Nan-Core (21 page)

After listening to what Dad had to say, I’d stopped caring about anything. I started to believe that Chie was beyond my reach, that she would never come back.

I mean, if she’d wanted to see me, she could have snuck away from her husband. The fact that she hadn’t done so even once spoke clearly of her feelings. Even if Ms. Hosoya discovered Chie’s whereabouts, there was nothing I could do as long as she didn’t want to see me. Occasionally I caught myself thinking about Chie like she was already dead. Just like my mother. It was curious, as though I was losing the ability to grieve for them individually. They had, without my realizing it, merged into a single ache.

My heart wasn’t in it but I made a show of working hard, and as I wiped down the tables and handed back change to customers, the hours eventually passed. When the cafe emptied out that evening I decided to take it as an opportunity to close up half an hour early. I’d never done that since the cafe opened.

After Nachi and the other girl working part-time had rushed home in glee, I filled a mug to the brim with coffee, but even after finishing it I just sat vacantly with my elbows resting on the table.

No matter how hard I tried to gloss over it, I always succumbed to an unbearable sense of emptiness when I was by myself. When night came and the quiet of the mountains eased its way into the building, even my sense of being seemed to dilute.

I nodded off a few times, with my head still propped up in my hands. It seemed like too much trouble to get up from the chair and go upstairs. I don’t know how long I sat there.

I heard the roar of an engine climbing the hill, then a car coming to stop in front of the cafe. When I dragged myself over to open the front door I saw Ms. Hosoya, looking sharp in a suit, step out of a taxi. I was about to walk over when I saw someone take her outstretched hand and slide out of the vehicle. My heart was already telling me it was Chie, but it took my mind a full second to catch up. In that second I thought I was looking at my mother, still young as she walked through the park at night, her body bruised, haggard. That was how slight Chie appeared. Her cheekbones jutted out from her pale face and her neck was shockingly thin.

I couldn’t process any of it. I moved on instinct alone. I ran to her side and held her softly like she was something that might easily break. That she had very nearly been broken was clear from a single glance.

“Chie …” My throat was choked up, and I could barely get my voice out.

She seemed like a doll. She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t return the embrace either. It was enough. Nothing else mattered so long as Chie was alive and I could hold her.

It took a long time before the doll opened its mouth and the words came slipping out. “I’m so sorry.” Her voice was wretched, barely audible.

A pitiful woman—I didn’t know what to do to put her at ease. I was almost suffocated by a rush of emotion. I held her a little tighter, just a little so she wouldn’t be afraid. “D-Don’t go away ever again,” I stuttered and stumbled over my words. In the end, that was all I said.

I supported her as she hobbled step by step up the stairs
to the cafe’s entrance. Ms. Hosoya was already busy inside, wearing an apron over her suit. In no time at all an omelette and salad were set on the table.

“This is all I can manage, but we need to get something in her stomach. And not just Chie. You look like you’re ill yourself.” She put a bowl of bread stewed in milk, like a sort of porridge, on the table next to Chie. “I hope this will be easy enough to get down.”

Chie thanked her, her eyes still on the floor.

“Chie’s got a bad cold, you can see she’s still recovering.”

I nodded absently. No cold could possibly have caused such a total transformation. I had lots of questions, but I knew it wasn’t the time to ask them. Chie didn’t have much of an appetite but she ate the milk porridge, blowing on it as she carried it to her mouth. As I watched her, I realized I didn’t want to ask her anything about it, ever. I wanted to just let it lie.

As though she’d understood what I was thinking, Ms. Hosoya said, “We can talk about the difficult bits tomorrow. We should let her get some sleep for now, once she’s finished. She should be okay here for tonight. Go on, boss, eat up.”

I did as I was told and took a bite of omelette. The soft yolk seemed to melt on my tongue and I suddenly realized I was completely starving. I polished off the whole plate in the blink of an eye. On the way out Ms. Hosoya gave me a few paper bags with Chie’s medicine, instructing me on how she needed to take them. The pills had been dispensed from a number of different hospitals and seemed to include anti-depressants and sleeping pills. I was shocked by the number of different types of drugs and started to feel uneasy. I had yet to absorb
any of what was happening, but that didn’t stop me from feeling a sudden and powerful hatred for Chie’s husband.

The sky that had been on the verge of rain for so long finally opened up, and the next morning brought a heavy downpour. I went down early to the cafe and was making coffee when Ms. Hosoya arrived at seven, as we had agreed. She had taken the business car home the night before, and driving it back meant she had been able to stay dry.

Chie was still asleep on the second floor. She had woken in the middle of the night and started to shiver violently, telling me she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, so I had given her one more of the sleeping pills and massaged her back. We didn’t say much, only speaking when necessary. I was amazed to find that even after all that had happened, the natural ease we’d had around each other back when we were happy, when we could spend hours in companionable silence, hadn’t faded.

“It was a surprise. I had never expected Chie to be there in person. I had a hard time convincing her parents. I all but dragged her away with me in the end. Chie herself hardly knows what she wants in the state she’s in, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

Ms. Hosoya’s eyes were red and bloodshot behind her glasses. She had used her day off and driven in again early in
the morning, so of course she was tired, but it didn’t come through in the way she spoke. I was too filled with remorse to properly apologize to her.

Chie had been close to contracting pneumonia, and her doctor had told her she needed complete rest and quiet. Her husband had dropped her at her parents’ home a week ago, and he was supposed to pick her up on Friday. That was in two days’ time.

“For the time being we have to keep her hidden. He probably knows about the cafe.”

Ms. Hosoya then told me the fragments of information she had gotten from Chie and her parents. Chie’s husband’s name was Tetsuji Shiomi. He had always enjoyed gambling and became increasingly obsessed with it after his company went under, so he was struggling financially. At the same time, he took to the bottle, getting drunk nearly every day, and beat Chie because she was the nearest thing at hand. It was the typical picture of someone on a downward spiral. It was so textbook that it was hard to believe it was real.

“They told me he’d been a decent, caring man before they got married. They’d trusted him. The change came the moment the ceremony was over. In time Chie was working hard to support the two of them, putting up with it, hoping that things would someday go back to normal. Even though he’d apparently used up all their money and broken her ribs and teeth from beating her.”

Something bright white sparked across my frontal lobe. I was momentarily blinded, unable to hear Ms. Hosoya as she spoke. I had never really known what rage felt like until that
moment. At the very least, I’d never felt such tremendous anger directed at a single human being before.

“Two years ago she ran away, unable to bear it anymore, taking with her what little funds she’d managed to stash away. She didn’t tell her parents where she was going because she knew Shiomi would look for her. She said she had been overjoyed when she started working here after some time.”

I remembered the somehow unstable expression she’d worn when she approached me, asking me to hire her. It was that odd sense of danger that had so thoroughly driven me to distraction.

“I think Chie became complacent. A year and a half had gone by without anything happening, so she decided it would be safe to call her parents. She hated to think they were worrying about her. She didn’t give them an actual address but she did say she was fine and working in Nara, at a cafe with an area for dogs to run around in.” Ms. Hosoya paused for a moment, sighing under her breath. That was the only time she let her guard down, a hint of tiredness rising to the surface. “I don’t have all the details but it seems that Chie’s parents’ house was quite old, and they’d renovated it using some of Shiomi’s money. Her mother also went through a period as a follower of some new cult I’d never heard of, again borrowing large amounts of money from Shiomi for donations. With such a history between them her parents were so indebted to him that they could barely look him in the eye. He visited them repeatedly, demanding his money back, always pushing for information on Chie. Eventually, they let slip about the call.”

The full picture was slowly coming into view but I stayed
silent, listening intently to her voice so I didn’t miss a single word.

“Chie hadn’t given them the address, but there aren’t many cafes in Nara that also have a dog run. Going through them one by one he’d track us down eventually.”

She was right. When Chie was working outside, she was visible from any number of places around the cafe. The idea that Shiomi had once come close to Shaggy Head brought with it another dizzying rush of anger.

“She said he just turned up without warning. He was leaning against her apartment door one night when she got back from work. When he saw her he clung to her, desperately begging for help, telling her he’d be killed if he didn’t pay the money back.”

“So what?! That’s no reason to leave without a word!” I half-shouted the words, briefly losing control.

Ms. Hosoya kept her eyes on me, remaining quiet for a while. When she opened her mouth again, she spoke more slowly. “Shiomi is under pressure from the yakuza. It’s been going on for so long he’s started acting like one himself. He knows all too well how to threaten Chie, how to hit her where she’s most vulnerable.”

I waited for her to continue but she didn’t say anything else, so I prompted, “By vulnerable, you mean her parents?”

“There was that, too. He threatened to send the yakuza that were coming for him to her parents’ home, telling her they owed him lots of money, that he’d get it back even if it meant causing them pain. Even worse was the fact that he’d worked out Chie was seeing you.”

“Shit. He went that far?”

“I’m sure he threatened to harm you, telling her that anyone messing with another man’s wife had to pay. I think it was the photos, though, that were probably the hardest for her to ignore.”

“What photos?”

“I don’t really know. Just that he’d threatened to send you some photos from her past, ones she wouldn’t want you to see.”

We both fell silent. Part of me felt that I didn’t want to ask anything more, but still I had to know. “Did you find out about what work Chie did when she was living with Shiomi?”

“Not specifically. But I think the photos she didn’t want you to see are probably related.”

It wasn’t hard to imagine the kind of photos they’d be. I felt ready to cry and wail aloud. I didn’t want Ms. Hosoya to see how badly my lips were quivering. I envisioned untold numbers of men jacking off as they flicked through photos of Chie in various indecent positions.

“She had no choice but to become Shiomi’s puppet, just as before. She couldn’t refuse him when he told her to steal all that money from you. I don’t have any details, but seeing how emaciated she is, there’s no doubt he had her working hard to bring in more money.”

“I’ll kill him.” The words leapt from my mouth, startling even myself. At the same time I felt a wave of something like rapture course through me.

Ms. Hosoya frowned, giving me a sharp look. “You can’t think like that.”

“What else can I do? Report it to the police?” Ms. Hosoya must have been well aware that reporting anything was only a
stopgap solution, setting off a game of cat-and-mouse. “Whatever we do, the moment Shiomi finds out Chie is missing he’ll be here to have words with me.”

The decision came naturally, without conscious thought. I would lure Shiomi and then kill him. If I didn’t, I was certain my anger would eat me alive. I hadn’t been able to protect my mother, so I wanted to protect Chie no matter what happened.

“There’s a chance he’ll come right here. I got the impression that Shiomi was under a lot of pressure, too. So we have to be quick in moving Chie somewhere else.”

What would the kind woman before me think, I wondered, if she found out I had the blood of a murderer running through my veins? The notion just popped into my mind.

When I imagined running a sharp blade through Shiomi’s body, I felt a numb burst of something like elation. Right through the heart, with my own hands. I felt confident that I could do it. My blazing rage had already blasted away the hatred I’d felt for my own blood. I would never have supposed even moments earlier that I could come to terms with being my mother’s son in such a manner. No doubt Dad would have said it was providence, fate. I couldn’t help but feel it myself, the sense that everything happening was somehow predestined.

Had I thought about it rationally, I might have decided that blood had nothing to do with it at all. Maybe it wasn’t just me, maybe everyone has a killer lying dormant within, waiting for the conditions necessary to rouse up and fall into place. How else were acts like genocide or war possible? I remembered reading in some book that senseless acts of killing
increase during peacetime.

“At the very least, boss, we need to decide our plan of action. It won’t be long before people start to arrive.”

I looked at the clock on the wall. There was less than half an hour before the cafe opened at nine. Chie was probably awake by now. The lack of options meant I didn’t have to waste any time pondering the decision. I hated to let Chie out of my sight, but the only recourse I had was to accept Ms. Hosoya’s offer to take her in. The weather being the way it was, the cafe would be quiet. I asked her to take Chie back early that afternoon, then to take a few days off to stay with her and get some rest. We were discussing how to work out the workers’ schedule for when she was away when Nachi turned up and called out, “Morning!”