Knew you’d come around

 To be honest, I’m a bit of a dumbass sometimes.

Look, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying trying to apprehend petty criminals is stupid. If anything, it’s a very noble, very bold pursuit that takes a very specific kind of balls. I should know; I came out of and inherited a pair of those. But see, being a hero is a job with all sorts of inherent dangers that you’d have to be lobotomized to ignore. Especially when even the villain is trying to remind you of them.

“You know, you really shouldn’t be doing this,” Yui says, peeking behind her.

Full disclosure, I don’t know if that’s her actual name. It’s just what’s written on the back of her jacket (kanji for ‘bind’, the contract, not the kink), right above a tattoo-style drawing of a red mountain. But see, I’ve been chasing her for a while now. Slaloming out of that fish market, dodging prams and roller-skaters through a park and, currently, down a narrow back-alley filled with all sorts of cardboard and food refuse from the businesses in the front.

Point is, I need a win, no matter how small.

“Does that line ever work to stop people?” I reply.

“Would you be surprised if I said yes?”

“Well, you’d be lying. So, no. Not really.”

“Why would I lie!” she asks, her voice this lilting mix of innocence and brattiness that I usually find endearing. Now it’s just annoying, verging on disturbing. Not really used to robbers ribbing with the cops. Nor to them being this insane at running from the law.

I watch Yui rolling a stone off the ground, up her leg, then flicking it with her foot right into her waiting hand. Then, with a precise throw, she shatters the lock on the nearest fire escape, causing the ladder to drop with a metallic thunk. The same noise made by my last two braincells colliding.

She leaps past the first couple rungs, then pauses before the landing. “No peeking, okay?”

“Peek – You’re wearing shorts!”

“Well, I didn’t leave my ass at home, did I?”

I grip the handles tight enough to break them. Not only did she make me look – making a ‘What ass?’ comment all the more limp – but now she’s giggling and climbing even faster. Possibly because I’m doing my best virgin impression with a flustered blush. Most definitely because I’m now even more determined to catch her, if only just to wipe that smirk off her face – or mask, or whatever.

After a minute of going up while staring down, I finally reach the top. As far as the eye can see, there’s nothing but forgotten scaffolding, rusted rebar and girders and a couple antennae for ambiance. In other words, Yui’s heaven. Probably why she’s done me the favour of waiting, only to dash away as soon as our eyes met – a frown and a glimmer. Really starting to think she’s enjoying this cat-and-mouse game a little too much. But with this view, who can blame her?

Far across the bay, the peaks of Tokyo rise, wrapped in the blurry veil of distance. On the other side, the sunset flares above the hills of Wakaba in an image of stillness, of nature left untouched by humankind. As I jump the ever-wider gap between buildings, the world below reveals itself as a gold-soaked terrarium with ant people, beetle cars and buses and the monorail a loud snake.

The perfect backdrop for where this all comes to an end.

I hoist myself over a brick-lined ledge, finding Yui stopped on the other side of the roof. She looks poised, mighty even, with her back turned to a skyline reduced to nothing but faraway cinderblocks. But even though she’s all but run out of road, and almost out of breath, there’s something in the way she stares at me, a sort of glow that puts a proud smile on my lips.

“Well,” I say, taking a step closer to her. “What now?”

Yui takes a short step back, losing none of her cheekiness. “I click my heels together three times, then wish a house falls on you?”

“Am I meant to find that funny?”

“No, you’re meant to say I’m missing the ruby slippers. Then I’ll ask if bloodied white sneakers will do and you’ll look at me – yeah, just like that.”

‘Just like that’ here means ‘barely holding in a snicker,’ I guess. Although with the sun making me squint, it probably ends up being more ‘constipated’ than ‘debonairly in charge of the situation’. Which is how I’d want to come across, considering I’m five feet away from someone one foot away from a steep and likely lethal drop.

“Okay, Dorothy, you’ve had your fun. Now it’s time to go back to Kansas.”

“Can we grab a bite to eat on the way there?”

“Sure, we’ll stop in Kawagoe. There’s this nifty ramen place right next to the juvie detention centre.

“Noice. How do we get there? Bus? Train? Private limo?”

“Police van, probably. Depends if you try breaking my nose.”

She tilts her head and snorts as if to say, I could – but I won’t. Not that it matters, really. I’m close enough to stop whatever crazy thing she might want to pull off before it even starts. Though, for someone quite literally on the edge of defeat, she’s acting surprisingly docile.

“You know,” Yui says quietly, almost hesitant, “I meant it when I said you shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Still not working.”

She shuffles away again, her heels now dangling over nothing. “Yeah, no shit? But we’re pretty much at the turning point, so I thought I’d give it a shot. You never know, you know?”

“What a perfect definition of insanity.”

A sigh. Long and worryingly deep.

“Can’t fault a girl for hoping every now and again.”

Remember how I said I’m a bit of a dumbass sometimes? Let’s make that a lot of a dumbass most of the time. Because when Yui falls back, the abyss claiming her, I instinctively reach out. And, maybe because I had no uncle to teach me the proper way to catch a suicide jumper, or maybe because I was a little overzealous, I fall along with her.

I never really thought about my death – or if I did it was in the context of ‘what if that ice cream truck runs me over and I end up slinging mad dick in another world’. Which is pretty far away from now, when I’ve got my eyes shut, mumbling a million ‘whatthefucks’ a second as the air rushes past my ears. But see, when you’re plummeting to your untimely demise, it tends to be this long, gruelling descent that stretches on and on until you grow a beard.

In my case, however, the ground catches me pretty quickly. And it’s soft and springy enough that I bounce off it, then fall back down, then bounce again and again, until this thing decides to stop being sardonic and finally hold me tight. It takes me a long moment to recover, most of which is spent convincing myself that I am, in fact, still alive. The rest is just adjusting to what that entails.

I’m sitting on a dirty piece of tarp that used to be a banner advertising the Tokyo Olympics. Now, ten typhoons later, it’s a makeshift trampoline that Yui has strung up between the rooftop shafts of adjoining apartment buildings – judging by all the safety fences. Speak of the devil – because only someone inhuman could go through this experience without whiplash, she’s currently stuck before a closed door, fidgeting through her pockets.

I get off, crack my neck, then pad to her side and the only thing I can say is, “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Oh. You’re not paralysed. Great.” I’m not sure if that’s excitement or sarcasm. “Here, hold this,” she says, handing me the parcel that, now that I think about it, started this whole thing.

“I – what even is in here?”

“Cocaine.”

“What!” I flinch so hard, I almost drop the bag.

“It’s not radioactive, you know? Also, not really cocaine.”

“R-right… Circling back to my original question,” I say, only for Yui to answer me in, by now, typical fashion. She does a couple warm-up hops, digs her soles in, then kicks open the door, revealing a dimly lit stairwell. Think I’m getting a migraine.

“All right,” Yui utters under her breath, then turns to me, hand outstretched. “Give.”

“No. You know what? No.”

“Really?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Okay, now you’re just being silly.”

“Am I? I feel like I’m pretty justified in not giving drugs back to a criminal.”

“I – okay, technically they are drugs, but – ” a deep breath and a click of the tongue “ – look. What’s your name?”

“Luca.”

“Look, Luca. You tried to stop me. And don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that. I really do. But we’re quite literally two levels away from the delivery point, so I think we can both appreciate that you failed. So, you can keep this up, in which case I will have to unapologetically beat the shit out of you to get my bag back. Or, you can come with me and – see if you can at least get some closure, I guess.”

I take a good, long look at her. For all the tongue-in-cheek sprinkled throughout her soliloquy, Yui’s pretty much all serious now. And with her default being the manic offspring of gleeful and flippant, it’s enough to make all the red flags fade to off-white. Besides, after chasing her for so long, I think I’d be lying if I said I’m not interested in her – mission.

So, I suck my teeth, groan out my entire soul, then – give up, I guess.

“Attaboy,” she chimes, taking back the parcel with little-to-no resistance. “Knew you’d come around.”

“You’re still going to jail after all of this,” I say meekly.

“Yeah, right,” she scoffs, staring downstairs. Off-kilter and with a deep breath, I follow right after.