Nightlife Rendezvous

“Wait here. I need to check if it’s still safe.”

We were standing outside a barely-illuminated warehouse door. Loud thumping from industrial machinery was making the door rattle. Kanamaru was checking out the door alone. Hosoya and Ootake were hiding in the shadows. I was crouching a little further back, wondering if the North really kept people working until 11:00. It seemed really late for a factory to be running; even the worst workplaces down south usally let their workers go by 9:00.

Kanamaru rapped a pattern on the door. Tat-a-tat-tat-tat. Tat-tat.

The door opened a sliver. I couldn’t see who was on the inside from the angle I was looking at, but Kanamaru looked immediately relieved. Good. That meant that everything would go as expected. Kanamaru curled two of his fingers in our direction to call us over. The coast was clear.

To my surprise, the thumping that I had been hearing from inside the door wasn’t from a factory staff burning the very-near-midnight oil- It was music. Specifically, it was some sort of industrial-drone-rave music that someone in the South might have described using the suffix “-core” or maybe “-punk.” I wasn’t a fan of that sort of music. The thumping was still muffled by another set of doors, but there was clearly some kind of rave going on in the adjacent room.

We were in what looked like a locker room of some sort. A rough-looking older man quietly shut the door behind us. A table had been laid out in the middle of the room where a bank of lockers had been shoved aside. There were a variety of items on the table, seemingly unconnected by any theme- books, music CDs, old cassette tapes, portable video game consoles, assorted PC components, and some chintzy jewelry and designer-brand clothes.

No, there was a theme here. All of this looked like stuff that would probably count as junk in the South. Ah, but we were in the North, weren’t we? This was all contraband.

A muscular man was sitting behind the table. He was tattooed from head to toe and was wearing a pair of dark sunglasses despite the fact that the only source of light in this room was a flickering fluorescent tube on the ceiling well past its useful lifespan. His hair was slicked back a little like he was in some old gangster movie, but he didn’t otherwise give off any vibes of being a real Yakuza goon. It looked more like he was just playing a part.

Hosoya and Ootake remained silent. Kanamaru was the first to speak, putting on his half-sleaze-half-charm persona again.

“Toshi! My droog! It’s good to see you again!”

The man scanned us, but didn’t say anything. Kanamaru looked a little defeated, but was undeterred.

“As promised, I have brought more of he stuff. 300 Units, give or take. I have located some…new talent to help me move larger volumes. I hope we can continue our very profitable arrangement.”

“Show me.” The man fired back. Kanamaru’s vain attempts at charm weren’t doing very much for him. Kanamaru snapped his fingers. None of us moved.

“Are you deaf, freshie? Show this fine gentleman the goods already!”

I had no idea why Kanamaru targeted me- Hosoya and Ootake had done this before and hadn’t moved either. I ripped a taped-up bundle of modules from the jacket and placed them on the table in front of the tattooed guy- Toshi, if Kanamaru could be trusted to remember his name correctly. I had doubts he even remembered mine. The man ripped the module off the edge of the bundle and held it up close to the flickering light tube.

“As you can see, my supplier has done an even better job concealing them this time. No more extra wires sticking out the side. It’s a perfect copy of the original.”

Kanamaru was giving his ad pitch as if he was concerned that the man wasn’t interested in buying. That wasn’t how he had pitched it to me; He had made it sound like he already had an interested buyer at a set price..The man set the module down next to the others.

“I will count them.”

Ok, that was better. Maybe the Yakuza wannabe was actually just trying to make sure Kanamaru wasn’t trying to rip him off. Kanamaru snapped his fingers at us again. I started ripping the rest of the modules I had taped up and laying them on the table. The man began to rip them from the bundles of tape and slide them over to an empty spot close to him. Hosoya and Ootake followed suit. Kanamaru didn’t- he was counting them as they slid across the table. Their working relationship must not have been as trustworthy as Kanamaru’s buttery praise earlier had made it sound. When we were done, Kanamaru finally started laying down the ones he had taped to his out-of-style jacket.

“283. "You're short, droog.”

I hadn’t been watching closely, but the man had been, and he had come up short. Kanamaru wasn’t terribly disturbed by this.

“I am. It’s high tide and I didn’t want to let the rookie drop any of these in the drink.”

An excuse for everything, Kanamaru, an excuse for everything. We had definitely emptied the two boxes Hosoya and Ootake had lugged to the park. Maybe he was hoping to pull a fast one on his dear “droog” Toshi, whatever that meant.

“Let’s just do a partial payment for the ones I brought you now, and I’ll make these pack-mules carry extra next time. Our usual rate?”

“Fine. 2.5 Mil for the lot.”

Short of what Kanamaru had promised me. Not so short as to scuttle the deal right here. Besides, who knows if this guy had backup? I had been so worried about getting caught by the CitPols or the Kempeis that I hadn’t even thought about getting caught and maybe ransomed by criminals. No, even if I was getting screwed, it was really Kanamaru’s fault. I could make him pay when we got back if I played my cards right.

“Deal. Thanks for your continued partnership.”

Kanamaru had a hollow grin on his face. He was pissed off. Hosoya shot him a concerned look. I guess he was getting screwed out of a percentage too. Maybe he was annoyed that Kanamaru hadn’t tried to haggle with the man. The man stood up and walked to a room in the back, slamming the door shut behind him. It was just us and the door guard now.

“So… what now?”

I had to ask something to break the silence. I knew what Kanamaru was going to say. I just didn’t want to stew about how much he had ripped me off.

“Now? Now we get paid, and go home. Like I said. Twenty minutes, no risk.”

It was probably closer to an hour by now, but I didn’t feel like contesting that point. The man returned with a stack of wadded up bills. He slapped them on the table on top of the tuners. It was a big stack. Kanamaru reached for them with glee- and then stopped.

“Hey, what are you trying to pull?”

He grabbed a clump of bills.

“When I said 2.5 Mil, I meant capital-M Money. You trying to pawn off all this Northern crap scrip on me?”

I moved up a little closer to get a better look. It was a big stack of cash, all right, but Kanamaru was right - the face of Uncle Yoshi’s signature smile peered up from each bill. It was Northern yen. Northern money was worthless. It nominally traded at around 20 to 1 rate, but nobody in the south would take it. Supposedly, American soldiers going North could trade it, but they had to do so at a horribly extortionate rate. The little rip-off Kanamaru had pulled on me looked honest compared to this brazen scam.

“Hosoya. Freshie. Grab the stuff. This guy has rewarded honest businessmen like ourselves with contempt. You hear that? Contempt for the honest worker! What a paragon of socialist virtue!”

Kanamaru was being extra theatrical about this. Hosoya started shoveling the tuners into his coat pockets. I reached forward to do the same, but Kanamaru held his hand to block me. What now?

“Ok, fine. We make another deal.”

The man had spoken up again. The Northern accent always sounded a little rude to a Southerner like me, always full of commands and blunt questions.

“We had a deal, before you tried to screw with me. You had a nice little gravy train going here and you decided to insult me and my colleagues. Why should we make another deal?”

Kanamaru would have made a great two-bit Shakespeare actor with all the gesticulating he was doing to play up his fury. He was pissed, no doubt, but this felt like some kind of rehearsed bargaining tactic.

“I don’t have any more southern cash right now. I give you something more valuable, no? Something a true businessman will appreciate.”

I had thought the man was being terse with us because he was worried about Kanamaru ripping him off, but maybe that was just the natural rudeness of the Northern accent slipping through. Kanamaru wasn’t impressed.

“Show me” he said, mimicking the man’s earlier order.

“Is in the back, in my safe. I will show you. Come.”

At this, he started for the door which he had disappeared into earlier. Kanamaru scanned the room before turning to the rest of us. I couldn’t tell if he was paranoid or just annoyed.

“Ok. I’ll give this guy one more chance. Ootake- guard the product. Don’t take your eyes off it, and make sure there are really only 283 there like he said. Hosoya, you come with me. I don’t want this guy pulling anything. Freshie-”

He looked at me, unsure what to say. What was there left for me to do?

“- just don’t get lost. We’ll be done in a bit.”

He and Hosoya followed after the man. Ootake grudgingly stood up from the corner he had slumped in and began to count the modules on the table. The door guard wasn’t guarding the door anymore- had he slipped out without us noticing?

I stood in silence for a moment. Ootake wasn’t counting the tuners very fast. The drones and thumping of music from the adjacent room had given way to an up-tempo pop song. I recognized this one- it was a few years old, but still recent enough to be recognizable.

Well, a little peek wouldn’t hurt.

I quietly opened the door. Kanamaru and Hosoya weren’t back yet. Ootake was too entranced by the task of counting the tuners to notice that the music had gotten a little louder.

A wide warehouse floor was packed full of people. On the far end of the room, a DJ had set himself up with what looked like a vintage turntable. The room was lit up by industrial lamps with a bit of red plastic over them, as if the emergency lights had been jury-rigged into creating some kind of rave-ambience. There weren’t any laser shows or special effects, but a mirror disco ball had been hung over the center of the floor in front of the DJ stand.

There must have been over a hundred people on the warehouse floor. Their dress was strange, almost alien- some were wearing ripped up coveralls, some were wearing old suit jackets paired with baggy sweatpants, and some weren’t wearing much of anything at all. All of them were dancing, or at least swaying rhythmically. A few were even singing along to the popular chorus, though the speakers were drowning their voices out.

The weird ravers didn’t have a hold on my attention for long. On the periphery of the floor, leaning against one of the steel girders that held up the roof, was someone I knew. Someone I hadn’t expected to see, no matter how much I had wanted it. Someone who had been the real reason for doing something as stupid as sneaking into the North- and someone who shouldn’t have any reason to be here. Yet, here she was.

It was her.