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There was nothing else like it. Underneath the chain-smoking cattle of nightlife, through the shoddy bright entrance of Qing Jin—through the backdoor, or in the freezer, a broom closet, under a certain table (rumors surrounding the elusive entrance were always changing to the uninvited)—and if you ordered the "white century eggs", you could find yourself walking through a cold storage tunnel of pickled vegetables and salted meats into the real (and rather dank) entrance of Ijincho's Purgatory.
Then—up and back down a red soribashi, past floating pagodas and lanterns hanging on the edge of gabled roofs, LED lotus flowers, forever-blooming cherry trees and other Japanese chinoiserie—came the thick choking scent of oil, cigars, and finally, a pleasant hosting perfume.
It wasn't the luxury that made it so attractive—nor the women, which were certainly a bonus, and outnumbered the men two-ta'-one! spat an Osakan who'd come to see it for himself—but the elusiveness; Ijincho's—rather, Mabuchi's—Purgatory was hidden in plain sight like wealth on a wrist, or foreignness on a tongue.
"Whadda smell?" asked a white mask poorly to the attractive bartender. He promised an uncle in the Liumang he'd move to Japan once he hit drinking age, which was well under one week ago.
The bartender's eyes moved to the blackened vent above her, her eyeshadow glittering in the dim lamplight. She shrugged and her earrings came along with it. "We're below Restaurant Row. So that, I guess."
When the lights dimmed and the late morning came; when Purgatory was the emptiest, and the bartenders traded shifts, one could hear the kitchen clamoring, or a foot step over the vent—the concrete wall that separated the underground from reality.
"Uh-huh," he replied. Then he turned to the side. "Tesso, what do you think?"
Tesso—who had been sinking lower and lower into his drink—shrugged. The heavy ice clinked in his glass, his heavy heart hardly beating. He'd been informally promoted by Zhao earlier that day.
Under a harsh fluorescent light, steaming wok in hand, his voice drowned out by the range hood of his kitchen—standing over Purgatory, too, perhaps a few doors down—Tesso waved him off, and Zhao did not look his way, only asking lowly: Why not?
Of course, Tesso could find a million reasons why he shouldn't have taken it; Mabuchi was walking backwards into Omi politics (anyone with half a mind could make out Japanese yakuza in a room full of Geomijul and Liumang). Those flashy, rowdy, tattooed men who never allowed themselves to be quiet were patterned between the stern faces of the Geomijul and young-but-worn masks of the newbie Liumang, for no other reason than to sit and wait for their bosses to mingle with Mabuchi, who seemed to come and think of himself in recent years as the "leader" of the Great Wall. And, the further Zhao and Mabuchi always pulled apart from each other, the harder Tesso had seen them crash. Feeling the Chinese mafia was small by comparison (rather, ill-equipped to deal with any potential Omi-related incidents) Zhao was beginning his quiet escape. Tesso knew a war with Mabuchi was stirring, and he knew Zhao did not want to be the face of the Liumang in the event the Ijin Three would fall. He only wished Zhao did not take him so stupid; or that he was not shown the dishonesty of a leader's troubled spirit.
Like the disgusting drink in his hand, Tesso brought the offer to his lips, and swallowed it anyway. He paid for it, after all.
"I think," he began in his buzzed stupor. "I think you oughtta run off." He said to the young, more foreign Liumang; and to the one still inside himself.
So he did, noticing his new leader's burdened expression. At the bottom of his drink, Tesso pushed his hands on the bar top to leave; just before he turned around, he heard a sweet voice calling, "Got something on your mind, Captain?"
He straightened his back.
"No," he said, chuckling at his own luck. He turned, then had to turn again from the oiled old stool. Tesso knew by her voice—the little hostess he knew to be Mabuchi's favorite. "Nothing in particular, Lin Lin."
Lin Lin crossed her long legs tight against his, which made him feel large and invasive. She blotted her lipstick with a bar napkin, leaving a red half-ring on either side. If Mabuchi had nothing (nothing at all) he had good taste.
"Aren't you going to ask me how I knew you became captain?"
Tesso's eyes followed her hands folding the napkin, then the bare opening of her cherry red qipao. "How did you know I became captain?" he asked swiftly, like she told him to.
"I won't say."
"Was it Zhao and his big mouth?"
"Well." Lin Lin pulled and pinched a thread from her dress. It looked cheap on her skin which deserved a richness Mabuchi had failed to give her. "Who's to say?"
He took a fake sip of his drink, which had become mostly melted ice in his hands.
She looked at it. Her face was like a mask, smiling from one angle, frowning from another; unreadable—perhaps never wanting to be read—always putting up a front. She was just like that place, beautiful and untamed and false. "Leaving without celebrating?"
"Ain't much to celebrate," he admitted. He hadn't told anyone for the same reason. His men were scattered around the bar, hopping between green cloth blackjack tables like frogs on lily pads.
Lin Lin frowned or smiled at his admission. "I'm off for fifteen more minutes," she said. "Care to celebrate that?"
"Cheers," Tesso agreed, since all of his logic dissolved like stitches when he was around her. Zhao was a fool for telling Mabuchi's girl about his early retirement. If only he weren't the bigger fool now, falling for her and the fifteen minute break he knew she wasn't given. He convinced himself it was good business (he was captain, after all) even if Lin Lin was as suspicious as she was beautiful.
Tesso followed the swan of her through the pond of the casino, behind a bill counter and collections of poker chips and mahjong tiles. He followed her, still, between the ugly behind parts of the underground casino, where it was quiet and the kitchens above them could be heard through the silence.
He wondered what she thought of him—he, who was so bad at poker he could only to afford to watch her from afar; he, who was offering his time to the girl of the man certain to soon become his enemy. He wondered that for a long time until they were outside, which was just a spot behind the casino with the breeze of a box fan.
Lin Lin nodded to greet another dealer, who was finishing her last smoke. She went inside and closed the creaky metal door, leaving a few squashed cigarettes behind, and the two of them. She sat on a crate that was probably meant to be thrown out years ago, the painted logo worn off. Tesso watched her throw the thick of her hair behind her back and sigh.
"Now look who's not in the celebrating mood," he remarked.
"Sorry," she said in Japanese, and Tesso wondered if that meant she didn't really mean it. She sat there with her knees and shoulders turned inwards. It was as if she had suddenly deflated. "Is it such a crime to enjoy your company?"
Tesso blushed, feeling ashamed to not know the answer.
"How do you really feel about Mabuchi?" she asked inconspicuously, looking towards the ground. She chewed her lip without a cigarette in its place, though she wasn't the type to smoke.
"You know I can't tell you that."
Lin Lin glanced at him with abandonment; her expression was one he'd seen in the grassy fields in his hometown—standing in front of an old farmhouse, being passed by his bike. A long time ago, his legs pedaled past someone like that, and they didn't stop.
She put her pretty head against the brick wall behind her, and sighed again; this time, as if she had done away with something. "I thought you were supposed to be a fighter."
"A fighter," he affirmed. "But not an idiot."
Her eyes moved back and forth, chasing something invisible flying quickly in front of her. In her mind was perhaps a boxer, a dancer, a future. "Only an idiot would get kicked in the head for a living."
"Any fighter worth their salt doesn't get kicked in the head."
Lin Lin sat up to bow another small, facetious apology. She sat on the old crate with her legs crossed tastefully, as if it were a bar stool. In one fix of her posture, her insult became playful, tip-worthy banter, and the view of the underground alley became a private gambling suite. It seemed that the frustrated and insulting Lin Lin was a glance at the authentic one—something she was so afraid for him to see that she corrected it immediately. And when he stood there, he felt himself looking down on her with pity. She was not a little girl, but she surely looked like one there.
"What's got you in a twist?" he asked her, looking sideways at the now chic and sophisticated woman who seemed to suddenly appear in front of him.
"You first," she bantered.
Tesso folded his arms, lacking the ability to pout. "I asked you first."
She leaned back in a slow, dawning pause. Her eyes shifted like they had done before, seeing something in front of her that wasn't actually there. "I can do a lot of things," she said. "But I can't tell the truth."
"Then tell me a lie," he said.
"I want to stay here forever," she answered. Her round eyes formed half-crescent moons, but her mouth quieted to a straight line. If anything was obvious to Tesso now, it was that she was afraid.
On a few occasions, Lin Lin had shown herself in ways that cats may show their stomachs: vulnerable for the sake of wanting, only to later bite the hand that brushed against her. Tesso suspected that more than a couple of Zhao's tussles with Mabuchi had been a result of that—Lin Lin's double-dipping, and her unfortunate loyalty to Mabuchi that hardly even made sense to her—but only now was he suspecting that she had begun to feel sorry for it.
"Your turn," she said quickly with clasped hands, before he had the mind to tread their conversation carefully.
"I think I'll be a damn good leader," he said, returning her lie and speaking with the same gusto as a man victorious in battle, "I'll blow Mabuchi and the Omi Alliance out of the fucking water."
She scoffed, perhaps remembering an earlier conversation she had with Mabuchi. "So you do know about that."
"Doesn't take a genius and a little hostess to figure that out," he said, as the genius.
"What are you going to do?"
He shrugged. "What else can I do but run away?" he asked her defeatedly, wishing his watery whiskey was back in his hands right now, missing the anonymity of the bar where he could hide his requisite sobriety. "Or I could gather my men and go underground, I guess."
Tesso paced on his heels like a real army general, or an old man looking lost on the road, alone, his hands clamped behind his back. When he turned away from her, he heard a sudden, angry stomping click from her heels. Lin Lin was hot on her feet.
"And what do you suppose I should do?"
He looked over his shoulder. "Stay here, with Mabuchi? Where it's safe?" he half-suggested. His voice was low; low enough to hide his confusion.
"Safe," she scoffed and folded her arms tight around her chest—looking like she was about to burst any second—then obediently turning away in a quiet, crawling sadness that was rather unbecoming of an elegant woman like her. "Right, safe."
Lin Lin pulled another thread from her costumed qipao. If she pulled any more of it, it would have come completely undone. She was much like that, too—pulling and fixing, pulling and fixing—revealing some lifelong poverty at the end of each thread.
He had been to her home once (and into her arms a second time), only to be shocked by the stark emptiness of it. More than that, he remembered the white marble-patterned floors, which in actuality were stickers on concrete. This is how Mabuchi keeps his women, he had caught himself thinking. But it wasn't, because all Mabuchi held above her was a flimsy paycheck, a fat head, and that so-called "safety" she'd scoffed at earlier. That was the way Lin Lin kept herself; cold and stiff and unknowable, showing herself by hiding. Unable to read her expression, Tesso suddenly felt quite timid around her.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked her softy.
"Take me with you," she said, pleading only in her expression. "I'll be a White Mask."
Tesso laughed at that, approaching her with humility he always thought a man owed a lady. "You're not a fighter," he said.
"No." She shook her head. "Just an idiot."
"You're not that, either." He hardly had the space in his head to feel insulted by that, since he was always easily fooled by her. But he didn't think he was being fooled now.
In one relenting gesture, Tesso felt Lin Lin's head against his shoulder. Even if he was being fooled, he didn't care. He'd tell her all of his secrets.
"I'll take care of it," he said, because he couldn't think of a secret he hadn't told her yet. "...Somehow," he muttered.
Lin Lin stepped away, and he finally got a good look at her face. She was smiling—really smiling—under the dark, emboldened shadow of a woman keeping a man's passive promise. "If I get out of hosting, I want to be a flight attendant," she admitted.
Tesso raised his eyebrows, the scar across his nose smiling where his lips failed. "A flight attendant?"
She nodded. "I want to see the world."
The world, he thought. The one thing he'd never thought to give her.
"I'll be your pilot, then," Tesso said.
He stuck out his pinky finger like a child, remembering the shackle roof of his grandfather's farm long ago. Lying in the grass and dirt, he made a promise to his neighbor, the other Chinese boy who struck him hard enough to knock him to the ground; he'd leave that night, never to return to the life of a delinquent farmhand. Tesso wasn't sure how well he'd kept that promise now. He managed his men the way a farmer would let their cattle roam free, out in the intoxicating fields of hostess nightlife. A farmer had no interest in grass. He hardly had any interest in fighting off the bull. Until now.
Lin Lin locked her pinky with his, satisfied. "Thanks, Captain."