Week 5
You ever had a bully? Not the goofy kind you see on TV that hits you a few times and takes your lunch money—a real one. They don’t wear black leather jackets or football jerseys. No, I’m talking about the ones that wear the flesh of a lie, a mask of rehearsed humanity. There is a substantial difference between the methods of a teenage bully, possessing a juvenile mind littered with impulsivity and blameless naïveté that manufactures nothing more than a schoolyard tyrant, and my stepfather.
Imagine a hunter dipping his knife in fresh blood, one layer at a time, freezing it until it’s coated thick. Then he sticks it upright in the snow, waiting. A wolf comes, licks it eagerly, tasting that familiar coppery sweetness, that bite of life. And he licks, and he licks, until his tongue goes numb, until the blade is slicing him open and he doesn’t even feel it. He’s drinking his own blood now, but he doesn’t stop. He can’t stop. Because he doesn’t even know he’s bleeding. The hunter was my stepfather and who do you think the wolf was. They say, “When life gives you lemons make lemonade,” but life doesn’t hand you lemons. Life hands you a frozen blade and watches you lick it.
I still remember holding the gun, its handle cold to the touch like the stiffened remains of a cadaver. He stood frozen as well. He had never considered this was even a possibility. Well, who’s afraid now, trembling, wide-eyed like a dog that has just come back from a swim. I wasn’t shaking, and neither were my eyes.
He had money. It was probably the main reason my mother never spoke ill of him. Thou shalt not use the lord’s name in vain as they say. Then again, it could have been fear. I wouldn’t blame her if it was. I mean, what are the odds that she—born with a silver spoon in her mouth, cushioned by wealth even throughout adulthood—could raise two boys about to hit puberty without a father? She needed him more than she needed us, and for a while, so did we.
I could hear the faint sirens trickling in through the crack of the door. Someone must have phoned the police. It was probably mother, though I’m sure her call was more about me than the man who was now on his knees in front of me. I almost started laughing. I mean isn’t it funny? The heroes were finally on the way, just like they were for my real father, always arriving when the killer’s gone or the victim’s dead—blood dried, body cold. That’s the truth, right? The ugly, bitter truth they don’t put on their badges. They’re not the cavalry. They’re just the clean-up crew—vultures.
No one ever believed me. “He’s just strict,” they all said. Strict. Right. Strict is making you mow the lawn. Strict isn’t locking you in the basement for hours with the lights off just because you looked at him wrong. Strict isn’t smashing your PlayStation with a hammer while he makes you watch.
People like to paint the devil as some horned monster surrounded by fire and brimstone, snickering whilst whispering sin into your ear. My stepfather liked to whisper things into my little ear too, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
Bang. (relate this to the tree falling quote)
I’d never heard a gunshot before. Never felt one, never smelt one.
The sirens were close now. For a moment, I stood frozen in the middle of the room, eyes still fixed on the limp body of my step-father that laid sprawled out like a rotten piece of meat. "So, now what?" The words tumbled out of me in a raspy whisper. I had no answer. Nowhere to go, no one to turn to. But at least my brother—my sweet, innocent brother—was safe. That’s something, right? I needed a smoke. God, I needed a smoke.
I dragged my feet up the basement stairs, each step creaking underneath my weight and paused. I about faced and descended back down the steps. I went over to my step-father and bent down to reach into his pockets. Bingo.
Opening the door of the basement, I felt like a plant, forgotten in some dark corner, suddenly dragged into the sunlight—sharp, blinding, and almost painful in its warmth. My mother was quiet, her deer-in-the-headlights eyes looking in my direction, but not fully grasping what was going on. When she realized it was me, she started sobbing, deep, guttural sobs that made her whole body shake. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.
Upstairs, I ransacked my parents’ room, my hands moving on autopilot as I searched for something—anything—that would take the edge off. I didn’t have the energy to run. I wouldn’t get far before getting caught, then dragged to who knows where. Cigarettes. I needed cigarettes. Now.
I ripped through drawers, tossing socks, papers, and forgotten trinkets onto the floor in a frenzy. Nothing. There was only one other room, not including mine and my brother’s room. My step-father’s study.
The corridor seemed to stretch and narrow at the same time. My body began to feel stiff, my breath becoming heavy, as if my step-father’s hand were constricting my throat. The doorknob was cold. Police sirens echoing as if they were next to me.
The study was spotless, crisp and uncluttered. It looked more like a surgical operating room meticulously sterilized before surgery. The walls were painted hospital white, every corner cut with a scalpel, no dust daring to touch any surface. The order was so sharp, you could cut yourself on it.
Bookshelves stood tall in front of three walls, crammed full of thick and heavy scientific books—all hardcover. The spines of each book lined up like iron bars, rigid and unyielding, towering over the glass desk that was placed in the center of the room. I sensed a dense pressure from the cold facts confined to these walls, scorning and judging my every movement as I infiltrated the chamber.
My stepfather was notorious for his highly ritualistic routines. He wrote everything down, said it was the best way to turn your thoughts into reality. Every movement was carefully thought out beforehand and carried out religiously, at the same time and place. Fortunately for me, over time—which I had a lot of—made him predictable.
Underneath the table were a row of wooden drawers. One needed a key. Bingo.
Envelopes. A stack of them, neatly tucked away, six or seven in total. Yellow and musty, and in stark contrast with the rest of the room, they were covered in a layer of dust.
"The answers are bound where minds wander but bodies stay still."
Three Years Later
The early bird gets the w— I paused mid-thought, letting out a long, groggy yawn, my eyes heavy-lidded. "Ugh, I need caffeine," I muttered, rubbing the back of my neck. It was barely 4 AM. There was hardly any light as if the world too was sleepy-eyed, squinting as to not allow the spotlight to shine through yet. Even Akashi Station was still dark and empty—as it should be.
The only sign of life, with the exception of “Tyson”—the pigeon I just jabbed with the front tire of my bike, was the unagi shop just down the street. I parked my bike near the Lawson by the market’s east entrance and made the last thirty meters to work on foot.
The air here was thick with the scent of sizzling fish oil and soy sauce, the kind of smell that works its way into your clothes and hair, clings to your skin, and doesn’t let go. Yesterday was a Sunday so the garbage was yet to be collected, leaving the market brimming with piles of the previous days trash which reeked of stale beer and discarded fish guts, a harsh contrast to the sharp sweetness and the earthy richness of grilled eel that filled the market air.
All the other shops were pitch-black, but occasionally I would see some of the owners, lumbering ghost-like to and from the Lawson with a steamy cup of cheap coffee, stopping to stroke the neighboring cats before returning to their hush-hush games of mahjong.
Like every other morning, when I got to work I would greet everyone with an enthusiastic “good morning,” and as usual, received nothing more than some grunts and moans, almost inaudible over the crackling unagi and the sound of Bruno Mars’ honey voice singing That’s What I Like. No champagne here, no diamonds, and definitely no women—at least not for several hours. Just a bunch of men, young and old, trying to get through another day. There were four of us in all. Together, we would slaughter thousands of unagi (eel), contributing daily to the fast-progressing extinction of unagi in Japan. We are the best at what we do. And one of them may have killed my father.
When I think of my father, I always think of cigars—the smell of them. You don’t need to see it to know one is burning. Unlike your cheap standard cigarettes, who’s odor is sharp and chemical, leaving a lingering staleness of burnt paper, its aroma was rich and earthy, with undertones of what I have come to understand as I’ve aged to be leather and chocolate. It’s thick smoke hugged and danced circles around me, coating the room like an old-world perfume.
A naturally curious child, I was eager to understand the myriad of smells flowing out of a mere stick, enticed into undertaking the first of many crimes I would commit throughout my childhood and young adult life.
One night, when my father was asleep, I snuck into his study and lifted one of his prized Cubans, which at the time were illegal and very expensive, facts I was oblivious to. Using a swiss army knife my father had gotten me for my birthday that year. That morning, he had reprimanded me for what felt like hours. His freshly shaven face glowed a bright red, resembling the tip of a newly lit cigar. What he didn’t know was that I had actually taken two, so when he sent me to my room afterward, I tasted my first cigar.
Sometimes I wish I could have unwrapped what was going on inside my father’s head. Though, I feel its complexity would have been incomprehensible for me then—and perhaps even now.
My father used to say, “We are our choices.” Every seemingly innocuous decision is a chisel carving, shaping us into who we are, who we will become. We all have our rough edges, including my father. He had a longer relationship with cigars than he did with my mother, and was caught flirting with the devil’s nectar more than he should. He had never laid a finger on me other than to comb his hands through my bushy hair, or when we wrestled.
The first time we wrestled was when I turned eight. What matters is I lost. Every time. From what I can remember, my father wasn’t a big man. What he lacked in muscle and size he made up for with brains. Even when I played dirty and took a hard yank of his arm hair, he would just laugh and throw me down. I loved that laugh. We would wrestle for hours, usually calling it quits once I started crying. I hated to lose. He always told me not to cry—that men don’t cry. The only thing worse than losing to him, was finding out I would never get the chance to beat him. Because one day, he just... disappeared, like a puff of smoke. And that’s when the real wrestling started.
The news of my father’s death hit me like a blunt knife—more numb than pain. I had convinced myself that he was still out there, lost within the crowded streets of some neon lit city on the other side of the planet. I tried to get my hands on the police reports, but no cop in their right mind would give an eight-year-old anything, though even if I were able to, the foreign characters were like undecipherable hieroglyphics which were as much of a mystery to me as my father’s disappearance.
My “investigation” gradually turned into nothing more than the desperate imagination of a boy hanging on to the last slivers of hope. While other kids my age were helplessly distracted by their pubescent wet dreams, I was crafting stories in my head of vengeance and revenge, charging in head first to rescue my father. In my mind, I was Sherlock Holmes, Batman, and ...
At first, these dreams were about being the hero, finding the clues and saving my father from some villain who had kidnapped him. But as I got older the dreams started to change. They started to focus much less and saving my father and much more on torturing the villain. Playing with a new victim night after night. Like someone who needs gradually more stimulating porn to satisfy his porn addiction, I needed more blood, more screaming, more crackling of bones to satisfy my hunger for vengeance.
Always carrying father’s lighter, symbol of him holding on to his memories of his father and his death.
The burning cigar like a clock ticking down
When he died he didn’t have his cigar case and lighter with him. Strange?
Cigar smoking is a slow, relaxed activity. Puff every 30-60 seconds, letting the flavors develop. Don’t inhale the smoke; cigars are meant to be savored through taste and aroma.
The owner of this unagi enterprise is a jolly middle aged man, well-known for his beer-belly and being a heavy smoker, easily lighting up two packs a day, only during business hours since his wife preferred to keep their home smoke-free—sex-free too if you ask me. But don’t let his marshmallow exterior fool you. His intimacy with the knife would make your heart skip a beat. Gentle but firm, and with just a few practiced flicks of the wrist, so smooth even a camera would miss it, he could deconstruct an eel in under ten seconds. Twenty-plus years of dedication to his craft, and commitment to his family’s legacy. Most businesses don’t make it past their first year. Shirotani Unagi was just short of a hundred years and counting, flourishing under third-generation owner Hiroshi Shirotani.
After working here for the past three years, what has surprised me the most is how close everyone is to each other. Everyone is family. His right-hand man, Fujiwara, a sizeable man in his mid-fifties who literally runs on alcohol, is married to Hiroshi’s older sister. If you were to say there was a “draft” in here he would likely give you a smirk and ask for one himself. He too was exceptional with his hands, though he was a bit of a live wire. You never really knew when he would flare up.
Then there was Take, a fresh youngster like myself, who despite being the same age as me, was married—to one of Hiroshi’s relatives—and working on his third kid. They called him, Shūjin, meaning prisoner.
They called him Shūjin—not because he had ever set foot in a prison, but because the school he attended might as well have been one. Unpainted concrete walls and barred windows, they were just missing the orange jumpsuits. I remember him more for his smile, which looked like the side of a fishing boat.
I still hadn’t mentioned the fact that I had actually been to prison—well juvenile prison.
Not many women in Japan have sufficient curves, and even if they do, you're guaranteed to find them wrapped up like presents at Christmas, forcing you to wait until the time is right. But the heavily caked-up girl sat just a few feet across from me, with her arms gently squeezing her breasts, like you would when squeezing out gelatin from its mold before sucking up the sweet snack.
I wanted to hire her then and there. Not for her looks, though that was a delightful bonus, but because she was a quick read. The only layers on her were the layers of foundation and mascara that she would inevitably have to take off if she wanted to work here, as per Hiroshi’s orders. “If she worked in the restaurant the customers would spend most of their time concentrating on sneaking a peak instead of focusing on the unagi,” he said.
I haven’t found myself on this side of the table—or the law—that often in my life.
The clocks hands hung heavy at eleven, the shutters were raised and the customers were seated. One customer sat at the counter, a book laid in front of him. I always wondered what he was reading.
Kurosawa came every Wednesday. Alone. Always alone. He sat in the same seat quietly and only spoke when making the reservation over the phone. He would state his name and his order, politely reminding whoever was on the line with him at the time that he wanted to sit in the chair closet to the kitchen as usual. I had never heard his voice.
He was a bit of a gorilla. As if he had peed in the corners, it was no longer felt like a shared space. It became his territory. His restaurant. Before he even walked through the door I could feel my muscles tightening, pulling my shoulders up to my ears. The moisture leaving my mouth and moving to my upper lip, my voice betraying me, cracking like a teenager’s when he walked in. One of the waitresses forgot to remove the menu from his seat and I quickly grab it, the menu stealing what little dampness remained in my palms.
The first thing that caught my eye were his kimonos. He must have a graveyard full of them because I had never seen the same one twice, as if he were a snake shedding its skin, never to be worn again. Some were elaborate, with intricate designs that screamed for attention, and others were as simple as a blank canvas. But no matter how splendid and luxurious the silk was, it was as though each thread bowed to him, following his every step, yeilding to him, clinging to the solid man beneath, like vines wrapped around an ancient tree. Most people wear clothes like a scarecrow—just hollow frames with cloth draped over their flimsy shoulders. Not Kurosawa.
But no matter how extravagant or rich the fabric was, it was as though each thread bowed to him, surrendered to his stride and melted into his aura. Most people wear clothes like scarecrows — just frames with fabric draped across their shoulders. Not Kurosawa. The fabric clung to him, yielding to the solid, iron-forged man beneath, like vines clinging to an ancient tree.
The second was his tattoos, coiling taught against his skin. I had only been able to sneak a glance at them, like the supple breasts from this morning, only allowing me to see what he wants me to see. His skin was pristine, gleeming under the dim restaurant lights, the tattooed ink acting as sharp flowing contours to his lean muscles that jutted through from beneath.
There were always two things he always had on his persons. A book. "There is no friend as loyal as a book," a lesson I had learned from Ernest Hemingway and my bunkmate in juvie who shared the same habit. And, “What’s that silver thing he’s carrying with him?”
“That’s a kiseru.”
