time. A virtual bank teller on the screen bows, hands clasped over her skirt. ‘Please wait. Transaction being processed.’ I wait, and read the stuff about lost cards and cheap credit. When I next look at the virtual bank teller she is saying something new. I gag on disbelief. ‘Father will see you shortly, Eiji Miyake.’ I treble-check – the message is still there. I look around. Somebody must own this practical joke. A bank teller stands at the head of the row of machines to help people in difficulty, and she sees the look on my face and hurries over. She has the same uniform and expression as her virtual co-worker. I just point dumbly at the screen. She traces her finger across the screen. ‘Yes, sir. The transaction is now processed. This is your card, and don’t forget to keep your receipt safe and sound.’
‘But look at the message!’
She has a Minnie Mouse voice. ‘“Transaction completed. Please take your card and receipt.” No problem here, sir.’
I look at the screen. She is right. ‘There was another message,’ I insist. I look around for a practical joker. ‘A message with my name on it.’
Her smile tightens. ‘That would be most irregular, sir.’
People in the queue are tuning in. I flap. ‘I know how irregular it is! Why else do you think I . . .’ A uniform in a yellow armband arrives on the scene. He is only a couple of years older than me but he is already Captain Smug, Samurai of Corporate Finance. ‘Thank you, Mrs Wakayama.’ He dismisses his underling. ‘I am the duty manager, sir. What seems to be the trouble?’
‘I just transferred some money—’
‘Did the machine malfunction in any way?’
‘A message flashed up on the screen. A personal message. For me.’
‘What leads you to conclude the message was for you, may I ask, sir?’
‘It had my name.’
Captain Smug puts on this troubled frown from a training seminar. ‘What did this “message” say exactly, “sir”?’
‘It told me my father wanted to see me.’
I feel housewives in the queue bristle with curiosity and turn to one another. Captain Smug does a passable imitation of a doctor humouring a lunatic. ‘I think it might be more than possible that our machine uses characters that may be somewhat tricky to read.’
‘I don’t work in a bank but I can read, thank you.’
‘But of course.’ Captain Smug eyes my work overalls. He scratches the back of his neck to show he is embarrassed. He glances at his watch to show I am embarrassing. ‘All I am saying is that either some misunderstanding has occurred here, or you just witnessed a phenonemon which has never before occurred in the history of Tokyo Bank, nor, so far as I am aware, in the history of Japanese banking.’
I put my card back into my wallet and cycle back to Ueno station. I am so on edge all afternoon that Mrs Sasaki asks what the matter is. I lie about feeling feverish, so she gives me some medicine. During my tea break I use the ATM in the station which gives balance statements but which does not take payments. Nothing unusual happens. I search the faces of lost property customers for knowing glints. Nothing. I wonder if Suga did it. But Suga doesn’t know about my father. Nobody in Tokyo knows about my father. Except my father.
Riding the submarine back to Kita Senju, I look around. Paranoia, but. No drone catches my eye, only a little girl. Walking back from the station, I catch myself looking in the road mirrors for stalkers. In the supermarket I buy a fifty-per-cent-off okonomiyaki and some milk for Cat. ‘Buntaro,’ I think while I queue. I got my capsule because a relative of my guitar teacher in Kagoshima knows a friend of Buntaro’s wife – could he have found out about my father? But what sort of video shop owner is powerful enough to use ATM screens as a personal telegram system? Some sort of unholy alliance between Suga and Buntaro? I get back to Shooting Star to find my suspect on the phone to his wife, running his hand through his thinning hair. They are talking about kindergartens for Kodai. He nods at me and makes a nagging goose with his hand. I watch a scene or two from a horror movie called You Go to My Head. A cop is on the trail of a psychic killer who discovers his victims’ darkest fear, and murders