handwriting is an clear as malice. Tsukiyama, Osugi & Bosugi, PanOpticon.
First I laugh in disbelief.
Then I think: another trap.
Then I think: no trap. Apart from the fact that nobody knows I know my father’s name, since Tsuru died nobody wants to trap me. Mama-san let me go once already. This is no trap, but a card trick that Tokyo has performed. How is it done? Look at it stage by stage. I know ‘Kamikaze’ because . . . here it is. I remember. Weeks ago, that night when Cat came back from the dead, a man misdialled, called my capsule thinking I was a pizza restaurant, and ordered this same pizza. Only he never misdialled. That man was my father.
The rest is simple. My father is not Akiko Kato’s client – he is her colleague.
Akiko Kato is why I watched PanOpticon from Jupiter Café.
Jupiter Café is why I met Ai Imajo.
Ai is why I met Sachiko Sera.
Sachiko Sera is why I am standing in Nero’s, preparing a pizza for my father.
No more misdirections, jumped conclusions, lies. To my father, I was a sixty-second amusement. Then I was a zero. Now I am an embarrassment. I feel so, so . . . stupid. I dress his pizza. It looks as disgusting as it sounds. I feed it into the inferno, watch the black gunge glow orange. Why ‘stupid’? How about ‘angry’? Since I wrote to Akiko Kato my father has known how to contact me. Morino, Tsuru, everything . . . if only he had just told me to go away two months ago. I would have been disappointed, sure, but I would have obeyed. This time, I decide what happens. I don’t know what I will do when I confront him, but now that Tokyo has unearthed the man, I am going to see him. I open the hatch. No sign of Tomomi. Sachiko gnaws a Biro. ‘If I say that a wild budgie flew into the blender of its own accord, d’you think head office will believe me?’
‘Only if they want to.’
‘Lot of use you are.’
‘But I could deliver this Kamikaze for you.’
Sachiko checks her watch. ‘Your shift ends in two minutes.’
‘PanOpticon is on my way to Shinjuku.’
‘You are a biped blessing sent from heaven, Miyake.’
The door to PanOpticon revolves in perpetual motion. Palm trees sit in bronze urns. Gaudy, people-eating orchids watch me pass. Nine identical leather armchairs wait for occupiers. A one-legged man crutches across the polished floor. Rubber squeaks, metal clinks. Behind the desk is the chubby security guard who threw me out when I tried to see Akiko Kato two months ago. A smear of shaving foam is under one ear. He yawns as I approach. ‘Yeah, son?’
‘I have a pizza for Mr Tsukiyama in Osugi and Bosugi.’
‘Do you?’
I hold my box up.
‘“Never fear-O, it’s a Nero.” No explosives in there now, are there? You international terrorists always smuggle weapons into buildings using pizza boxes.’ He thinks this is very amusing indeed.
‘Put it through a scanner, if you want.’
He waves a baton thing at the elevators. ‘East elevator, ninth floor.’
The Osugi and Bosugi reception appears deserted. A console, piled with files, plants dying of sun starvation, a monitor on screensaver mode – a computer face drifts from anger to surprise to jealousy to joy to grief and back to anger. A single corridor runs to a pane of morning. A photocopier intones. Where do I go? A human head rises up from a swamp of sleep. ‘Yes?’
‘Morning. Pizza for Mr Tsukiyama.’
She drags herself to a higher plane of consciousness, clips a headphone over her ear, and presses a button on her console. She lights a cigarette while waiting. ‘Mr Tsukiyama, Momoe here. Pizza boy with breakfast. Shall I send him along or are you still projecting positions with your client?’ She suctions in her cheeks while my father replies. ‘Received and understood, Mr Tsukiyama.’ She jerks a thumb up the corridor and removes her headphone. ‘All the way, turn right at the end. Mr Tsukiyama is dead ahead. And knock first!’
The carpet is worn, the air-con is old, the walls need repainting. A door ahead opens and – bang on cue – Akiko Kato appears carrying a wire basket of shuttlecocks. Her silver sea-urchin earrings dangle. She catches me sneaking a glance at her as I catch her sneaking a glance at me. I keep walking, reminding myself that I am doing nothing illegal. I reach the end of the corridor, and nearly collide with