Two Kinds of Research

“Ahahaha! You thought I was a stalker?!” The young man laughed as he pulled down his mask, revealing his slightly pronounced canines.

It was only after he’d pressed the button for the same floor Midoriko was headed to that she realized where she’d seen him before. He was the next-door neighbor with the eyebrow piercing she’d seen in passing throughout the week.

“I take it you’ve had problems like that in the past, then? That’s terrible!” He smiled sympathetically.

“Haha…Something like that…”

The truth was, she’d never had a stalker before, but the incident with the Russian man left her rattled. The young man looked Japanese, so she didn’t think he was at all connected with the Russians—a stalker was the next worst thing her mind could come up with.

“Gosh, I’m sorry!” he said, rubbing his neck. “I guess I shoulda said somethin’ sooner!”

“Um…Really! It’s okay!” Midoriko said, waving her hands. “I feel like I should be the one apologizing…”

The elevator stopped on their floor, and the two of them stepped out, headed in the same direction.

“You just moved in, right? Do you feel safe here?” he asked. Midoriko couldn’t even bring herself to look at him out of embarrassment. “I know we’ve only just met, but please feel free to knock on my door if ya need anything!”

“S-sure…” Midoriko nodded politely.

“Oh, right! We haven’t properly introduced ourselves yet, eh?” He stopped right outside his apartment door. Midoriko stopped herself right before reaching her door. Bowing, he said, “I’m Kuroiwa Akira. Nice to meet ya!”

Midoriko returned his polite bow with her own. “H-hello. I’m Suwa Midoriko.”

Akira punched in the code for his door lock. He opened the door, giving Midoriko one last smile before he entered. “Well, see ya around, Miss Suwa!”

“R-right…” Midoriko nodded politely and entered the code for her own door. When she got inside, she felt like her legs were going to give out from under her.

“Welcome home, Midoriko-nee!” Itoko trotted up to greet her, filling Midoriko with strength once more.

“I’m back! And I have something for you,” Midoriko said, pulling a doll out of the bag for Itoko. She was over the moon.

***

“By the way, Miss Midoriko, I was wonderin’…” Akira turned to Midoriko as they walked together from the train station. “What happened to Mr. Nishikawa?”

After formally introducing herself to Kuroiwa Akira, Midoriko found herself interacting with him a lot more. As it would turn out, they shared an entire commute. Akira was an undergraduate student at the University of Osaka, right next to the National Museum of Ethnology.

“Nishikawa…?” Midoriko tried to remember why that name seemed familiar.

“He’s the owner of your unit. Though I never really saw him very much…” he said with a shrug.

As Midoriko mulled over the name in her head, it clicked.

“Enishi—spelled with the kanji for creek and west.”

Nishikawa…Westbrook…Enishi. His aliases were so…stupid.

“Ah…Of course…Mr. Nishikawa…” she mumbled, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Yes, he’s renting to me right now.”

“Oh! Gotcha!”

Akira was a very friendly sort—Osaka born through and through. They’d only been talking for about a week, yet Midoriko found him to be incredibly easy to talk to. Perhaps it was his outgoing personality, or maybe his Kansai accent was just very disarming. Most importantly, she appreciated that he spoke to her politely, unlike someone she knew.

Through their daily conversations, Midoriko had learned that Akira was twenty-two, a fourth-year psychology student, and lived by himself in an inherited apartment. He worked part-time at his family’s business during school breaks and spent his free time studying as well as attending drinking parties with classmates. A much-needed normal presence in her life.

“Um…Can I ask, what does Mr. Nishikawa look like?” Midoriko asked as they stepped into the elevator together.

“Huh…?” Akira looked at her in confusion as he pressed the button for their shared floor in the elevator.

“It’s just– I rented through an agent!” Midoriko quickly added, realizing how strange she sounded. “I never actually met him before.”

Akira covered his mouth and looked away from Midoriko. His shoulders trembled slightly.

“Wha– What’s wrong?!” Midoriko touched his shoulder with worry. Was Ryouma actually really scary to other people when walking around as his aliases?!

“I’m sorry,” he said, smiling. It was now obvious that Akira was trying to hide his own laughter. “I think I might’ve had some inappropriate assumptions about ya, Miss Midoriko…”

“Huh?! Inapro– Wha…?”

“Mr. Nishikawa is an older salaryman type with greying hair,” Akira explained. His cheeks flushed slightly as he looked at Midoriko. “Please forgive me, but I thought maybe you were his mistress or somethin’ since you’ve got a little girl…”

Midoriko felt her cheeks heat up as she buried her face in her hands. “Oh my God…”

They exited onto their floor and began walking towards their units together.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” Akira groveled, pressing his hands together as he bowed deeply.

“It’s fine…” Midoriko answered meekly. “Itoko is…a relative’s child that I recently started taking care of…”

“Wow! You’re so amazin’, Miss. Midoriko! And here I am thinkin’ the worst of ya!”

“Really, Akira…It’s okay…” she mumbled as they both reached their doors.

“It’s not! I’m gonna go inside to commit seppuku right now!” Akira stuck his tongue out and laughed. “Just kiddin’!”

Midoriko laughed as she punched in her door code. “Okay. See you tomorrow, Akira.”

He waved goodbye as Midoriko entered her apartment, then let his smile fade. Akira punched in his own door code and quietly entered his own dark apartment. He kicked off his sneakers, leaving them sitting in the middle of the entryway, then dropped his backpack down near the living room.

Akira grabbed a beer from the fridge before heading into a room dimly lit by computer monitors displaying camera feeds. One feed was pointed toward the walkway where the front door was, while another was pointed toward a neighboring balcony in the rear.

He sat down at the desk and kicked his feet up while initiating a phone call to a contact called “Boss.” As the phone rang, he cracked open the beer, then lit the cigarette.

“What is it?” asked a deep, gruff voice on the other line.

Akira took a drag off his cigarette and exhaled. “Just checkin’ in to report that the girl next door doesn’t seem to be Nishikawa’s mistress like we thought.”

“Is that so?”

“Yep. She didn’t even know what he looked like,” he said, taking a sip of his beer. Akira looked at the camera feed on the walkway to see Midoriko walk past with the little girl beside her. Those two only seem to go out either really early or after dark…

“So she doesn’t know anything about him?” the voice on the other line asked.

“Hmm…Well, actually, I’m not really convinced she doesn’t know anythin’,” Akira said, taking another drag off his cigarette. He exhaled a puff of smoke before continuing. “Like, for instance, the name Nishikawa was apparently new to her… But she made some kind of quick association in her head. I could see the cogs turnin’ as she figured it out.”

“So what do you think that means?”

“I think it’s an alias.”

“...”

“I mean, that’s why you sent me here, right? To figure out who this guy is?” Akira took a long swig of his beer. “Come on, you don’t think his face is the only thing that’s fake about him, right?”

Nishikawa was slippery. Everyone had conflicting descriptions of him—the only constant was that he was taller than most Japanese people, leading to rumors that he might be a foreign sorcerer.

“Then what’s your plan, now? Remember who it is that’s paying your bills.”

They’d been monitoring the place next door for several months as a fruitless endeavor. Akira’s employers, a yakuza syndicate from the Chubu region called the Shishiba-Gumi, were about to cancel the operation until he sent word that there was activity in the apartment.

That was weeks ago. Now there was suddenly a woman and child living there—Suwa Midoriko was a fresh lead.

“Well…” He sat up in his chair and set the beer can on the desk. With a few clicks of his mouse, Akira opened up a file on his computer containing a profile he’d compiled for Midoriko. He used his shoulder to press the phone to his ear as he started updating the information in the file.

“I’m gonna keep talking to this girl. I have a feeling that I’ll be able to get something out of her if I do.”

The voice on the other end let out an exasperated sigh. “Kuroiwa…At least try to hide your ulterior motives…”

“Huh? Who? Me?” He laughed, taking another drag off his cigarette. “Sorry, I can’t help it. I just really love timid girls like her.”

***

Midoriko sat in front of her laptop at the kitchen table. As she scrolled through online academic journals, she passed glances at the kīla resting on the tabletop next to her. She’d exhausted the research available in Japanese and was struggling to come up with any deeper information on these items.

So far, she’d only been able to uncover surface-level information. In the Tibetan script, it is written as phurba, with kīla having derived from the Sanskrit name of the implement. In Japan, it’s referred to as a kongou-kou amongst the Buddhist sects that incorporate it into their traditions. The three-sided blade of the knife is symbolic of tent stakes used amongst nomadic Himalayan cultures, from which this form of Buddhism originates, and it’s often driven into the ground during rituals.

She had even done deep research into the temple that discovered this kīla and Shingon Buddhism as a whole, but everything came back to “ritual use.” There didn’t seem to be much information about the kīla’s purpose beyond that.

Midoriko leaned back in the chair and stretched. She heard a bedroom door open behind her and turned around, prepared to usher Itoko back to sleep. Instead, it was Xiǎomíng making a rare appearance.

“Maybe I should try Chinese sources…” Midoriko pondered outloud, brushing her finger over the intricate carvings on the kīla’s pommel. She followed Xiǎomíng with her eyes as he walked into the kitchen. “Hey, do you think you could help me out with some research in Chinese on Tibetan Buddhism?”

“Sure, but you might not find much,” Xiǎomíng said as he walked into the kitchen. “Those cultures were heavily suppressed after the Cultural Revolution.”

“Then, do you know anything about these?” Midoriko asked, holding up the kīla.

Xiǎomíng cast a quick glance at the kīla as he poured himself a glass of barley tea. “It’s not really my area of expertise.”

Midoriko rested her chin on her hand and sighed. “Thanks anyway, I suppose…”

He set his cup on the table and sat next to Midoriko. “Well…I do know that there is one group of Tibetan Buddhists that has seen a cultural resurgence over the past forty years. Do you know of Bon culture?”

They quickly found that he was right in that academic texts available in Chinese regarding Tibetan Buddhism and Bon culture were lacking. However, it wasn’t completely fruitless. Together, they learned that during the 1960s, following the exodus of Tibetan Buddhists from the region, there was a surge of Western academic study into Bon culture.

A glut of English-language information opened up to them.