***
It was more awkward than I had thought. My own feelings about visiting the site of my wife's death hung heavy above me, like rain clouds waiting to burst. Naomi stood silent outside the van, looking at nothing, her feet heavily planted on the ground, hands in her pockets. Kaz stood watch like a good soldier, slowly patrolling the street in the immediate area, his unblinking eyes never straying far from gates of Yasukuni shrine. Yuki stood close to me, her arm brushing mine. I took a step away, but she came with me like we were attached by magnets. No one spoke. Every time we met each other's eyes, we did our best to look away quickly. Dawn was doing its best to break over the eastern part of Tokyo, toward the bay, but dark purple shadows still lingered, clinging to every unlit surface around us. Both cars were off and the headlights doused. I wondered about the picnickers in Ueno Park, and hoped they hadn’t followed us here, slinking behind buildings as we drove. Yuki grabbed ahold of the back of my belt, her fingers shaking a bit, but she still walked with me.
I swallowed and swallowed, my throat suddenly filled with dust and chokingly thin air, like I had just stepped out of an airlock with a broken seal on my spacesuit. I did NOT want to be here. But as we approached the sidewalk with my messages and Airi's in bigger letters, I knew it had been the right choice. In much smaller letters, but still large enough to read in the encroaching dawn, there was a message from the arsonist. I recognized his handwriting, spray painting, whatever.
Let's burn down the rest of Tokyo together.
Great, he was a nut job. But either way, I had to meet him, so we got back in our vehicles, the others still looking at the ground or somewhere off in the distance. We followed the directions in the message to meet near the intersection of Roppongi station and the bakery, Almond. Yuki gave me a look that I couldn't decode and again I felt like air was bleeding out of my spacesuit, replacing itself with hard vacuum.