State of matter, p.4
Keep Me, page 4
Kittydoll was convinced her father had killed her and tried to burn him in his sleep. She was a pyromaniac and very much not dead. Ten years in the asylum and now she was twenty-seven, the youngest of his lieutenants. She still saw ghosts from time to time, especially when she was off her meds. Just the other night, she’d claimed his car was haunted by a dead woman in a white robe and a fox, while Reaper was trying to deal with his teacher overdosing.
Crusher had his own problems. He was trigger happy but also stuffed his pockets with brass knuckles as if he had eight fists. The sutras tattooed on his bald head were to exorcize the demons he claimed lived inside him.
Boa never graduated high school, but she wore the uniform anyway. And much like the constrictor snake, the girl strangled with the chain she carried. Also, she could make anything out of anything, like the bike she was straddling—she built it.
Looter was his heist guy and Wisp was his tracker. Seven had that many souls inside him, or so he claimed when he was off his meds—there was a repeating theme through his crew, hence the name Lunatics.
Stripes wore arm warmers with bands of colors, in this heat, and it was to mask the stripes he’d put on his wrists—the kind that bled.
Harbinger couldn’t think of a cool name for himself and was riffing on Reaper’s. But he was no joke in a fight and always had Reaper’s back. His favorite weapon was a bat.
All his lieutenants carried a katana, and they weren’t too shabby with it either. Modern day bujin, they’d call themselves, which would make Reaper a lord, but he doubted the warriors of the olden days were mental basket cases like them. All in all, the Lunatics were a hundred strong, and although not as large as some other gangs, like the Three-Sixers, no one screwed with them either because they had the highest kill rate. A good thing about not thinking much of life was that it was easy to escalate. None of his lieutenants would give a shit should they die today—so as long as it was fun.
“I swear I know him,” said Kitty, seeing Sensei behind the glass doors, walking back because the motion sensor hadn’t activated for him. “He killed me.”
Reaper reached over and zipped up Kittydoll’s silk jacket. She hadn’t been wearing anything but a bra underneath. “You have never met him except for the other night, girl. Please try to be… less you. Also, be respectful. He’s kind of old-fashioned.”
She rolled her eyes at him but still bowed when Sensei came out. Teacher was a revered position in Nara, and Kyuzo sensei was Reaper’s teacher.
“Good morning, Sensei,” she said, and the others did the same.
“Good afternoon,” Kyuzo sensei said. “Your building is falling apart.” He pointed at the hole on the twelfth floor.
“Earthquake, Sensei.” Reaper opened the door for him, waited for him to settle in the backseat with his wooden box on his lap, his daughter’s things, and closed the door.
Boa looked up, gliding balm over her lips. “I didn’t feel any quake.”
“Well, my wall is gone.” Reaper walked around the car as bikes started around him. Being respectful to his sensei, no one throttled it, and it was a low even rumble. The fumes were obnoxious in the humidity, though.
“Boss, we heard the police shooting up their own station earlier. That lot might be blocked now. Let’s turn east out of here and get on the speedway.”
“The world’s going to hell in a handbasket,” said Harbinger. “There’s a demon in my apartment complex, I swear it.”
“Was it in your mirror?” Kittydoll said, putting an electronic cigarette between her lips and letting the thick smoke roll out. It smelled of bubble gum.
“Yo, Kitty.” Reaper turned before reaching for the driver’s door. “The peddler?”
“Six feet under in the city cemetery. Put him in a fresh grave because someone forgot the shovel.” She narrowed her eyes at Crusher, who ran a hand over his bald head, flashing a metal grill when he grinned.
“Give me some lead, don’t crowd me, and don’t be noisy.” Reaper got into his car.
“Ay, ay, sir, silent mode activated.” Kitty mock saluted.
There was no silent mode, and they were on his ass as he pulled away from the hospital. When he held up his hand, Crusher signaled outside his window and they fell back—some. Reaper’s mind flinched for a split second when he flicked a look at his side mirror and thought a red fox was chasing him. A car passed by, and it was gone. He reached for his pants pocket and popped a pill into his mouth. They may as well be mints. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bright idea for him to be driving, but he wanted to keep an eye on Sensei.
As they passed through downtown, he heard Sensei mumble, “Why so tall?”
Reaper looked in the rearview and saw Sensei gazing out the window.
“Skyscrapers?” Reaper asked. “A hundred and twenty million people on a tiny, tiny island, Sensei. We have room only for up.”
“Why?” Sensei frowned in the mirror.
“Why what? Why so many people?” Reaper shrugged. “Perhaps the afterlife is closed and there is no way out of this world. Maybe we’re just all moving through a revolving door to nowhere.”
“You’re a peculiar child.”
“I’m your peculiar child.”
“Damn right.” Sensei had a way of warming Reaper’s soul.
He got on the highway and the Lunatics rode behind him, blocking the lane so he could merge at will.
“So, where to, Sensei?”
“Home.”
“I know. But after that.”
“I’m stopping by the shrine. Then I’m going home, Reaper.”
“Where is that?” He checked the rearview. Sensei was in a reverie.
“Yukiyama,” he said.
“Is that where you’re from?” Reaper asked.
“Yes.”
Maybe your teacher just wanted to die, Kitty’s voice rang in his mind. Death was fine for a schmuck like Reaper, a leech of society, but Sensei saved people’s lives. His, Willow’s, and thirty others he could name off the top of his head, and that was just his generation—there were older students and younger as well. He wondered if Sensei knew that.
“Sensei?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you,” Reaper said.
“What for?”
“Everything.”
Kyuzo sensei cursed and threw a napkin box at Reaper’s head, which he dodged. “Hey, I’m driving here,” Reaper exclaimed.
“Then, do that, and shut up.” He didn’t take compliments so well.
four
Bad Dreams
The evergreen mountains, the waterfall causing its own climate of permanent mist, the choir of cicadas over the hiss of the fall, the red shrine of emperors, the stone stairs, and the wooden hut behind it—Sensei’s home always greeted Reaper like a serene corner of his troubled mind, a world of its own, an escape from life.
Not all trees around Sensei’s wooden home were evergreen, and orange and maroon autumn foliage had carpeted the limestone steps that always appeared dark, damped by the mist and the spray of the waterfall riding on the breeze. Unlike the city, the air was cool and the smell of burning logs carried from the hut.
Under the tassels of the copper bells and sacred sutras hanging over the door, Reaper sat on the steps he’d spent many days of his childhood on and fiddled with his phone. The signal was shoddy out here and nonexistent in the backyard where Sensei was. Yukiyama was a large province, and he’d wanted to know where they’d be going. He’d asked in the car, wanting to punch it into his GPS, but Sensei had only said, ‘Moonlight’.
There was no such address in Yukiyama, and now he was reading the history of the province on his phone.
“Sensei!” he hollered over his shoulder.
“I’m old, not deaf.” Sensei walked around him with a broom. He was going to sweep his steps.
“Sorry, I thought you were in the garden… did you mean the Ishii cemetery?” From what he could find, Moonlight in Yukiyama used to be a castle of a large clan. But it’d been gone for centuries. The two other Moonlight in Yukiyama were a strip joint, and a cat café. Neither seemed like a place Sensei would go to. Also, there was a woman named Moonlight on a members only site.
“I suppose,” Sensei said.
Done with the stairs, he climbed the railing and stripped off the tassels from the door. Reaper followed him with his gaze and saw him toss them into the fire burning in the packed earth at the center of his home.
“Sensei?” He got up and entered the home. Sensei had thrown his daughter’s altar in the fire. That was what the wood smell was. Everything was rolled up and packed away.
Reaper went out through the back door and found Sensei had taken down his greenhouses. The irises were a vivid patch of purple on the yellowing carpet of early fall.
“Sensei, what are you doing?”
“It’s so they can catch the rain,” he said, meaning he wouldn’t be back to water them. Pointing at the disassembled poles and panels of the greenhouse, neatly stacked, he asked, “I believe there’s a nursery nearby. Do you think we can stop by and donate this? I’d hate for them to go to waste.”
There were large pieces. Reaper scratched the back of his neck. “They won’t fit in my car. But I can get someone to come collect them… are you sure, Sensei? I can have someone come water the ayame,” irises, “till we return.”
“No need for the trouble. It’s time to let them go. There is a gardening shovel over there, can you fetch it?”
Reaper brought him the shovel, then watched as he dug under the steps of his home. The backdoor had wooden steps.
“Do you need help?”
“No.”
A foot deep, there was a wooden chest. Lacquered, beautiful, and old, it had a faded crest on it—a five-petaled black flower. Reaper bent to pull it out of the ground, but Sensei gestured him down and opened the lid, still in the ground. There were stacks of folded robes wrapped in tatoushi and tied with silk. Sensei was looking for a particular one and he pulled it out. Reaper didn’t get to see it because of the storage paper it was folded in. There were labels written on them, but they were names of the robes, not descriptions of them.
“Here, that’s for you.” Sensei handed him a thing that Reaper knew was a katana before he unfurled the cloth it was wrapped in.
“I don’t know if I can accept this, Sensei. I have a blade.” The saya was old but the copper-colored silk thread of the hilt was unfaded. Even as he refused it, Reaper slid the sword out of the beaten wooden sheath and saw the blade didn’t have a single nick. “I have a sword,” he repeated, unable to tear his eyes away from it. It just felt home in his hand, and he couldn’t help checking the balance and admiring the flawless craft of it.
“It’s a death god’s blade, Reaper. It suits you. You keep it.” Sensei ruffled Reaper’s hair as though he was still a kid. “Move all that shit away from your eyes so you can see.” He meant his hair.
Sensei closed the chest and buried it again. “When you get the chance, donate that to a museum. In the meantime, I don’t want the weather getting in it.”
“Museum?” Reaper followed his teacher through the house as he closed the backdoor and put out the fire in the pit. “How old is this?” He couldn’t stop twisting the katana. It breathed through the air, and he could hear the movement.
“Death gods don’t have an age,” Sensei said. “Come on, let’s get going.” Taking the small things he’d packed, the wrapped robe among them, Sensei closed the front door after Reaper stepped out. “How long is the travel?” he asked, as they descended the stone steps, leaving the home and the shrine behind.
“About six hundred miles, Sensei.”
“I know how far it is. How long is the journey in your… car?”
“Eight or nine hours without stopping.”
“Is that all?” Sensei turned to him, amused. “That used to take half a moon in pleasant weather if you rode with a spare mount and didn’t fancy eating or sleeping too much.”
“In the Middle Ages?”
“Something like that… time flies by, doesn’t it?”
“You can fly there in an hour,” Reaper said. They were walking through the old streets, empty wooden huts on both sides, dark windows, and collapsed roofs. They were someone’s home… once.
“Fly?”
“Planes, Sensei. I’m joking. You don’t even have an ID, they won’t sell you a ticket.”
“What adi?”
“Never mind. Let’s just go… What’s your full name, Sensei?”
“Kyuzo.” He frowned.
“Family name, Sensei.”
“Ishii.”
“Like the clan?” Reaper asked.
“Like the clan,” Sensei said.
“How old are you, exactly?”
“Old.”
“Yeah. I parked over there.” Reaper pointed.
“I know. I have eyes and I’m not senile, yet.”
“There used to be a moat here,” Sensei said as they were leaving the city.
When Reaper said eight or nine hours, he hadn’t factored in traffic. The sky was red already, the sun setting, and at the speed they were crawling they might as well be on a horse.
“Did it also have a dragon and a princess?” Reaper asked.
Sensei flicked him. He’d opted for sitting next to him to be pressing various buttons on the console. “Study your history, Reaper.”
“What for? I’m not in school anymore.”
“Because it repeats. Time is a wheel.”
“Right, useful for the next time we build a moat.”
“Smart mouth.”
“Always, Sensei, always.” He glanced at his side mirror to see where his crew was but jolted, whispering a curse. He thought he saw a pair of red eyes looking at him from inside the mirror. There was nothing there, of course not, just the line of cars behind him, all too polite to honk.
“Are you all right?” Sensei asked.
“Yeah… do you mind if we stop by a pharmacy?” Reaper asked, then amended, “A store, Sensei. So you can get drinks and snacks. It’s going to be a long ride.” He needed to fill his prescription.
“Of course,” Sensei said, then furrowed his brows in concern. “I don’t have money. I burned them.”
Reaper burst out into laughter. Whatever shit was happening in his life, Sensei was the center Reaper’s sanity circled. He was his anchor in this world, always had been, and his presence eased his tumultuous mind.
“Sensei, I’ve been thinking of picking up archery. What do you think?”
“Give up. You’re complete shit at it. You’re the most untalented student I ever had as far as that goes.”
“Yeah, but it calms my mind, brings things into focus.”
“So does meditation,” Sensei said.
“I hate it.” Reaper grimaced.
“That’s why you need it.”
The fluorescent light reflected off the white floors. The drugstore smelled of its spice aisle, and as Reaper waited for the man in a lab coat behind the plexiglass to count his pills on the sterile counter, he saw Sensei down the aisle looking at something. Reaper’s sight wasn’t so good, but he dreaded the thought of contacts, of poking his eyeballs with his finger, and didn’t want to wear glasses in case he got punched in the face—that happened, sometimes. But bad sight and all, he didn’t miss how out of place Sensei was, surrounded by bright shelves stacked full of garish boxes. He’d say it was his robe and hair, but it was the way he carried himself as well. Everything he did, from getting up to sitting down, Reaper didn’t know anyone as graceful or as formal as his teacher. His posture was always straight, and every movement was purposeful, even when he was high—which he sometimes was.
Reaper took his meds, paid for them with his corporate card, then found Sensei studying some glue-on lashes.
“Do women donate them?” Sensei asked.
“These? No, Sensei, they’re plastic.”
“Why?”
“So they can bat their eyes. I don’t know, Sensei. Did you want to buy something? Tea perhaps? Wine?”
“When are you getting married?”
“Never.”
His crew had followed him in. Reaper waited for them to pick up whatever and put them on his corporate card as well.
“Sensei, do you want to stop for the night?” It was one in the morning. Not that it mattered, but the Rat Hour just passed, ending the Soul Festival.
“Are you tired?” Sensei asked.
“They could probably eat.” He gestured at his crew while they stood at the cash register.
“Of course,” his teacher said.
Back in the car, Reaper found a five-star hotel on the way, but his crew had a way of spooking people. He tried calling traditional guest houses but at this hour no one answered their phones. So, he decided on a random hotel off the highway.
Half an hour later, he discovered it was a love hotel. There were photos of the rooms in the lobby, and one had a red cage inside. Another had a heart shaped bed. A photo of a plush cat in bondage; the Lunatics found it hilarious.
He had nowhere to put his face when Sensei asked, “Are we in a teahouse?”
“There’s no tea, Sensei.”
“There usually isn’t. Is there wine?”
Sake sounded good. Reaper let his crew have fun, flipped the bill, then picked the most normal looking room for Sensei. It still ended up having black light framing the ceiling but a far cry from the purple room with sculptures of legs.
They had food and wine brought up to the room, then Sensei did what Reaper had known he would—lay down on the floor.
“Ah, wait, it might not be clean.” Reaper wiped the floor with a damp towel, and to the hotel’s credit, it appeared clean.
Then he turned off the light and sloshed around on the giant waterbed.
He couldn’t breathe. Everything was white and his wrists were tied to the metal frame of the bed. It smelled of bleach and Junpei. The guard had a liver illness, and his skin had an odor of old licorice, his mouth too.
