"Plastic? Are you serious?"
"This is Japan, not a frickin' licensed gun range y' know."
"Yeah, but it looked so, so -"
"Real?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I figured once you started pointing that monstrosity of yours at people's heads, by the time I got round to my little faux revolver act, they would all be too scared shitless to question whether or not the gun pointed between their eyes was the real thing or not. Pretty smart, huh?"
"Smart?! That's goddamn crazy! What if someone would have noticed?!"
"Not to be forward, but I really don't think you're in the position to be calling anyone else crazy."
"Fair enough. But, how'd you even get it, and - and how'd you find me in the first place?"
Mei struggled to get her thousand and one questions out between her erratic breaths. Harumi kept a constant pace just ahead of her, rucksack slung over her shoulder, as she too struggled to juggle breathing and the upkeep of the demanding conversation. The pair slid as quickly through the lively streets of Kobe as they could, the furious adrenaline surging both their bodies not helping either's coherence.
"I followed you pretty immediately after you-," Harumi broke off awkwardly," Yeah - anyway, you were so wrapped up in your thoughts that you didn't even notice me trailing behind. After fox face invited you in, I waited a moment before following you."
Harumi stopped suddenly at a crossroads. "But when I eventually did, that annoying waitress ushered me so quickly into a seat behind a separate screen; I wouldn't have had a chance to speak with you even if I'd known what to say. So, in the end, I just ended up sitting there, mulling over whatever that right thing was until I eventually got dragged into the stampede."
"And the gun?" Mei questioned, as she followed Harumi down the leftmost road.
"Oh, yeah; I gave some kid the rest of your change from the convenience store in exchange for it before I went in. I spotted him with about six just like it strapped to every inch of him, so I offered him the trade on a whim. Little guy was pretty easily swayed by the prospect of a little extra pocket money, and gladly parted with the smallest piece in his collection, so that part wasn't all that hard."
"You mean, you thought you'd just waltz in there and start threatening people with a kids toy?!"
Mei threw the plastic revolver back to a breathless Harumi, who turned and caught it neatly. Shoving the gun into her inner jacket pocket, she returned her pace to a few notches off a jog whilst Mei still followed closely behind.
"Well - like I said. I wasn't actually planning to use it. It was just a precaution in case you were really more bite than bark," Harumi grinned over her shoulder, "That said, someone seemed pretty grateful that I did."
Mei wrinkled her nose, deflecting the embarrassment over her brief moment of weakness.
"And besides, it's not like yours was exactly loaded either. Without any pellets, that oversized shotgun's just a useless hunk of wood and metal anyway. You're really not standing much higher than me on the podium of adverse risk planning."
"We just bluffed our way through robbing a whole restaurant," Mei stated distantly, more to herself than anyone.
"It's sure looking that way."
Harumi stopped again. She looked from the busy street ahead and then back to the corner by which she hovered. This time she nodded unconsciously and turned down the darkened sideroad. Mei could do nothing but place her faith in Harumi's mental GPS as she followed her reclaimed companion down into the dark alley.
The relentless rain was still bucketing down in thick sheets, drenching both women from head to toe as they crawled through the eerie backroad. Mei felt her damp hair clinging to the back of her neck, rivulets of icy water constantly finding the gap between her collar and freezing skin. The scarlet - white streetlights were blocked from view behind the wall and instead replaced by homely orange pools shunting down from the curtainless windows either side of the alleys constricting walls.
"If I'm right we should get to the car park through here," Mei caught Harumi's voice on the howling wind.
The thundering rain echoed off the alley walls, the sound of their feet sloshing through the culminating water smoothing out the sound of the rain's intensity. Mei hoisted her own slipping rucksack further up her back as she sped up to within speaking distance of Harumi's silhouetted form.
"Harumi."
"Hmm?" she replied distractedly, half wondering if the alley she had chosen was the right one after all.
"I'm sorry."
"What was that?"
"I said, I'm sorry," Mei enunciated her repeated words, attempting to make them heard over the thunder of the falling rain, "and - I just wanted to say you were right. Throwing away your morals like that, it isn't easy, even in the light of things. I shouldn't have come after you. I thought we were wasting time, and now I've - just made everything so much worse."
The length of silence that followed forced Mei to doubt whether Harumi had heard a single one of the words on which she had just spent precious breath.
"Are you kidding me?" Harumi finally replied, abruptly halting the beginning of Mei's second attempt at apology.
"Thanks to you and your massively screwed up perspective, we've gone from having a spare few yen between us, to a bag half-filled with cash. You're right we may well end up dying right here in Kobe after pulling shit as bold as this, but it's a far better fate than waiting on that hill while Yuzu rots in Sakata. Because of what you did tonight, Yuzu's fate may well have just been flipped entirely."
Despite the rush of the rain, Mei didn't allow a single one of Harumi's moving words to be lost in its incessant chorus. She held each syllable close to her skin, their soft touch going their way to healing the gaping wound ripped across her soul.
"And looking at things from your side, I see now I was just a coward after all-"
No, don't say that!" Mei shot back, surprising even herself as she pounced on the unfavourable dip in conversation. Harumi stopped fast mid-sentence, a little taken aback by the ferocity of which Mei had interrupted her. Aware of her uncharacteristic display, Mei continued more softly.
"It's just; I don't want - just don't say that. You came back. I don't know whether or not I would have done the same - for a person like me. And to be honest, in the end, I needed you there, "Mei averted her gaze even though Harumi was looking the opposite way," So, thank you."
The dimly lit alley would have hidden the reddening of Harumi's cheeks even if Mei didn't avert her eyes. Harumi, however, quickly shuffled on with the conversation, afraid the darkness wouldn't go the whole distance to saving her dignity.
"God prez, you can switch from casually joking to deadpan formality in the blink of an eye. It's actually kinda scary. Loosen your corset, it's no problem, and besides, I can't have the boring-ass class president showing me up. But, if we die, I'll be riding your ass about this little stunt of yours for all eternity in hell. Just so y' know."
Mei felt herself laughing again. It felt good, so maddeningly good to be laughing despite everything. Almost as though she were giving one big 'screw you' to the world and its twisted games; its despair and misery couldn't catch her for all their trying if she didn't want them to. Mei relished in this realisation, laughing uncontrollably.
Harumi was laughing now too, just chuckling constantly right along with her. The two of them cackled like maniacal hyenas as the freezing night air took on an electrical quality, the high whistle of its wind filling Mei with a giddy kind of thrill. She allowed the exhilaration of all that had just happened to play on her tingling nerves again and again, yet this time, she didn't feel guilty about any of it. She was free.
"What about the sound, though?" Mei asked through fits of laughter, deciding she should enjoy herself as much as possible while she still could.
"What sound?" Harumi barely called back, straining to breathe as she too struggled with the infectious laughter.
"You know, that click the guns make in the movies?"
Oh, you mean the safety release? You're really not letting this thing go, are you?
Mei shook her head amused, even though she knew Harumi couldn't see her.
"It's actually not really that hard if you practice." Harumi paused for a moment, then clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth as though it were the most natural thing in the world. And, just like that, Mei was back in the restaurant again, ears disbelieving as she heard the unmistakable clack of the revolver that had jolted all hearts present.
"My God, I still can't believe this," Mei responded, somehow reaching a higher intensity in her hysterics. The insanity of their actually pulling something so unplanned and delusional off was too overwhelming for her usual straight face to handle.
"You just slipped into some apocalyptic rampage, robbed a whole restaurant and got us blacklisted for probably the rest of our lives and your greatest takeaway from all that is my weird talent for sound effects?"
"Yes, I suppose it is," Mei replied, finally beginning to recover from her crippling laughter.
"Yep, you've definitely got a warped perspective over there," Harumi said, smiling into the darkness. "Y'know Yuzu used to be the exact same. This stupid little trick of mine could keep her entertained for hours. You know what she'd make me do?"
"What?"
"Prank literally every unsuspecting person known to man. She'd always have an ear out for teachers ringtones for one so that later we could crouch by the door during some important staff meeting, wait till the crucial point and then I'd blurt the ringtone out suddenly. The chaos was always priceless, a thousand and one apologies, followed by the offended snorts of some stuck up board members while the poor guy or girl would rummage in vain for the phone that'd always conveniently ring off just as they found it. Oh my god, it was hilarious. Yuzu almost got us caught every time 'cause she just couldn't shut up laughing when the bomb finally went off."
"What other sounds can you do?"
"Everything really, animals, cars, sirens-"
The dim wail of a siren resonated off the cold brick walls.
"You're kidding me, that was so realistic!"
"That wasn't me."
Unwanted reality dawned on Mei as harsh realisation leered unseen at the boundary of her brief bubble of happiness. Mei lost her smile altogether as she visibly reflected the sudden change in Harumi's joking tone. This wasn't over yet. Not by a long shot.
"Sounds like Mr Knifeman's other half has finally gotten through to the cops."
The sudden right turn in the alley ushered them further along as they continued faster now slicing through the thick silence of apprehension. The route weaved twice more before throwing the two breathless women out onto the concrete clearing.
The hulking form of a brutalist multi-storey car park overshadowed the street as the two women stepped tentatively from the projected darkness of the alleyway. The five floors, each only visible from the outside were lined with tight rows of hundreds of cars, the concealed area beyond promising the same merciless cramming of metal across almost the whole area of each story. Mei gawked as she took in the scale of the fresh challenge before them.
"Harumi, tell me you're kidding me."
"It's not like you're gonna shoot me if I don't."
"Wh- I thought you said you knew where the restaurant's car park was, not the car park for every resident of the entire city?!"
"Well technically, this is the restaurant car park. It just also happens to be the car park of every establishment fronting the three streets surrounding it too."
"How the hell are we going to find it in this?!" Mei stuttered after Harumi as she made purposefully for the yellow double doors of the car parks pedestrian entrance.
"We'll just have to."
Following Harumi's dismissive hand wave, Mei slipped through the leftmost door before it flapped shut. The short corridor had a sterile smell. The echoing of her footsteps as they slapped the shined floor were jarringly clear once again, the peeling paint of the bile coloured walls only adding to the overall effect of reverberation.
She caught up with Harumi as she finally came face to face with the first level of the snaking labyrinth.
Harumi reached inside her jacket pocket and drew out the smooth black key fob that had waited patiently within. She tilted the tactile object, brushing her thumb over the previously unseen ridges in an absent attempt to discern the nature of its embossed surface.
"What kind of car is it?"
Harumi exhaled sharply with annoyance, "I can barely see in this crappy lighting, and the designs chipped anyhow," she looked up steadily, fixing her eagle eyes on the droves of colourful vehicles fanning out before her. "It's just gonna have to be trial and error."
The sickening whine of the sirens rang out again, this time undeniably closer.
She looked at Mei with weakly smirking anxiety, "Hopefully, not so much error."
The impossible search began.
The cars rolled on and on; the hulking vans rudely concealed their neighbours, making the already difficult maze damn near impossible to navigate. Harumi jabbed the stolen key fob frantically at the decided gap of every five cars, begging the telling pair of headlamps to make themselves known under the fobs infrared sweep. At every click, only a mocking darkness glowered back at her, firing unneeded doubt into the already hellish plan.
On and on they went, Mei searching desperately behind for any flicker of luminosity her partner might have missed in her haste. The intricate designs of the many cars tumbling by soon morphed to nothing more than shapeless lumps of metal by the seventh row. This was crazy. Skidding to a stop by the last Nissan, Harumi looked at Mei haplessly with nothing to show for the fresh sheen of sweat glossed over her face.
"Goddamn, - t's not here- cmon, we need to go up."
Mei simply nodded, far too out of breath to respond verbally.
Tearing back across the grey concrete of the first story the pair slid into the first corridor, this time continuing to its end. Bursting through a mirror set of doors the two tumbled onto the equally sterile stairwell. Checked patterns climbed the wall, indicating the presence of the second story, which lay just above their heads. Harumi flew immediately into the ascent of the unnecessarily deep stairwell, Mei practically doing high knees as she struggled to stay in her wake. Finally throwing themselves onto the second level now more breathless than before, Harumi launched into the same disciplined process of trial and error. Mei despaired as she weaved between Suzuki bikes and Honda mopeds, the area somehow more jam-packed than the one below.
Harumi's testing gap quickly doubled as she raised the fob in vain towards the reams of Mazda's, Mitsubishi's and Ford's spewing out before her, the cars were seemingly reproducing on the spot. Ten cars width increased to twelve, time running incredibly thin. The last miserable Honda stooping by the right-hand corner pillar winked defeat as the exhausted pair of women finally rounded on its disappointing form.
This time the twin doors were green, the antiseptic stairwell replaced by a mysterious scent of cinnamon. Skywards they ran, catching feet on steps, flailing for handrails. Their aching legs screamed with lactic acid, lungs threatening to collapse under the pressure. The third floor bared its black smile as they entered, its many residents an inconspicuous black, adding to the already ridiculous struggle of discerning one car from the next. Harumi let out a cry of frustration at the sight of the tortuous rectangle. She descended into the chaos; nonetheless, this time not stopping at each testing line, but merely slowing to a light jog.
Harumi's breaths reached a new pitch as she darted between the lines, prompting Mei's awareness of Harumi's increased exhaustion over hers. Flanking her, Mei extended a hand and demanded to carry her rucksack too. Harumi refused at first, pointing out Mei's own reddened face between sprints, but at the cued wail of the sirens swanning dangerously close below Harumi quickly dispensed with chivalry. Slinging the somewhat more cumbersome bag over her shoulder, it became clear to Mei that they needed each other if they were to have any chance of making it through this.
Mei fixed her wide-angled view on the scene from where she backed towards the blue set of double doors. She watched as Harumi staggered back and forth now shouting reels of profanity ridden insults at the hundreds of metal bodies waltzing around her. Her reckless lack of pacing, causing her to wobble on her unstable feet. Hitting the icy blue of a Mazda with her thigh, Harumi finally crashed to her aching knees with a groan. She slumped where she fell; her need to catch her erratic breath outweighing the warning of the inconsistent sirens. Mei flung the two rucksacks to the ground and wheeled over to Harumi's shuddering form. Kneeling by her partner, she attempted to attack the overwhelming problem with logic.
"We need to think about this."
"Mei, we really don't have time for drawing up an essay plan," Harumi replied breathlessly, returning herself to a shaky standing position.
"No, just slow down a minute. Who'd you take the keys from?"
"That couple. The Korean lady and that blonde guy, American, I think."
"Alright, so we're probably looking for a foreign car. Ignore the Japanese ones. Like you say we don't have time for a full search. It's either this or nothing."
Harumi nodded grimly, the brief break strapping her legs with renewed zeal. A minute later she'd completed the unfinished round. Mei watched despairingly as she threw up her hands, indicating yet another failure. The long tubular lights overhead flickered gravity across Harumi's reddened face.
Only one more flight.
By the centre of the ruthless steps, Mei began to seriously regret taking both rucksacks, entirely ready at this stage to go into cardiac arrest. Harumi had long since left the stairwell by the time Mei eventually hauled her dishevelled body up onto the final step. Staggering into the last sea of vehicles, Mei raised her heavy head in search of the other woman.
The clap of distant footsteps prompted Mei's next movement down the aisle second from the centre. The guiding sound dimmed then suddenly stopped altogether as Mei rounded a pack of chic minivans. She called out to her partner, the lack of sound leaving her at a loss for where to turn.
"I think I found it."
A delayed thrill shot through Mei's body as she registered Harumi's impossible words, her legs traversing the last few metres towards Harumi's voice through the might of pure adrenaline alone.
Mei double-stepped as she noted the air around Harumi held an electric kind of magnitude, the source of which was concealed from Mei's current angle by the silver bumper of a Kia Soul. Finally flanking Harumi's paralysed form, Mei spared words as she just allowed her gaze to tell the story of what held her companion so utterly enraptured.
The two amber eyes of the Dodge Hellcat glared back at her in reply. The two intake scoops gracing the hood flaring as the two infernal nostrils roughly inhaled the fear of the two women who had gone so far to seek it out.
Every inch of the Challenger's sleek body line enunciated the devastating might of the beast promised within its gorgeous bodywork. Mei traced the rim of the cars slick underbelly with undeniable awe, the raked, aggressive stance of the creature supported effortlessly upon the crouch of its bulky, black tyres. The indented rubber gave way to gorgeously deep, gunmetal wheels, their rims reflecting the blue hue of the flickering lamps overhead with an absolute menace. Mei heard Harumi exhale as she rolled her eyes for the third time over the midnight black coat of the car born straight from the fires of hell, it's perfect skin coming to a worthy end in the delightful flick of its delicate spoiler.
The scarlet red stripe that ripped across the body of the alluring creature straight from hood to tail stood as the only colour daring enough to break the gorgeous sheet of ebony, the beauty and ferocity radiating from the Dodge Challenger utterly untouchable in the face of the scrap heaps flanking it. Mei swallowed as she once more settled eyes on the four lights either side of the coarse black grill, the outside white enunciating the inner which still seeped that bloody yellow. The hellcat leered at them.
"Jesus Christ," Mei whispered.
"Yeah, I know," Harumi replied, with equal quiet.
Looking at Harumi, damp strands of brown hair thrown across her glowing face, Mei could see the visible excitement sparking attractively behind her charged glare at the prospect of what came next. Mei couldn't help but get caught up in the appeal.
"Well, it's now or never."
Following a madly grinning Harumi, Mei slid herself around to the passenger door of the car. The sirens rang out again as she slipped herself inside the leather interior and quickly slammed the door shut. Mei turned and hauled the two rucksacks one after the other into the back seat of the car, then flicked her agitated gaze back on Harumi, who was still running her hands over the ground metal framing the ambition of the analogue speedometer.
'Erm Harumi, I can see you're reeling in a personal fantasy right now, but-"
"Yeah, I know, I know," she replied quickly, testing her grip on the chrome automatic shifter," but, I mean this thing's probably over seven hundred horsepower."
"Is that a lot?"
"Let's just say we're way more likely to die in the hands of this thing than the police."
"Sounds like a better death to me."
"Are we doing this?"
"Do we have a choice."
"Probably, but right now I'm all for blissfully ignoring alternative possibilities."
"Ditto."
Harumi strapped herself in profoundly. Mei quickly replicated this with the small click of her own seatbelt seriously doubting the thin strap of fabric's promise to save her from a hundred-ninety mile per hour collision. The sirens shattered below once more, prompting Harumi's overly respectful movements to finally speed up.
"Shit, I mean - alright, here goes."
Harumi turned the key. Mei held her breath as the ignition purred to life.
/