one or two lines on his throat, his age betrayed by the knuckles on his fighter’s hands. But most of all his eyes now spoke of his age and his experience.

Sorrow illuminated his gaze, a deep sorrow that was as much a part of his identity as anything else about him was. There was no regret or self-hate now, all the drink he had consumed had diluted that so that it was no longer visible in his eyes, but there was a certain resignation. It spoke of a lifetime that had been sent doing the job, and trying to convince himself that it not only needed doing, but was the best thing to do. Gosuto didn’t define best by kindest or most loving, and justice didn’t figure in his reasoning. Only duty. Gosuto had always done his duty, his duty to his profession, and that he probably did because of his loyalty to his late father. That was where this had originated from, but now it was continued probably because of not much more than force of habit, because of the familiarity of having done it for most of his life and because he was skilled at it, having done it for that long. It was not that the man was averse to or scared of change, just that he was not a particularly insightful or reflective man usually, and so he had never thought to change. Now, though, he felt the nudge. He had almost had enough. The tarnished feeling of being responsible for all that he had done in the name of duty unsettled him. He had always been able to bury it before, so why not now?

Blearily stretching his eyes open, he blinked in the pale wash of sunlight. The grey hairs on his head glittered silver, unlike their dull black counterparts, who shunned the influence of the sun. Gosuto didn’t move. He had never had that much trouble holding his drink, but he had to admit that this time around, he did feel ill, not that it would stop him getting up and doing what he wanted to do that day, once he had decided what that was. He mouth was dry as parchment and smarting from the strong spirits he had poured down his throat all night. His eyes were gummed up and sore. You silly bastard some part of him pointed out, this isn’t what you need to be doing. He didn’t acknowledge the thought, but his black-clad frame stirred and his head lifted from the tabletop. Drink never went to his head, it always went to his stomach. He swallowed a couple of times, and considered a glass of water from the dripping tap in the sink by the window. A shower would also be good. He rubbed his gummed up eyes as his stomach ant other organs complained at his treatment of them.

Faintly, he could hear footsteps on the stairs, on the way up to the apartment. This flat was in a large and rickety apartment block, and only a couple of other apartments were at present inhabited by a range of squatters and vagrants, and those apartments were down on the ground floor. Therefore the person on the stairs, striding purposefully and unhesitantly on upwards, was in all likelihood, coming to pay him a visit. Gosuto sighed and ran a palm tacky with alcohol through his short-cropped, grey-flecked hair, and tried to wake up a bit more. Today he didn’t have time to sleep it off.

Unsteadily, he got to his still-booted feet and blundered his way across the room to the sink. His stomach gurgled and lurched dangerously as he did so, and indeed he had to admit that he was surprised he hadn’t thrown up yet. Wading through clinking bottles and tin-like, misshapen beer cans, he suddenly skidded on something on the rubbery tiled floor, and had to take that back. The footsteps grew louder as he reached the sink. Leaning heavily and gratefully on its edge, Gosuto turned on the tap. The handle spun and abruptly fell off. He swore, and cupped his hands under the barrage of water anyway. He splashed his grimy, sweat and blood layered face and was at once refreshed. He rinsed his furry mouth out and was disgusted at the tang of alcohol on his breath and tongue. Then Gosuto paused, his eye held by something out of the window, a girl-child in a beret on her way to school, her hand held by her father. This was a rarity, for the father to escort his child to school in the morning rather than rush to the office, which more often had priority over children and family. Its irony on this particular morning was not lost on the jaded mercenary, but the scene did not soften his shrewd, unemotional gaze. Hatred shot out of his eyes in a beacon line to the man and girl, who, blissfully unaware of the injury they had done to their watcher, rounded a corner and disappeared from sight.

As Gosuto held the tableau, staring achingly and angrily at the corner, the tapping footsteps silenced and were replaced by altogether more muted footfalls as the visitor made their way down the tongue of lino on the floor of the corridor which brought them past all the other doors to the last one. Gosuto’s front door. The unlocked door swung creakily open as the visitor’s fingers brushed it, about to knock. The visitor stood in the doorway for a moment, arm upraised, horror and disgust evident on their face, as they saw the cascade of bottles, cans and rubbish that trailed out at the heels of the man by the sink. Gosuto hunched over the sink, eyes still on the horizon. A twinge of guilt poked his stomach just before the visitor spoke.

“What the…? What the heck happened here?” the voice demanded, and Gosuto reluctantly twisted to face the intruder upon his sorrow. His eyes met the eyes of his number three in charge, a thirty-something Korean-Chinese woman. He couldn’t think of anything to say, but his face, at one distraught, grieving and smoulderingly furious at the world, let her know more than any words could. “Fuck me,” the woman repeated in amazement, and stepped through the doorway.

ooo

Yourei had dozed off. Stupid girl she berated herself as her eyes flew open, lashes batting the air like crow’s wings as she blinked and tried to make herself sit up straighter. She could hear a commotion outside the room she was in. Noises, movement, voices raised and immediately shushed. Footsteps on thick carpet. Instinctively she knew she was the topic of conversation, the item causing the fuss. She knew they were coming to this room, and in a fighter’s natural way, she wanted to be ready for them. She shifted, trying to escape from the blanket she was cocooned in. Suddenly, instead of being something that kept her warm, it became suffocating. She tugged at it. The verbal battle in the corridor grew nearer, louder, and sweat and fear pricked at her skin. She was weakened and trapped in the enemy’s fortress and all alone. All at once it became too much for her. Her breath quickened overly and, on the verge of hyperventilation, a shaft of lightning suddenly entered her head. Her mentor’s wise words sounded hollow as a bell, his advice for a predicament just like hers: It doesn’t matter what you haven’t got, think only of what you do have and Appearance is all.

In a flash, her fighter’s spirit returned, and inexplicably, illogically, she knew she could do this. She could fight and she could cope, even against all the odds, she was going to survive this. Elated by her discovery, the countenance she turned to face the door as it opened was fierce and radiantly defiant. She stopped Ginjo dumbfounded in his tracks, as well as the crowd of lackeys and servants with him.

Ginjo stood in the double doorway, in the middle of berating a wizened old Japanese woman in a stripy cook’s apron. From the understanding yet uncompromising glare she cast at her, Yourei guessed that this was the one who had put her to bed. The crowd with Ginjo in the doorway were all male, and indeed most of his employees were. There were few women on his team, and they were all rather butch and masculine too. She couldn’t see any of them thinking to put a blanket around a prisoner abandoned in an unheated room for the night, and any other feminine touch was absent from the cavernous room she was in. She guessed it was the cook who was responsible, and from her memory of what her mentor had repeated to her about Ginjo’s crew, she retrieved a name. Remika. In an instant, she assimilated all that she knew about the way Ginjo’s fortress was run, and her conclusions made sense of the situation.

Remika was a relation of Ginjo’s, and the old woman had known him since he was a boy, thus she alone of the crime lord’s employees had the nerve to stand up to him. Yourei had heard that she was a formidable old lady, and indeed she broadcast all the signals of a tough, vicious and inscrutable matriarch. Her pursed mouth and disapproving frown testified to the fact that she thought she knew better than Ginjo, and Ginjo’s almost bashful, sulky stance showed that she still had a modicum of control over him, hence the blanket. In all likelihood she had heard the henchmen bearing Yourei’s unconscious form into the subterranean building, and had got up to investigate. She would be the sort of woman who has to know all that is happening in her household and who is not afraid to judge her youngers. Yourei could see her as a meddler, shrewd but ultimately intolerable to her younger relation. Yourei marked her up as potential ally, and shifted her attention to Ginjo himself.

At the sight if his face and body, her blood froze and her fragile bubble of assurance and confidence softly and timidly deflated. Terror gripped her but she didn’t quite let it show. Here was a man who was mad, and further, a man who was in the mood to unleash his frustrations on somebody else. Inevitably, that unfortunate victim was her. Other henchmen and lackeys framed Ginjo and the woman Remika on either side as the principal players in this play. Yourei’s long fingers, unseen, dug into the arm of the chair and she forced herself to meet the man’s gaze unflinchingly and with boldness. Whatever happens, she thought, I must go down fighting. Again.

Ginjo’s piercing eyes bore down on the girl sitting in his velvet armchair. She clutched one arm and had his great-aunt’s tasselled Scottish blanket draped over her knees. She looked very ill. Her skin was bloodless, china white and her dark ponytail was scruffily on the wonk from a night spent sleeping in his armchair. She was very slender, yet muscles stood out on her arms. Dishevelled, she reached one hand up to put straight her rumpled black vest. There was blood under her fingernails, dried to a crusty brown colour. Her wide eyes never left his as he licked his lips and opened his mouth to speak.

“Great-aunt… go back to the kitchens. You aren’t needed, and I’m sure there is something you could be cooking.” He rounded on the old woman, towering over her. Grumpily she replied, brandishing a wooden spoon for emphasis.

“Alright, Ginjo, but I’m warning you, I don’t want you getting anything on my nice blanket. You know that came all the way from Scotland and I don’t want it being ruined.” Swiftly, she turned on one heel and marched off, presumably to the kitchens, muttering to herself as she went. Yourei’s heart went with her, as the only one here that could protect her from this man’s simmering wrath.

“Good, now…” Ginjo scanned the room, ignoring the girl in front of him sitting on his chair. “You- you and you, go. I don’t need you here anymore.” Ginjo gestured at some of the guardsmen loitering around the room, and they peeled off and disappeared after Aunty Remika. Then Ginjo spoke to two scantily clothed girls who were cowering in the shadows of the corridor behind him. Yourei hadn’t seen them previously, as they seemed to be very good at blending in with the wallpaper in the corridor. They were obviously frightened, and twitched like rabbits as their master spoke bluntly to them. “Go now, I don’t need you here either.” She saw that one of them had a streak of blood on her face, bleeding down from her eye, which was swelling shut. Yourei had a feeling she knew who had inflicted it. They didn’t move, and Ginjo tuned impatiently to shoo them away, and as he did so, he grimaced, and Yourei saw what had been done to his back.

Someone had flayed it, or at least, had had a damn good try. Sheer amazement coursed through her that the man was even standing up on his own, and simultaneously, she became horribly aware that, in all probability, she had underestimated this opponent, a stupid thing to do, and one which should rightly earn her whatever was coming. Shit she swore under her breath, and suddenly felt very old and very tired. Why me? She thought, What have I done to deserve to be here, right now, in this terrible situation?

His servant-girls gone, the crime lord turned his attention back to her. In spite of herself, Yourei swallowed, and broke his gaze. Those fierce brown eyes bore into her as the man focussed his anger, made her the subject. His jaw set and his gaze hardened even more. With a little smirk, he stepped forward and it began.

ooo

At first her superior had tried to deny that anything was wrong, in his typically stubborn way, but finally Hengei had managed to squish the story out if him. As soon as she thought she had enough information to make sense of the situation, she set the wheels in motion and things once again rolled on, in spite of Gosuto’s pathetic state.

“Right,” she said, and “I see.” In a few curt words, she wrapped up their conversation, then out of nowhere appeared a mobile phone in her palm. She viciously stabbed a number in and waited for the one who should be on the other end of the line to answer. Silence reigned in the grubby flat. Soon, she grew impatient and, muttering curses under her breath, ceased her attempt at contacting the other, and punched in a different number. Again she waited, the heel of one shoe drumming lightly on the floor.

The relentless progress of the sun had brought it towards the zenith of its journey through the heavens, and it rays of light told no lies, and brooked no excuse, although they never condemned or judged. Gosuto’s apartment was shown in all its non-splendour and muck. There was an overwhelming sense of washed out colours and alternately worn down or peeling up surfaces, couple with all the squalor, grime and threadbare-ness that accompanies unhygienic living conditions. No one bothered to clean this flat because its purpose was not to be lived in and loved as a home. It was only a house, a shell, and the people who inhabited it at odd times were what lent it all vitality or spark, of which it had little.

The same could be said, at the moment, of the run-down commander who stood in front of the Korean-Chinese immigrant, glaring at him with temporary hatred and a drawn back lip. All of a sudden, with the tone ringing in her ear, waiting for that click as the baby half of the phone was lifted out of its cradle, a few words grudgingly ripped their was out, their berating message aimed at the man before her. Heedless of his pain, she made known her feelings, a signal that testified to what she was feeling. Disappointment? Irritation? Whatever it was, her words were unforgiving. And the man stood in front of her, uncowed and unrepentant, arms folded as a shield against the whole world. Whether she should have been understanding and kind to him, engaged him in sympathies and pity, or whether she should have been as he was to her the more often in times of crisis, who dares suggest, but there is no doubt that her words were bare and unforgiving.

“I think you’ve killed her.” Her voice came out queer and strained. He flinched. She heard that click, turned away to kick start the mission, and did not see him hurting.

ooo

Bleeding and in terrible, red-hot pain, the fallen one’s daughter lay on the floor. The plush tactile carpet-fronds tickled her skin and she anticipated more to come. Gasping, a jigsaw piece of her mind that must be apart from the rest whispered to her. She noted the burgundy hue of the carpet, selected to respond to the scarlet of the unfortunate’s blood while simultaneously screening it, absorbing it and pretending it had never been there at all. Searching for breath again, clutching after life and air, her brown eyes were glazed over with a film of pain, but he was not through yet. Neither was she at the end.

In a whirl of the sight of scaly leather-bound books, fusty and ancient, they hauled her to her feet and another round commenced. The engraved gold of the titles on the spine seemed to hold her eye, and she fixed her conscious on that.

ooo

In another area of Gion, in a terraced house abandoned by its family due to its imminent demolition, a young-ish Chinese male reached for the phone with one hand, even as the other tugged at the zip on his weathered black jean trousers. Pinching the phone between his neck and his shoulder allowed him to satisfactorily do up the zip with both hands while speaking at the same time.

“Hello?” he questioned, mystified as he was not expecting a call. At once an urgent voice greeted him. “Why aren’t you answering the other phone?” The young man opened his mouth to speak, like the orange and black splotched koi carp that swam wild in the pond in the garden of this house, but the woman interrupted even the drawing of his breath. “You know you should be there; you know we need you there, online. You should be there.” She paused for the briefest of moments. “Anyway, we don’t have time for that. Something’s come up.”

In a second, the pointed quip the young man had prepared fell away from his mind and his tongue, and all thoughts of humour melted away at the tone of his aunt’s voice. “What is it? Rong Na, what’s happened? What’s wrong?” he demanded. Her urgency was contagious, her anxiety transferred to him as he too was drawn into the action and confusion, sucked into the vortex of this particular event. “Contact the team. Get them to go down to Chuushin House. You go there too. We – me and the boss – we’ll meet you there in about an hour; we’ve got some things to do first. Got that?”

“Yes- you want all of the team together. All of them?” He could not help but query it, as it was such an unusual request. At the back of his mind, he knew that the rarity of this occurrence did not bode well, but as yet, he did not know for whom. His mind ran through the likely victims. His aunt’s voice intruded upon his thoughts. He blinked. “Yes. This is an emergency meeting…” she hesitated, almost guiltily. “Anyway, I’ll phone you later.” She hung up, and Ming Gwok, the nephew only barely rescued from a dubious fate in Shanghai’s darker, more menacing quarters, went to finish his shower. The corner of his mouth turned down, belying his mood. Annoyance at his aunt stayed etched in his face for a second, and then rapidly disappeared.

He tousled his hair as he went, pensive, and flung a couple of aqua drops onto the fine solid wood-boards of the floor. His feet stamped prints of water as he tramped off back to the bathroom, his jeans now damp. The mid-morning sun peeked round the shutters to his gloomy, hollow lodgings, looking for the ornately carved wooden fittings of the rooms, which dated from an earlier, colonial period. The sun found no varnished antiques of this age, only a spirited, sensitive young man of this time, still dripping from his rush from shower to phone. The sun made do with this, and soothed his soul instead. A turquoise drop rolled down his shoulder blade, unbidden.

Ming Gwok chuckled a dry and almost mirthless laugh. Who wouldn’t sleep in late, after a night out where he’d been, doing what he had? He was youthful, he was reckless, and best of all, he was his own. Liberty’s taste was still sweet in his mouth, as a commodity, for him, only recently obtained. His eyes gleamed good-humouredly, but as ever, the smile didn’t quite reach his mouth.

ooo

Yourei’s mind went back to the first blow struck. Her mind played back Ginjo yanking her to her feet and simultaneously launching a hard straight punch with his right hand. The impact as it connected with her cheekbone and the dizzying feeling as she spun onto the floor. How long ago did all that happen? Half an hour, forty-five minutes? She didn’t know. The current of the river of time carried her along, whether she willed it or not, and she had no mooring in it. She did not know where she had come from, or where she was headed, what her destination on this course would be, but something buoyed her up and kept her awake. A gritty stamina, a tenacious desire to hold onto her sense of self, even though she had relinquished her sense of time.

She rested on the floor, a clot of sticky blood on her temple melding with the carpet as it dried. The whirling shock and confusion in her head slowed. Ginjo and his men were having a break. It is hard work to beat somebody into a bloody pulp. A servant came with drinks for all but her. How barbaric she thought, but she did not let the pointed but predictable gesture touch her. They chatted, and someone even laughed. The pain dulled with time, but in time her blissful relief was once again snatched away.

The girl was hauled to her feet. The white double-door to the room slammed shut behind the one who had served the drinks in elegant crystal glasses, which made a ringing sound when polished.

ooo

Her phone call concluded, Hengei turned with a sigh to pursue the more immediate matter in hand. Gosuto was staring out of the window. “You,” she barked. The man jumped and rounded on her with eyes, two pools of grief and shame, which belied his easy posture and unagitated voice when he spoke. “What?” he growled, with an attempt at annoyance, although he knew it was he who was at fault. The roles of superior and inferior had, for the moment, been reversed. The Korean-Chinese woman put herself in charge, and Gosuto let her do it.

“We’re gonna meet the others – all of them – at Chuushin House in about an hour.” She paused. “We’re gonna get her out, Gosuto. It’ll be okay, you’ll see.”

“No.” His reply was curt.

“What?” She said, astonished. “What d’you mean?”

“I mean no, we can’t do that. She’s only one team member, and I can’t risk the rest of the team just for her, just for one.” Even to him, his explanation sounded harsh. But even she couldn’t buck the logic in it. Instead she went for the heart.

Tenderly, she suggested “Even for her?” The expression on his face didn’t change. His mask didn’t slip. She tried again. “Gosuto, listen to this. Try this. If we don’t get her out, you will feel like this forever. You will never lose that shaft of ice that digs into, telling you it was you who let her down. Yes, you let her down. She’s only young, can’t she make a mistake and get away with it? Cos I believe that, if we’re there for her, she can. Don’t let her die because of this one thing. And don’t let her die because… because, for you, it feels kinda good.”

“Gosuto, I know your past, I know your history. You forget that. If you do this because, in some perverted way, it makes you feel better about her, the other one, I will never forgive you. Once the team know that you had the chance to save her and you didn’t they won’t stick with you. They’ll have no faith in you, just like you have none in yourself at the moment. And I know you need us to carry on, just as we need you. Just as she needs you now. Don’t let her die just because Hosako died too.”

Hengei looked at the man’s face. At the mention of her name, all the colour drained from his face, leaving it bloodless white. His face was that of a man stricken by grief, and by the onslaught of memories and feelings he thought he had locked away years ago. So many feelings: grief, doubt, fear, hatred; all were there, and a huge, consuming, gnawing sense of guilt and regret. And love, love was there too. It was a terrible thing to have churning in one’s soul, and Gosuto had carried it for years. It was like a lump of acid, eating away at him from the inside, looking for a way out. Even this man needed some respite from the sour mixture in his soul. He could bear it no longer. As he turned, Hengei swore that she saw his eyes brimful of tears, a row of crystalline drops of salty water. He blinked and they were gone.

“Alright,” he said, voice hoarse and low. “No, not again. I can’t – won’t let it happen. Not twice. Let’s do it.”

ooo

A bedraggled grey towel tucked and knotted round his waist, Ming Gwok ate his breakfast in between phone calls. He lounged in his costly leather chair, his damp skin fastening with the black cow-skin, and the spindly head set like a halo on his head. Slurping his tea, he keyed in the number of a mobile and rested back into the chair’s tacky embrace. Crunching on plain cornflakes, his meal was punctuated by the dialling tone in his ear, until someone picked up, and he hastily choked down his mouthful of cornflakes and spoke. He relayed Rong Na’s message to Kai first.

“Otōto, listen up, it’s about Yourei…”

ooo

About three quarters of a mile away, in a mediocre Japanese high-school, a teenage boy stood hanging around the corner of the science block, on his way from chemistry to history, chatting on his mobile phone. He nodded, listening attentively and making frequent aizuchi to encourage whoever was on the other end of the line to continue. After a few brief exchanges, their conversation was almost done. The boy appeared very sombre now to any onlooker, as though he had been weighed down by the seriousness of what had been discussed. He nodded once, went to hang up, but paused, and chatted for a few more moments. Suddenly, he saw a teacher approaching from across the grounds. Bad news He nodded once, more decisively than before, and hung up. Swiftly, he disappeared around the corner of the building and hurried off, his strides fluid yet urgent. But he did not walk off in the direction of the history department.

ooo

Through the haze of pain that whirled in her mind, Yourei was hazily respectful and in awe of the stamina of Ginjo’s rage. He had prolonged it for more than an hour, focussed it solely on her, and she knew from the ragged breathing sounds he was making that the pinching feeling of having been humiliated and thoroughly degraded had loosened its hold on him. A vague mental picture drifted through her mind of sweaty dark hair and aching fists. Ginjo himself had torn a nail on her, and it eased the sense of being so overwhelmingly dominated and helpless to know that, quite without meaning to, she had repaid a modicum of the damage that they had done to her. Blood welled up like rust from underneath the man’s jagged nail. The door to the room clicked open and Remika’s ancient, prune-like face poked around the door. A glance of disgust at Yourei’s condition, and she addressed herself to the crime lord.

“Shitsureishimasu ga… there is a phone call for you, Ginjo. Excuse me for disturbing you. But it is urgent”

Yourei groaned slightly and lifted her head. It was one of those miraculous strokes of luck that every beaten and scraping prisoner dreams of, an interference that would keep the attention, and thus the violence, away from them. She had studied the reactions in a thousand case studies, Gosuto had made sure of that. The echo of his name in her head thrust a spike of ice through her, and she forcefully brought down the veil across the rest of her life. Her head thumped back down on the floor. Ginjo shot her a venomous look, blinked and became another man. It seemed that a glaze retracted from his brown eyes, dragging with it the man who dealt out violence and death to others without thought of consequence. He was a white-handed, sweet-talking businessman once again. Like a chameleon, he was comfortable in all those guises.

“Okay, Remika. Thanks.” He was polite to his aunt, then, wheeling on his leering, muscled henchmen, became more brusque. “You – have a break. Come back here in twenty minutes.”

“But boss, what about her?” The idiot who had spoken gestured at the girl who lay sprawled on the floor, pale skin and black locks tumbling about her equally bloodless face. Dramatic scarlet adorned her here and there like jewellery, on her neck and her fingers and her wrist. A couple of bruises already flowered at her temple and on one side of her collarbone, blooms of a dusky, muzzy purple. Her captor stared at her contemptuously for a moment, then dismissed her from his list of threats, as captors are wont to do. The corner of his mouth curled up, revelling in a more personal thrill of seeing her defenceless. He had snatched something from Gosuto this time, not the other way round. Elation at his small triumph coursed through his veins, but he realised that he would have to do something with this prize in order to really get to his enemy. Ginjo looked at her.

“Her? What about her? She isn’t going anywhere. Are you, Musume?” He snapped. Yourei winced at his corruption of her pet-name, and all that it meant. Satisfied, Ginjo swept out of the room, trailing henchmen after him. The expression on Remika’s face was disapproving but unpitying as she twisted the key in the lock, and Yourei was finally alone again, or so she thought.

ooo

Minutes later, her eyelids again fluttered open, exhausted twin butterflies, fragile yet somehow resilient. Footsteps scattered across the floor of the corridor outside the room she was in. It was almost as natural as breathing for her to analyse their sound. Light, certain but quiet; must be a woman or a child. Slippers, it sounds like… her thoughts trailed off, and she rolled her aching head over to see whoever it was as they came through the door. Remika’s leathery face appeared round the door, and Yourei noted for the first time her sparkling grey eyes, a colour that is rare among Japanese. Of all those she knew, Yourei could only think of one that had that eddying current of creamy greys pooled in their eyes. It was somehow arresting, but being used to it, she wasn’t distracted by it. Remika grinned and spoke abruptly.

“Thought you’d be in here…” and she cackled at her own joke, for of course the young mercenary was in no condition to have moved from where she was, not unless it was totally necessary. “Shitsureishimasu…” the woman murmured formally, as she entered the room. Yourei blinked, and saw that she carried a rectangular, silver and white box in one wrinkled paw, upon which was emblazoned a red cross. The girl was scarcely able to credit what she saw; a first aid kit, here? In the prisoner’s room? What on earth was Ginjo thinking and who had been on that phone? Yourei’s mind was all perplexed, and her brow creased in a frown.

“I… I don’t understand,” she said muzzily, and to her, her voice sounded some distance away. Her head pounded abominably, pain swirling about between her ears in a skull that seemed to be void of all else at the moment. She tipped her head to obtain a better view of her rather dubious saviour, and the ache suddenly concentrated itself in her right ear. Wincing, she scrunched her eyes shut so tight they watered. She heard Remika cross the room, tracking the sound of her indoor carpet slippers as she came to crouch by her side. The older woman clucked sympathetically.

“No, of course you don’t. But Ginjo will not trouble us. My stupid nephew is on the telephone, and will be for some time.” She said dryly. Her grey eyes roved over the girl’s battered body and her expression became grim, jaw set, eyes more serious than they had been. “Well, I can’t do much for you, or he will see that I’ve been here. I cannot touch your outside, to prevent the damage they will undoubtedly inflict on you, but I can do something else…” The old woman jabbered on, and Yourei, attentive at first, slipped away from her and went to dangle her toes over the banks of the river of unconsciousness. “Yamete!” the old woman said, voice sharp as a lemon. “Don’t do that, come back to me at once. You aren’t listening to me!” The old woman accompanied her cutting words with a pinch to Yourei’s exposed shoulder.

Yourei rushed back to the world, astonished. The room was there once more, with its leather-bound books and its sagging armchairs and mahogany coffee tables. Somehow, she managed to sit up, or at least, to hoist herself up to rest on Remika’s knees. She looked around. “That’s better…” the old woman soothed, doing something to her upper arm. Yourei blinked, fetching her gaze from an optical evaluation of the room’s furnishings to her immediate surroundings. She looked at her arm. It explained why she felt so much more awake. Remika had put a shot in her arm. Suddenly she snatched her arm away. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “What was in that?” she interrogated, gripping Remika’s wrists with her much stronger, unwrinkled hands. She felt the sudden fear emanating from Ginjo’s shrunken, witty old aunt, and loosened her hold on the woman’s bird-like wrists. “I’m sorry,” she croaked, all at once ashamed. “I didn’t mean to do that, it’s just…” She shrugged, and the old woman rubbed her sore wrists and extricated herself from underneath Yourei’s head.

Lurching to her feet somewhat unsteadily, the old woman collected up her medical kit. Mortified, Yourei’s eyes were drawn like a magnet to the red marks on the woman’s wrists. In silence, Remika withdrew a bottle of water and a couple of the triangles of sticky rice that the Japanese favour as snacks and tossed them to the girl on the floor. Yourei drank first, clutching the rice balls in one fist. Remika stood and watched her. Yourei avoided meeting her eyes. She swallowed the two onigiri, and held the bottle out to Remika, who reclaimed it. But the old woman still stood waiting. “Thanks,” Yourei offered huskily, brown eyes downcast, nervously eying the elder woman’s fluffy, faded ruby-red carpet slippers. One twitched, and her eyes switched to the old woman’s face, but she had already turned to leave. Yourei had a sudden thought. “Wait!” she cried out. Remika regarded her coldly over one hunched shoulder, spoke through clenched teeth “What?” “I- what is the time, please?” Yourei asked. The woman consulted her watch and replied. “A quarter past twelve. Lunchtime.” She added. “Is that all?” she taunted, semi-venomously, “Or would you like a weather-forecast as well?”

“I’m sorry,” Yourei repeated. “I just thought…”

“Thought what?” Remika interjected in a brittle, controlled voice. “That-“ she appeared to tremble with rage, or some other passionate emotion, and stopped. Exhaling one, she continued on another subject. “You, Yourei. No. Riyoko, Riyoko Ohaku, for that is your name. Listen to me. You may have been brought up by an aging, wasted, bitter scoundrel, and in a family of useless ruffians, thieves and thugs and worse.” She paused to suck in a breath, her chest heaving, and continued, a bird-like woman no longer, but a manipulative, enduring, utterly ruthless family matriarch. She heaped her words down on Yourei’s head like burning coals as her tirade continued. “You, Riyoko, you. You are not like that, you are not an undiscerning, aimless, self-degrading mercenary’s whore. That is not you. I should have expected a lack of manners in that someone, not in who you are.” And with that, she exited the room. The door brushed to behind her, and Riyoko sat there completely stunned.

ooo

Ming Gwok listened to Kai’s unrushed, languidly phrased words. The boy’s Chinese provincial accent still tinged his Japanese even after all the months and years.

“Just so you know, I can’t get to Kinake at the moment. She’s in a lesson. Do you wanna ring her, or shall I get her out?”

“No, I’ll – get her out.” Ming Gwok spoke with memories of Kai’s previous, rather unorthodox methods of retrieving the dedicated scholar Kinake from her classes. Ming Gwok recalled the girl’s fury at being disturbed during a maths test by the fire bell, to discover that there was no fire at all, only Kai, and observation duties. Kai simply could not understand that she liked school. He was neutral to it. Ming Gwok wrested his head out of the pool of memories, both amusing and much more grave than the one that he considered now.

“Okay… Where’s Ko?” Ming Gwok put in quickly, before Kai hung up on him after his silence. His voice bounced down the phone to Kai, echoing tinny and digital as it relayed his message to the young half-Chinese. “She’s not at school today. I know because she spoke to me yesterday and told me she wouldn’t be in.” Ming Gwok’s lips thinned. If anybody had watched him, they would have remarked how like his aunt he looked when he did that. But nobody was there with him in the apartment that, as well as being the team’s communications headquarters, doubled as his home, so they didn’t. Ming Gwok huffed testily, and spoke again.

“Great. I expect you reminded her of the penalties doled out to those who bunk school? Gosuto won’t be pleased. She keeps doing that.” He grumbled. “At this rate she won’t get anywhere. She’ll be chucked out before Christmas.” He complained. “Zannen dayo,” he lamented, and Kai agreed.

“Sōdayo. She wouldn’t listen to me.” He paused, unwilling to be the one to grass up on Gosuto’s newest protégée, she being his friend. Still, he would let Ming Gwok extract the information from him, because his first loyalty was to his master, and Gosuto had hinted that he wanted the young mercenary to monitor her, if not to report of his own volition. “Where is she?” Ming Gwok interrogated. “I don’t know,” Kai countered. He had clammed up. Ming Gwok changed tack, riding on a hunch he had. “How’s Ko’s grandma today?” he offered, conversationally enough. On the other end of the line, Kai grinned a wry grin, and said innocently “Ko’s grandma? Well. She mentioned to me that she isn’t too well this week. You know how it is, her lungs play up, living above the laundry as she does.” Ming Gwok will need to be able to locate her… “The laundry in Plum Street.” He added, and flushed, cursing himself for his tactlessness. He heard the smile in Ming Gwok’s voice as he said “I see. Well, thank you for informing me of Ko’s grandma’s health, Kai, and see you at Chuushin in a while…”

“Yes, see you there.” And the boy hung up, and walked off.

ooo

Ginjo on phone
Some development here?

ooo

A girl smart in Japanese middle school uniform sat in her lesson and tried to absorb as much as possible of what the teacher was saying. Oshima-san tended to prefer the lecture style method of teaching to anything that needed the pupils to actually do something in his classes, hence most of the class were already snoozing on this day when the air was so muggy and oppressive. This girl was one of the few who still sat up straight, paying attention. Her books were stacked up in front of her, and she had a notebook underneath her clasped hands. A Hello Kitty pencil sharpened to a precise and lethal point rested on the school desk to one side of her. Occasionally, having distilled Oshima-san’s rather vague and incoherent warblings into a point worth making, she snatched up the pencil and noted it down in her rather tall, cramped yet neat handwriting.

Watching Oshima-san draw a triangle on the board to illustrate his point, she suddenly jumped in her chair, a startled look flitting across her face. The teacher glanced her way, but as she remained where she was, he carried on with the lesson, looking away from her. Swiftly, the girl’s hand went to the square in her pocket that sent and received messages between her and some of her… acquaintances. She withdrew it from the pocket of her uniform and, under cover of reaching for her calculator, read the message that was somehow the more potent for its brevity. It read:

1 – Chuushin House, a.s.a.p.

The number one at the beginning of the message referred to the urgency of the instruction, and it was further backed up by the a.s.a.p at the end of the message. Kinake’s crossness at the intrusion upon her education drifted away, and a tangible apprehension came over her. With fingertips now slightly rubbery with sweat, she posted the pager back into the pocket of her skirt and thought, very quickly. Code 1; that’s not good. We haven’t had one of those in ages…Her agile mind cast back to the last one, five or so months ago. And prior to that? Eighteen months. And before that? Over a year. Shit. I’d better go. Her sensible and efficient mind clamped down and refused to let her speculate on the possible cause of this alarm. She was well trained enough to be able to focus on the necessities, and ignore any trifling, irrelevant details or distractions.

She needed to get out of her maths class, and immediately. Her mind darted through all the possible means she could use to effect her escape, and she alighted upon one, and, with the slightest of hesitations to attest to her annoyance and her reluctance to skip class, she went into action. The young mercenary, at once diligent scholar and wanted criminal, packed her things away and rose from her seat. Oshima-san had paused to gulp down a drink of water from a frosted glass on his desk. She went to him, rummaged in her school bag and flicked the doctor’s appointment card at him. The maths teacher nodded, and she made her exit. On her way out of school she paused to stuff the fake doctor’s card back into her bag, and then continued, hastily wending her way to her genuine meeting.

ooo

Rong Na and Ghost – what are they doing now?