After a bit of horseplay—ruffling each other’s hair and such—we returned to our earlier discussion of James and Edward. Where would they live? Did they get along? Who else did they know, and what did they get up to with their time? In our half-asleep state, the human drama we constructed was built half on dreams and half on jokes. James and Edward lived in Japan. They were part of the yakuza, in fact. The Ya’aburnee brothers had a running argument over whether sushi was better with or without wasabi, but always made up again in good time. The two were inseparable.
As gangsters, they eschewed all illicit activities. Theirs was an honorable gang, one that always extended a helping hand to those in need. No tattoos for them, either. (We found them a tad frightening for our tastes.) Members of the yakuza could pledge their loyalty to one another and become sworn brothers, but James and Edward had no need for that. They were real brothers.
At some point, we dozed off for a time. I woke with a start. Jeffrey didn’t look tired at all. His eyes were fixed on some point off in the distance, and I could not read the look in them. Some point over my head held his attention.
“So how does the rest of the story go, Ricky?” he asked.
“Er?”
“What happens to Edward and James in the end? How do they turn out?”
My head was still in a fog, and Jeffrey’s question puzzled me. Why ask something so self-evident?
I didn’t have to think to respond, “They stay best friends for as long as they live.”
“Huh. Do they?”
Jeffrey rose, then, and bade me a good night. He gave me a pillow and tucked me in before he climbed into the neighboring bed to get some rest. However, when I gave him a pleading look, he picked up his pillow and climbed right back into bed with me. We felt asleep together pressed close like two baby birds in a nest. We dreamed of the future.
I was still quite bleary-eyed the following morning, when Jeffrey walked me back to school, chatted up the teachers to ensure I didn’t get into trouble for staying out late, waved, and returned to his own stone-faced bodyguards.
Before long, rumor spread like wildfire among the more idle of my classmates that the second son of a British earl, one of the top students in an elite public school, had stopped by this very academy to visit his sibling. For a time, it was the talk of the school. But, like a misty mirage above a summer lake, the rumor petered out and vanished before autumn.
“Let us decide on a name for you.”
“Sorry, what?”
“I can hardly call you Seigi in front of our adversaries. However, should we choose something completely different, you may struggle to respond in a timely fashion when addressed. It would be safest to pick something simple and close to your real name.”
“Okay. Um, Seigi, Seigi, Seigi…Seiji?”
“Too close. It may be misheard as Seigi. Think up a last name, and I shall refer to you as such.”
As we geared up to raid the scam jewelry store, Richard made the odd suggestion that I choose a fake name for myself. Fair enough—slipping up and saying my real name was potentially dangerous. It was time to put my nonexistent thinking cap on. A simple name that sounded close to my real name…but not too close. Hmm.
“Nakata, Nakata, Nakata…Yamada? Maybe? Or I could do Tanaka. Hmm, which one’s better? Yamada or Tanaka?”
“Yamada will suffice. A pleasure to meet you, Seiji Yamada. You may call me Edward Baxter.”
“…How on Earth did you get that from Richard?”
“A pleasure, Mr. Yamada.”
“Right, uh, pleasure’s all mine!”
Decked out in a red open-necked shirt that would have looked less out of place at a costume contest, I slid into the Jaguar’s passenger seat. As weird as I looked, I had no hope of winning that metaphorical contest—not with the way the man next to me was dressed. White, white, white—he wore nothing but white from head to toe. He’d even slicked back his hair. He looked spiffy, but a gangster kind of spiffy.
“…Just so we’re on the same page, what does Edward Baxter do for a living?”
“Works miracles, tells fortunes, reads fates in stones, and delivers messages from the cosmos.”
“Ooh. Okay. I’ll try not to laugh.”
“I should hope you wouldn’t. It is quite rude to laugh at an emissary of the universe.”
That got a laugh out of me anyway.
The Jaguar purred to life and cruised down the road like this was any other errand. If the car had a mouth, this was the part where it would have raised a timid question—wasn’t there something, well, off about its driver? But the Jaguar was an untalkative and loyal beast.
My anxiety began to creep up the more we drove. I wanted to break the silence, but Richard looked too stern. Bringing up some random anecdote about tea or desserts would’ve been awkward at a time like this, but I wanted to say something. The question was, what? Only one thing seemed appropriate.
“Hey, so… Does Master Baxter have any family? I guess not, if he’s too busy taking messages from the universe. Sorry for asking. You probably didn’t plan that far ahead.”
But…
An odd look flickered across Richard’s face, which was usually a mask of calm. It was intense—something I couldn’t describe as anything but a warped grin. He didn’t look at me as he smiled, though. His eyes were caught on something far off in the distance.
Then, he said, “Mr. Baxter has no surviving relatives.”
“Got it.”
With that, the two of us carried on our way to the shady jewelry store.
I caught the sole remaining member of the Baxter family’s eye in the rearview mirror. He looked sad, almost. But Seiji Yamada was too conscientious to comment, and thus pretended not to have noticed that moment of weakness in this cosmic messenger.
Seigi Nakata, though? I don’t know if he had it in him to ignore it.