Rain sips his beer in silence as usual. Willfully drowning out all sound around him, focusing only on the cold glass in front of him- noticing every drop of perspiration on it, the color of the liquid, the small sound as bubbles pop on its surface, everything else is white noise to him. He has done this so he would not have to hear what he knows would be happening on the other side of the bar.
'Another miscalculation' he thinks. 'If you had wanted me to hear and notice, you would have found out where I usually sit and found a seat closer.'
He smiles sardonically to himself. He had been so afraid that Kyoko, the actress would successfully break the character of Rain he had created. But now he realizes, he had nothing to fear. Granted he had been a bit rusty himself and made a few mistakes in his acting, but if the result is that Kyoko leaves him alone and he goes back to trying to forget his life with her, does it really matter if he is not the best actor in the world? 'No it does not.' he says to himself and for the moment he believes it too. Perhaps that should have been his strategy from the beginning. When Kyoko arrived, he should have honestly told her that he wanted nothing to do with her, asked her to leave him alone once more. Maybe added more mean things like how she had started sucking as an actress or insinuate stuff about Shin. 'Yeah' he thinks bitterly to himself, ' That would have worked.'
But he had left her saying mean things the last time. Specifically designed to stop her from coming after him and she had come anyway. How long could he buy this time? Perhaps not long, he realizes. She was rather persistent.
He is lost in such thoughts when somewhere from the background, something like a commotion, people yelling or speaking loudly, starts edging into his consciousness. Idly he turns around
"- you share the Jap with me?" a burly bearded man sitting next to Kyoko and her companion is saying. He is addressing Kyoko's companion who replies something but Rain can't hear it.
"Or I could just buy her from you outright, huh!" the burly man continues as though he didn't hear the other man.
James, the bartender, has walked over to their side saying in a voice that carries, "Folks, how about we keep the peace here huh?"
"C'mon James," the burly man replies, his words slightly slurring. "Don't be a spoilsport."
"Carl, why don't you play nice. These folks here are from outta town. How about we show our trademark Danville hospitality and leave them alone."
"I was being nice-" Carl says
"We were just leaving -" Kyoko's friend says at the same time.
"Let's go, Tom," says Kyoko getting up. She had been sitting in between Carl and Tom. Carl puts out a hand stopping her. Since Tom had been sitting close to the wall, where a table blocks his way out, she and Tom would have to push through Carl's hand to leave.
At this moment, Kyoko glances in Rain's direction, and Rain stares back. Then he turns around and places some change on the counter. His barstool scrapes noisily as he gets up. But he doesn't walk towards Kyoko and the others. Instead, he walks towards the door. It is exactly what recluse Rain would do, leave the bar when it got too noisy.
Tom is saying, "Could you let us pass please." to Carl. Rain then hears Kyoko say in exasperation, "Enough is enough. Tom, you can find your own way back to Kansas."
Rain opens the door as quickly as possible and walks out before Kyoko, who he can hear walking towards him, reaches the door. She must have somehow pushed through Carl's hand. Maybe using that supernatural force that she had used that morning.
Outside Rain walks quickly to an alley to the right of the bar and waits, hiding in the darkness. He wants to see if Kyoko would try to follow him. She knows the direction of his apartment - the road that led away directly across from the bar's entrance. Her hotel is to the left so he feels relatively safe to the right.
Kyoko appears in moments and glances around as if trying to get her bearings. She walks towards the alley Rain is in. Surprised, he creeps more inward as silently as possible. But Kyoko doesn't glance in the alley, she walks quickly and with purpose, her eyes flashing with anger.
'She can't possibly be thinking her hotel is that way.' Rain thinks staring at her. 'Or does she think it is my apartment that is that way? How terrible is your sense of direction?'
He is puzzling this when he hears the door to the bar open again. Peering around the corner he sees Carl stagger out. As he looks to the right, Rain ducks inside again but not before seeing the malicious grin on Carl's face. In a few seconds, Carl passes by Rain's alley as well, following Kyoko.
Rain clutches his head. 'What should I do? Clearly, Carl is not part of Kyoko's act - he is a local, and James knows him as well. With the clothes she had been wearing and acting like she was with that Tom fellow, she was going to attract the wrong kind of attention, sooner or later."
His thinking is once again cut short by Tom also spilling out from the bar. He glances right and presumably sees Carl and Kyoko because he curses uncharacteristically.
"I ain't paid enough for this, man." Rain can hear him mutter. His accent is way different from before - less sophisticated, more drawl. He then proceeds to whip out a cell-phone and holding it to his ear says, "Hello, 911, yes I want to report that I saw a suspicious man follow a woman in Danville. Yes, outside the bar on State St. What?"
Tom is saying all of this at top speed. He stops when the person on the phone asks a question.
"Yes. I think north." He glances around at the street signs. "Third Street is at my back and they are heading in the direction of Fourth Street." He pauses again as the voice asks another question. "Well the guy was drunk, I don't know what else was suspicious about him. There was a commotion in the bar that he just came out of involving him and the same women he is following now. How do I know that? Well-" and Tom hangs up muttering to the phone again "I ain't gonna tell you that, sweetheart.". He starts walking in the opposite direction to Kyoko.
Rain curses. Either Tom had stopped acting his role or he had been putting on an act for Kyoko's benefit that he was stopping now since she wasn't around. Either way, he was going to be of no use and that call to emergency services might simply be ignored. Rain had no way of knowing if help would arrive. Gritting his teeth, he walks out of the alley and follows Carl and Kyoko.
The lights grow darker as they walk farther away from the bar. Rain can vaguely see a silhouette in the distance which he assumes is Carl. But as they keep walking, the edges of the silhouette blur into the darkness, and before long, he can't see anything. He hurries forward, afraid to lose them. He nears another dark alley still unable to see them when he hears a sound - a thud like something hitting the floor.
"Come on." A gruff voice. Carl's comes from the alley "Japs are masochists. Aren't you turned on by the pain?"
Rain runs forward and as he does, he hears Kyoko's muffled voice - as though she is speaking into the ground, "Please."
Rain feels his hair stand on end. Turning the corner of the alley the scene in front of him stops him cold. Kyoko is sprawled on the floor. Carl is standing behind her, crouching to pick up something. As he straightens, Rain sees that he has a bottle in his hand. Rain is already moving.'NO. NO. NO.' his mind screams. 'Not again!' as he lunges forward. But Carl and Kyoko are farther inside and in the time it takes him to reach them, Carl says, "C'mon, cry some more. Turns me on!" and he smashes the glass down. At Kyoko.
Rain had been lunging towards Carl. He tries mid-lunge to change direction to protect Kyoko from the bottle. Rain blinks and he is back at the airport on that fateful day, his mind on autopilot repeating a single wordless command, "Save Kyoko."
Ren blinks his eyes awake. For a second, he cannot recognize his own apartment. It seems eerily like the hospital - a single bed with Kyoko on it and a single chair by its side where Ren, it appears, had fallen asleep. Then the events leading up to this come rushing into his head. He looks over at Kyoko - she has been bandaged. Presumably, he did that sometime last night. He glances over at the clock -it reads 5:00 AM. He must have drifted off to sleep after tending to Kyoko.
Like a drunk person trying to remember events, Ren tries to peer into the fog of his memory and remember what happened after Carl threw the bottle. But it is blurry. But the thought of Carl strikes a spark within him. 'That bastard.' And suddenly Ren feels very very awake and needing to find Carl and take him apart piece by piece. He looks over at Kyoko making sure she is asleep. Good. She probably won't wake up soon. He dashes out into the freezing dawn straight to James's house. He didn't know where Carl lived but James would.
Woken up by the incessant and loud knocking, James comes to the door and opens it.
"Jesus! Rain! Do you know what time it is man? You do know I run a bar that runs into midnight?"
"James. I am sorry to wake you up but I wouldn't if it were not important."
"Well, I suppose you saying anything other than 'one more beer' means that it is important enough to wake me up. Now I am up. You wanna come in and get some coffee?"
"No. I really need to know Carl's address. Just let me know and I will be on my way."
"Carl? Carl who?"
"The guy last night - Carl who was being obnoxious to that couple."
"Oh him. I don't know where he lives."
Ren is so obviously disappointed that James frowns, "You know, you should ask that woman he was bothering yesterday. She would know."
"She would know what?"
"Where this Carl-fellow lives, if that is his real name."
Feeling a cold dread, Rain asks, "What do you mean 'if that is his real name'?
"Well, I have never met the fella till last night, see. That woman was the one, I'm sure, who told me on the phone. That there would be a Carl coming into the bar and bothering her and another fella. She had this young fella give me an extra friendly tip to just ask this Carl-fella to back off."
James continues explaining what was asked of him but Ren has stopped listening.
'She couldn't have possibly- She just - Everything was - staged." His mind staggers at the meaning of that. Tom was a feint, Carl was the real act. And all she had to do to fool Ren was get James to say Carl's name. It was so simple and so brilliant. But if that was the case, how did she allow herself to get hurt? Did Carl miss?
He thought back to what happened at that moment. Carl standing over Kyoko and throwing the bottle to the right of her face and Kyoko making a desperate movement to escape him to her right. So that her head came right under Carl's bottle. Carl had intended to not hurt her. But Kyoko had intended to get herself hurt!
"You all right? You look a little pale. How about you come in for that coffee after all?" James asks.
"No. Thank you, James," says Ren and leaves.