Going up to the third floor, he stood at the door to Playground. He had told Kunimatsu to keep the sign unlit so as not to attract the cops' attention, but once you opened the door, there was no hiding the noise and excitement of a casino that came pouring out. Satake slipped inside and surveyed his club. In about seventy square metres, he had managed to arrange two small baccarat tables that could accommodate seven customers and one full-sized table where fourteen could play for higher stakes. At the moment, there were crowds around all three. In attendance were three black-suited men, Kunimatsu among them, and three girls in bunny costumes to serve drinks and snacks, all circulating briskly through the room.
The dealer at one of the smaller tables noticed him come in and nodded, though his hands never stopped stacking the chips that lay in front of him. Satake nodded back. He was familiar with this type of disciplined, skilled young man from his mahjong days. All in all, he found the whole club exactly to his liking.
Baccarat was a simple game. The customers bet on either the player or the banker to win the hand, and the dealer took a fivepercent commission from the banker's winnings as the house cut. That was all there was to it. The mark of a good dealer was his ability to get the customers to compete against each other, but the game was such that most people got caught up in it without much coaxing.
The player and the banker were each dealt two cards, as in blackjack, but the object in baccarat was to get cards adding up to, or as close as possible to, nine. The player or banker was allowed to draw a third card depending on the total of the original hand. If the player was dealt cards totalling eight or nine, that was considered a 'natural', and he either won or tied, and the banker wasn't allowed to take another card. If the player was dealt a six or seven, he would 'stand' and wait to see the banker's cards. Below five, he took a third card. Besides that, there were just a few simple rules relating to particular card totals.
The secret of the game's popularity was that anyone could learn to play almost immediately; and because of this, the place always seemed to be full of respectable-looking young businessmen or office girls on their way home from work. But Satake knew the truth about his customers. Though the atmosphere of the place was trendier than a traditional casino, Playground attracted a crowd of losers and scumbags. Still, he was more than happy to watch them throw their money away.
'There he is,' Kunimatsu whispered in his ear, pointing at a man seated next to one of the tables, sipping a drink and watching the other customers play. 'And he's already down about a hundred thousand for the night.' Satake moved to a corner of the room where he could observe Yamamoto without being noticed.
He seemed to be in his mid-thirties. Short-sleeved white shirt, nondescript tie, grey pants. A forgettable man with a forgettable face. You would never notice him in the endless crowds of other office workers. So then what was this nobody doing falling for Anna? She was still just twenty-three, the prettiest girl in Mika, which was full of pretty girls. But more than that, she was his number one - Yamamoto was way out of his league by any standards. Anna was right: just as there were rules in gambling, there were rules in this game as well; and it made Satake, who was himself so scrupulous, furious to see someone like Yamamoto ignoring them.
The game at Yamamoto's table was coming to an end. The cards in the tray would give out in another round or two. Trying to look decisive, Yamamoto took the few chips he had left and bet them all on the player's hand. Almost everyone else around the table immediately bet on the banker, anxious to avoid following Yamamoto's lead. The dealer, pretending not to notice the stampede to the banker's side, quickly dealt the cards. The player drew two face cards, or zero. Loser, Satake thought to himself. The banker's cards totalled three, so both sides had to take a third card. The player took the card dealt him and, in the customary fashion, curled up both edges before looking at it. Then he threw it down in disgust. Another face card. The banker flashed a smile of relief and showed a four. Zero to seven, bank wins, and the game was over.
'The card shark gets bitten,' Satake muttered, and Kunimatsu, who was standing close by, chuckled softly. A young woman dealer took over at the table, and several of the customers changed places as well, but Yamamoto, though he was now out of chips, sat where he was and sulked. A young woman dressed like a bar hostess who was waiting for the place at the table glanced over at Kunimatsu by way of protest. Satake signalled that he was ready to step in and walked up behind Yamamoto.
'Excuse me,' he said.
'Yeah?' A shock must have gone through Yamamoto as he turned to look: the hard body, the soft face, and the outfit that could only suggest one profession. He managed to keep it from showing on his face, but inside everything was probably numb.
'If you aren't going to play, would you mind letting this customer have your seat?' Satake said.
'Why should I?'
'Because people are waiting.' Satake's tone was still polite.
'Who says I can't sit here and watch?' He had apparently had a few too many free drinks, and was flicking the ash from his cigarette on to the table. Satake called an assistant manager and asked him to clean up the mess.
'I'm sorry, but I'd like to have a word with you. Please come this way.'
'You can tell me here,' Yamamoto muttered. The other customers at the table eyed him with distaste, and several of them, noticing Satake standing behind him, seemed scared and looked away.
'No, I think you'd better follow me.' Yamamoto made a show of being offended, but Satake managed to lead him to the door. When they reached the dimly lit corridor outside, he turned to face him. 'I've been told that you've asked to borrow money from the house, and I wanted to inform you that making loans to customers is against our policy. If you need funds to play with, please make arrangements elsewhere.'
'This is a business, isn't it?' Yamamoto said, beginning to look like a pouting child. 'People ask to borrow money all the time.'
'That's exactly why we don't do it,' said Satake. 'And another thing, I have to ask you to stop following Anna around. She's still young, and you've been frightening her.'
'Hold on. Who says you can tell me what to do when it comes to her?' Yamamoto looked indignant. 'I'm still a customer, aren't I? I've spent enough money on her, that's for sure.'
'And we appreciate it. But you should stop following her. It's not allowed to see the girls outside the club.'
'Who says?' he snorted. 'She's a hooker, isn't she?'
'She's way too good for the likes of you.' Satake was losing his temper. 'We asked you nicely to stay away, now fuck off!'
'Who the fuck d'you think you are?!' Yamamoto shouted, suddenly throwing a punch. Satake blocked it with his right arm and grabbed him by the collar. Planting a knee in his groin, he pinned him against the wall and held him immobile and gasping for air.
'Go home now, before you get hurt,' he hissed. Just then, a group of business types came up the stairs and, seeing the two of them at it, hurried inside Playground. This was exactly the kind of thing that started rumours that the mob was running the show, which was never good for business. He loosened his grip. Given an opening, Yamamoto threw a wild punch that caught him on the jaw. Satake swore, then jabbed his elbow into the man's stomach and, when he doubled over, kicked him down the stairs. As he watched him roll down and come to rest sitting on the landing, for a moment he felt the rush of adrenalin that fighting had once given him. But only for an instant, before his carefully cultivated self-control kicked in again. 'If you come back, I'll kill you, asshole,' he called down at him.
Yamamoto sat in a daze, wiping the blood from his mouth. Maybe he hadn't even heard the threat. A bunch of young women heading upstairs stopped short, screamed, and ran back down. Shit, thought Satake, not wanting women to get scared away as well.
It never occurred to him to wonder what else might happen to Yamamoto that night as he straightened his suit and went back inside.
5
Hate: that's what you call this feeling. The thought occ
urred to Yayoi Yamamoto as she looked at her naked, thirty-four-year-old body in the full-length mirror. Right near her solar plexus was a conspicuous dark-blue bruise. Her husband had punched her there last night, and with the blow a new feeling had risen inside her. No, that wasn't exactly true. The feeling had been there from before. She shook her head and the naked woman in the mirror shook hers as well. It had definitely been there before; it was just that she'd never been able to put a name to it. As soon as she'd realised that it was 'hatred', it had spread like a dark cloud and taken possession of her, so that now there was nothing else inside.
'He can't do that,' she said aloud, and as she did so, she burst out crying. The tears dribbled down her face, falling in the space between her small but well-formed breasts. When they reached the bruise, another surge of pain ran through her and she crouched down on the tatami. It was so sensitive that even liquid or a draft made it hurt, and no one, she felt, could ever make it better.
Perhaps sensing her movements, the children sleeping nearby in their tiny futons began to stir. Yayoi jumped up, wiped away the tears, and wrapped herself in a towel. She didn't want the kids to see the bruise, or the tears. But, realising that she had to bear this treatment alone, she felt so isolated that her tears started flowing again; and the worst thing of all was that the source of her pain was the one person she was closest to. She had no idea how she could get out of this hell, but at the moment she was fighting just to keep from crying like a baby.
The older child, a five-year-old boy, frowned in his sleep and turned over on his stomach, and then his three-year-old brother flipped over on his back. If she woke them up, she wouldn't be able to go to the factory, so she crept away from the mirror and out of the bedroom. Closing the sliding doors as quietly as she could, she turned out the light, hoping with all her heart that they would sleep until morning.
She quietly made her way to the living room and the tiny adjoining kitchen and hunted through the pile of laundry on the dining table for her underwear - panties and a plain, cheap bra they sold at the supermarket. She remembered how she'd had nothing but beautiful lace lingerie before she was married, because Kenji had liked it so much. She could never have imagined then that this was the future that was waiting for them: a loser obsessed with a woman he could never have, a wife who detested him, and an unbridgeable gulf separating them. They would never again be on the same side of the gulf, because she could never bring herself to forgive him.
He probably wouldn't be back again this evening by the time she had to go to work; and even when he did come home, she was nervous about leaving the children with someone so unreliable. The older boy in particular was unusually sensitive and easily hurt. Then, on top of everything else, three months ago Kenji had stopped bringing home his paycheck, and she had been forced to try to feed herself and the children on the little bit she earned at the factory. It was all too much, this sneaky husband who would slink home late at night and go to bed while she was at work, only to argue endlessly with her when she arrived back exhausted in the morning. All they ever did otherwise was exchange cutting, ice-cold looks. She was sick to death of the whole thing. Breathing a sigh, she crouched over to put on her panties, which made her double up with pain again from the bruise. As she cried out involuntarily and curled into a ball on the couch, the cat, Milk, perked up its ears and looked at her. It had spent last night under the couch, letting out long, plaintive howls.
The memory of that night made her skin crawl. Never before had she had cause to hate anyone, but the dirty cloud of emotions that engulfed her now contained not just anger, but real hatred. She'd been raised in a quiet provincial city as the only child of dull but well-meaning parents. After graduating from a junior college in Yamanashi Prefecture, she had gone to Tokyo to work as a sales assistant for a well-known tile company. As an attractive young woman, she had received a good deal of attention from the men at the company, and in retrospect that had probably been the best period in her life. She could have had her pick of the lot of them, but she'd fallen in love with Kenji, who came to the office quite often in the course of his duties at a second-rate construction supplies company.
She had chosen him because he pursued her more aggressively than anyone else, and up until their wedding day everything had seemed like a lovely dream that would go on for ever. But almost as soon as they were married, Yayoi's illusions began to fade. Kenji left her behind to go out drinking and gambling, and soon she spent most of her time home alone. It wasn't, of course, until fairly recently that she'd realised that he was fundamentally the type of man who only wanted what belonged to others. He had wanted her because she had been the spoilt pet of the company, but once he had her, he lost interest. In the final analysis, he was an unhappy man, one who was forever chasing illusions.
-
Last night, for God knows what reason, Kenji had actually come home before ten o'clock. The children had finally gone to sleep, and Yayoi had been in the kitchen doing the dishes as quietly as she could when she sensed something and turned around. He was standing directly behind her, looking at her back as though the sight of it filled him with loathing. Startled, Yayoi dropped the soapy sponge into the sink.
'You frightened me,' she said.
'Why? Did you think it was another man?' For once he wasn't drunk, but he was clearly in a bad mood. Still, Yayoi was used to that.
'And why not?' she said, picking up the sponge. 'When was the last time you were home at this hour?' she added, unable to resist the jab. To be honest, she would have preferred it if he hadn't come home. 'Why so early?'
'No money,' he said.
'How could that be? You haven't given us anything in months.' Though she had her back to him again, she knew he was smirking.
'Nope, I'm flat broke. And I've used up all the savings.'
'You what?' she said, her voice breaking. The two of them had put aside more than five million yen - almost enough for the down payment on a condominium. Why else had she been breaking her back at the factory? 'How could you? You've been keeping your whole salary; how could you spend our savings as well?'
'Gambling,' he said. 'A game called baccarat.'
'Tell me you're kidding.' She was too shocked to think of anything else to say.
'I'm not,' he said.
'But it didn't all belong to you.'
'Or to you.' So often he had nothing to say to her, but tonight he had a smart answer for everything. 'So, maybe it'd be better if I just left. What do you think?' Why was he trying to needle her? What was bugging him? Usually he made no effort to draw his family into his little dramas, so why was tonight different?
'That wouldn't solve the problem,' she said, her tone icy.
'Then what would? You tell me.' His face took on a crafty look, as if he'd got her trapped.
'Well, for one thing, it would help if that slut would dump you,' she said, furious now. 'She's the cause of all this.' Almost instantly, she felt something hard and heavy thump her in the stomach and she toppled over, on the verge of losing consciousness from the pain. She had no idea what had happened to her, but she knew that she couldn't breathe, that her chest was convulsing. She groaned and curled up in a ball, and then felt another blow to her back. She screamed.
'Dumb fuck!' Kenji yelled. Out of the corner of her eye she could see him rubbing his fist as he went into the bathroom. She lay groaning on the floor for a while, listening to the sound of water running in the bathroom.
When she finally began to recover a bit, she realised she was still clutching the sponge in her soapy hand. She pulled up her Tshirt and found a blue-black bruise just below her chest. The sight of it seemed like the final sign that she and Kenji were finished. She let out a long sigh. As she did so, the doors to the bedroom slid open and Takashi, the older boy, looked out at her with fear in his eyes.
'Mama, what's wrong?' he asked.
'Nothing, honey,' she managed to get out. 'Mama fell down, but she's fine now. Go back to sleep.' Seeming to under
stand, the boy slid the door shut. Yayoi knew he was worried about his brother, sleeping in the next futon. If even a small child could be considerate like that, what had gone wrong with Kenji? Obviously, people changed. Or maybe he'd always been that way.
Pressing on her stomach, she made her way over to the table and sat down. She took slow, even breaths to control the pain. There was the crash of a plastic bucket in the bathroom. She laughed quietly and buried her face in her hands. It was miserable to be living with such a man.
-
Suddenly realising that she was still in her underwear, she pulled on a polo shirt and a pair of jeans. She had lost so much weight recently that the jeans slipped down to her hips, so she went to look for a belt. It would soon be time to leave for the factory. She didn't want to go, but if- she didn't show up, Masako and the others would worry about her. Masako in particular wasn't one to overlook any sign of trouble. There was something a bit unnerving about it, but at the same time she felt a strong urge to open up to the woman. Maybe it was because she somehow knew that Masako could be relied upon. If something happened, she was probably the only one Yayoi had to cling to. It was only a glimmer of hope but the thought sent her shuffling more quickly around the house.
Hearing a sound in the entrance hall, Yayoi tensed. Had Kenji come home early again tonight? But when no one came into the living room, she wondered if it could be somebody else and hurried out to the door. There she found Kenji, sitting on the edge of the floor with his back to her. His shoulders were slumped as he stared in front of him, and the back of his shirt was dirty. Apparently, he didn't realise she was there. As she thought about the night before, a tide of loathing welled up inside her. It would be better if a man like this never came home, if she never had to see his face again.