Kazoku Read online

  Kazumi smiled, but not her usual happy one. This one barely reached her lips.

  “I don’t know. Creating a life with the one you love, I suppose. A family can be many things. Two parents and a child. Two people in love. A single parent and a single child. Siblings with no parents. There’s no one single family, Yotchan.”

  Why was she asking me this? I finished my drink and put the glass on the table by the couch.

  “It takes more than love to make a family,” I said. “You gotta be able to protect those you love. Give them the best life possible. I could never give someone that.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me.” Wasn’t it obvious? I stood up and grabbed my shirt from the floor. “Could you really see me, of all people, raising a kid? Keeping a wife happy and safe?”

  Kazumi stood up and placed her hands on my hips. “Did you not hear anything I just said?”

  I buttoned the shirt and shook my head. “I’m not a good person, Kazumi. Family or no family, I could never give another person a good life. The life they deserve.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  Her words stung, but not for the reasons I thought they would. She didn’t know. She didn’t know that right now I was already late for a “meeting” where I had to run a single mother and her only child out of their home. Whatever it took, the boss said, but don’t kill the woman.

  Don’t kill the woman. In what line of work was that a reasonable and benevolent response? How could a man, whose only family were his brothers in arms, ever come home to a woman and sleep soundly knowing that was how he provided for her?

  I didn’t deserve a family. I didn’t deserve one, and I didn’t need one. I had my family. They accepted me and although we didn’t always, or even often, run on the right side of the law, they were the only people who truly understood me. Didn’t judge me. Who had my back when times were tough.

  “You be careful, okay?” Kazumi’s words brought me back. She knew I had business to attend to. She didn’t try to stop me or say anything about it. My heart felt heavy, like an anchor. I grabbed her cheeks and kissed her, softly and gently.

  “I’m always careful,” I said. She smiled. Again it didn’t reach her eyes.

  05

  Two cars sat in the parking lot of the building when I arrived. One was expensive and sleek; Ren’s. The other was beat-up and ancient looking. No doubt the mother’s. The elevator rode to her floor in silence. Fourth floor, room three. Right in the middle. Surrounded by empty apartments in all directions. It had to be lonely, and yet the woman still refused to move.

  The door stood ajar when I arrived. Voices inside alerted me to the fact that the boys were already trying to convince the woman without me.

  “All you need to do is sign these damn papers and we’ll be out of your hair!”

  I stepped inside. Wallpaper peeling off the walls. A stench that couldn’t be placed. Stains of who knows what on the floor and roof. A woman, late-30s by the look of her, cowered on the couch as one of the men towered over her. Ren sat opposite her, his eyes focused but silent. Toshiki’s hand trembled on the curtain he had pulled back to see outside. What was he expecting? Police to burst in at any moment?

  “Hey.” I put a hand on the guy’s shoulder. What was his name? Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered Ren calling him “Kame” because of his resemblance to a turtle, but somehow I didn’t think that was his actual name, and he probably wouldn’t have appreciated being called that in front of a stranger. He looked up and the momentary flash of anger in his eyes died when he saw who I was.

  “Oh, hey, Yotchan, you’re here.”

  “I am.”

  “We’ve been trying to gently explain to… What’s your name again?”

  “H-Haruko,” the woman stuttered.

  “Right, to Haruko here about how important it is for both her and her son to sign these papers.”

  A quick glance around the room confirmed no sight of the boy. Ren jerked with his head towards a door leading to another room. Well, it was getting late, and it would be better for the boy not to see any of this.

  Haruko shook her head. The other guy, shorter than Kame and less turtle-looking, paced in front of the door as though trying to wear a path into her tatami mats. Both were just waiting for an excuse to let loose. Like our little soiree earlier wasn’t enough? I pushed Kame aside and sat down next to the woman.

  “Haruko?”

  She nodded, refusing to look up at me.

  “Alright, listen to me very carefully, Haruko. My colleagues have explained the situation to you, correct?”

  Again she nodded, her eyes cast down to her lap.

  “You understand how important this apartment is to our boss, right?”

  She nodded, but this time her lips quivered as well. She whispered something I couldn’t hear.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I-I’m not moving…”

  “She keeps saying that, over and over!” Kame raised his voice, pointing at the woman. I held a hand up to calm him. His temper was going to make this situation a lot more difficult unless he got his shit together.

  “You’re not moving? Why is that?”

  For the first time, she looked up at me. Her hands trembled in her lap, wringing the handkerchief she was holding. Tears glistened in her eyes, one rolling down her cheek as she closed them.

  “This is all we have. We can’t leave.”

  “Why? Why can’t you leave? There are apartments all around here. What makes this one so special?”

  She shook her head and returned her gaze to her lap. “W-We don’t have any money. Any family. Rai is all I have left, and this is where his father…” Her voice trailed off and a sob wracked her body.

  Rai. The boy?

  “His father? Where is the boy’s father?”

  The woman raised a trembling hand and pointed to the corner. A small, simple altar sat on the table, a photo atop it showing a stern but otherwise handsome man in a suit.

  “I see. I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

  “We can’t move,” she repeated. The words were the only thing that seemed to give her strength. “This was where he wanted us to be. This apartment is the only connection Rai has to him. The insurance has us covered until the end of the year, but until then…”

  This didn’t look like it was going to end well. I looked over at Ren. He leaned back in his chair and shrugged, as though to say, “Welcome to what we’ve been struggling with this whole time.”

  “Surely you can transfer that insurance money to another apartment? I mean, the money our boss is willing to offer for you would easily cover the costs of another apartment, and then some.”

  She shook her head. “We can’t move.” Her eyes flickered over to the altar. Something else was going on here.

  “What? What is it?”

  Her eyes flickered quickly to me and then back to her lap, ashamed that she’d been caught out.

  “You don’t want to move your husband’s altar?”

  Kame scoffed. The urge to call him that in front of the woman was becoming more difficult to fight. “She doesn’t want to move her dead husband’s fucking altar? What is wrong with this woman?”

  “Shut up.” I glared at him, but he rolled his eyes. He strode towards the altar and bent over, opening its doors.

  “Geez, there’s not even anything in here. What a sad afterlife. If that’s what awaits me after death, then I sure hope there’s nothing waiting for me at all.”

  “Don’t touch it!” The woman screamed. She jumped up from the couch and leapt towards Kame. He laughed and caught her, shoving her back on the couch. I stood up, towering over him, and grabbed the front of his shirt.

  “I think you should go wait outside.”

  He knocked my hand away. “What, you got feelings now?”

  “Outside.”

  “Make me.”

  Ren crossed his arms behind his head and shrugged. He wasn’t going to interfere. H
e was nothing if not patient, which Kame seemed to miss out on when they were dishing it out.

  I dragged him past Ren’s chair and down the narrow hall to the front door. He screamed and protested until I threw him out, his shoulder colliding with the railing.

  “What the fuck, man?”

  “You stay here and shut the fuck up. You’re not helping matters.”

  “She’s one woman!” he protested, standing up. “Just make her sign the fucking paper so we can get out of here, what’s wrong with you?”

  “If you would stop scaring the woman, maybe she would have signed it already! Now shut the fuck up and wait here. Let us know if anyone comes.”

  “Who the fuck would be coming? There’s nobody else here!”

  I turned to reenter the house and stopped in my tracks. A shadow at the end of the hall stood above Ren. No, not quite a shadow. It seemed to be both light and the absence of light at the same time. It turned to look at me and then disappeared.

  “What?” Kame said behind me. “Seen a ghost?”

  “…Maybe.” I made my way back to the living room before he could say anything else.

  As a kid, I always saw things that others didn’t. My third grade teacher told me it was reikan, an ability to see spirits, and not everyone was lucky enough to be blessed with it. I failed to see how seeing ghosts was a good thing, but it diminished as I grew older. Sure, I got a glimpse of something out the corner of my eye every now and then, but as long as I didn’t focus on it, or pay it any attention, it went away.

  I sat down next to the woman again.

  “I understand why you don’t want to leave. I do. It’s not the money, is it?”

  She shook her head. Kame’s little outburst had her even more on edge. It was looking less and less likely that we could salvage this. Sure, we could brute-force the woman to sign the papers. Beat her and her five-year-old son up. Throw all their furniture over the balcony and toss them out into the street. Other families would. But we weren’t other families. We were the Harada family. We worked with honour, or at the very least, we didn’t abuse women and children for our own benefit.

  “I think that he’ll follow you regardless of where you go. In my experience, spirits are more often attached to people and objects than places.”

  Ren raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. He hadn’t said a single word the entire time I’d been there, and I suspected he hadn’t said anything since they arrived. Let the scene play out and then decide when all options were exhausted. That was his usual way.

  Yet the woman, Haruko, shook her head. “We can’t move,” she said, repeating the words like a broken record. “We can’t…”

  I sighed. The woman’s dead husband was keeping her here. No amount of money, even for a woman who clearly had none, was going to change her mind. How did you get rid of a dead husband and his attachment to an apartment?

  Finally Ren pushed himself out of his chair, raised his arms high in the air, and yawned.

  “Well, this has been fun, but clearly we’re not going to get anywhere tonight.” He pushed the papers on the table between them closer to the woman and peered down at her face. “I suggest you take another look at these before we return. Because we will return. Tomorrow night, and the night after that, and the night after that. We’ll be here. Every day. Every night. No matter the hour. Whether you’re here or not. We won’t stop until you give us what we want, and I don’t think we’re being unreasonable here. You sign the papers, we give you money, you get a nice new apartment that isn’t a shithole. You get me? You can raise your boy somewhere that doesn’t stink like mouldy trash. I sure would hate to have to start visiting your boy’s school with my colleagues here, you know? Probably not gonna be a good look.”

  He slapped the woman’s cheek a few times and smiled.

  “Cheer up! You’re the last one here. That means the boss is being extra generous with you. You’re getting far more than he offered the others.”

  Ren glanced at me and then signalled to the others to move out.

  “Think it over carefully. We’ll be back tomorrow. Be a doll and have some tea waiting for us, yeah?”

  She didn’t look up. She didn’t make a sound. She sat on the couch in silence, her hands trembling in her lap and showing no sign that she’d heard anything Ren said. But she did. She knew exactly what he meant. A battle of wills was taking place inside her at that very moment. Her refusal to leave her dead husband behind, and fear for her child’s life. The latter would win out eventually—it had to—but no doubt she was going to do her best to tough it out for as long as she could. The longer she did, the more time she could spend with the spirit that lingered somewhere in that corner of the room.

  “Come on, let’s go.” Ren ushered the others out and stopped to stick his head back around the corner. “See ya tomorrow, hey?” He left with a wink and a smile.

  06

  It didn’t matter what we did; she wouldn’t listen.

  We paid Haruko a visit the very next night. A little later than our previous visit; sometime just after midnight. The sleepy woman greeted us at the door and Ren burst in, not waiting for an invitation.

  “Oh, excuse me, so sorry to barge in at this late hour, but you know, busy day!” He made himself at home on the woman’s couch and crossed his arms behind his head. “Hey, where’s the tea? I do believe I told you to make sure tea was ready for me next time!”

  Myself, followed by Toshiki, the guy from the previous night who apparently called himself Eita, and his buddy Kame filed in behind him. Haruko, barely awake when she opened the door, now seemed suddenly very sober and very aware.

  “Tea!” Ren screamed. The woman jolted and turned towards the kitchen, putting a kettle on to boil. Kame made his way towards the altar in the corner of the room, his pride still wounded from the night before.

  “I reckon we should toss this over the balcony,” he said, giving Ren a look.

  “Were you born stupid or did too many knocks to the head make you that way?”

  Kame—I still didn’t know his actual name, nor did I care to learn it—frowned. “What?”

  Ren leaned forward in his chair. “You want to throw the altar of a woman’s dead husband over a balcony?”

  “…Yes?”

  Ren sat back and took the cup of tea Haruko nervously placed before him.

  “You’re an idiot.”

  This time Kame frowned at her, his agitation causing his left eye to twitch. “All you need to do is sign the damn papers!”

  Ren held a hand up to calm him, took a sip of the tea, and then smiled at Haruko. “Delicious.”

  “T-Thank you…”

  He took another sip, slow and lingering, and then put the cup back on the table with a soft clink. “Now. Did you consider our offer?”

  Haruko wrung her hands and shook her head. “I’m not…”

  “Yes, yes, you’re not moving. We heard you the first ten times. The problem with that is that I can’t accept no for an answer. Surely you understand, we’re all in a tight situation here. You don’t want to move. I don’t want my boss to murder me. Nobody’s happy here. But there is one way that everyone wins. You sign the papers. We get out of your hair. You get a nicer apartment than this shitbox in the middle of slum alley, we all go home and sleep soundly. Sounds good, yeah?”

  She said nothing.

  Kame, his rage boiling over, turned and kicked the woman’s bookshelf next to the couch. She cringed as several books and DVDs fell to the floor and the wood cracked under his foot. “Just sign the fucking papers!”

  Again Ren held a hand up and slowly turned his focus towards him. “What did I say?”

  “What?” The stout man was like an impetuous child who wanted a toy he couldn’t have.

  “Don’t get your knickers in a bunch or I’ll have Yotchan throw you outside again, get it?”

  He clenched his jaw and turned his furious gaze to me. I wasn’t opposed to the idea of tossing him into another wall. />
  “Eita, maybe take your friend for a walk outside. We need a few moments alone here.”

  Eita stood up, but at the same time the door separating the living room from the bedroom opened. A small boy stepped forward, rubbing his eyes.

  “Mama? What’s all the noise?”

  Ren beamed and stood up. “Why, is this the little scamp?” He reached out to grab him and Haruko rushed over, placing herself between the stranger and her boy.

  “Don’t you touch him!”

  Ren raised his eyebrows in surprise. “My, my. So you do have some bite to you after all. Looks like you just needed the right… inspiration.” He knelt down in front of the boy and looked around Haruko, who pushed the boy further behind her.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “…Rai.” He looked up at his mother, confused. Hard to blame him. Probably didn’t expect to find several large men standing in his living room.

  “Rai. Well isn’t that just the coolest name ever. Very badass.”

  The boy said nothing.

  “Your mama tells me you’re five-years-old, yeah?”

  The skin on the back of my neck prickled. I turned towards the altar, but nothing was there. Nothing I could see, anyway.

  “I’m turning six.” the boy replied. Ren turned to smile at the rest of the room.

  “Hear that, boys? He’s turning six. Gonna be a big grown up man in no time!”

  “You leave him out of this,” Haruko whispered. It was less of a threat and more of a plea. Ren reached around and ruffled the boy’s hair.

  “Tell you what, Rai. Why don’t you go back to bed while we finish up some business here with your mum, okay? We won’t be long.”

  Rai looked up at his mother, unsure. She ushered him back into the room and emerged a few moments later, the deep lines around her eyes even more prominent than before.

  “Cute kid,” Ren said, standing up.

  “Please…”

  The sensation passed. Whatever was there, it was gone again. Kame’s tic grew stronger, however. His eyes glued to the door, his focus unwavering. Toshiki watched the entire scene from the corner, silently. If the yakuza ever needed someone to blend into a scene, literally blend in, they’d be hard-pressed to go past him. It was easy to forget he was even there at times.