my eyelids I watch the exact parabola of the soccer ball curving over a volcano and under a distant crossbar.
‘Miyake!’ Buntaro, of course. I lift my head too quickly and yank my neck cords. A hammering on my capsule door. ‘Come quick! Quick! Now!’ I clatter downstairs where customers cluster around Buntaro’s TV. The outside of Aoyama’s office, high above the tracks. Live from Ueno Station Hostage Crisis Centre. The picture is being taken with a night camera – light is orange and dark is brown. I don’t need to ask what is happening because the commentator is telling us. ‘The blind is up! The window is being opened and . . . a figure, Mr Aoyama has . . . yes, that is him, I can confirm that, the figure climbing out of the window is Mr Aoyama . . . he is on the ledge . . . the light is going on behind . . . please wait while . . . I’m receiving . . .’ Background radio scratchings. The consultant . . . is unharmed! The police have taken the office! Whether they broke down the door or . . . now, Aoyama appears to have honoured his promise not to . . . but the question now is . . . Oh, oh, he surely isn’t thinking of jumping . . . The face at the window, I can confirm that is a police officer, attempting to talk Aoyama out . . . he is dealing with a very disturbed man at this moment in time . . . he will be saying that . . .’
Aoyama jumps from the ledge.
Aoyama is no longer alive but not yet dead.
His body cartwheels, and falls for a long, long time.
Footsteps in the hallway wake me up. I open my eyes – my trophy shines on the table, proof that I didn’t dream the whole glorious afternoon. Evening lights the worn wooden room where my uncles and mother spent their childhoods. And here are my grandmother and Mr Kirin, one of Yakushima’s four police officers. ‘I’m back,’ I say, worried. ‘We won.’
My grandmother doesn’t care. ‘Did Anju say she was going anywhere?’
‘No. Where is she?’
‘If you’re lying I’ll, I’ll, I’ll—’
Mr Kirin gently sits my grandmother down and turns to me. ‘Eiji—’
I want to be sick. ‘What happened to Anju?’
‘Anju seems to have run away—’
He knows more.
‘She wouldn’t, not without telling me. Never.’
My grandmother’s voice is broken. ‘So what did she tell you? She told me she was going to Uncle Tarmac’s yesterday evening. He called me this lunch-time to find out why she had changed her mind. If this is a game you two cooked up, you are in a sackload of trouble!’ Mr Kirin sits down on the other end of the sofa. ‘I want you to think, Eiji. Is there a secret place where she might have gone?’
First I think of trees. Then, with sickening certainty, I think of the whalestone. To get even with me. Her swimming costume . . . I run upstairs. I open our drawer. I was right – it’s gone. I remember my promise with the thunder god. Anything that I can give you, you can have. Take it. Mr Kirin fills the bedroom doorframe. ‘What is it, Eiji-kun?’ I get the words out before everything crashes down. ‘Look in the sea.’
Nearly five o’clock, says Fujifilm. I get up and piss. In my toilet cube mirror a drone looks back at me in mild surprise. I need a cigarette. The packet of Dunhills is empty, but I find one rolled under the ironing board. I light it on the gas stove, and go on to the balcony to smoke it. Dawn sketches outlines and colours them in. Tokyo roars, far off and near. So, that is the end of Mr Aoyama. He ran out of minutes, so he jumped. I sloosh the fungus out of a mug and make myself a cup of instant coffee. I take Anju’s photograph out to the balcony, and drink my coffee in her company. I think about the letter from my mother, and a deal presents itself. Should I? I must do my washing up today. I look in the cockroach motel – I look again. Cockroach escaped. A leg and a smear of cockroach shit remain. I take in my washing and fold it into a neat pile. I tune my guitar and run through some bossa nova chords, but all those sunlit