The official cause of Koji’s death had been overwork, which was medically recognized in Japan with its own name, but to Ryan, it was ironic because Koji had lost his job and was unemployed at the time. But after being laid off, Koji had seemingly spent every waking moment working on designing his video game. And that was just how Ryan found him—slumped over his computer desk, mouse still clutched in one cold hand and the screen still showing the last code he had been writing when his heart gave out. The thought of his friend being dead while he had been in the next room doing whatever trivial shit he had been doing still weighed on Ryan.

  After a moment, he realized he was blinking so much because he had started to cry. The last thing he wanted was to break down here in their house, opening old wounds for them and himself. He quickly wiped his eyes and tried to compose himself.

  “I’m sorry, may I use your bathroom?” Ryan asked.

  “Yes, of course. It’s in the hallway to the left. Take your time.”

  Ryan bowed once more and went into the hallway. No one noticed he went to the right.

  Ryan wiped tears from his eyes and then realized how hot it was in the hall. He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt as he looked around, a little unsure. The hallway seemed unnaturally dark and quiet. He slowed as he noticed the door at the end of the hall had a blue light shining from underneath.

  When he got to the door, he paused. A tray of food with a glass of water was on the floor next to the door. Ryan frowned, confused. Why would anyone leave a tray of uneaten food outside the bathroom? He decided to knock just to be sure.

  “Excuse me? Is anyone in there?” After receiving no answer, Ryan pulled the door open a little and looked in. He saw an empty bedroom with heavy curtains drawn shut. The blue light was coming from the static of a TV, but other than that, the room was dark.

  The room was small, so there was no doubt that it was empty. He shook his head. His Japanese wasn’t bad, but he still wasn’t fluent, and occasionally, he mixed things up. He realized Koji’s mother must’ve said left, not right. As he started to close the door, he happened to glance down at the tray of food on the floor.

  The food had now been eaten, and the glass was empty.

  He stepped back in shock, staring at the tray for a long moment before shaking his head. He must be more upset than he realized. He had been certain there had been food on the tray, but obviously, he had to be wrong. Then he heard a sound from inside the room, like something sliding or being dragged.

  “Hello?” He said again as he started to step forward to peek in the still, slightly cracked door.

  “No!” A voice yelled.

  Ryan looked up to see Koji’s mother rushing down the hall toward him. “I said left! The bathroom is to the left.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ryan said. “My Japanese... sometimes I get things mixed.”

  Koji’s mother took his arm and led him away to the other end of the hall. Ryan didn’t notice the bedroom door slowly closing.

  Ryan splashed his face with cold water from the bathroom sink and took a deep breath, trying to collect his emotions. He stared at himself in the mirror for a while and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Koji.”

  He felt a little nauseous, but he didn’t know if it was the heat or the situation. He knew his guilt over Koji’s death wouldn’t disappear just because he visited his parents' house, but he was still glad he decided to come, and he was sorry he hadn’t come sooner.

  As Ryan was about to open the door and leave, a small, folded piece of paper slipped underneath. He was startled for a moment, then opened the door. The hallway was empty. He looked down to the other end of the hall, where the TV light was still spilling from under the door. He noticed the tray was gone, but he didn’t see any way someone could have slipped the note under the door and then run down the hallway out of sight before he opened it.

  It had to be his imagination again. He looked down at the paper and figured he must’ve accidentally kicked it with his foot or something, and mistakenly thought it was slipped under the door. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand a few times, studying the intricately folded paper. It was like the notes people sometimes hand-wrote and then folded in a special way to keep them closed.

  “Are you okay, Ryan-san?”

  Koji’s mother stepped into the hallway, startling Ryan, and he discreetly put the note in his pocket, although he wasn’t sure why.

  “Yes, I’m fine. Sorry to worry you,” he said as they walked back into the living room, where Koji’s father was now standing.

  It was obvious they were waiting for him to leave. Ryan stood in front of the parents, who had their backs to the hallway entrance. He started to button his shirt up in the cold room, but he noticed that compared to the oppressive heat in the hallway, the chill in the living room felt good now, safe.

  “I should be leaving,” Ryan said. “Thank you.”

  Ryan bowed, and so did the parents. As Ryan rose, he saw a young woman in a nightgown with long black hair walk past the doorway. Walking from the direction of the empty bedroom toward the bathroom.

  Neither parent reacted to his shocked expression, nor did they turn around. Ryan started to speak, thought better of it, and then slightly bowed again.

  “I’m sorry again. Good night.”

  Ryan stepped down into the entranceway and put on his shoes. He bowed to the parents one last time and then walked out the front door. He had forgotten how comfortable the temperature was outside after being in that cold and hot house. The sound of crickets drifted through the surprisingly mild end of August night. He had put off this visit for far too long, but he was also grateful that it was over. He closed the front gate to their yard and looked at the house one last time before starting to walk down the street.

  Ryan sat in the back of a partially crowded bus. Sitting next to him was a Japanese woman in her late twenties or thirties wearing a dark business suit, a typical “office lady” no doubt on her way home from work.

  Ryan kept running the events of the night back over in his mind. The young woman he saw had to have been Koji’s sister, Tomoko. She must’ve come back after hearing about Koji. Ryan knew that, at least, would’ve made Koji very happy, but he couldn’t help but wonder where she had been for the past few years. He wished he could’ve spoken to her, but he knew grief affected people in different ways, and he didn’t want to put any more stress on the family.

  That’s when he remembered the note and pulled it from his pocket. It took him a moment to figure out how to open the folded paper without tearing it. Once he got it open and started to read, his confusion of the night only grew. The note was in English and read: THE WOMAN SITTING NEXT TO YOU IN THE BLUE BLAZER AND SKIRT WILL DIE TONIGHT.

  Ryan stared at the note for a long moment and felt his nausea return. Then, slowly, he turned his head to look at the woman next to him.

  She was wearing the exact outfit mentioned in the note.

  Ryan stared at the woman’s clothes, confused, then reread the note. Could the young woman in the nightgown he saw really have been Koji's sister? He knew Koji’s parents didn’t speak English, so she was the only one who could have left the note. But why? This had to be some bad practical joke, but he couldn’t figure out what its purpose was.

  Ryan balled up the note and dropped it on the floor. It unnerved him in a way he couldn’t put words to, but then again, this whole night had been stressful for him. Now he only wanted to get home and get some sleep.

  5

  Ryan savored the warmth of the coffee as he waited for the caffeine to kick in. He hadn’t slept well after last night's strangeness and had walked past Koji’s room multiple times in the night. He convinced himself he wasn’t checking to see if it was empty.

  Finally, he had given up on sleep just before sunrise, grabbed his laptop, and headed to a diner. Since he had started avoiding his apartment he often spent a lot of time in Japan’s twenty-four-hour American-style diners like Denny’s or Jonathan’s, and his favorite time to get work done had always been when they were going through the customer transition phase of late-night party-goers waiting for the first trains to start running and normal business people grabbing a quick something before they went to work early.

  At first, Ryan told himself he was going to look for a new job, but he hadn’t even made the pretense after he had sat down and had just started surfing the web to distract himself from life. Even so, his mind kept wandering back to the weird circumstances from last night.

  In the light of day, what happened on the bus wasn’t quite as menacing. Dark colored clothes were common, and many women wore skirts to work. Also, since most office workers went drinking with their coworkers a few times a week, if not every day, it wasn’t unusual for a person still dressed for work to be riding home late at night. And it wouldn’t be hard to guess that Ryan would catch a bus because he hadn’t shown up on a bike, and the closest subway was farther than a comfortable walking distance. It was all very logical. And just thinking about the logic disturbed him.

  Was Tomoko working through her own grief or maybe even trying to get back at the person she blamed for her brother’s death? If that had even been Tomoko. The woman he saw did look similar to the pictures Koji had shown him of her, but really, he had only caught a glimpse. And where had she been over the past few years? Ryan couldn’t help but feel sad for Koji’s parents, to have lost a daughter, then lost a son, only to regain the daughter. No wonder things seemed weird.

  Ryan had met Koji's parents a few times after he moved to Japan, and they had always been welcoming to him. Koji never seemed to visit them as often as Ryan thought he should, but he never brought it up because he figured he was just projecting. It was always easier to judge how little time you spent with loved ones in hindsight, when it was too late to do anything about it.

  One night, a few weeks after he had been in Japan, he noticed Koji seemed a little more down than usual. Ryan was still coming out of his shell himself, and he was a little more sensitive to Koji’s moods then.

  “You been out here for a minute, man. You okay?” Ryan asked Koji as he stepped outside the izakaya to join him. Koji was leaning against the neon sign of the drinking tavern and smoking what looked like his third cigarette, judging from the butts in the little smoking trash can next to him.

  “Huh? Yeah, I’m good,” Koji said in English, taking another long drag. The nightlife in the Shimokitazawa neighborhood was as vibrant as ever. Scores of people were walking back and forth down the streets, going in and out of karaoke bars, local restaurants, clubs, clothing stores, or simply hanging out. “You finished letting Riko drink you under the table?”

  “Ha, I’m not even trying to keep up with her,” Ryan said, moving over to lean on the wall next to him and watch the bustling groups of people move past. “It’s still a little weird if I’m being honest, hanging out with a bunch of people after I’ve been out of it for so long. There’s still a part of me thinking I’m going to say the wrong thing or do something stupid. Not just culturally but… socially, I guess.”

  “Might just be your shitty Japanese,” Koji elbowed him in the side.

  “Bastard.”

  Ryan turned down the offered cigarette as Koji lit up and started a new one. They stood there in silence for a while, immersed in the voices on the street and the laughter from inside.

  “You went to see your parents today, right?”

  “Yeah,” Koji took another long drag, but this time dropped the cigarette on the ground and crushed it out with his foot, which was something Ryan had never seen him do. “Sorry, I was supposed to be bringing you out to have fun.”

  “And I am,” Ryan said. “I’ve been out more in the last couple weeks than I have in the last couple years. Don’t mean I can’t notice something’s bothering you.”

  “I was just thinking about Tomoko,” Koji started to pull out another cigarette, stopped himself, then put the pack back in his pocket. “I miss her.”

  “I know, man. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s just different when…” Koji didn’t finish, but Ryan knew he was going to say when there was no body. Even though she had gone missing, his family had started to believe that she was dead.

  “Remember that dude I told you she was last dating?”

  “That wanna be gangster guy?”

  “Yeah, that asshole. We found out today through random gossip that he had been arrested. Nothing to do with Tomoko. Some stupid drug charge. It just brought up a lot of memories.”

  “Damn. Do your parents still think he had something to do with it?”

  “Not really. They accepted the police's account when they investigated it. That fucker wasn’t even in town.”

  Koji had told Ryan before that Tomoko had been dating some rough characters. But she had finally broken up with the last guy after some big argument and had seemed to be growing out of her bad boy phase and getting her life together. That was not too long before Koji went to school in America.

  Then, surprisingly, Tomoko became more withdrawn and started staying at home all the time. That went on for a long time, and then one day she was just gone. No warning, no note, none of her things were missing, not even her phone, just her. Naturally, his parents always suspected foul play, but the police questioned the ex-boyfriend, and nothing ever came of it. That was when Koji had moved back to Japan, but even years later, they still never found out what happened to her.

  “Still, I never liked him. I’m glad he got what was coming to him,” Koji started to pull out another cigarette, shook his head when he saw it in his hand, then put it back and pushed off from the sign he had been leaning on. “Anyway, enough of that. Let’s go back in before Riko drinks everything herself.”

  “Ha, I bet she could.”

  They had talked about Tomoko, and Ryan’s parents, more than once after that. And it would be more than half a year before Koji lost his job and started to withdraw more himself. As much as Ryan hoped that she was okay and had come back, the thought that Tomoko had missed Koji by only a few months was naturally depressing.

  So when his friend Carter texted him that morning, trying to get him to meet for lunch for the millionth time, Ryan had told him he was already at a local diner and that he should swing by to meet up. As the morning turned into afternoon and Ryan conceded he wasn’t really going to do anything productive, he sat at the counter, switching between watching the news on the wall-mounted TV and looking at the passersby outside.

  Soon enough, a sandy-haired white American man in his mid-thirties came in and looked around. Carter was an expatriate from California, having lived in Japan for the past five years. A little taller than Ryan’s six feet, he was fit without being an exercise buff, and he had a short beard and a smile that were equally well-maintained. He had been a friend of Koji’s, but it had taken a few months for Ryan to accept him. Carter had always seemed something of an overbearing, entitled trust fund brat to Ryan, but he wasn’t a bad guy at heart. In fact, he, more than any of the other people Ryan had met since moving to Japan, had continued to try to reach out to Ryan after Koji’s death.

  “Man, it’s about time you finally returned my calls,” Carter said, shaking his hand and pulling him in for a back-slapping hug. “I thought you might have just up and gone back to the States.”

  “My bad,” Ryan said, returning the gesture.

  Carter sat next to him at the counter, signaling the waitress for coffee, and looked Ryan up and down. “Really? My bad. That’s all I get?”

  Ryan started to say sorry, realized that was just as bad, and chuckled a little. At least Carter hadn’t changed.

  “Almost three months of hiding, and nobody knows if you’re alive or dead. You even started working from home again.”

  “Yeah,” Ryan said, waiting for the waitress to fill Carter’s mug before he continued. “It’s just that after Ko… well, I just needed some time.”

  Carter nodded his understanding and raised his coffee mug. “To Koji.”

  Ryan clinked mugs with him and took another drink. “To Koji.”

  “Look,” Carter said. “I know this woman, Dr. Kaneda, who has done some work for my family and owes me a favor. She’s a well-respected psychiatrist.”

  “I don’t need a shrink.”

  “Ha, don’t knock therapy, dude, that shit can be better than a drug,” Carter said. “Get in, get some stuff off your chest you’d never say to anybody else, and get out. Get a couple of prescriptions to boot and you're golden.”

  “Your entitlements showing.”

  “Oh, you’re talking?” Carter laughed. “Tony called me the other day and told me that your second week back, you had a meltdown in the middle of some multimillion-dollar deal. I know Mondays can be rough, but damn.”

  Ryan had forgotten that Carter knew some of the people at his job. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m fired, but I was going to quit anyway.”

  “What are you going to do about your visa?”

  “Hell if I know,” Ryan shrugged and took another drink of his coffee. He knew he had another four months on his work visa, but he hadn’t bothered to research what would happen if he were fired. Even so, he didn’t regret it. “I’m not really ready to go back to the States, though.”

  “Well, if you need some work, if no other reason than to just get out of the damn house, you can always come help out at the factory.”

  “I appreciate that,” Ryan knew Carter wasn’t the most business-savvy person. Koji told him that Carter’s first venture had gone bankrupt. But Carter had his father’s money to fall back on, and now he was running a, if not completely successful, then acceptably passable import-export business.

 

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