into Xanadu and out again. The air is crammed with silvery helium balloons and tinsel music. Swarms of conversation pieces, smoke from a corn-on-the-cob stand. I see our reflection in a pair of mile-wide sunglasses. We look like shit. A giant black rabbit produces a midget magician from a top hat, and the world claps. Somewhere a piano and strings perform something beautiful. I feel Daimon heaving. ‘Do you want to be sick?’ I ask him. ‘No. I was laughing at the funny side of today.’ I wonder where the funny side is. ‘Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is for me having my hide saved by you, Miyake?’ Zax Omega leaps across our path, selling models of himself. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I imagine it must be pretty humiliating, considering.’ Daimon says nothing more until we get to the taxi rank. His feet drag more heavily, and his breathing is rawer. The taxi door swings open all by itself – down south you still have to open them by hand. ‘Do you know Kita Senju?’ I ask the driver. He nods. ‘Do you know the Tenmaya five minutes from the station?’ The driver nods. ‘This video store is right on the same street—’ I scribble the Shooting Star’s address. ‘Please take my friend there.’ The taxi driver looks dubious, balancing a very good fare against Daimon’s grogginess. ‘Only a bit of sunstroke. In ten minutes he’ll be himself again.’ The fare wins, and the taxi drives Daimon away. I turn back and face the way I came. I have an appointment back in Valhalla with a discarded document wallet in a metal trashcan.
The Mongolian is climbing nearer. A man-shaped hole in the dim dark. I can see his almost-smile. His cowboy boots count off my remaining moments. Lizard and the Cadillac headlights strobing the battleground may as well be events from another lifetime. Are Morino and Frankenstein still watching? If I take my eyes off the Mongolian, I am afraid my killer will halve the distance when I look back. My adrenalin is fighting my fever, but I have no way to use this energy loaned by fear. No amount of adrenalin will keep me alive when I hit the ground after that drop. No amount of adrenalin will let me disarm a real, live mercenary with a real, live gun. Fuck, no. I am dead. Who will miss me? Buntaro will find a new tenant by next Saturday. Mum will enter her cycle of guilt, blame and vodka. Again. Who knows what my father will feel? My stepmother will probably buy a new hat to celebrate. Akiko Kato will have a little paperwork to process. Cat will find a new pad. She was only ever in it for the milk. My uncles, their wives and my cousins back in Yakushima will be shocked and distraught at the news, of course, but they will all agree that Tokyo was trouble and Japan is not the fortress of safety it used to be. My grandmother will receive the news with a blank face and a long silence which will last half a day. Then she will say, ‘His sister called him, so he went.’ My list ends there. And this is assuming that my body turns up. Burying me in a pit under a future runway with the others down there would surely make a whole load more sense. Buntaro will report me in a week as a missing person, and everyone will shrug and say he trod in his mother’s footsteps. Here he comes, checking his gun. What was it all for? Anju was overwhelmed by the ocean. I am just underwhelmed. I sneeze again. Sneezing, now! Why bother? The breeze is cool off the drained sea.
I decide to kill an hour before I re-enter Valhalla. First, I find a telephone. I call Mrs Sasaki at Ueno, but the moment I hear her voice I hang up in panic, or shame. Either I must tell her an outright lie – or I tell her the outright truth. I cannot do either. So I call Buntaro, who is easier – he jumps down the telephone line. ‘Guess what, lad! Kodai’s eyes are actually open! Inside my wife! Open! Imagine that! And get this – he is sucking his thumb! Already! The doctor said this is unusual, so early on. Early developer, the doctor actually said that.’
‘Buntaro, I—’
‘I was watching this baby video earlier. Maternity is . . . beyond