Half-Truths and Complete Lies

Maybe Midoriko should have worried more about her living situation.

“I heard voices outside, so I came to see who it was,” Ryouma said, smiling. But his eyes weren’t smiling. “Who might this be? Hm? Midoriko?”

He was sticking out from behind the apartment door, eyeing Akira with suspicion.

Midoriko had just arrived home alongside Akira, and as per usual, they were chatting outside of their apartments for a moment. Ryouma, whether by impeccable or terrible timing, had just entered the conversation as Akira was asking her a personal question.

“Th-this is our neighbor, K-Kuroiwa Akira,” she stammered.

“Who is that, Miss Midoriko?” Akira asked, eyeing Ryouma up and down.

“Th-this is…” she trailed off, unsure of how to introduce Ryouma.

“Nishikawa,” he said, finishing her sentence.

“Nishikawa?” Akira repeated, raising an eyebrow.

Midoriko looked back and forth between them. She had no idea how Ryouma looked to Akira at that moment, but she remembered that Nishikawa had been described as looking middle-aged to her. Something about Akira’s look gave her the feeling that Ryouma’s current appearance did not match that description.

“Well, nice to meet you, then!” Akira said with a slight bow.

He’s not going to acknowledge it? Midoriko kept her mouth shut, thankful that the interaction wasn’t over-complicating itself.

Akira punched in the door code, but stopped himself from going in. Holding the door open, he looked to Midoriko once more and smiled. “Anyway… What’s your answer?”

“M-My answer?” she repeated, trying to recall what he’d asked her just a moment ago before her mind went blank.

“About getting dinner together?” Akira’s fingers drummed against the door expectantly.

“Oh! Right! Haha…” Midoriko rubbed the back of her neck. It felt like someone was staring a hole in it from behind. “I’m really busy with the end of the semester and the end of my exhibit, so right now is a little…”

“I get it,” he said, sighing. “Well… See you tomorrow, Miss Midoriko!”

“R-right…” She smiled and gave a quick wave. After Akira’s door closed, Ryouma yanked her inside the apartment.

In the entryway, Midoriko’s back was pressed up against a wall while Ryouma loomed over her, propped up by his elbow resting against the same wall.

“Who said you could talk to the neighbors?” he asked in that dangerous, velvety voice.

“It would be rude not to,” Midoriko said, meeting his eyes. She’d grown used to him invading her personal space. He couldn’t get a rise out of her like this anymore.

His face leaned in closer. “That looked like it went a little beyond polite small-talk to me.”

“So what?” She ducked under his arm and removed her shoes. “We share a commute in the evening, so we became friends.”

Ryouma crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, watching as she placed her shoes onto the rack.

“And what have you told him about me?” he asked with a frown.

Midoriko stopped in her tracks as she made her way inside the apartment and turned around.

“I’ve said nothing about you. To anyone,” she scoffed. “Isn’t that what you want from me? To keep my mouth shut about who you are?”

Ryouma looked at her coldly. He opened his mouth to say something, but closed it.

Hmph. That’s what I thought… Midoriko swiftly turned her back on him and entered the living area. It was stupid of her to even feel flustered by this man earlier in the day.

***

It had been two years since a man named Nishikawa Tatsumi had taken down the top brass of the Yokohama Inukai Family in one night. Those who survived did so by virtue of just not being around that night.

The incident triggered the worst turf war Southern Kanto had seen in a long time. And it wasn’t just among yakuza either—even some Chinese Triads based in Yokohama got in on it. How was it possible for just one man to create that kind of power vacuum?

Some people insisted he wasn’t working alone. There were theories that he was working with other gangs to take out the Inukai Family. Other theories suggested that he was planted by foreign gangs to shake things up and make room for them.

It left ripple effects across all the different groups and regions. Smaller gangs began to band together as a strength-in-numbers strategy, while others were absorbed into the bigger syndicates. Akira had been witness to one such scheme where his own family here in Osaka had gone so far as to ally with a major player in the Chubu region—the Shishiba-Gumi.

“There’s no way that was him, right?” Akira mumbled aloud to no one. He lit up a cigarette as he scrubbed through the camera footage from the day.

Where did that guy even come from? The only people Akira had ever seen coming and going from the apartment had been Midoriko with and without the little girl, and a teenage boy.

Come to think of it, he didn’t remember seeing when the boy arrived either. Midoriko never once mentioned him to Akira. The only reason he knew the kid was there, was because he occasionally popped up on the cameras doing chores or going shopping. He’d been tempted to ask, but it was never something that came up organically.

Just who were these people? They couldn’t be Nishikawa’s family, could they?

Akira’s cigarette slumped at the corner of his mouth as he stared intently at sped up video of the walkway. When he got to the point where that man popped his head out the door, he paused it, then leaned in closer to the monitor.

“Ha! He doesn’t look a damn thing like the guy I saw…”

The man on camera had the type of face you wouldn’t look twice at—slightly round in shape, thick eyebrows, a center part haircut. However, the man Akira saw was model-like. He had a slim and angular face, with longer shaggy hair, and three distinct moles—two near the right eye, one on the chin.

“This Nishikawa bastard really is a sorcerer…” But he wasn’t a foreign one—he was definitely Japanese. Akira leaned back in his chair and laughed to himself.

Nishikawa’s dedication to glamour magic clearly surpassed that of most sorcerers. Unfortunately for him, those tricks didn’t work on Akira. They really had chosen the right man for this job.

Akira took a long drag off his cigarette and exhaled. The question now was, should he report this immediately or should he sit on it for a little while longer?

He went back in the footage a few frames to right before the door opened—right when he was asking Midoriko out. As he looked at her smiling face, something nagged at him about her, and it wasn’t just the feelings of conquest she stirred up in him.

How much does she know?

Akira picked up his phone and dialed the contact labeled ‘Boss.’ The call was immediately answered.

“What is it?”

“Hey boss, this has been botherin’ me for a bit,” he said, leaning back in the chair. “What exactly went missing from the Inukai Family?”

It was the head of the Shishiba-Gumi who sent out the orders to track down Nishikawa. According to a survivor, he’d taken something that belonged to the Inukai Family after nearly wiping them out.

The voice on the other end was quiet for a moment before asking, “Why do you need to know that?”

“Call it curiosity,” Akira replied, taking another drag. Smoke puffed out from his mouth as he continued talking. “I assume the thing was valuable, right? I mean, they got so desperate as to look into every damn Nishikawa in Japan over it…”

Truly, it was pure, dumb luck that led Akira to this assignment. The apartment had gone up for sale, and word of mouth spread from the realtor to persons connected with the Kuroiwa Family, providing them with a lead.

Evidently, the next-door neighbor, a man named Nishikawa, was extremely reclusive to the point where the realtor worried it might make the property hard to sell. The Shishiba-Gumi bought it solely for the purpose of surveilling Nishikawa.

“This stays between us, got it?” The voice on the other end grew hushed.

Akira sat up. He hadn’t expected an answer when he asked.

“Of course. Yes, sir,” he confirmed. It was better to obediently lick boots than to fuck up this opportunity.

“It wasn’t a thing that went missing two years ago. It was a person…”

***

Midoriko and Akira sat side-by-side on the train home. While they’d met up at the train station like they did every day, they’d exchanged nothing more than pleasantries so far. As they drew closer and closer to their transfer station, Midoriko realized that Akira was the one who usually carried the conversation day to day.

As she tried to think of topics to drum up a conversation with him, Akira leaned forward and cleared his throat.

“Um, so that Nishikawa from last night–”

“I’m not seeing him!” she blurted out. Midoriko realized far too late that she’d said that louder than intended as other passengers on the quiet train turned to look at her.

“Huh? Oh…” Akira’s surprise quickly turned into a snicker. “I was gonna ask if he was related to Nishikawa, the owner… But that’s good to know, too.”

Midoriko’s face grew hot. She had to deflect her comment. “Yes, he’s Mr. Nishikawa’s younger brother Ryou…Uh…Ryouta.”

She cringed at herself. Stupid! I’m just as bad as he is, coming up with a name like that…

“Oh, really? His brother? How do you know him?” He tilted his head in curiosity.

“We only recently just met,” she said, scratching her head. It wasn’t entirely a lie. “He’s the one I rented the apartment through.”

“Oh yeah, I remember you mentioning you rented it through an agent…”

“Wow! Your memory is really good!” In fact, it was too damn good. Midoriko cursed her past self for that one. “Mr. Ryouta owns the agency. It’s his agency I rented through. Though to be honest, I hadn’t really made the connection between the two people until recently.”

What the hell am I saying now?! Midoriko was veering off the path of half-truths straight into a forest of lies.

“How come he was there last night? It looked like maybe he was staying there…”

“Oh! Haha! Yeah!” Midoriko couldn’t stop herself. The train of truth had become completely derailed. “That’s the crazy thing! He’s actually Itoko’s long-lost father!”

“Seriously?!”

“Yeah! See, my relative was her mother, and she’d been estranged from Mr. Ryouta for quite some time—she’d never even told him she was pregnant—so imagine his shock at finding out he had a daughter!”

“Wow! That’s crazy!” He was hanging on her every word.

“Y-yeah! S-so he came to meet her recently, a-and he’s staying to get to know her…”

Did he buy it?

“Miss Midoriko, you know that’s a little strange, right?” Akira gave her a look of concern.

Midoriko cringed at herself. Of course, that’s fucking strange!

“It…It’s only temporary!” she blurted out, slightly too loudly again.

“And you’re not seeing him?”

“Absolutely not,” Midoriko whispered.

“Then…” Akira rested his head on the backpack in his lap as he looked at her. “Why can’t we go out to dinner?”