The Kingdom

  When I was a kid, I didn’t want to be with anyone, so I would spend my afternoons in my room, and at night, I would quietly sneak out of the orphanage and gaze at the world outside. The moon was always there, a strange light, eternally suspended far, far away in the night sky. I didn’t know anything back then, but I thoroughly researched everything I thought was somehow connected to me.

  I entered a back alley, and the din of the night gradually grew quieter. I heard a voice ahead of me. In the entryway to a bar was a businessman yelling at a woman. I wasn’t sure where she was from, but the woman getting yelled at was not Japanese. She was one of the foreign Asian women who stick out in these parts. The man yelling was drunk and animated. I wonder if he would yell like that if there was a big foreign man in front of him instead. He was screaming about how we do things in Japan. Stupid stuff. He spoke with discriminatory words. He was one of those cowardly people who look down on and denigrate others because they subconsciously wish to feel superior. The kind of person who’s always trying to compensate for their own fragility. The man’s suit was damp. He looked like trash. I approached him.

  “The people in this organization are from overseas. You should cut it out.”

  “What?”

  “These people, they really hate trouble . . . Wait. Don’t you know where we are?”

  Because of my lie, the round-faced man next to him tried to stop the man who was yelling. He acted like he had no choice but to tone it down since someone else was stopping him. He lingered for a while, but eventually disappeared from the front of the bar. That kind of man could still go home and smile and hold his kids. He’d probably become a lay judge, talking the whole time about his sense of civic duty. To show that I hadn’t interfered out of sympathy, I walked by the woman who had been yelled at without looking at her.

  I looked up at the moon again. The moon kept shining. Its light looked wet. When ancient people watched the moon wax little by little, become full, and then finally wane, they saw in it the passage of their whole lives. Looking up at that unchanging cycle of waxing and waning, they came up with the concept of fate, the idea that the future is already decided. I don’t believe in fate, and I don’t really like fortune-telling.

  I could see the tout, Kimura. He was a ways off, waving at me. He’s loose with women, but he’s worked as a go-between for me for a lot of jobs that couldn’t be done in the open. I knew I could trust him with work. Back when I worked at the club, I asked him to introduce me to a black market doctor so I could get a coworker who was addicted to drugs into a hospital without her getting found out by the police. As long as I paid him properly, he kept all of his promises. I waved back at him. The light of the moon made everything behind him look slightly blue. The light was passing through a cloud of white exhaust.

  I got a text message. It was from Hasegawa. Since I’d met with him, he had invited me to the orphanage three times, but I always made up an excuse and turned him down. I thought it would be all right to go, but what that man who took my knife had said held me back. I was sure he had mistaken Kondo for someone else, but somehow his words stuck with me. Something inside me, my intuition or something, couldn’t ignore what he said.

  As I went into an even deeper alley, the sounds of the city suddenly died out. Women stood along every dark road, their legs exposed. In Shinjuku there have been serious police crackdowns on prostitution, but there are still countless blind spots in this part of the city. In the appointed alley was a black luxury car. Coming to meet Yata felt like such a bother. He could just tell me what to do by email, and then I wouldn’t have to see him.

  When I got in the car, it was even colder than outside. Like always, Yata was sitting up straight, but he looked a little tired.

  “This man. Look at this picture. He’s in room 205 at that hotel now. Say that Ami couldn’t make it, so you went instead.”

  “If he asks why?”

  “Say anything. It would probably sound more realistic if you say that she’s got dermatitis instead of a cold or something. We don’t need pictures this time. I want you to take his laptop.”

  “But he’ll notice.”

  “That’s fine. No, actually, that’s better. It’s a good opportunity to let this man know definitively that he is being targeted. But don’t try to take it by force. That would be too obvious, and I want things to go smoothly.”

  I looked at the man in the photo. He had a plain face, but I got a bad feeling.

  “Maybe I’m wrong, but haven’t you been giving me a lot of work recently?”

  “Huh?”

  “The last assignment was a really tricky one. That corporate director.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What?”

  “I never asked you to do that.”

  My neck began to sweat. Yata looked straight at me. He was not joking.

  “What are you saying? Didn’t you email me asking me to do it? The last time we had a rush job, you sent me an email, too, right? It was from your address. The code to open the zipped files was also the same.”

  I logged into my email on my cell phone. I opened the messages from Yata and showed him the screen. Yata looked serious as he stared at the screen. The address was definitely his.

  “I didn’t send these.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “This is bad.”

  The car went silent. Yata leaned back and slowly pulled out a cigarette. He stared at the bottom of the steering wheel, thinking.

  “. . . What kind of man was the target?”

  “I’ve still got a picture. I’ll show you.”

  “I told you not to save any pictures.”

  “It was funny, so I put it on my phone. That’s all. I’m sorry, but this time it turned out for the best, didn’t it?”

  I showed Yata the humiliating picture of that fat man. Yata’s face grew even more stern, and he kept staring at the picture. Condensation formed on the windows.

  “. . . This is really bad.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “That’s not your concern . . . This is going to get really bad.”

  A group of drunk people walked by the window. They passed through the night, oblivious of what was happening in this car.

  “But this wasn’t my fault. Someone hacked your email account or something, right? And that means they know about me. I think I should be the one complaining.”

  “Be quiet,” Yata said softly. I think that was the first time I had seen him so deep in thought. I can’t imagine anyone else witnessing these small, secret acts of Yata’s. I didn’t know what the work I did was being used for, or who was asking for these jobs to be done. I didn’t know anything about Yata either, but he wasn’t the type of guy to make this kind of mistake. That’s why this case must have been so mysterious and grave to him. His reaction had nothing to do with me directly.

  “. . . We’ll deal with this after. We don’t have time. Go to the hotel.”

  “But . . .”

  “There’s one thing I need to tell you. The man at the hotel you’re going to, he might not look like much, but you should be careful. He’s a terribly violent man.”

  “Got it.”

  I looked at the picture again.

  “Hurry up and go.”

  “You’re not going to take me? Couldn’t you have at least met me near the job, then?”

  “I like it here.”

  Yata stared blankly ahead. Straight ahead several foreign women—I wasn’t sure where they were from—were standing on the side of the road.

  “. . . There is a system to this world . . . That’s why I love it. I love staring at the people excluded from it. I love seeing the people tortured by this system.”

  “. . . What?”

  “Go.”

  Suddenly, Yata returned to his usual emotionless self. He o
pened the car door for me before I had the chance.

  I returned down the road I had come and headed to the hotel. I looked once more at the man’s picture. His hair was parted in the middle, and his face was completely plain. If he was actually going to be problematic, I couldn’t just do things the way I always did. If he forced me down onto the bed, I wouldn’t be able to stop him. I’m an expert with my stun gun, but there was no guaranteeing that I’d be able to move.

  “Prostitutes” like me exist everywhere. There are many of us recorded in history. We become the lovers of important people in society to dig up information. We get them to have sex with us, and once they’ve grown comfortable around us, we put them to sleep and steal what we’re told to, or we threaten to expose our relationships. Every man—at least every straight man—wants a beautiful woman. We take advantage of that weakness, sexual desire. We use our beauty to dull their judgment and achieve our aim. But most of the time that is impossible without giving them our bodies. Living like I do is hard. A while back, there was a story in the news about some women who pretended to sell their bodies, tricked men into S&M play, then tied them up and ran away with their wallets. I’m a lot like them. But it’s only a matter of time until I can’t get by just doing things my way.

  My chest had started pounding a long time ago.

  There was no time. I took the hotel’s employee entrance and climbed the stairs. I caught my breath in front of the man’s room and knocked on the door. Until I saw him, I wouldn’t know what the best approach was. I knocked a second time, but there was still no response. The door was unlocked. I had heard stories about prostitutes who had let themselves into their clients’ rooms and then the clients, without any discussion of what they were about to do, raped them. Those men probably wanted to commit a sex crime. I opened the door cautiously. I noticed I was smiling. My nerves were stretched to the breaking point. This was the feeling of confronting the sexual desires of an entirely unknown man. Those men who, regardless of their position in society, regardless of the lives they lived, regardless of everything, expose their true, hidden desires and try to take me with their whole bodies. I evade them, double-cross them, and escape from them. I make a mockery of them all. Whatever people want from me, whatever life demands from me, no matter who tries to catch me, I will escape and keep laughing at them all. I will live my life in this whirlpool of desire and betrayal. I will make them submit to me, while feeling the heat that comes from being desired. I will rise, feeling the even greater heat that comes from betraying someone. I will rise to a dark peak. That place is mine alone, and envied by no one. In that instant, I become my true self. I feel like I’ve been set free from everything. From those who try to control me. And from all the powers in this world that try to regulate my life. Those powers that push everyone along. There is a heat born within me when I fiercely defy whatever appears before my eyes. I had no intention of stopping myself from opening that door. My heart was pounding. I’d probably die soon.

  The lights were on. I said “Excuse me,” and stepped carefully into the room. What was he going to do? How was he going to try to fuck me?

  I felt a sharp pain in my heart. My arms and legs lost their strength. I saw what was there, and my body responded, but I couldn’t process what was in front of my eyes. The sheets on the bed were bulging, as if something were sealed inside. Blood leaked from the edges of the bulge. I approached it, unprepared for what I would see. My arms moved like it was their duty. The chill of the sheets traveled through my fingers. The roughness of those sheets felt strange to me. It also seemed strange that the light next to the bed wasn’t on. I pulled back the sheet slowly. I could see the hair on his head. That raw blackness pierced something inside me. I couldn’t breathe. I yanked back the sheet the rest of the way as if by reflex. There was a knife standing in the exact center of the man’s chest. It was the man from the photo. His suitcase was open, and the contents were scattered around the room. My toes were touching the socks someone had tossed on the carpet. The computer I had come for was gone. I looked at the man once again, and saw that there was a strange look in his dead eyes. What was the last thing he had seen? Something inside me began falling down, down. I saw myself bursting out screaming, sitting down right there. The feelings had arrived late, but now they were chasing after me. I focused on steadying my legs. My pulse quickened further. I felt someone right behind me. It was still too early to scream. I slid my hand into my bag and gripped my lucky knife. I knew the stun gun would be of no use. I turned around fast, and just when I confirmed there was no one behind me, the phone rang, piercing the silence.

  It was too loud. It ripped apart the atmosphere of the room. I took deep breaths and stared at the room’s white phone. I thought about how there must be someone on the other end of the receiver. I wasn’t sure if I should pick it up. But the sharpness of the sound demanded I answer quickly. I took control of my breathing, approached the phone, and picked it up as if I had no choice.

  “You must be Yurika Kajima.”

  Sweat ran down my back. Kajima. That was my old last name. The last name that I had never told anyone. A name that even Yata probably didn’t know.

  “Your world is about to get interesting. Tell that to the man who sent you here.”

  There was a lot of noise on the other side of the receiver. I was confused. It felt like all that noise was surrounding me. I couldn’t recognize this man’s voice.

  “That is, if you can get out of this hotel safely.”

  I put down the receiver and left the room. I ran to the storage closet at the end of the hall, opened the door cautiously, went in, and locked it behind me. The large shelves were lined neatly with white sheets and towels. I knew everything about this hotel. I could leave through this window and climb down the fire escape. I didn’t know how to extend it, but I could figure it out. But the window wouldn’t open. Surprised, I looked at the lock and saw that it was unbelievably rusted. My vision grew cloudy. I had to calm down. It wasn’t like my life had been easy up until now. There was no reason for these people to take me lightly. No matter how many times I called Saito, he didn’t answer. The window was moist with condensation. Should I break it? But if I did that, they’d know where I was from the sound.

  I leaned on the wall, wondering if I was being toyed with. If they’d really planned on killing me, wouldn’t they have done it in that room? They could have gotten me from behind while I was distracted by the corpse. Just like my premonition. There was no reason to call, and no reason to let me out of that room.

  I opened the door and went into the hallway. I could see my breath. Just in case, I gripped the knife in my bag. It has always kept me safe just by being there. Lifeless rectangular doors lined both sides of the hallway. The air was freezing. Those doors seemed to express the hallway’s will to maintain the silence. I walked quietly past that succession of rectangles. If I took the elevator, there’d be nowhere to run, so I took the emergency exit to be safe. For some reason, the railing was wet. Just as I thought, no one was there. I got out of the hotel.

  Out of curiosity, I went back in the hotel. The hands peeking through the space at the front weren’t Saito’s. But he worked at this time every day. I went outside. I had called Saito, but he’d never picked up. What was I supposed to do now? I didn’t know Yata’s number, so I couldn’t call him.

  The next day, Yata told me to meet him. He said he knew everything, and he asked me to come so we could fix it. Yata showed me a single photo. It was a tall man wearing sunglasses and smiling faintly as he walked. “I want you to approach him and take something,” he said.

  “What kind of guy is he?”

  “He works behind the scenes of everything. Many people have died because of him. He’s one of those extraordinary individuals who make things happen. He has many names. Nerigami. Yoshihara. Kizaki.”

  My heart dropped. Kizaki. That’s what the man who took my knife had called Kond
o. But would that mean Kondo didn’t actually work at the orphanage? The picture wasn’t clear, and I couldn’t tell if that man was Kondo. But what did this mean? What was this?

  I couldn’t understand. For some reason, the moonlight overhead was growing stronger.

  5.

  I had a dream.

  I was sitting in the middle of a field of grass wet with rain.

  When I felt the presence of the moon, I noticed that there was a red book of paintings in my hands. When I was young, I admired the depictions of Phryne in that book. Her body was so beautiful and white. I wanted that body. I stared at the book. I thought that a woman could laugh away this world. In ancient Greece, she lived free, even though she was a prostitute. When she was called to court and charged as a criminal, she showed the men her body. They fell for her, and let her go free of any charges. It was thought that a woman that beautiful must have been a priestess of the goddess Aphrodite. Strong people are free. But I lived in other people’s houses, and wore other people’s clothes. Being like her was just a distant dream.