Chapter 2

CHAPTER ONE The Boy Who Left the Island For starters, I figured I’d ask around online. I opened Yahoo! Answers on my smartphone, glanced around—just in case—then typed in my question. I’m a guy in my first year of high school. I’m looking for a part-time job that pays well in Tokyo. Are there any places that will hire you even if you don’t have a student ID? Hmm, would that work? The Internet could be harsh, and I got the feeling I was going to get myself trolled hard. Still, a search could only get you so far, and I had no one else to ask. Just as I was about to hit the POST button, a shipboard announcement began. “Extremely heavy rain is predicted over the ocean. If you are out on deck, for your own safety, please go indoors. I repeat, extremely heavy rain is predicted…” “Yessss,” I muttered under my breath. Right now, I just might get the deck all to myself. I’d been getting sick of sitting in the second-class cabin, which was a literal pain in the butt, and I wanted to go out on deck before the other passengers came back and watch the rain start coming down. I stuck my smartphone into the pocket of my jeans, then headed for the stairs at a run. This Tokyo-bound ferry had five floors, and my cheap second-class ticket got me a spot in a room on the lowest level, where the noise of the engine was especially loud and everybody had to sleep sprawled together on the tatami flooring. Shooting a glance at the comfortable-looking first-class cabins out of the corner of my eye, I climbed up two floors’ worth of the interior stairwell, then exited into a corridor that ran around the ship’s outer wall. A crowd of people was just coming back in from the deck, or so I assumed. “Rain again, they said.” “Just when it finally cleared up…” “Summers are nuts lately. It’s always raining.” “Even out on the island, the typhoons were almost constant.” Everyone was complaining. Ducking my head and saying “Excuse me,” I made my way upstream through the crowd in the narrow corridor. When I climbed the last flight of stairs and poked my head out onto the deck terrace, a powerful wind hit me in the face. The wide deck was already deserted, shining in the sunlight. Right in the center, a white-painted pole stood like a signpost pointing at the sky. My anticipation building, I walked across the empty deck and looked up. Gray clouds were closing in, burying the blue. —Plish. A raindrop struck my forehead. “…Here it comes!” I yelled before I could stop myself. All at once, countless raindrops fell from the sky and into my eyes, and right after that, big drops crashed down with a thundering roar. The sunlit world from just a moment ago was rapidly colored over in the monochrome of an india ink painting. “Whooooa!” The rain drowned out my yell so thoroughly even I didn’t hear it. I was enjoying this more every second. My hair and clothes were getting heavy and sodden, and even my lungs were filling up with moisture. I broke into a run and jumped as hard as I could, as if the sky were a soccer ball and I was trying to head it into the net. I spread my arms and spun to create an eddy. I opened my mouth wide and drank the rain. As I ran around like a lunatic, I poured out my soul and shouted out all the words I had bottled up inside. They were all washed away by the rain, unseen and unheard. A hot mass welled up in my chest. Half a day after I’d stealthily slipped away from the island, I was finally experiencing a sense of genuine liberation. I looked up into the rain, panting. What was above my head wasn’t rain so much as a great mass of water. I couldn’t believe my eyes. A whole flood was plummeting from the sky, as if an enormous pool had been flipped upside down. It’s coiling—almost like a dragon, I thought, just as a violent impact threw me to the deck. It felt like I was right under a waterfall as the heavy deluge pummeled my back. The ferry groaned, rolling dramatically. Oh, crap! By the time the thought hit me, I was already sliding toward the water, and the angle of the deck was only getting sharper. I reached out, trying to grab something, but there was nothing to grab. I can’t; I’m gonna fall— Just then, someone caught my wrist, and I lurched to a stop. The ferry slowly began to right itself. “Th…” I came back to my senses. “Thank you…” It had been a close call, straight out of an action movie. I raised my eyes past my wrist to the one holding it and saw a man: tall, lanky, stubbly, and middle-aged. Smiling faintly, he let go of my hand. His shirt was bright red in the sunlight peeking out again. “That was some serious rain,” he muttered, apparently not caring much either way. It really had been astounding. I’d never seen such an incredible downpour before. Several rays of light were slanting in through the clouds now. I’d heard this tune before. It was classic, and I was pretty sure it was the background music for some old retro game. You controlled a penguin and tried to catch fish as you slid across the ice. Oh yeah, and sometimes seals would stick their heads up through holes in the ice to get in the penguin’s way. If you timed your jumps wrong, the penguin would stumble— “Y’know, this is pretty tasty stuff.” I raised my head. The middle-aged guy who sat across the table from me was cheerfully working his way through a set meal with chicken Nanban. He was wearing a tight-fitting flashy red shirt, and he had a thin face and narrow, drooping eyes with monolids. His untended stubble and casual curly hair marked him as an obvious free spirit, exactly as I’d envisioned a (slightly sketchy) Tokyo adult to be. The man was shoveling food into his big mouth, slurping pork miso soup, and picking up pieces of chicken with his disposable chopsticks. My eyes were drawn to the thick chunks of fried meat slathered in tartar sauce. “Kid, you seriously don’t want any?” “No. I’m not hungry,” I answered, forcing a smile, just as my stomach growled audibly. I turned red, but… “Oh yeah? I do feel kind of bad, letting you handle the bill,” the man said, even though the way he was stuffing his face with the chicken indicated otherwise. We were sitting across from each other in the ferry’s restaurant. The guy in the red shirt was eating a deluxe lunch, while I’d been concentrating on the restaurant’s background music in an attempt to take my mind off my empty stomach. I’d offered to buy him a meal as thanks for saving me, but this whole time I’d been thinking that picking the most expensive item on the menu (1,200 yen) had been uncalled for. Weren’t adults supposed to be a little more discreet in situations like this? I’d decided to allow myself a maximum of five hundred yen a day for food, and thanks to this, I was badly in the red on the very first day. But even as the thoughts ran through my head, I tried to respond politely. “No, no, no need to feel bad! You really saved my butt out there, and—” “Yeah, no kidding.” Red Shirt practically talked over me, pointing his chopsticks at me. “That really could have gotten nasty back there, kid… Oh.” Red Shirt stared into space, mulling something over with a rather complicated look on his face. Slowly, he broke into a broad grin. “Hey, come to think of it, that’s the first time I’ve ever saved somebody’s life!” “…Oh.” I had a bad feeling about this. “And did I see beer on the menu here, too?” “…Shall I go buy you one?” Giving up on everything, I got to my feet. The black-tailed gulls were all mewling at once, circling comfortably at a distance so close I might have touched them if I reached out. I watched them absently from the ferry’s corridor deck while I nibbled at the Calorie-Mate nutrition bar I was having for dinner, making it last. “I can’t believe I got an adult sponging off me…” Draft beer had been a jaw-dropping 980 yen. Give me a break already, I thought. That’s so overpriced it’s unreal. I’d left home only that day, and I’d already used up four days’ worth of my food budget on some old guy I didn’t even know. “Tokyo is terrifying,” I muttered, and I meant it. I stuffed the empty CalorieMate wrapper into my pocket and pulled out my smartphone, opened Yahoo! Answers again, and posted the question I’d entered earlier. I was going to need that part-time job, no matter what. C’mon, Best Answer. Plip. A raindrop landed on my phone’s screen. When I looked up, scattered rain was falling again. Beyond it was Tokyo, where the nighttime lights were beginning to come on. The Rainbow Bridge was colorfully illuminated and slowly coming closer, like the opening title of a game. In that moment, my frustration with the strange man and my money worries vanished without a trace. I was finally here. I shivered with excitement. I’d made it. Starting tonight, I was going to live in that city of light. I could hardly wait one more second for the life that awaited me there, and my heart was beating faster and faster. “—There you are, kid.” Suddenly, I heard an easygoing voice, and my elation wilted like a balloon losing air. When I looked back, Red Shirt had just stepped out into the corridor. Rolling his head lazily, he took in the city lights. “Almost there. Finally,” he said. “Hey, you’re from the island, right? Whatcha got goin’ on in Tokyo?” he asked, walking up next to me. I gulped, but I had an answer ready. “Uh, I’m visiting relatives.” “On a weekday? What about school?” “Oh! Um, uh, my school starts its summer vacation early…” “Oh yeah?” Why was he smirking? Red Shirt peered into my face rudely, as if he’d found an unusual insect, and I averted my eyes. “Well, look, if you run into trouble in the city…” He held a small piece of paper out to me. A business card. On reflex, I took it. “Get in touch. Anytime.” K&A Planning (Ltd.) CEO Keisuke Suga, it said. As I gazed at the line of characters, I silently answered, No way in hell. * * * Over the next few days, I don’t know how many times I whispered to myself that Tokyo was terrifying—people tsking at me, making me break out in a cold sweat and turn red with shame. The city was vast and complicated and perplexing and callous. I got lost at the train station; I took the wrong train; I bumped into people no matter where I walked; nobody answered when I asked for directions; other people accosted me as they tried to recruit me for I don’t even know what; I was too scared to go into shops that weren’t convenience stores; I was shocked to see a grade-schooler in a school uniform transferring trains all alone. And every time I remembered how overwhelmed I was, I wanted to cry. I had a vague idea that Shinjuku was the center of Tokyo, so that was where I went to look for a job. When I finally got there, a guerilla rainstorm left me drenched. I worked up the courage to go into a manga café because I wanted to take a shower, but the clerk tsked at me and told me not to get the floor wet. Still, I decided to live out of that café to start with. I tried searching for part-time jobs on a PC in a cubicle that reeked of something rotting, but there weren’t any help wanted ads that said “No ID required.” Most of the answers on my Yahoo! post—my last resort—were things like “This is an insult to jobs” and “I think we have a runaway lol lol lol lol” and “That’s a violation of the Labor Standards Act. Die.” Among the jeers, I did find some actual information: “You don’t need ID to work as an errand boy in a sex shop.” So I desperately hunted up several of those and scheduled interviews, but when I actually went in, a relatively young but rough-looking guy just yelled at me—“Like hell! Why would we hire anybody without ID?! Whaddaya think we are around here, punk?”—and I ran back to the café, almost in tears. Actually, I was so scared that I did cry a little. And before I knew it, five days had gone by. This isn’t gonna work. I can’t get by like this. In my cramped cubicle at the manga café, I checked the notebook I was using as an account book. The cost to stay overnight at this place was two thousand yen a day, and what with travel and food expenses, I’d already used up more than twenty thousand since leaving the island. A week ago, my running-away fund of fifty thousand yen had seemed almost infinite to me; now I was furious with my past self for being so shortsighted. “Okay, only one way to handle this!” I said aloud, flipping the notebook shut. My back was against the wall. I began picking up my scattered belongings from around the cubicle and shoving them into my backpack. I was moving out of this manga café; I had to save money. Until I found part-time work, I wouldn’t spend the night indoors. It was summer, and sleeping outside for two or three nights should be doable. I hurried out of the café before my resolve weakened. Behind me, the TV on the café’s wall dispassionately warned, “The number of localized downpours has already surpassed last year’s historic high by a wide margin, and they are predicted to become even more frequent in July. When you go out, whether it’s to the mountains, the beach, or even just in urban areas, take sufficient care—” I needed a place where I could shelter from the rain and hopefully spend the night. There were summerhouses in parks and spaces under railroad overpasses, but other people had invariably gotten to them first. I’d been wandering the streets for more than two hours, wearing the heavy backpack, which had everything I owned in it, under my raincoat. It was after nine at night, and the comfortable department stores, bookstores, and CD shops where I could have hung out for a while were already closed. If I sat down by the wall at a train station or an electronics retail store, security guards immediately shooed me away. That left me with no options except finding a place to stay on the street, and there just didn’t seem to be anywhere available; on the other hand, going too far from the station made me uncomfortable, so in the end, I just kept going around and around the same area. As a result, this was the fourth time I’d passed through the gaudy lights of the gate to Kabuki-cho. I was getting seriously tired from all this walking, and my feet were numb. I was sweating, which made it muggy and super-gross under the raincoat. I was starving. “Excuse me.” Suddenly, someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned around to see a police officer standing there. “You were walking around here earlier, too, weren’t you?” “Huh…?” “What are you doing here at this hour? Are you in high school?” I turned pale. “Hey, wait!” I heard a yell behind me. My feet had broken into a run before I could think. I sprinted through the crowd, without looking back. Every time I bumped into somebody, they swore at me. “That hurt, dammit!” “Go to hell!” “Stop it right there! Damn kid!” I ran past the side of a huge movie theater, heading for a place with fewer streetlights almost on instinct. Gradually, the voices faded into the distance. Clink. The faint sound of an empty can rolling along the ground reached me where I sat huddled up, and I lifted my head to see a pair of round green eyes shining in the gloom. They belonged to a kitten, a skinny one with shabby-looking fur. We were in a spot a good ways back from the main street, by a string of connected buildings with low eaves. Several eateries stood in a row, their lights extinguished. There were no doors on their entryways, and I was sitting inside one of the cramped entrances. At some point, I’d drifted off to sleep. “C’mere, kitty,” I whispered, and it responded with a scratchy mew. It felt like my first decent conversation with somebody in ages, and that alone was enough to make the inside of my nose prickle. I took my last CalorieMate out of my pocket, broke it in two, and held one half out to my new friend. The kitten stuck its nose forward, sniffing at it. When I put the food on the ground, the little cat looked at me steadily for a moment, almost as if it was saying thank you, then started to wolf it down. It was pitch-black, like a cutout of night itself, except for the white around its feet and nose, which reminded me of socks and a mask. As I gazed at the kitten, I put the rest of the CalorieMate in my mouth and slowly chewed. “…Tokyo is terrifying.” The kitten was focused on its meal and didn’t answer. “I don’t want to go home, though… No matter what.” I buried my face in my knees again. I could hear the tiny sounds of the kitten eating, the pattern of the rain hitting the asphalt, and a distant ambulance siren, all mingled together. The pain in my feet from all the walking I’d done finally melted sweetly away, and I dozed off again. “Eek! Somebody’s there!” “Huh, for real? Whoa, you’re right!” “Agh, what’s with this kid? I think he’s asleep!” …A dream? No, it’s not; somebody’s right in front of me— “Hey, you!” A deep voice sounded over my head, and my eyes snapped open. A blond man in a suit with a pierced ear was glaring coldly down at me. The entrance was now brightly lit, and the man was accompanied by two girls in clothes that revealed most of their backs and shoulders. The kitten was gone. “You got business here?” “E-excuse me!” I leaped to my feet and ducked my head. Just as I passed by him, I lost my balance. He’d kicked my ankle with his toes. I made an impulsive grab at the trash can by the vending machine and ended up taking it down to the wet asphalt with me. The lid came off, sending empty cans clattering all over the road. “Hey, are you okay?!” one of the women asked, but the blond man with the earring put an arm around her shoulders. “Forget him. As I was saying, you’ll make a killing working at our place. Come in and let me explain, all right?” With that, the blond ushered the two girls into the building and disappeared after them. He didn’t even glance at me. “The hell? Outta the way, kid!” Openly clicking their tongues in irritation, a couple walked past me where I sat in the street, kicking empty cans aside. “I’m sorry…!” Hastily, I put the trash bin back in place, then crawled around on the wet ground, desperately picking up the scattered contents. The garbage was more than just cans; there were empty bento boxes and food waste in there, too. The passersby weren’t shy about letting me know I was in their way. I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible, but I had to clean up before I could, and I grabbed frantically at limp, soggy fried chicken and half-eaten rice balls with my bare hands. Tears welled in my eyes and ran down my face alongside the raindrops. There was a distinctly heavy paper bag in among the garbage. It was about the size of a hardcover book, and it had packing tape wound around and around it. Ka-tunk. As I was peeling off the fabric packing tape, the wet paper bag ripped, and its contents fell to the floor of the restaurant. After the heavy metallic clunk, I hastily reached down toward my feet. “Huh?!” The thing looked like a gun. Flustered, I grabbed it and shoved it into my backpack. The ominous chill of the metal lingered on my hand as I scanned the area. I was in a late-night McDonald’s, sandwiched between a private railway station and a pachinko parlor. This place was familiar; it was close to the manga café where I’d been staying, and I’d already been there several times. The trains had stopped running for the night, and there weren’t many people in the restaurant. Most of them were silently focused on their smartphones, and the only ones talking were a pair of women. “I just keep falling for him harder and harder, but I’m the only one… He mostly ignores my messages…” The women’s conversation came to me in very serious whispers. Nobody was looking my way. I exhaled in relief. “It’s gotta be a toy,” I said aloud, trying to convince myself. After I’d cleaned up the empty cans, I’d washed my hands thoroughly in a public restroom, then remembered this place and came here. They probably wouldn’t let me stay until morning on one order of potage, but I wanted to be somewhere that felt safe until I’d recovered enough to walk around outside, at least. Pulling myself together, I sat back down in my chair. I rummaged through the pocket of my jeans, then set a crumpled slip of paper on the table. K&A Planning (Ltd.) CEO Keisuke Suga The business card I’d gotten from Red Shirt on the ferry had an address written on it in tiny letters. Tokyo, Shinjuku Ward, Yamabuki-cho. Shinjuku Ward? I punched the address into Google Maps. It was twenty-one minutes from here by city bus. Closer than I’d expected. Wrapping my hands around the paper cup of soup, I slowly sipped the last mouthful. Outside the window was a bright, enormous outdoor TV, blurred by the rain. The bustle of Kabuki-cho came to me faintly through the window glass, like sound leaking from headphones. If I go to this address…, I thought. What are the possibilities? CEO means “company president,” doesn’t it? Would he point me toward a job? But if he’s the kinda guy who’d sponge a meal off a high schooler, his company probably isn’t on the up and up. And— Hang on. If he’s got his own company, he probably has enough money to get by. And he made me pay 2,180 yen for his food! It was too late to get mad over this, but I did anyway. So I’d been picking up the tab for a company president? The set meal had been a thank-you, so that was unavoidable, but wasn’t the 980-yen beer a little much? Shouldn’t I explain the situation and get him to pay me back for that, at least? It wouldn’t be the classiest thing I’d ever done, but sometimes you have to sacrifice a little to keep from losing a lot. Once he knew about the mess I was in, even a cheapskate like him might be surprisingly quick to give my money back. But… I slumped over the table. That would be really pathetic. Besides, he actually had saved me, and I’d offered to pay for that beer myself. Had I come all the way to Tokyo just to be selfish and petty? I had no money or goal and nowhere to stay, and my stomach was so empty it hurt. What in the world was I doing here? What had I expected to find in the city? I remembered that day. I was pedaling as hard as I could, trying to cancel out the pain from where he had hit me. It had been raining on the island then, too. Thick rain clouds were rolling across the sky, but several rays of light had lanced down through gaps in the cloud cover. I was chasing that light. I wanted to catch it, to get inside it, and I biked down the coastal road for all I was worth. For just a moment, I thought I had it! …But I was at the edge of a seaside cliff, and the sunlight flowed away, far out to sea. Someday, I’ll go into that light, I decided back then. A faint wind blew across me, gently ruffling my hair. It wasn’t from the restaurant air conditioner. It was a real wind, the sort that carried the scent of grass from a distant sky… But inside? I lifted my head from the table. A Big Mac box was sitting right in front of me. Startled, I looked over my shoulder. A girl was standing there, dressed in a McDonald’s uniform: a deep-blue shirt, a black apron, and a gray newsboy cap on her delicate pair of ponytails. I figured we were probably about the same age. She had big eyes with large pupils, and she seemed mad about something as she looked down at me. “Um, I didn’t…,” I protested, meaning I didn’t order this. “That’s for you. Don’t tell,” she said, her voice as delicate as the scent of a small flower. “Huh? But why…?” “You’ve had that for dinner three days in a row,” she said pointedly, with a glance at my soup, then trotted away. “Uh, wait…,” I began, but the way she spun around was like a gentle hand over my mouth. The tight line of her lips suddenly softened, and she gave a brief chuckle. The colors around me brightened, as though the sun had broken through the clouds—or that was what it felt like to me anyway. Without a word, the girl turned her back again and ran quickly down the stairs. “…” I think I sat there, dazed, for a full ten seconds before I came to myself with a jolt. The Big Mac box sat on the table like a special present. Lifting the lid, I was greeted by the savory aroma of meat and the soft swell of a thick bun. When I picked it up, it was heavy. Glistening cheese and lettuce peeked out from between the beef patties. In all the sixteen years I’d been alive, that was, without a doubt, the most delicious dinner I’d ever had. * * * “Shoot, we’re almost at the bus stop! Listen, when can we hang out again?” “Let’s see. What about the day after tomorrow? I have practice, but I’ll be free in the afternoon.” “Yay! I found a café with good reviews on Tabelog I’d like to go to. Maybe I’ll make reservations!” It was afternoon, and I’d been listening to that sickeningly sweet conversation on the bus for a while. The voices were coming from the back seat. I’d been staring out the window; I felt a little awkward about looking back at them. As I watched the water droplets flowing backward in complicated patterns, I was oddly impressed: So couples actually do have conversations like that. I’d never truly understood the demand for foodie apps before, but apparently Tabelog really was a thing for city dwellers. I didn’t know you could make reservations at cafés, either… My eyes went to my smartphone. My blue dot was slowly getting closer to the red flag icon at my destination. In ten minutes, I’d be there. I was getting a little nervous. Ding-dooong. An electronic chime sounded, and the monitor beside the driver’s seat displayed the words Stop Requested. “Okay, Nagi, see you later!” someone chirped. When I saw the short-haired girl who was getting off the bus, I did a double-take—she was wearing a school backpack that had Traffic Safety written on it. She was still in grade school. What, seriously? Tokyo is full of surprises. Grade-schoolers read Tabelog? “Ooh, lucky me!” A long-haired girl, also in elementary school, boarded the bus and took the first girl’s place. “I thought I might get to see you, Nagi!” she said, running happily toward the back seat. My eyes followed her involuntarily. “What the—?!” The kid sitting on that back seat with his legs crossed (in shorts) couldn’t have been more than ten or so. “Hi, Kana,” he said, giving the girl an elegant wave. He took her backpack with a smile, like a gentleman escorting a lady. He had a silky short bob, sharp eyes, and childlike but symmetrical features; he seemed rather princely. Did this kid have a girlfriend for every bus stop? The bus set off again, and I tore my eyes away from them. Behind me, I could hear them flirting. “Hmm? Kana, did you curl your hair?” “Oh, you can tell? Yes, just a little. Nobody else noticed it today, but of course you would, Nagi! So? What do you think? Does it look good?” “Yeah! It’s looks great—kinda grown-up, like a middle schooler.” The girl gave a little chuckle. It was embarrassing just hearing how happy she was, and I started to feel excruciatingly awkward. This kid was in grade school, but he probably had multiple girlfriends, and on top of that, those girls were making reservations at Tabelog cafés. The guys who get all the girls start so young. Is this what they call cultural capital? “Tokyo is seriously something else,” I muttered as I got off the bus at my stop. I opened my umbrella and, squinting at Google Maps, made my way through a blue-collar shopping district. When I turned right, as Google instructed, the atmosphere of the street abruptly changed. Several small printing companies sat in a row on the hill road, and the faint smell of ink mingled with the rain. “…This is the place, right?” The address on the business card turned out to belong to a small, run-down building that looked like a shop. A patently old-fashioned awning sign jutted out from the front; the word SNACK was written on it in letters that had all but disappeared, indicating this was one of those low-key hostess bars. I checked the address on the card against Google Maps one more time. This was it. When I took a closer look at the awning, I realized the name of the shop was covered by packing tape in several places. The fabric of the awning, the letters, and the packing tape were all equally worn out, so I hadn’t noticed on that first casual once-over, but this place wasn’t a snack bar anymore. A rusty plate that said K&A PLANNING (LTD.) was secured to a fence by the road’s shoulder, and beside the company name, there was an arrow pointing down. I realized the building had a semibasement, where a narrow set of concrete stairs led down to a door. Apparently, this place actually was a company, but I hesitated, unsure what to do. The building was as sketchy as they come, and it really didn’t look like there was any money around here. “CEO,” my butt. Even so, I didn’t have anywhere else to try. I steeled myself, folded my umbrella, and started down the narrow stairs. They weren’t even three feet wide. Click. I was sure I’d pressed the doorbell, but I couldn’t hear anything. I put my ear against the door, then tried the doorbell again. Silence. Was it broken? I knocked. No response. Just to see, I tried the doorknob, and the door swung open easily. “Excuse me! I’m Morishima; I called you earlier!” I peeked in. When I’d called the number on the business card a few hours ago, Red Shirt himself had told me he’d be waiting, and to come on over. Nervously, I stepped inside. There was a small bar counter just inside the door, but it was surrounded by jumbled piles of books and papers and cardboard boxes, while the floor was strewn with sake bottles and take-out flyers and clothes. It was impossible to tell whether the place was a shop or a home or an office. It was as if the room itself were saying, Meh, it’s not like it really matters. “Mr. Suga, are you here?” I took a few more steps and spotted a sofa beyond a bead curtain near the back of the room. There was a lump on it, curled up in a blanket. “Mr. Suga?” Long, white, bare legs hung off the end of the sofa. As I got closer, I saw toenails painted a shiny sky blue, feet in chunky high-heeled sandals, and a face that belonged to a young woman. Her long, smooth hair hung over it like a veil, and I could hear her breathing softly, sound asleep. “Mr.…Suga…?” I already knew she wasn’t who I was looking for, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Her denim shorts were very, very short. I could see her eyelashes through her hair, and they were so incredibly long, she could have stepped out of a manga. She was wearing a purple camisole, and her bust rose and fell gently with each breath. Slowly, I crouched down until her chest was at eye level. “…Nah, that’s not okay. Not for anybody.” Coming to my senses, I looked away— “Oh, g’morning.” —just as someone suddenly spoke to me. “Waaaaugh!” I yelled, straightening up involuntarily. The woman’s eyes had blinked open. “Uh, um, sorry, I’m—!” “Yeah, I heard from Kei,” the woman replied nonchalantly, sitting up. “He said a new assistant was on his way over.” “Huh? No, I haven’t—” “I’m Natsumi; nice to meet you. Aaaah, finally, I won’t get stuck with the odd jobs anymore!” The woman stretched comfortably. Looking at her again, I realized she was gorgeous. She was pale and slim and smooth and sharp and trim and stunning, like somebody from TV or a movie. “Sooo…” The woman who’d introduced herself as Natsumi had her back to me as she spoke. Behind the bar counter, there was a living room almost 180 square feet in area that was apparently serving as the company’s office. I sat on a chair, staring at Natsumi’s shoulder blades as she fixed us drinks in the small kitchen. “Yes?” “I wanna ask…” “Uh-huh.” “You were looking at my chest back there, weren’t you?” “No I wasn’t!” My voice cracked. Cheerfully humming a little tune, Natsumi set an iced coffee in front of me. “What’s your name, kid?” She sat down across from me. Her voice was light and musical. “Hodaka Morishima.” “Hodaka?” “Um, it’s written with the characters for sail, like on a ship, and high…” “Oh yeah? Wow, that’s a terrific name.” My heart skipped a beat. That might have been the first time in my life that anybody had called me terrific. “Do you work in the office here, Ms. Natsumi?” “Oh, are you asking about my relationship with Kei?” I remembered that Mr. Suga’s first name was Keisuke. “Um, yes.” “Ha-ha! You’re hilarious!” Huh? Had I said something weird? After Natsumi laughed for a while, her eyes suddenly squinched up in a smile. She peered at me from the shadows beneath her eyelashes. “It’s exactly what you think it is,” Natsumi said in a husky, sexy voice, sticking her pinky straight up. “Huh?!” I stared at her, stunned. …For real? I accidentally let bitter iced coffee dribble out of the corner of my mouth. I’d never seen a mistress before… Just then, we heard the door open. “Hey, you’re here,” said a laid-back voice. I turned around to see Red Shirt—Mr. Suga—padding over to us, a plastic shopping bag dangling from one hand. “It’s been a while, kid… Hmm? Did you lose some weight?” He tossed a can to me. I caught it and realized it was beer. For a moment, I was confused, wondering why the heck he gave this to me, and Natsumi promptly plucked it out of my hand. “Uh, excuse me? Have you been playing pachinko?” Natsumi asked, popping open the pull tab in near-perfect unison with Mr. Suga, and the two of them started chugging down the contents as if this was normal for them. What’s going on? You’re telling me these people start drinking at lunchtime? Mr. Suga dropped down heavily onto the low sofa beside the table. “So, kid, you’re looking for a job, right?” He seemed awfully happy. Pulling a magazine out of the pile below the sofa, he held it up for me to see. “This is what the company’s working on right now: a commission to write articles for a magazine with a long and influential history!” The cover of the magazine, which had Mu written on it, held an illustration of a pyramid, a planet, and an enormous, eerie eye. I flipped through the pages, as he clearly wanted me to do: “Contact Finally Made! A Resident of the Year 2062,” “All-Out Special Feature: Guerilla Rainstorms Caused by Weather Weapon!,” “State Secrets Obtained: Tokyo Protected by Hoard of Human Sacrifices.” They were all like this and full of attitude: We’re discussing online joke articles, but we’re taking them about fifty times more seriously. Got a problem with that? “The next job is about urban legends.” Mr. Suga seemed to be smiling faintly. “Meet with some people, interview them about what they saw or went through, then turn it into an article. Boom, done.” “Huh…” “Easy enough, right?” “Um… Huh? Wait, you mean I’m doing this?!” “Topic-wise, anything goes. Like people getting spirited away or prophecies or shadowy human-trafficking rings. You kids are into that stuff, right?” With that, Mr. Suga took out his smartphone. There was a long list of articles on it: “Fish from the Sky,” “The Tokugawa Clan and Virtual Currency,” “Trump Is an AI,” “CD Found on Surface of Mars,” “Activate Chakras with Smartphones,” “Elevator to the Hidden World,” et cetera, et cetera… “What about this one? It’s close to home,” he said, pointing to an item on the list. “The fabled ‘one hundred percent sunshine girl.’ According to the Internet, anyway.” “S-sunshine girl?” “I’m a sunshine girl!” Natsumi raised her hand cheerfully. Mr. Suga ignored her. “It’s been raining all the time lately. On TV, they were saying we’ve got a new record for the number of rainy days in a row. I’m guessing the demand is probably there, yeah?” “Uh…” I wasn’t sure how to respond. “What’s with you? Not much of a go-getter, are you?” Mr. Suga said with mild dismay. “It just so happens that we’ve scheduled an interview for this afternoon, so this is perfect,” Natsumi said. “Go get that story.” “Huh? Me? Right now?!” Natsumi clapped her hands. “It’s like test-driving the job before you join up!” she said excitedly. “You mean he’s an intern,” Mr. Suga corrected. “Sounds like fun, don’t you think?! I’ll come with!” “No, please, wait just a minute; this is totally out of the blue, and I really can’t—” * * * “Of course sun women exist.” The subject we were interviewing was so clear about it that the alternative almost didn’t seem possible. “I knew it!” Natsumi leaned forward, her voice bubbling with excitement. The petite woman who sat in front of us had bobbed hair, and it was hard to tell whether she was young or old. The fairly large, colorful accessories she wore from head to toe made her look like some unusual type of animal. “Rain women exist as well. Sun women are possessed by nature spirits aligned with the god Inari, while rain women are possessed by spirits aligned with the dragon god.” “Um…what?” And now I had no idea what we were talking about. Next to me, I could sense Natsumi’s growing enthusiasm. The subject of our interview— Well, this was a fortune-teller’s shop in a mixed-use building, so I think she was the fortune-teller who worked there and not one of these “sun women” herself. Anyway, she went on, as smoothly as if she were reading from an invisible piece of paper. “Those aligned with the dragon god are distinguished, first and foremost, by drinking beverages in large quantities. They unconsciously try to find water, you see. Typical behavior for a dragon.” Beverages? “Dragon-god types are strong-willed and excel in competition, but they tend to be careless and perfunctory about their responsibilities.” Now we were talking about personalities? This was really straying from the intent of the interview, I felt, and I was about to interrupt, when— “Hmm? Kinda sounds like me…” Natsumi murmured gravely, and I glanced over at her. “Inari types are diligent and readily succeed in business, but they are also rather timid and poorly suited to leadership positions. For some reason, many of them are extremely attractive, both men and women.” “Now, that’s me!” She sounded like a child whose question had received a satisfactory answer. “Because the weather is currently out of balance, it is easier for sun and rain women to be born now. The homeostasis of Gaia, so to speak.” “I see!” “But they must beware…!” Suddenly, the fortune-teller lowered her voice, leaned forward, and looked at each of us in turn. “The act of influencing nature inevitably carries a heavy price. Do you know what it is, young lady?” “No,” Natsumi said, gulping. The fortune-teller’s voice dropped even lower. “They say if you overuse weather-type abilities, you’ll be spirited away and become one with Gaia! That is why debt, personal bankruptcy, and disappearances are unusually common among sun and rain women!” “Wow…” Natsumi’s eyebrows came together. “I’ll be careful!” As we were leaving, Natsumi bought something from the fortune-teller for a lifelong boost to her financial luck. “—So? How was it?” Instead of sighing, I took out my earphones and looked up from the screen of the MacBook. Mr. Suga was standing over me, backlit by the office’s fluorescent lights. “…This fortune-teller, who sounded like a Vocaloid, went on and on about a bunch of stuff straight out of a light novel. Something about people disappearing if they use too much power.” I’d been in the middle of typing up a manuscript for the fortune-teller’s story based on my notes and the recording I’d made. “So it really was one of those, huh?” Mr. Suga was grinning. What, he knew all along? I thought with some frustration. “The weather’s got nothing to do with dragon-god types and Inari types and Gaia and personalities and good-looking people, does it? It’s just nature doing its thing; fronts and pressure changes and whatever. Sun women and rain women are just patterns people see where they want to see them, right? They can’t actually exist, no way!” I’d googled plenty of sound arguments online. “All right, look,” Mr. Suga said, suddenly bristling. “We know all that; we’re providing fun. The readers know, too. Don’t act like entertaining the masses is beneath you.” I swallowed what I’d been about to say. Mr. Suga peered at the screen of the MacBook, reading the draft I was working on. Is that what this is? I was actually a little impressed. “We know all that. Don’t act like entertaining the masses is beneath you.” “This all you’ve got? Damn, taking your sweet time.” Mr. Suga lifted his head, and I reflexively ducked mine in apology. “I’m sorry.” “…Your copy’s not bad, though.” The muttered compliment was like a piece of candy, and I was the little kid excited to get it. I’d enjoyed writing fiction ever since middle school (although I’d never told anybody, and I hadn’t actually completed a single novel yet), and I liked to think I was pretty good at it. That said—when I was with this guy, my feelings went up and down like a rollercoaster. “Okay, kid, you’re hired!” “Huh… What?! Wait just a minute, I never said I’d do it—” I hadn’t heard anything about hiring requirements, wages, or even exactly what I’d be doing yet. True, I was looking for a job, but this shady place wasn’t— “You can live here at the office.” “Huh?” “Meals included.” “…I-I’ll do it! Please let me do it!” I leaned forward involuntarily. It was like finding a grab bag stuffed exclusively with things I wanted, and I suddenly didn’t want to give it to anybody else. Mr. Suga happily thumped me on the back. “Oh yeah? Good to hear! So, what was your name again?” “Huh?” My enthusiasm cooled down fast. Whoa, hang on, you’re hiring a guy when you don’t even remember his name? “Ha, you’re hilarious, Kei!” Natsumi glanced at us from the kitchen with a laugh. “It’s Hodaka,” she said, bringing food over. “Oh, I’ll help!” I said. There was a heaping platter of fried chicken, accompanied by a generous amount of slivered green-onion tips and grated daikon. A salad with tomato and avocado and onions. Hand-rolled sushi with beef and celery and tuna sticking out of it. And then I was starving. “Here,” Mr. Suga said, handing me another beer, and by then I knew not to say anything and just switch it for a can of cola. “Okay, in celebration of our new hire, Hodaka—!” Mr. Suga and Natsumi popped their pull tabs in unison, and I hastily opened my cola. “Cheers!” Clink, clink, clink. The three cans connected with one another. As I chewed my fried chicken, I realized it had been a pretty long time since I’d eaten dinner with anybody else, even though I wanted to roll my eyes at how pushy they were. Between that and how tasty the chicken was, I teared up a little. Mr. Suga and Natsumi both chugged beer after beer with incredible gusto, and of course, it wasn’t long before they were smashed. They were having a great time swapping online gossip and griping about their editors and making me tell them about my own life. It was a strange sensation, like having someone constantly tickling a part of me that wasn’t ticklish—like a gentle hand scratching the back of my head, for example. It wasn’t unpleasant at all. I had a strange feeling that for the rest of my life, even in the distant future when I was old enough to have grandkids, the memory of this rainy night would come back to me when I least expected it. That was how my new days in Tokyo began.