The white and red lights of Kobe gifted their attractive shimmer to the falling rain. The thousands of descending rubies merged with their diamond counterparts as they collided with the concrete execution ground on which they were promptly obliterated. But, none stay dead for long and thus the trillion shards of glittering gemstone reformed collected in reflective puddles framing the animated faces of the nightlife wanders. The less fortunate birthed from obliteration were ushered reluctantly down through metallic drain covers, quenching the insatiable thirst of the Gods below in a delightful trickling.
Those unfortunate enough to have business on this flood driven night fell victim to the assault of the deluge from both above and below, the rebounding raindrops showing scarcer mercy than their sky born cousins. Passing vehicles threw up the droplets culminating beneath the kerb edge, soaking the fury of skimpily dressed club-goers, thus fueling their latent disdain of so-called good times.
Before this day, Mei had never set foot on the slick streets of the night governed Kansai region. She remained motionless as the vibrant world moved around her, only partially taken in by the contemporary beauty of the city. For the most part, her thoughts attended more pressing matters. Mei tightened her hold on the object that occupied her grip; the concealed gun's hard surface going little way to relieving her troubled thoughts.
Upon entering the build-up of cityscape, Mei had been presented with sixty-six distinct opportunities; three petrol stations, twenty-three liquor stores, twenty-one well-dressed citizens and exactly nineteen bars; not that she was counting. The numbers might well have been accurate, though more than likely, her freshly birthed gifts of unearthly intuition were simply born from her mounting insanity. Whatever the truth of the matter was irrelevant, importance lay only in the fact that chance after chance had whispered past her tensing form and in her resolve she had invariably failed to seize a single one. All she ever did was tense, in that singularity alone she could at least be certain.
Apprehension restrained her arms whilst morality squeezed at her bare throat. Harumi was right; she was foolish to believe washing her hands of long inbred principle would have been anything less than a wholesome struggle. Though it didn't matter now; the window of apology had long since closed.
The world was mocking her. Beyond her own misgivings, the might of external opposition had stood only in the stooping form of a single police car. She happened upon it ten minutes into her descent, turning the corner where it lay snoozing behind a junction of shops. However, upon closer inspection, the rain-streaked glass deemed the black vehicle entirely devoid of life. With no viable excuse, Mei was offered a free pass into the city; she had accepted it reluctantly. There was no excuse for her procrastination; Kobe had willingly thrown her the best-case scenario, and unlike the surety of her words, in action, she couldn't hope to weather the trepidation of its storm.
Mei raised her face to the pouring rain. The refreshing droplets hit her forehead and cheekbones, sliding down her face in gentle rolls. The pinprick bursts of cold liquid offered the clarity she so needed. Her tired body struggled beneath the weight of inevitable conclusion; the first raindrops swivelled the corner of her mouth and made for her chin as she finally accepted point-blank reality. This was insanity; she had to go back.
Mei opened her eyes, allowing the formerly harmless droplets to burn the whites of her eyes. But how could she go back now? The taste of Harumi's salty tears remained on her lips, the rain refusing to wash away the sting of their saline quality. Sucker punched, Mei's mind swivelled back to the fleeting possibility of her pulling off a successful robbery alone. Hurting people was her forte, surely this shouldn't be so difficult for someone like her.
"Are you coming in, Miss?"
Mei turned softly to regard the white figure, one leg bent, leaning against the red brick of a large, single-story restaurant. She blinked the water from her eyes, further revealing the greying white of the busboy uniform that clothed the fox faced man. She then became aware of her existence on the area of pavement at which she had unconsciously stopped to undergo her internal war of morality. A rich scent of sizzling beef filtered through the well-kept ventilation units of the steak house she now fronted; the quiet man watched her curiously as he took another drag on his cigarette.
"I'm not so sure."
As though he kept smacking into an invisible wall, Mei noted as the man spoke further, the unusual tendency he had to stop abruptly at the natural close of a sentence.
"Well if you're into your steak Miss, best Kobe beef around, this joint," he finally finished, gesturing flippantly to the golden plaques adorning the length of the well-lit hallway just beyond the impressive glass door of the restaurant.
Mei looked up distractedly, her focus on his words skewed by the unique vocal intonation.
"That said, they don't friggin' pay their staff like it."
He scoffed, flicking away his cigarette and promptly slipping another from the crumpled box of his trouser pocket. Extinguishing the stub with the sole of his battered shoe, the man nodded to Mei's hand as he also struck a match.
"You often carry around an umbrella around just to then not use it?"
Mei drew a blank for a passing moment before tensing her hand around the slippery material of the rain jacket concealing the shotgun. Consciously withdrawing the girth of the weapon behind her back, she forced a graceful smile.
"I suppose I must have gotten lost in my thoughts and just forgotten to put it up. Rainy nights do that to a person like me, I guess."
The man gave a hum of intrigue before waving the burning match into extinguishment.
"So… are you coming in, or not?"
Mei half studied a pretty woman pedalling desperately through the rain, the sheltered child seat gracing the rear of her bicycle pelted mercilessly by the neverending onslaught of rain. The comfortable response boundary of three seconds came all too soon, and Mei was forced to flick her gaze back on the expectant man. She smiled politely with the genuine belief her stadtfest excuse would form naturally at the close of conversation.
"I don't see why not."
Great Mei; nice move.
Questioning the sanity of her whimsical acceptance, Mei left the harshly lit pavement and stepped through the transparent door the man moved to hold open graciously. Entering the mellow hallway, Mei tensed her fingers once more about the wooden frame of her companion. Unlike her old partner, Mei found Mr Uki offered no warmth of reassurance.
/
The rich aroma of sizzling beef surged, it's thick scent diffusing into every crack and crevice of the large oval room. Mei was no avid meat eater, but even she couldn't help the slight convulsion of her somewhat full stomach as she first stepped into the delectable fog.
Dotted about the edges of the room were a number of chefs, backing substantial metal pan friers, all utterly consumed with the delicacy of their work. They flipped the extortionately priced cuts of meat with the utmost care, searing the rose-coloured surface layers to absolute perfection. Mei passed a man with an excellent moustache as he made a barely susceptible movement with his knife-wielding right hand; the pink flesh seemingly lacerated before the blade ever made contact. The thin meat slices slid from their parent cuts as though slicked with an unearthly sheen of butter; the softness of the flesh incomparable to any Mei had ever witnessed.
She followed the usher of the mousy waitress further into the room and upon further inspection came to find that the whole area of the restaurant was nearly made up of this single space; the only exception being two double doors to the far left which Mei assumed concealed the inner workings of a kitchen of some description.
With the lack of walls, the single dining and cooking area had been segregated into three distinct regions by the abstract shapes of tamely coloured decorative screens. Mei relaxed a little as she discovered no television or radio gracing the chic furniture of the steak house, its many embellishing shelves occupied instead by the jade vases of austere flowers. Glancing about herself as she entered the first section, Mei watched the entranced faces of diners sampling the pink cuts of meat with apparent ecstasy. They, however, didn't acknowledge her passing glance.
Thinking nothing of their ignorance, Mei took advantage of the lack of eye contact and allowed her curious glance to trail the stature and garments of the folk that frequented the elegant restaurant. Awareness of her own basic state of dress kicked in promptly afterwards as nine times out of ten the coats draped over mahogany chairs were those of exorbitant Channel, and the wrists of chopstick occupied hands were of gold-clad Rolex or Jaquet Droz at the very least.
Mei experienced a stab of unpleasantness as she bathed in the familiarity of the scene; the memory didn't take long to surface. She saw herself seated patiently in the sickeningly similar mahogany of her chair, the placeholder of Takanawa Honda gracing the wood of the table before her. Soon enough, the cold skin of her hand would be tainted by the globular saliva of her husband's business partner, the last guest as always to arrive for the annual company dinner. She would smile gracefully nonetheless and sit in silence, powerless, whilst the six other distinguished heads would discuss politics, golf swings and the defamation of her beloved academy.
The air-headed wife of one of the investors would surely tap her arm, ready to enthusiastically strike up a conversation on some topic inane beyond belief. All the while, Mei's rightful place at the head of the table would sit mockingly close, the serious tones of its conversation barely audible over the ridicule of questions surrounding her most recommended cleaning company.
That other life was utterly remote now, the simplicity of her travel gear and the merciless ache in her legs a far cry from that distant reality. Mei would never return to that reality and such, despite her scorn for its memory, her emotions were mixed.
The server stopped at the lonely corner of the second dining area. Four high backed chairs sat, awkwardly crammed under either end of the roughly varnished rectangle by which the waitress stood. Mei looked from the misery of the skulking table back to the immaculate area through which they had just traversed, thus confirming her suspicion that the restaurant wasn't anywhere near full enough to already be making use of its surplus seating.
Too tired and wary of discovery to argue, Mei nonetheless complied with the woman's slight hand gesture and sat steadily down into one of the chairs facing the restaurant door. Mei relieved herself of the heavy weight of the concealed shotgun as the waitress placed two laminated menu cards before her. Swiftly bowing once more, the busy woman shuffled off to receive a foreign couple that had just passed into the waiting area, leaving Mei alone once again with her troubling thoughts.
Mei stared blankly at the menu, the elaborate kanji gracing its beige surface not translating any meaning to her overwrought brain. After five minutes, Mei flicked her wandering attention to the diners around her. To her chagrin, the people just beyond her prison were of an even deeper vein of money. She had been taught at a young age not to stare, but the more she tried, the more futility wagged his feathered tail; everything was just too surreal. Whether the change had occurred over seven tedious years or within the chaos of the past two weeks, she wasn't certain, but whatever the time frame of her metamorphosis, her undoubted realisation as she looked from face to distinguished face, was that her old perspective of this moneyed world had been stripped away as sure as a snake's worn skin.
Disgust fed her, as she watched a silver-haired man stuff a fatty morsel into his open trap, the transparent fat of the cow trickling down his bristly chin as he greedily consumed his meal. The younger woman sat opposite, more than likely his daughter, performed the same action shortly after, adding a barely discernible touch of grace as she sloshed the half masticated cow about her semi-closed mouth.
Swallowing, she immediately dove into a lengthy critique of the seven and a half thousand yen meal, a chunk of meat caught fast between the gap of her stubby teeth. As if by sixth sense, the woman tore her attention from her strong opinion of the meats marbling intensity and caught Mei's scrutinous glare. She took in the plainness of the shadowed woman's clothing, her slump of exhaustion and the bags shading her dark eyes.
With a nose wrinkle of disgust, the woman tore her attention from Mei's minorly dishevelled state and leaning forward, so her bony buttocks creaked off the wood of her chair, she muttered inaudibly into her father right ear. He turned in a dumbly obvious glance behind him, clapped his surveying eyes on Mei then swiftly jerked his rude attention back on his daughter.
Mei felt the heat of embarrassment flush her ears as the two burst into barely contained fits of laughter, the shoulder blades of the bulky man rising and falling erratically as he tried in vain to speak through the spasms. Mei found herself wishing he would choke.
Embarrassment morphed to hot anger at the blatant disrespect of the pair, the emotions now snaking freely inside her. How dare they? If they even had the slightest inclination of who she was, they wouldn't even dare. Mei stared down at her pale hands; a multitude of cuts and bruises dotted her unbroken skin of a few weeks prior. She shifted uncomfortably in the warm yet weatherbeaten travel coat she had failed to remove as uncomfortable realisation befell her at the frivolity of her thoughts. But then again, who was she anymore?
Then reality hit her all too mercilessly; she had been thrown from the members club. It was true; in this world, she no longer belonged. Building anxiety wouldn't lessen its relent upon her ailing self-perception as she peered around the suffocating room. Carbon copy after copy of the same individuals met her anxious glare; young, old, thin, quiet, charismatic; it didn't matter; any who didn't drop her gaze immediately would offer her that same icy stare, the mockery practically dancing in the deep black of their hard, isolating pupils.
Taking in downturned smile after upturned wig, Mei asked herself, with all honesty; did she ever truly hold a role within the wilds of the freakshow before her? Perhaps she had been demoted at the moment her husband's head hit the fifth step, maybe the day she lost the academy or maybe even the winter when she first admitted her first feelings towards Yuzu.
At some point, recent or far, the world she had grown up in had decided it didn't want her, she was too much trouble for it, and its treachery and blindness were far too much trouble for her. In truth, she knew she had willingly divorced this life long ago and now done licking its wounds, that which she'd thrown away had decided to make it patently clear how much more she needed it than it needed her.
The waitress returned to the table, notebook in hand, plastered smile on point.
"Your order, Maam?"
Mei returned her eyes to the nauseating sheen of the glossy menu; she jabbed her finger absently at the hundred eighty gram sirloin cut.
"Very good, and to drink?"
Mei again didn't speak but pointed bluntly to the first cabernet sauvignon on the wine menu.
"Will that be a whole bottle or a glass, Miss?"
"Bring the bottle," Mei replied flatly.
The woman smiled nervously and collected the scattered menus. She then promptly flipped her notebook shut and slipped wordlessly from the poisonous table, the cogs of her mind grinding desperately to work out what she'd done so wrong as to displease her customer before the food had even been served.
Mei didn't feel bad in the slightest at taking her rising vexation out on the innocent waitress. She was in a bad mood now.
/
Forty minutes had passed at the lonely table. Mei sat, swilling the last remnant of the bloody wine sliding about her curvaceous glass. The perfectly seared sirloin beef sat untouched by her drumming fingers, just as it had done so for the last ten minutes. Her calculating stare lingered on the grey suit of the cashier fronting the exit, her discrete observation leading her to two well-evidenced assumptions. The man was for one; without doubt the quintessential people pleaser and two; utterly oblivious to the world around him; both good.
Now, leaving the almost infuriating courtesy of the bowing cashier, Mei's vision trawled back through the tragedy of humankind sat to her left. An obnoxious screen concealed the view of the diners to the right of her; but even so, both the chink of cutlery and her glance upon entering the restaurant presented her with a sharp enough mental image of the hidden row.
She flicked her attention forward for a final time, the cashier bowing graciously as he accepted a wad of thousand yen bills from the claws of a saggy throated woman. In deliberate unison with the chime of the opening cash register, Mei tipped her glass back and at long last drained her wearisome cup. She set the vessel down on the table with a profound clunk of glass and wood, licking the bitter flavour of the wine from her lips as she did so. Her tongue unwittingly brushed the disturbance of a tiny flesh wound marking her lower lip as it swept by, its discovery prompting a sudden gush of emotion without identity but undeniable intensity to rush her body.
Mei didn't spare much care for what the feeling was she concluded as she watched the waitress glance her way for a third time and finally ambled over to her table with an all honest reluctance. All she knew, was in this crucial moment, she needed its strength.
"Is something wrong with your meal, Miss?"
"Actually, there is."
"Ok. Erm, I mean - sorry for the inconvenience. What is it that I can do to help?"
"You can sit down."