warning him off. Maybe they had met here by pure coincidence. I didn’t plan to find out. From now on I was going to assume the worst.
I didn’t go anywhere near either of them. There were paper timetables in the information office, so I took a few of those, as well as a list of local hotels and B&Bs, and wandered casually away, feeling my spine twitch under the pressure of the goon’s imagined gaze, although he was nowhere near me.
It was half past four now and getting colder. It would be twilight within the hour, and dark glasses would become attention-grabbing, so I’d have to stay out of sight as best I could. I knew that logically they couldn’t watch every hotel in town, but the way my luck was running, I’d probably walk into the place they were staying. And wouldn’t a student booking a business hotel room be too noticeable? Or I could go OL again…but I had another idea.
I made my way back to the shopping mall and scrutinised the bus timetable in the toilets, where I was spending more time than I liked. What I needed was for the provincial bus services to be lousy. The odds were against me—this was Japan, after all—but I finally found a destination to which the last bus departed at quarter to seven. Risky, but not impossible.
It was miserable waiting. I wandered around the mall, and lurked in the bathrooms, and thought of poor Yoshi, and poor Noriko, and the guilt choked me. I had brought this on them both, and it did no good to say that it wasn’t my fault, because if they hadn’t known me, this wouldn’t have happened to them.
If I had told Noriko not to go back home last night—it was so obvious they’d have gone to my address, why hadn’t I thought of it? If I hadn’t reassured her—why, Christ, why had I said that, why? To make her feel better?
I dug my sharp nails into my palms, wanting the pain. If I had just thought about her instead of myself for a few seconds. If she hadn’t given me her luck. She’d had that charm since she was a little girl; she’d misplaced it (as she did everything) a couple of times, and had been reduced to tears by its loss, and I’d helped her turn the flat upside down searching for it because of her panicked distress. But she’d given it to me when I was in trouble, and I had taken it without a thought.
If I hadn’t taken away her luck…
No. If I had refused to interpret for Kelly. If Yukie had let Kelly use those electric tongs in the bath. If Noriko had never persuaded me into hostess work—no, not that either. If my father had gone to Russia or America instead of Hong Kong and never conceived me in the first place.
Yakubyo-gami , I thought. Bringer of evil. Jinx.
I stewed in misery and self-pity for long enough that when I started to call minshuku , small B&B places, my voice was convincingly young and tearful.
“Excuse me, but do you have a room for the night? Is it expensive?”
The first two minshuku were full, or said they were, and my heart sank, but I lucked out on the third try—an old lady’s voice. She had a room, she said dubiously, but it was too late for her to prepare a meal for me—
Oh, no, that’s no problem. You see, I have missed the last bus back to (wherever it was, some nowheresville that I forgot the name of as soon as I’d said it), and I just need a bed for the night, I was very foolish, no, please don’t go to any trouble, I will eat some noodles before I come to you, oh, well, if you insist, thank you so much.
I had stopped off at a pharmacy earlier, so now I took out my plasters and cotton wool pads and rigged up step two: an eye bandage. Cotton wool over my left eye, secured with strips of neat sticking plaster. It was probably too dark now for people to notice, but if they did, I hoped all they would see was the dressing.
And there was no way in hell the yakuza could have marked every tiny B&B.
I walked to the minshuku I’d booked and put my dark glasses on when I got there. The obāsan who ran it
I didn’t go anywhere near either of them. There were paper timetables in the information office, so I took a few of those, as well as a list of local hotels and B&Bs, and wandered casually away, feeling my spine twitch under the pressure of the goon’s imagined gaze, although he was nowhere near me.
It was half past four now and getting colder. It would be twilight within the hour, and dark glasses would become attention-grabbing, so I’d have to stay out of sight as best I could. I knew that logically they couldn’t watch every hotel in town, but the way my luck was running, I’d probably walk into the place they were staying. And wouldn’t a student booking a business hotel room be too noticeable? Or I could go OL again…but I had another idea.
I made my way back to the shopping mall and scrutinised the bus timetable in the toilets, where I was spending more time than I liked. What I needed was for the provincial bus services to be lousy. The odds were against me—this was Japan, after all—but I finally found a destination to which the last bus departed at quarter to seven. Risky, but not impossible.
It was miserable waiting. I wandered around the mall, and lurked in the bathrooms, and thought of poor Yoshi, and poor Noriko, and the guilt choked me. I had brought this on them both, and it did no good to say that it wasn’t my fault, because if they hadn’t known me, this wouldn’t have happened to them.
If I had told Noriko not to go back home last night—it was so obvious they’d have gone to my address, why hadn’t I thought of it? If I hadn’t reassured her—why, Christ, why had I said that, why? To make her feel better?
I dug my sharp nails into my palms, wanting the pain. If I had just thought about her instead of myself for a few seconds. If she hadn’t given me her luck. She’d had that charm since she was a little girl; she’d misplaced it (as she did everything) a couple of times, and had been reduced to tears by its loss, and I’d helped her turn the flat upside down searching for it because of her panicked distress. But she’d given it to me when I was in trouble, and I had taken it without a thought.
If I hadn’t taken away her luck…
No. If I had refused to interpret for Kelly. If Yukie had let Kelly use those electric tongs in the bath. If Noriko had never persuaded me into hostess work—no, not that either. If my father had gone to Russia or America instead of Hong Kong and never conceived me in the first place.
Yakubyo-gami , I thought. Bringer of evil. Jinx.
I stewed in misery and self-pity for long enough that when I started to call minshuku , small B&B places, my voice was convincingly young and tearful.
“Excuse me, but do you have a room for the night? Is it expensive?”
The first two minshuku were full, or said they were, and my heart sank, but I lucked out on the third try—an old lady’s voice. She had a room, she said dubiously, but it was too late for her to prepare a meal for me—
Oh, no, that’s no problem. You see, I have missed the last bus back to (wherever it was, some nowheresville that I forgot the name of as soon as I’d said it), and I just need a bed for the night, I was very foolish, no, please don’t go to any trouble, I will eat some noodles before I come to you, oh, well, if you insist, thank you so much.
I had stopped off at a pharmacy earlier, so now I took out my plasters and cotton wool pads and rigged up step two: an eye bandage. Cotton wool over my left eye, secured with strips of neat sticking plaster. It was probably too dark now for people to notice, but if they did, I hoped all they would see was the dressing.
And there was no way in hell the yakuza could have marked every tiny B&B.
I walked to the minshuku I’d booked and put my dark glasses on when I got there. The obāsan who ran it
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