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In the evening, he’s left restless.
The yakuza mansion is empty and terribly, hauntingly quiet. No yelling or arguing, no rowdy men’s voices. Just… quiet.
Takayama and Kaneko have checked out for the night. The twins are off doing god knows what with god knows who… maybe they’re living it up with their police buddies, maybe they’re bothering some sex workers somewhere. Kakihara doesn’t particularly want or need to know. Their ideologies don’t mix with his all the time.
Tomorrow, they’ll continue their search for Long and the old man, but there’s not much left to do for now. Even now and even they all need sleep.
Karen had left a tip in the morning – a simple text with the information about Long and his girl Myu-myu.
Karen…
She’d disappointed him. He’d… he’d gotten terribly excited when she said she wanted to be his woman. Her sadistic side was breathtakingly beautiful. The pure pleasure on her face as she tried her best to tear the greeter’s cheek off…
In that moment, Kakihara had wanted her like he’s wanted few other people in his life.
And when they’d gone over to his, and she’d hit him… none of that enjoyment was there; instead - her punches and slaps were filled with pity and inhibition. Painfully obvious that she didn’t want to hurt him, not for real. Not the same way she’d wanted to hurt that man…
She’d disappointed him. And he’d left her hanging. Walked right out.
But now… Kakihara wants someone to talk to. He doesn’t have many friends, or even friendly acquaintances.
The ones who knew him best were Anjou and Karen, and… Anjou’s dead.
Anjou’s killer is coming after Kakihara next. His heart beats nervously at the thought of it. What kind of killer is Ichi? Going by what outcast Kano said… he’s a scary guy. But then, Kakihara has never seen Ichi’s handiwork before.
When he’d come to Anjou’s that terrible morning, it had all been so clean. So spotless. And Kakihara – he’d clung to the hope that it was a situation that could still be solved. That it was a little mystery with a happy ending. That his little world hadn’t just capsized.
Well – here he is now. Life’s a bitch sometimes.
He puts the cigarette out on the railing of his balcony and tosses it carelessly unto the ground. Then, he knocks another one loose from the pack and lights is with his zippo. The smell of butane fades to cigarette smoke again.
Man, he should get some sleep, but…
He can’t. There’re too many thoughts at play in his head. There’s too much going on.
On a whim, Kakihara pulls out his phone and dials one of the numbers in his top contacts, the one right under a number he can never call again.
The call rings out. And then it goes to voicemail.
‘That’s understandable,’ he thinks, ‘guess she’s at work.’
But… he wants to talk. And she’s the only one he can think to talk to who would understand what he’s saying. He wants to talk about the feeling in his gut – the worried excitement. The growing apprehension. The tension.
He dials a different number.
“This is the Hirando club, how may I help you?” a pleasant, sultry female voice answers. He can’t make out the faint murmur of the interior, but his mind supplies it anyways. The hushed voices, the low music.
“Is Karen there?” Kakihara asks before taking a deep drag. He breaths out with his mouth closed, through his cheeks. The smoke billows in his peripheral vision.
“No, I’m afraid Karen isn’t in today,” the voice answers, “but I’m sure any of our other girls could satisfy you if you’re looking for a good time, sir.”
“No, that’s fine,” Kakihara answers simply, “thank you.” As if the other girls matter to him. No, Karen’s the only one.
He and her, they’re… he wonders if friend is the right word. Partners in crime, perhaps, even if they’ve never actually committed crimes together. It still feels like that.
They’ve known each other for years now. She’d been Anjou’s woman since before Kakihara joined the Anjougumi. She’d never been afraid of him the way the men were. He thinks that she’s always seen him more clearly than other people, even if she’s never quite understood him to the bone quite like the boss had.
It’s… odd that she’s not picking up her private phone if she isn’t at work, Kakihara thinks. He watches the Shinjuku skyline, dark as pitch but filled with ads and lights and smog. The yakuza mansion is quiet, but the street outside is not. There’s faint music from the many clubs on this block, people’s voices, car alarms going off.
Somewhere in the city is the last person he really cares about aside from himself.
Why won’t she pick up?
In a final and perhaps somewhat desperate attempt, Kakihara dials a number he’s used less times than he can count on one hand. It’s almost by pure chance that he’s even saved it.
It’s the landline for the communal apartment where Karen and the other girls from her club live. They each have their own room, but the rest of the space is communal.
“Hello? Who is this?” a woman’s voice answers. One that Kakihara doesn’t recognise. He tries to keep his disappointment small.
“Is Karen there?” he asks instead, without answering the woman’s question.
The voice on the other end hums thoughtfully. “Hm, no I haven’t seen her since the morning. She said she had an errand to run and hasn’t come back yet. Maybe she went directly to the club, have you called there?”
This makes Kakihara pause. He stares down at the streets, brow furrowed. What kind of errand could she be running, he wonders. Does it have something to do with gathering information about Ichi or the old man?
“…hello? Anyone there?” the woman asks after the prolonged silence from Kakihara.
He ends the call.
“Karen… what are you doing?” he mumbles into the night air. The sound doesn’t carry from up this high. No one hears it.
Instead of getting to talk to her to calm down somewhat… Kakihara finds himself even more tense than before. He can’t quite rule out that she’s in danger, but he has so little to go on. He can hope for the best, somewhat foolishly.
But them, with the way that things have been going recently…
“Shit,” he whispers, flicking the cigarette to get rid of the ash at the tip. Everything is so fucked up right now.
He feels as high as he feels low, as calm as he feels nervous.
Anjou is dead. Karen is off the grid somewhere. The Anjougumi are expelled from the syndicate. The yakuza mansion is empty.
There’s a killer coming after him.
Kakihara finds himself at a loss. He doesn’t even understand what’s going on, not fully. He knows the web exists, but he cannot see its threads and how they wind about and over him, around all of Shinjuku.
“Shit,” he says again, this time with a helpless little laugh. It’s tantalising, it’s maddening. He wishes he understood the mess, the hole he finds himself in.
Maybe he’ll get some sleep after a drink or two.
--
Someplace else, in a house since empty, Karen lies in a pool of her own blood, cold and lifeless.
Jealousy was a weed that grew in her soul, and seeing Anjou going off with younger girls just watered it. Perhaps this whole plot to kill him off and make off with some money wasn’t the right thing to do, but in the moment, fuelled by her emotions, she had agreed to the old man who’d come to propose a plan to her.
There was no way for Karen to know that she’d been a hand-picked chess piece, useful up until it wasn’t and then cast away with little care. There was no way for her to know that she would die today, trying to help some sicko killer with erectile disfunction.
Maybe if she’d stopped to think about it, maybe if she’d tried harder to find piece with how things were… it wouldn’t have ended like this. But what-ifs don’t matter anymore when her heart has stopped beating and her blood has seeped into the floorboards and dried up on her skin.
She cannot pick up when her phone rings in the other room.