Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan (20 page)

The ground then opened up and he was gone.

After the demagnetization, Hideyoshi’s box was returned to its original position. His vision seemed to have improved. He could now see the gray pulp in the grain of the cardboard.

The top flipped open. It was the creature with the blond hair. “You will be alone in your box,” she informed him.

“But I thought my son might be joining me soon?”

“No, we’ve discovered that he will not.”

The cover closed and Hideyoshi could hear a male voice addressing the blonde. “That quality-control shithead. He’s been on my case ever since he started. And why is this asshole asking for his son? The demagnetization should have eliminated that desire.”

“He was just asking about him, not for him. It’ll be fine.”

“If only you had the calibrations correct in the first place.”

“Oh, don’t blame this on me. You’re the one who said that he was sociopath. That he wouldn’t have any attachments.”

Their argument continued but got fainter.

“Pssss. Hideyoshi.” The familiar voice from next door.

Hideyoshi was annoyed. “I thought that you had left. Don’t you have any new cases to follow up on?”

“Checking in to make sure that everything is okay.”

“I’m fine,” he said, feeling space between his body and the box. “Never better.” He didn’t say anything further, and the quality-control man seemed satisfied.

“Goodbye, Hideyoshi. May you have a good stay here.”

Hideyoshi grunted. He was able to extend his right elbow a little in his box. To have all this space all to himself was indeed glorious. Yes, he could easily be alone like this for a life eternal.

I only want one thing in the whole world: for my band, Flying Jelly Attack, the world’s greatest Shonen Knife cover band, to play at Cherry Blossom High School’s Spring Dance. Two things stand in my way:

1) Lizard Blood, a Lolita death metal band, our bitter rivals

2) The end of the world

Lizard Blood isn’t a real band. They only care about going viral and how many hits they get on UltraPluz. They never really learned to play their instruments. Instead, they use synthesizers plugged into programmable neuromuscular implants, upload whatever song they want to play, and play it—or “play” it, rather. They even have their implants synched so they play together—not that that really matters when it’s death metal.

Lizard Blood’s fake lead singer and fake lead guitarist, Yuki Niamori, is very rich—or at least her family is—and she can have anything she wants.What she wants is to be lead singer of a Lolita death metal band that will play at Cherry Blossom High School’s Spring Dance.

She must be stopped.

As for the end of the world, I’m not really paying attention. It’s got something to do with cyber attacks on big banks draining all the money out of their systems—not transferring it, not stealing it, just deleting it as if it never existed. The banks are shutting down and the government can’t stop it. Experts are saying to change your online passwords and stuff, but that doesn’t help because the hackers fix the system so it doesn’t need passwords at all. Change your passwords and biometric logins all you want, doesn’t matter. The hackers still delete everything you have.

It’s not like I have much money anyway, since I spend everything on guitar strings and upgrading my amps. And we still have to go to school, even though half the teachers haven’t shown up all week and the other half are threatening to strike if they don’t get paid soon. Our parents are making us go because they think it’s safe—Cherry Blossom High School’s security guards are still here when the actual police have fled the city. It’s all very complicated, but I’m working too hard to get the chord progression right on “Brown Mushrooms” to notice. If we don’t get to play at the Spring Dance, nothing else will matter.

The big audition for who gets to play at the Spring Dance is in three days. Only two bands have signed up: Flying Jelly Attack and Lizard Blood. Attrition—we scared everybody off. Yuki possibly made threats—at least, she’s made them to us.

Miki, my bass player, says our best course of action is to avoid Yuki and her girls entirely. Ru, my drummer, goes into a murderous rage whenever we even mention Yuki or Lizard Blood. She’s prone to murderous rages, where all her hair stands on end and her eyes go wide and she bares her teeth like some kind of demon. Miki and I both have to hold her back to keep her from doing damage. It’s this kind of thing that makes her a great drummer.

Trouble is, we can’t avoid our enemy entirely when our enemy seems bent on searching us out.

There we are, just hanging out between classes—or these days, just hanging out until we find out whether we’ll even be
having
classes. Miki, hair in a ponytail and her wire-rimmed glasses slipping down her nose, hunches over her deck doing something online—because she’s
always
doing something online when she isn’t playing—while Ru and I discuss what we should wear to the audition. Modern art mini-dresses or jeans and leather jackets? Cute or vintage rebellious? Whatever would make us the most different from Lizard Blood, is my opinion. Ripped jeans and anger.

“I don’t really care, you pick,” Ru says. When she isn’t angry, her hair lies flat in a pixie cut. Really, I don’t even know why I’m asking her—she doesn’t have any fashion sense at all. Me or Miki pick out all her clothes. If we didn’t have school uniforms she might not wear anything at all.

“I just want you to pick one, skirt or jeans?”

“Kit, look!” Ru points down the hallway, and I swear the lights dim and a mysterious wind begins howling past us. Even Miki looks up from her deck.

Lizard Blood appears, standing together, glaring a challenge at us: Yuki, with Azumi and Hana flanking her like acolytes. Between all of them, their poofed-out skirts fill the corridor. They have dyed their hair three different shades of pink: hot, bubblegum, and rose.

We get to our feet and it’s like an Old West standoff.

“Hello, Yuki,” I say. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be
practicing
?”

“You can’t win,” Yuki says. Her arms are at her sides, her hands in fists. She’s wearing a black and white striped tea dress trimmed in lace and a little derby hat the size of an apple. She is above school uniforms, as she has often informed us. Just think, if she spent as much time practicing guitar as she did dressing, she could actually learn to play. “Why don’t you give up?”

“We’ll let the judges decide.” I cross my arms. I’m not afraid of her. “It’s only fair.”

“I’m trying to save you the humiliation of losing.”

“That’s very kind of you, I’m sure.”

She studies a manicured, black-painted nail. “I don’t know why I bother. You’re too stupid to listen to
anyone.
”

At that, Ru roars and launches herself as a mad battering ram at the trio across from us. Miki and I grab her just in time, hooking our arms across her body and holding fast.

Predictably, Yuki laughs. Her henchthings start in a second later, and stop a second after she does. Throwing a last glare at us, they turn on their high-heeled patent-leather Mary Janes and march away.

“I hate her
so much
!” Ru hisses, slumping in our arms out of exhaustion.

“Our best revenge is to win the audition and play at the dance,” I say. “We’ll practice tonight, right after school.”

“I may be late,” Miki says, her expression scrunched up in apology. “I have … a
thing.
”

“A thing? What
thing
?”

“Just. It’s. I’ll explain later.”

She turns and runs, bumping up against a boy standing at the end of the corridor. It’s like he just appeared. He glances briefly at Miki, then stares at us, and I wonder how long he’s been standing there. Did he see the whole confrontation with Lizard Blood?

This guy, he’s
cute.
He’s in a pale suit with a blue shirt and a thin tie. The jacket sleeves are rolled up and his hands are in his pockets. His dark hair flops perfectly over his forehead, framing his very mysterious gray eyes.

“Who is
that
?”

“I think it’s the new boy,” Ru says. “Just transferred in.”

I can’t look away, but I have nothing to say to him. Then, with a final dismissive glance, he turns and is gone.

Seriously, this is not the time to be distracted by such things as new boys at school.

I try to find out everything I can about the New Guy, but it’s not a lot. He transferred in from New Tokyo Polytechnic, but I don’t know anyone from there I could ask for gossip. He’s taking a normal roster of classes, but rarely speaks. Even though he’s collected a gaggle of girls and a few boys following him wherever he goes, he ignores his admirers completely.

“I bet he’s a secret agent,” Ru says. “He’s spying.”

“On what?”

“I don’t know. Just on something.”

What can there possibly be to spy on at Cherry Blossom High School?

“Or an undercover cop, like in the movies. He’s going to make a drug bust and set the whole school in an uproar.”

“As long as he waits to do it after the Spring Dance.”

The guy stands in the doorway of the lunch room and just … watches. I’m not thinking it’s drugs because with the city falling apart and the police on strike, would they really send someone to bust drugs at a high school? This has to be bigger than that, which means he’s a government agent. There’s an international spy ring made up of teachers. Or a secret cavern under the school with a breeding den of giant monsters.

“I bet the school is home to a secret laboratory creating superheroes,” I say, and Miki and Ru just stare at me. I keep going. “You know, like some of our fellow students may in fact be superheroes in disguise, with strange mental and physical powers. There’s a secret high-tech gymnasium under the real gymnasium where they do their training.”

Miki says, “If there are secret superheroes, why don’t they do something to save the city?”

That is a very good question.

Finally, school ends and we can get to work.

Despite saying she would be late, Miki’s already at our practice space in a second music room behind the school auditorium’s stage. She’s finally put her deck away. Ru and I hurry to get our instruments and tune up. We have the space for an hour and have to make the most of it.

We’ve spent months working on our set: “Twist Barbie,” “It’s a New Find,” “Banana Chips,” and of course our signature “Flying Jelly Attack.” This is for a dance—we have to get people dancing first thing or we’re doomed. But Shonen Knife makes it easy to dance. Their music is all about dancing and being happy. How can we not win the audition, when Lizard Blood is all about death and fashion? Of course, times being what they are, maybe people are in the mood for death.

We practice and I start to feel better.

Besides the dancing and expressing happiness, another reason I started a Shonen Knife cover band is that the lyrics are pretty easy to learn.

“Naaaa na na na naaaaa na na na naaaa na na naaaa na na naaa—”

This is music in its very purest form, I think.

Everything’s coming together, we’re rocking, and I start to think maybe we should back off, save our strength to ensure that we don’t peak before the audition. But then Miki biffs a chord. I’m about to yell, but she’s staring at the door. We all look.

And there he is, studying us with this little frown and a narrowed gaze, like he’s on some kind of treasure hunt. The New Guy, in his perfectly starched suit and his very cool manner. Is he following us around? What does he want with us?

“Hey!” I yell. “This is a private rehearsal, can’t you read the sign?” I’d taped a handwritten sign to the outside of the door to discourage gawkers.

He glances at the sign, then back at us, and his lips press into a thin, uninterpretable line. Why doesn’t he
say
something? Then I have a terrible thought: Is he spying for Lizard Blood, so they can learn our strategy for winning the audition?