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The night is a beast knowing neither virtue nor corruption /
As we starve we will become /
Shameless brutes
- Jun Togawa
The summer slick wore well into the night, coated every outdoor surface, every bit of bare flesh that wandered late between the fastly closing parlors. It was early in the week. The streets had begun to thin - many who packed the coastal shops in search of an easy meal or small fuck already fell obedient to the ticking hands atop their wrist, knowing they must rise to meet an early morning in some few hours. These men were part of the countless victims of clockwork hypnosis and its minute mechanisms, the assurance of success found in the strict adherence to the cooperative turning of the gears.
They believed in their hearts completely that a day was twenty-four hours and twenty-four hours a day. Their lives would never extend past the glass encasing of their wristwatch. And fine for them in that. This is not their story.
There were others, men that resisted the call of an honest day’s living. They made their beds over bar countertops, stood about in dogged heat perspiring whole second skins, packed themselves tight into unmarked rooms, where nights stretched out along the unbound folds of open and emptied wallets. Between the humidity, the smoke trailing up from lips and filled ashtrays, the atmosphere could knock a weak man right off his feet. The night was paid for with the bodies of such men, whose failings fed the bellies of their betters. There was no magnetism greater than that between a player and his mark. Those who learned how to play a room could make off better in a few days’ time than an honest man could in a month of leash-and-collar salary pay.
Yasuoka managed the precarious walk between both worlds, between the throes of desperate late-nighters and the overcorrect posturing of the honest men of the morning shift. It wasn’t uncommon for him to come into the office hot off a hustle, some sucker cuffed by the thumbs dragged along behind. An inspector’s badge carried the same weight regardless of who wore it. Doors that would have otherwise stayed shut had a habit of opening for a crooked cop. Especially one of Yasuoka’s notoriety.
The postwar was a time of great opportunity for a man with steady hands and enough sense. A man whose morals matched the new world the Americans had carved out from the old. A decent living could be made just picking off the floors of parlor halls, taking whatever change still rattled in the pockets of that night’s failures, the scraps of torn-away fortunes. If they folded at the pressures of the table, they would invariably crumble and keel when confronted by a policeman. A man will crawl to such desperate ends to save what remains of their dignity. These were the men who kept Yasuoka’s pockets full. The threat of public humiliation and criminal punishment made many weak to his demands, whether it be hush payments or playing themselves as credit in Yasuoka’s own bets. There was no sweeter victory than one made off betting someone else’s flesh. To own someone so completely that they’d surrender their life to games of dire chance in his place.
Yasuoka knew enough to get by in any game, card or tile. But he knew he was best suited to watch from the side lines. Life as a bottom feeder was the best way to survive in a world of big fish. Even the smallest pond was infested with yakuza suits, men with connections Yasuoka refused to test. He had become a known man in the past some years, ever since he’d leeched himself onto that boy who made an enemy of the world and then promptly vanished off its face.
Where the white haired boy had left for, none could say. He had left as he came, with no regard for any life but his own. His face was impossible to forget and just as difficult to find. Though he had seen the boy’s knack for survival first hand, Yasuoka still found himself tempted to dreg the lakes and search for Akagi there.
A child had stripped men of their fortune and pride, men who put bodies in the ground for the slightest indiscretion. Ichikawa, the blind man whose true vision went beyond the limits of his sight, had been so feared that his name was never spoken above a whisper. And yet he had been retired in shame at the hands of a boy some forty years his junior. It was inconceivable that the yakuza would allow the boy to draw free breath for much longer.
Had he stayed with Yasuoka, there’d be no worry. No one else knew both sides of the street well enough to steer clear of trouble. Akagi was too precocious for his own good. He thrived off the undermining of authority. He rebelled against the adult world, thought himself above and apart from society as a whole. A complete antisocial.
He had driven off cliffs in fits of epiphany. He refused gentle victories. That kind of behavior assured an early grave. The boy had survived till now through sheer ingenuity and a face that still carried all the features of youthful innocence. But ingenuity and a pair of doe eyes were nothing when a gun was thrust between your teeth.
Whatever made Akagi tick, Yasuoka would surely find it some day - splat across some back alley cement. Another meal ticket gone uncashed.
One look and Yasuoka could read a man’s past, present and future in dollar signs. And he had seen firsthand so many fortunes flushed down the drain. Fortunes he could’ve easily staked a claim in. Forty percent. Thirty five at the very least.
Ash chipped from the cigarette that hung to his bottom lip, dashed against the knitting of his wool suit jacket. Beads of sweat trickled down in crooked streams across the contours of his aged face. His fashion made a strong statement in the thick of summer. It showed a strong adherence to the ritual practice of uniform and the power it held. There was strength in dress. In any situation, the best dressed man held all the advantage.
Still, tonight he felt as if he had sweat out his own body weight twice over, with nothing to show for it but the stains in his shirt. The vultures had picked the local spots clean early. In these parts of town, first dark came with the setting sun, second dark with the closing stores. The usual marks seemed to have left in between, realizing their come up would never come. But ever stalwart, Yasuoka refused to leave until both his hands and pockets had been filled.
Two streets over, a voice rang out. “You rat fuck!”
His ears perked towards the sound of bodies in collision, the wet and heavy slop of a battered face meeting the ground. At this time of night, where blood fell, cash grew. The night held some promise yet.
He bound around the corner, held his place just out of sight. Two men stood adjacent to the backdoor of a two-bit mahjong parlor whose name Yasuoka hadn’t bothered to commit to memory - inside, they were all the same. Another figure, between the two, sat on his knees, hands crumbled before his face as if practicing shadow puppets. Red river trickled through the damming of his fingers, dripped onto the collar of his shirt.
Yasuoka could only see small details of the two men standing. One, the leader, carried petulant tempter in the splotches of his cheeks and the emergent bruising of his knuckles. The other stood some steps back, evidently disinterested but anchored to the scene out of some sense of loyalty, or at least an obligation to hierarchy.
Again, that sick sound rang out through the alley. A swift kick and the bloodied figure tumbled to the ground.
The man made no effort to conceal his voice. “You try that cheap shit in a real shop, kid, and they’ll take your fingers before you can make it to the door.”
Public humiliation was as much a retributive tool as physical punishment. Common among yakuza types. Gave the cops less to go after, if the victim went to rat. They almost demanded the attention of passersby, inviting others to leer, take part, commit this moment to memory.
“Tell him, Kazuka. Tell him what we do to cheats,” said the one standing by the door.
Still, these men seemed distinctly less than yakuza - their dress shabby, their stance heavy with ego, bereft of code. And their victim seemed even further less, less than yakuza, less than man, barely reaching their waist height from his knees. The presence of the man on watch was hardly necessary. Even if he were on his feet, the inevitability of the outcome, their disparity in stature, would be too much for the battered figure to resist.
“I’ve seen it happen,” the one called Kazuka said. “They stick a nail in the bed of your fingernails and push till you can’t take it no more. I’ve seen them lynch a kid your age for nicking one of the boss’ cars. What’s to stop me from doing the same?”
Yasuoka pieced together some semblance of context from their words. This was a boy, caught in the harsh tides of an adult sea, spat out on harsh concrete beach like a drowned pup. The gravity of the situation would have compelled Yasuoka to intervene, had his heartstrings not gone loose from forty something years of harsh life. A child’s cries no longer tugged him into action. There was no money to be made there. And he never stayed long where money was not.
Sudden - a flash of image under lamplight. A slice of silver hair caught in Kazuka’s calloused grip. Yasuoka’s eyes cut through the scene, tore through the mist that enclosed the assault, that divided actor from audience. Memory took hold and brought his feet to move without thought. Only once before had he seen a boy with such an unnatural shade, as if Death had grazed early what would be His in time.
“Put his teeth to the curb, Kazuka. Make it so the bitch won’t forget.”
He had sworn that never again would he let that boy from his sight. Shigeru Akagi - the boy who walked hand in hand with fortune and chance, who stood in the most tumultuous depths of fate with a look of total apathy. Who locked eyes with coming cars and crashing waves and refused to step away. The kind of boy who would find himself caught, helpless, between two men and hold his tongue rather than cry out, regardless of threat made. But Yasuoka refused to leave behind what had so easily been lost before: the most brilliant boy he’d ever known. The boy with dollar signs in the dead center of his eyes.
He raced forward, his heavy steps echoing off all the empty space of the surrounding alley. With each foot he stepped backwards in time, towards that final moment, when the boy made his way out into the night. That trace of the demon hidden within had vanished - an indifferent veil guised his every feature. His youth was evident then more than ever. With the blind Ichikawa defeated, and with no one willing to compete in his place, Akagi stood dejected, like a child whose favorite toy had been confiscated.
What Yasuoka would have done to hold him back, tear him away from whatever dark future lay ahead: the tight noose these self-assured boys tie for themselves. He could have honed that raw talent, cherry-pick each and every match played, set him up against the very best, those whose skills were dwarfed by the size of their egos, and their wallets. But the boy refused.
He felt a furnace torch lapping at him from the inside out. The heat of his flesh outpaced his ability to speak. Before his mouth could give warning, Yasuoka’s body had struck, tackling the nearest of the two to the ground, collar and elbow gripped firm. Kazuka yelped like a kicked dog. The boy incapable of fighting back, all of Kazuka’s focus had gone to showboating for his companion. He hadn’t even begun to consider that they had attracted an audience, let alone a good samaritan.
He felt the concrete cut against his scalp, the wet warmth of collision. Who was this fucking guy?
The two tumbled, Yasuoka refusing to give up control. He struck from above with the force of a hammer. The squelch that sounded out was uncanny, a sound ill fitting the catalog of the human body.
Their struggle was an infinite second cut out from time. It seemed as if the rest of the world were caught in a delay. From the corner of his eye, Yasuoka saw the second man slouch forward into action. With one hand, he fumbled for the badge he kept close in the pocket of his suit jacket. In his search, his finger grazed the curve of a concealed Nambu M60. It called to him in a much sweeter song. An instant and permanent resolution, cast in discreet carbon steel mold. And, in his grasp, completely legal.
The pull was too great, the assurance of immediate authority. There was no chance these punks carried a piece between them. After ‘58, what guns were left on the streets were divided up quick between those tough or smart enough to get their hands on one.
Kazuka and the other - it was something in their mannerisms, their way of carrying themselves. The kid might not know enough to tell, but these two were nothing like the actual gangs Yasuoka had spent his life navigating around. They were playing adults more than the boy was.
Yasuoka pressed his knees down atop Kazuka’s shoulders, pinning him further. He swung the gun out from his pocket and held it towards the man standing guard, who only just now had taken his first step. “Police. Stand back.”
His hands went up with the gun, though one read of his face made clear his frustration. His eyes wide, his head cocked back, “Yeah fucking right, police. You’re supposed to show the badge first, asshole.”
Yasuoka fired a warning round into the air. 38 caliber fireworks. Enough of a badge for anyone. The man clenched his teeth and balled himself on the concrete, like a child frightened by thunder. His words bowed under strain, a sort of beg towards an uncaring god. “We weren’t doing anything! The kid got caught hustling at the tables, we were just throwing him out! Arrest him, not us!”
“Yeah…prick,” Kazuka said. What little sound he could muster from beneath Yasuoka’s weight was pressed out between broken teeth. Each consonant came with a slight bubble, for all the blood that gushed about his tongue. His words spat red like buckets dumping water on a flooded ship. Even caught underneath, he still carried the self-assured sneer of a man who overestimated his position in the world. The turn of his lips made his lower face resemble more of a crescent lake under sunset.
Yasuoka plunged his gun into the gaping maw before him, the pool of blood that threatened to flood over all its surrounding face, submerge the man called Kazuka in crimson anonymity. His sneer vanished, replaced instead with a look of abject terror. Eyebrows arched tall like mountain peaks, unveiling the eyes beneath. The eyes, and their endless tundras of white within. Yasuoka had an almost fetish thrill for this, the strange ways the face contorts in defeat.
“You stay away from this kid. I don’t care what you do. You play the parlors, you bust up suits for cash, you drink and piss and shit in the streets. But you don’t touch my kid. I’ll put a curb between your teeth, the both of you.”
He took to his feet, making sure to press Kazuka’s curled hand beneath his heavy heel. He walked towards the other, who still lay fetal on the floor, palms clasped about his thinning crown of hair. Curled into a ball, he sobbed into his own knees. These men were the least deserving of respect. Even worms knew not to beg.
"You want the kid's ass that bad?"
A stiff kick to the gut, and all his whimpers went silent.
Yasuoka crouched down. “You take your friend over there and you go home and you remember this night. I don’t ever want to see you here again.”
A smack on the ass and the man went as fast as his body could carry. He lifted himself from the floor as if featherweight, grabbed his companion by the arm, and dragged him out and around the corner of the alley, off into their night’s conclusion. Kazuka lingered for a moment at the end of the street, his lower lip and chin now completely lost in a thick, dark drool. But he too cowered and fled, leaving the two behind. Yasuoka and the boy he had once lost.
It was a recreation of that scene from years before, a chance at what Akagi had so long ago refused him. He’d have no choice now but to beg for Yasuoka’s company, his protection from a world that greased its wheels with the blood and tears of naive kids. Before, he had been lucky, had only caught glimpses of true villainy from his cushioned seat at the players’ table. But now he’d been kicked to the floor, shoved face-first into his own mess like an untrained dog.
The boy had yet to recover. He lay in the snow angel posture they’d left him in, his body jutting awkwardly along the uneven paving of the street. He hadn’t grown much, as far as the cop could tell. Though he had always been tall for his age. Same long legs, with a petiteness that suggested just how little attention he paid to food. Doubt he even had the luxury of regular meals. What sort of parenting resulted in a boy like this? Where had he gone off to, that night? What home did he make his way back to?
Whatever home it was, it hadn’t held him for long. He couldn’t have been living outdoors all this time. His skin was still the same clear white, as if his body refused the sun and let its shine pass straight through. He looked nothing like those Yasuoka had grown accustomed to seeing scrounging about in the wreckage of the war, whose bodies told impossible age - the tragedy of millions seared into their flesh. He was a shape plucked out of some dark void, with a boy’s spirit and a boy’s patience, who saw the world with eyes unspoiled, as if he had never been told no before. That’s why he felt himself perfectly able to stand up to men three times his age, men that no one else dared challenge. All the world was a game set, with the policeman, the yakuza, as pieces to play.
Yasuoka wiped the pistol and placed it back into his jacket pocket. There’d surely be questions at the station once they noticed the absence in his gun’s first chamber, but questions can easily be shrugged away.
He made that first step to the boy. “Are you alright?”
No response. Typical, if a bit tiresome. Yasuoka continued, bent down and reached out to prod him back to consciousness. Finger met fabric, pressed against the acute angle of bone beneath. “Wake up, kid. You’ve been through worse.”
The boy shook as if in his death throes, and then, in a fit, returned to the living. He sat up quick and kicked Yasuoka’s hand away. He scurried back towards the building wall behind him, clinging towards what small security it provided. Blood ran from his wounds anew, adding fresh color to his already ruined shirt. He braced himself, eyes clenched, one hand cupped over his nose. Yasuoka had never before seen Akagi possessed by such animal instinct.
“Please don’t hit me again!” Akagi cried, words sharp enough to tear his own throat. “I won’t ever come back. I gave you everything, I promise!”
He had mistaken Yasuoka’s touch for another’s. Before, the boy’s voice had never grazed above a whisper. What could those men have done, how could the night have gone, that the ever composed Akagi would be reduced to this? It left a pit in the policeman’s stomach to see, finally, some small piece of the frightened boy that lay beneath the demon face.
He continued towards the boy, his steps a pound heavier than before. He held his hands out, open, to show he carried no danger, meant no harm. “It’s just me, kid. There’s nothing to worry about. The others are gone. It’s just the two of us.”
The boy dug back against the wall, hoping to find further retreat from the man before him. Yasuoka lunged. The two tussled, hand over fist, Yasuoka holding tight to his wrists, unfolding the boy from the origami arrangement he’d made of himself. Too weak to resist, his wrists frail from nights gone hungry, his body worn from the beatings before, Akagi acquiesced, defeated.
Yasuoka was ignorant to niceties - his palms calloused and heavy. The slightest brush of skin rubbed the boy’s cheeks raw. He tilted Akagi’s head back, like a collector inspecting the damage made to a purchase. The subtle flush of fresh bruising. The crust matted to the roots of his white hair, the color of a cherry long past ripe. The busted lip, part-way open, panting through crooked teeth. The clear portrait of a boy in distress. Not at all the demon he had hoped to find.
It was noticeable only now, their faces barely a breath apart, the rose tint of the night wiped clean. Different angles to the nose, the brow - things that even a growing boy’s body could not so soon change. His eyes were like shallow puddles along a city road, not at all close to the frigid, dark depth of Akagi’s own. The white of his hair seemed more a sign of bad health than a hint at some angelic inhumanity. Even in the way he clung to the policeman’s hold, it showed a character completely unbefitting the infamous silhouette of the boy genius, born of darkness.
As chance a reunion as this, it had been too perfect for truth. Obviously so, he realized, in the afterglow of the moment. Yasuoka’s steps into the alley had been compelled by the tendrils of his own impossible fantasy, his desperate struggle to save a boy whose tragic visage occupied his every thought. And now, here he stood, with some lost child at his feet. Another man might leap at this opportunity to play town hero, but Yasuoka refused the call of chivalry without reward.
Still, he held inside him some small grain of hope. Perhaps life had taken its toll early, that a year’s worth of these nights, of being thrown under boot, tossed to the curb, had rendered the boy something beyond recognition.
He asked, “Do you know your name?”
The boy struggled to speak, a sob caught on his tongue. Even then, he eyed the man above him with suspicion, still unsure if he were in league with the two from before, men looking for a canvas to unleash their aggression. Yasuoka did look the part - unshaven, years of life tallied in the lines along his forehead.
Yasuoka fished in his pocket for the badge he had abandoned earlier, hoping it would serve as some small reassurance for the boy. He placed it into his hand. A gold trinket in dark leather. The source of all authority.
The boy ran his fingers over the badge’s engravings, eyes caught in its hypnotic glimmer.
He struggled to sound out the strokes of kanji beneath the sheen of the laminated card. “Yasu…oka?”
A nod yes. “Yasuoka. It’s the character for low, and the character for hill. Now what is yours?”
The boy rubbed his nose, wiping a long mess of snot and spit along the back of his wrist. His eyes met the policeman’s. The words came out in spats of syllable, interspersed with gasps for breath. “Yukio - Yukio Hirayama.”
As expected. Yasuoka’s hands fell by his side - collapsed like a doll with cut strings. All of the man’s inner machinations fell quiet, a deep silence that seeped out from his every pore and spread like a mist through the world around him, clouding the way forward. He found himself set with a burden greater than he had ever expected, a sniveling pup unable to fend for itself, or lick its own wounds.
His badge was still in the boy Hirayama’s hands. It’d be suspicious to ask for it back now, as much as he wished he could be freed of this moment. If he were to walk away, there’d be no telling what story the boy could tell to the next officer that happened to come along. But bringing the boy to the nearest station would only further tie the two together - Yasuoka’s responsibility would be penned to paper.
Every thought trailed to a dead end. He stood up, paced back, set flame to a cigarette. A long drag, and the words he struggled to find finally followed.
“How old are you, Hirayama? Do you know where you are?”
Hirayama’s face paled, almost matching the pallid shade of his hair. He held the badge tight in hand, placed it over his face, like a shield. It made him seem all the more juvenile.
“Those men, they aren’t coming back. Do you remember anything that happened?”
Yasuoka’s attempts at reassurance seemed to have done little for the boy’s worry.
“Where are your parents? Do they know you’re here?”
His questions fell, again, unanswered. Hirayama stayed pressed against the wall, totally still but for his eyes, which darted back and forth between the policeman and the alley entrance. His intentions were obvious.
Hirayama tossed the badge at Yasuoka and made a break for the open street, carried forward on unsteady legs, propelled by some hidden reserve of spirit. He could barely hold his head above his waist. His limbs flailed like rice stalks in the wind.
A thousand thoughts sped through the cop’s mind in that moment, every imaginable outcome, should the boy make it past that turn and set out free into the night. It would be simple, just to stay back and watch him go. Doubtful any word of the incident would make its way back to his desk. But the boy’s insolence, his total refusal to accept help, reminded him faintly of another. He refused to let another run off into the dark.
He outpaced the boy in short stride and yanked him back to the floor by the fold of his collar. Hirayama fell to the earth flatback - breath ripped from his lungs, left him gasping, nails clutched at his own throat, as if tearing new holes to let air through. Yasuoka towered above. He had grown tired of niceties, or, at least, realized the futility therein.
“Stupid brat. Only the ones with something to hide run from cops.”
His words were followed with the lighting and dragging of a new cigarette, the last knocked out from Yasuoka’s lips in the struggle. Hirayama’s throw could not have been better aimed.
Flecks of ash fell onto the grounded boy below. He flinched with each little burn. His face scowled under grey freckles.
“Those men, Kazuka and the other, they told me everything,” the policeman said. A bluff, an inflated half-truth. “And I’m inclined to believe them, after seeing you run. So you might as well tell the truth, save us both the trouble. I’d hate to hand-cuff you. The station is a long walk away.”
Another bluff. The detective never carried cuffs, more than content with the revolver propped against his beating heart. But the young Hirayama had likely grown up on the idealized image of the hero policeman, the kind projected in film dramas and child games, who projected and embodied a fetish for the strict rule of law.
The boy turned and turned, as if in the midst of restless sleep. His teeth were pressed together tight enough to crack. His eyes spat a coarse venom, in the moments he possessed the strength to even lift his lids. This was no different than the situation he had been so freed from before. He felt an all-consuming helplessness set over himself. He threw his hands against the concrete.
“Then arrest me! If they told you everything. They were in the right. It’s my own fault. I fucked everything up.”
The tears returned, sprung from a sorrow greater than any child tantrum. His cries were the echoes of a shattered heart. He verged on inconsolable, especially for one with such abrasive bedside manner as Yasuoka. Still, some progress had been made. He had spoken more words in this moment than in any before.
He tossed the boy both the box of cigarettes and a match to light. A small thud. Hirayama stared incredulously, lost to the meaning behind Yasuoka’s charity, and completely unfamiliar with so adult a ritual as smoking. Even after sitting up and grabbing the two in hand, he found himself blind to the art of smoke and fire. He struck the match against concrete, then the strip of paper that lined the box, neither drawing flame. It was all he could do not to cast a pleading glance at Yasuoka.
Still, Yasuoka crouched, grabbed the match, cupped a hand over the end of the cigarette, and brought the two to light. Hirayama inhaled deep with his first breath and choked on the furnace made of his own mouth. He doubled over in a fit, his lungs unaccustomed to the taste. But all thoughts that weighed heavy on his mind before were now wiped clean. His only focus - the simple act of drawing breath.
In each pull of smoke, Hirayama felt a great calm wash over. The tears fell no longer, his eyes trailing the wisps that snaked about the air around him. “What kind of cop gives cigarettes to a kid?”
“A cop you can trust,” Yasuoka said. The boy had some wits about him, beneath it all.
Hirayama turned, his eyes still bloodshot, like a vengeful spirit in an old woodblock print. “Never met one before.”
“Well now you have.” Yasuoka gripped the boy’s shoulder tight. “Now, tell me what happened.”
The wall he had clung to for protection finally broke. Hirayama surrendered himself completely. “They didn’t like how I played the table. I know how to win. And they found out. They thought I was just some dumb kid. That’s why they let me play. And then they got mad when they lost.”
The boy hardly seemed the type capable of playing a mahjong table, but Yasuoka knew from experience that the men that filled the halls at this hour paid closer attention to their drinks than their tiles. The subtle etchings of the pieces, the bamboo lines, indistinguishable in the super dry haze. Through the translucent glass rims about the table, it seemed more like perverse theater, broken men rearranging scattered teeth.
Still, mahjong was a difficult game to play, let alone rig, especially when one sat uncompanioned at a table. “You’re a cheat, then. I’ve seen worse happen to cheats before.”
“I’m not a cheat!” Hirayama said, cigarette clenched tight between teeth. “It’s not cheating. I know how to win.”
“If you didn’t cheat, then why’d they throw you out?”
The boy shuffled his feet along the grit of the concrete. His sandals hung precariously from frayed threads of rice straw. Though his skin had that same out-of-time-and-space quality as Akagi’s, it showed far more notice of humanity, past-ripe bruisings, flecks of scab. There was a full life lived beyond this boy, a life of struggle and tax. Hirayama was born of earth no doubt, a child spat out from the trampled wound of a defeated nation, left to the gnashing street.
“I can memorize the tiles. I’m not perfect, but in a slow game I can follow an opponent’s hand with no mistake. Those two, they didn’t get it. They thought I was cheating. They both went all in and lost. So they dragged me here, before I could run with the money.”
Yasuoka’s eyes betrayed his disbelief. It was a child’s fantasy, to memorize the individual grain of each tile within a set. In essence, to neutralize the challenge present, to win the game before it even began. But it was just that: fantasy. The squares that lined the table were indistinguishable, and any markings used to differentiate them by one side would go quickly noticed by the other three players. It might be a functional bluff, but only against those ignorant to the true limits of the game.
“Anyone worth their money’s weight knows that’s impossible.”
Hirayama shook his head. “It isn’t. I taught myself.”
The boy traced a finger across the coagulated sunset struck along the tearings in his shirt, bits of black and red tearing off under jagged nails. He seemed to realize only then that he was covered completely in the innards of his own self, serving proof of the night thus far and of his place within the world, under adult heels.
“I can’t explain it. I’ve always played mahjong. I learned from watching grown-ups back home. An American would come through on a truck and gamble with food. People begged to play. The grounds we lived on were black. Nothing grew there.”
Hirayama took a heavy breath and continued his story.
“His hair was like wheat. He would puff out his chest and grab girls by their shoulders and make them watch as he took every coin their parents had. He would come by every week or so. He once promised me the ends of his sweet potato if I’d shine his shoe. He’d kick at me with one foot while I polished the other. Smeared the grease across my cheek.
When he passed out drunk, I could play with his mahjong pieces. I would shuffle them face down and draw hands for hours, until I could pick a yakuman out of a pile. And then I’d place them back exactly as he’d left them.
One night he drank himself stupid, with a girl on his lap. Her father had been brought to tears in a game the night before. And when he saw his daughter, with a yankee’s hand down her shirt, he couldn’t take it. He couldn’t. He beat the American’s face into the floor. With his own mahjong set. Everyone saw. No one said a thing.
The next day they divided up the man’s food and trashed the car for parts. And I took his mahjong set. Washed them in the river. And swore I’d never again beg for a meal.”
Such a story should ring as fiction, but the detective had no doubt of its truth. That the boy was raised in tragedy came as no surprise. All the more reason to believe he would fall victim to a gambler’s delusion.
“So you’re lucky at picking pieces. That’s not mahjong,” Yasuoka said, well aware of his words’ weight. He anticipated the boy’s reaction.
Hirayama shot up quick, the weight of his heart and the gravity of the night both set against him. As steady as his legs could hold, he asked, “Do I seem lucky?”
It was more of an exclamation than a question. He tossed the butt of his cigarette at the detective’s feet. A sole spark grazed the cuff of his pant leg.
“Some luck I have. Stuffing myself with scraps. A stray dog under the table.” He balled his fist. “Take your luck! What has luck ever done for me? What luck was there being born into this?”
And again, that look. In his eyes, the end of the world. The dark creases of the iris - buildings that had stood for years, reduced to rubble, like the searing of their cigarettes, coarse pilings of black. Those uncountable mounds of ash, centuries of possession and promise. Flesh, wood, it all burned the same under fire from above.
Yasuoka felt that if he stared for any longer, he’d come away with dirtied hands, smudged and grayed by that same desolation. Hirayama, a pillar of salt. He dared not speak, lest the slightest sound cause the boy to crumble. Still, the boy had to be destroyed completely, before he could be remade.
“My mahjong isn’t luck. It isn’t play. It’s winning. I have to win. I have to win.” The quiver returned to his voice. “I lost. I lost. They took everything I had. You can’t begin to imagine how that feels!”
He stumbled forward, grabbing at the lapels of the policeman’s jacket. He pushed, shoved, wailed away with soft fists. Yasuoka refused to step back. He knew tantrums could only end in total exhaustion. So he stood tall, ready to catch the boy when his legs gave out.
“You’re all the same! It's just a game to you! You play for nothing, you take everything. You get off on others’ desperation.”
A stray blow knocked the detective’s jaw. Hirayama carried greater strength than his width of wrist implied. He grabbed at the boy’s wrist, bringing him to still.
“I saved your ass, kid. You don’t know a damn thing about me,” Yasuoka grunted. “Without me you’d be a smear on the concrete. Show some respect.”
He moved his grip from the boy’s wrist to his collar. He refused to be disrespected by anyone, let alone some brat he had been made to coddle through the night. He had experienced tragedy in twofold, had been driven by nationalist pride to the frontlines of a losing cause, then made to carry its failure home. He had known a life before defeat. He had watched his country be stripped of its empire, made to bow for the same men whose bullets had brought swift ends to more than half of his squadron.
He had realized only then, watching entrails spill from stomachs, the futility of it all. How he was just one of countless insects scurrying about in the shaded undersides of some faceless giants, these “nations” that stomped about with no care to the lives lived beneath. Those men that stood in line to welcome their conquerors, those men that spent their lives running about the office, they fooled themselves with routine delusions. They sat alone at night, wives tucked in bed, and chased their fears away with drink.
He pushed and pulled the boy by his shirt, unable to control himself. “I was meant to inherit the world. It was mine to take. And now look at it!”
He splayed a hand into the air. “This is what’s left of my inheritance. Buildings built out from rubble. Ghosts in the streets. Americans standing heads above me. Brats like you trying to push me out into my grave. You think you know loss? You were born into nothing! You are nothing! You’ve no idea what it's like to have something and to lose it!”
And then, as if summoned by his words, a flash of brilliance struck through Yasuoka’s mind. The sort of perfect euphonious thought that, like the ringing of a temple bell, shook the body with its awesome resonance. He felt in his hands the power to reshape the world, to set it on his own axis.
The boy he held in his hands, so close to the one lost. He had sat across the room from Shigeru Akagi, hounded him through the night based on one chance sighting and a witness’ description. And even he had been fooled by the similarities between the two. With some work, with corrections to his posture and presence, the boy Hirayama would doubtlessly pass for the real thing. The true test would be how he handled himself at the table.
He brushed the boy’s hair back, scraping off flecks of crusted blood and snot from his bangs. He cupped his face with his hands, mapped out the bones beneath. Hirayama made a show of resistance, tried to pry away the policeman’s tree trunk arms, but soon found himself in gentle surrender. Between Yasuoka’s finger and thumb, his lips lay pursed, the same pout he’d worn all night.
“What are you doing?”
His words were almost lost under all their venom. He eyed the older man with renewed suspicion.
“You’re not a police officer.”
“I am. Shut up,” Yasuoka said.
He ran a finger along the boy’s browline, down the nose, along the jaw. He felt for missing teeth. Hirayama tried once more to free himself. He felt smothered under touch. The sight and smell of dirt and smoke on Yasuoka’s fingertips, pressed so close against his own tongue, drove him to retch.
“Let me go - don’t touch me! I’ll go find a real policeman and tell him what you’re doing!”
“What I’m doing,” he said, his hand now stifling the boy’s screams, “is making you the richest boy in the world.”
Such a promise was enough to silence Hirayama momentarily, before doubt crept its way back in. Nails pressed into Yasuoka’s hand, he ripped the gag away.
“I know creeps like you. I don’t owe you anything. I’m not giving you anything. You think you can be my hero, that I’ll let you have your way with me, because you butt into a situation where you didn’t belong? I would never. I’m not that kind of guy.”
Hirayama made to walk away, go back out into the night and forget all about this chance encounter. His stomach was still empty. But when he looked back, for the final time, and saw the billfold out from the policeman’s pockets, more yen notes in one hand than an entire week’s earnings, he found himself unable to take that next step. In that clump of cash, Hirayama saw fresh clothes, tonkatsu bowls, a night’s rest in a warm hotel. He saw the infinite potential of wealth. And he was weak. For a single moment. The simultaneous fragility and strength of a boy living on his own.
Yasuoka held the billfold like one would hold out food for a stray. “Just a moment to explain. You want to play mahjong. You say you know how. I know where the games are. Where you won’t be dragged from the table. Where the players will be afraid to step on the same ground you’ve tread. Where you’ll play for more money than you’ve ever known.”
He stepped forward, money still outstretched. “You just have to trust me.”
He could have said anything in that moment - the game had already been won. No words could entice the boy in any way that money could not. His ears had deafened to all around him, his eyes set between blinders. His stomach felt a thousand times heavier.
Another step. Hand met hand. Contract sealed.
Yasuoka had long dreamt of lost opportunity. Possibilities surrendered to time. Medals he could have won, had he been a better soldier, had he been willing to die for his emperor. The family he could have founded. The son he could have raised to better the world in ways he could not. The money lost on a boy who wandered off into the night, just as he had come.
All his regrets whirled about him like dust trapped in the wind, until every speck came together in combined and total shape. Shigeru Akagi. That void of humanity. The undead walking amongst the living, rendering all he touched into death. It was as if, on that fateful night, on the ocean floor, he had bargained with the spirits that had come to collect and had promised a thousand souls in exchange for his own. He cut a hole into the lives of all those he crossed. He demanded total annihilation of his opponents, he refused the company of friends.
That boy. What had been Yasuoka’s first thoughts then, walking through that door, their clothes both still soaked through from the rain and sea. Hair as white as the bone in a mahjong tile. A face of sharp angles. It wasn’t that he saw something of himself in the boy. Akagi rejected all comparison, all likeness. But he felt a magnetism therein that he could not tear himself away from, a compulsion to save this boy from the world they found themselves in. And yet, even that, Akagi rejected.
But now, confronted by this figure, a phantom of false memory, he found it almost impossible to recall the true face that had, until just now, occupied the forefront of his every thought. This Hirayama, so plainly named, was an arrangement fatefully made from every piece of Yasuoka’s idealized recollection of the boy who sprung from the abyss. Akagi, of darkness born. Hirayama, birthed from summer sweat and selfish want, ripped out from Yasuoka’s own skull. To be molded to his exact specifications, the centerpiece of this new gambling world.
Yasuoka thumbed through his billfold and placed a small stack in Hirayama’s open hand. He expected the boy to take off in a sprint, but he stood perfectly still, as if the cash weighed like an anchor.
“Let’s get you something to eat.”