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  I spent a good portion of the summer break working part-time as a dishwasher at Naomi-san’s restaurant. Jeong-il was working there with me. He was trying to save up to pay for the college admission exams.

  “So how’ve you been doing?” Jeong-il asked with a meaningful smile one day during break period. I hadn’t told him about Sakurai yet. But after I’d turned down a couple of his invitations to hang out, he must’ve sensed something and stopped asking out of consideration to me.

  “She’s really great,” I answered. “I’ll introduce her to you soon, I promise.”

  Jeong-il didn’t ask anything more and simply said that he was looking forward to meeting her.

  Usually we’d talk about stuff like why black people were able to produce the blues, jazz, hip-hop, and rap, but Zainichi couldn’t create their own unique culture. But on this day, we talked about mindless trash—like whether we would die for Kim Basinger, whether Ringo would be the obvious choice if we had to fire one of the Beatles, and whether Superman’s piston action would be really super—and laughed our heads off.

  Toward the end of our break, Jeong-il stopped laughing and asked, as if he’d just remembered, “Do you remember the ‘Test of Courage’?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Crazy, you really were something else,” said Jeong-il, narrowing his eyes at me.

  “But you weren’t there at the platform, were you?”

  Jeong-il shook his head. “I was there, away from where you and your group were, and I saw you.”

  The “Test of Courage” was a test of nerves that was passed down as tradition in my junior high school. I called it the “Super Great Chicken Race.”

  The game was very simple: stand at the edge of the train platform, jump down onto the tracks when the train was fifty meters away from pulling into the platform, and run down the track from one edge of the platform to the other. The story was you were supposed to be able to outrun the train without getting killed if you ran a 12-second 100-meter dash, but since it’s likely someone at my school made that calculation, the story lacked credibility. Whatever the case, if you tripped, you were history. If you got freaked and stopped midway, you were history. If you were too slow and let the train catch you, you were history. If you escaped underneath the platform or to the adjacent track, you were given the title of Queen and were treated as everyone’s errand boy, so you were pretty much history anyway. In short, if you were going to do the challenge, you had no choice but to succeed.

  Given the severity of the rules, few challengers stepped forward, and only two people had ever succeeded before I came along. One was a senpai about twelve years my senior, who later became a “bullet”—a hit man for the yakuza, who was sent into action because he was expendable—and died. The other was Tawake.

  I decided to take the challenge to commemorate my citizenship changing from North Korean to South Korean. At the time, I was able to run 100 meters somewhere in the 11-second range, so I was confident that I would succeed. In the end, I came out of it with flying colors, but because I had tried at all, everyone started to believe that I really was crazy. The two senpai who’d succeeded before me had deliberately dropped a 10,000-yen bill on the track, creating a situation of having to retrieve it in order to psych themselves up. I had simply hopped down on the track and outran the train without dropping anything.

  After some hesitation, I decided to tell Jeong-il the secret to my success. The trick was that I had secretly invited a girl I liked to the train station to watch. The plan, of course, was for her to witness my brave act and fall head over heels for me. But that plan failed spectacularly. The girl didn’t have a clue how men’s minds worked.

  She said, “Maybe you should get your head examined at the hospital.”

  Jeong-il cackled with pure delight at my story. After a while, he composed himself and said, “If I were a girl, I’d fall for you.”

  I said, “Right?” and tilted my head.

  “You were really something else that day,” said Jeong-il, smiling tenderly at me. “For some reason, I remember that image of you running a lot lately. When I’m walking down the street or taking a bath, when I least expect it. I wonder why . . .”

  “Maybe you should get your head examined at the hospital.”

  Jeong-il and I looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  On our way back to the kitchen after our break, I said, “We should talk about crap like this more often.”

  Jeong-il gave me that good-natured smile of his and nodded.

  Every moment I could spare from my part-time job, I spent seeing Sakurai. Sakurai had gotten a job as a telephone operator through her father’s connections at work. Basically she answered phone calls, which not only was a pretty easy job but paid well, too. Sakurai had kept a savings account since childhood. Add that to what she earned at her job, and she already had quite a sum saved up. I was shocked to hear the amount of money she had when she told me once. She really didn’t need to be working that much at all.

  During one of our dates, Sakurai said, “Let’s take the mock exams together.”

  She took out a blank application form from a famous cram school for a mock college entrance exam and handed it to me.

  “You’re planning to go to university, right?” she asked.

  I nodded slightly.

  “Then you should definitely take it as practice.”

  As she said this, Sakurai looked longingly at me. How could I refuse? I nodded. She smiled. And so, on a Sunday toward the end of August, I went with Sakurai and took the mock exams for the first time. The results would be announced about a month later.

  One night toward the end of summer vacation, I got a phone call from Kato.

  “I’ve got a great gig for you.”

  It was a job as a bouncer at a dance party Kato was organizing.

  Hosting dance parties was a thing at my high school. It was an easy way to get girls and earn a nice profit from ticket sales. But amateurs that tried to get in on the action got hurt. There were more than a few flies buzzing around that sweet deal. Naturally, a war over profits ensued. A fly that didn’t have muscle was easily squashed. Battles with organizers from other schools over ticket sales and customers were always raging. Things would sometimes get violent, and those battles ended with a ride down to the police station. The party organizer would see his cred go down and customers disappear when that happened, so he tried to avoid trouble when he could. That’s when bouncers were necessary; the more there were, the less chance of enemies crashing the party. But to my knowledge, none of Kato’s dance parties had ever suffered an enemy attack. Anyone that dared to crash one of Kato’s dance parties without fear of his old man had to be one crazy bastard.

  “Some guys get drunk and get out of hand,” said Kato. “I’m asking you to bounce them out when that happens.”

  Kato had a number of henchmen working for him. He certainly didn’t need me in that role. I asked him how much he was paying. It was roughly the amount I earned in a month washing dishes at Naomi-san’s restaurant. Kato knew that I was trying to save up for Sakurai.

  “You sure?” I asked.

  “Come on, don’t be a pain.”

  “I owe you one.”

  “Sure, see you next Saturday.”

  Saturday night I headed for Z, the club where Kato had his birthday party. I entered the club and, just as the last time, was greeted by the pulse of electronica, cigarette smoke, the smell of alcohol, and body heat, along with the sight of Takeshita taking tickets. Takeshita pointed to the table I’d sat at before. Every table in the club was full except for that one. I gave Takeshita a pat on the back and made my way to the table.

  I sat down. Since I didn’t have anything to do, I opened up the paperback I’d brought and began reading by the flame of the spirit lamp on the table. It was In Exile, the book I’d borrowed from Jeong-il a while back. Things had been so hectic that I’d hardly touched it since Jeong-il lent it to me.

/>   Two glasses filled with iced oolong tea appeared on the table. I looked up and found Kato. I was so focused on the book that I hadn’t noticed him. I closed the book at the same time Kato sat down across from me.

  “Sorry I’m not a snow spirit,” he said, making a reference to the night I’d met Sakurai.

  Kato and I exchanged a look and laughed.

  “You guys getting along?”

  I nodded. “Yeah,” I muttered.

  After taking a sip from his glass, Kato asked, “Does the snow spirit know about you?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean, does she know everything about you?”

  “I’m thinking about telling her . . . soon.”

  Scratching his head, Kato said, “Probably none of my business anyway,” and drank the rest of his tea. Then he asked, “What’re you planning on doing after high school?”

  “I haven’t really decided yet,” I answered.

  “Then why don’t we team up and expand our turf?”

  “Expand? Just what are you thinking about doing?”

  Kato leaned slightly out of his seat. “I’m going to manage a club. It’s going to be off the hook. One of those cutting-edge clubs where all the celebrities hang out. Why don’t we do it together?”

  “If you’re looking for a bouncer, you’d be better off with some has-been solider from one of the American military bases.”

  He shook his head with irritation. “I’m not making you a bouncer. We’re going to be comanagers.”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “Money?” he spat out. “My father will give us all the money we need. I just want to keep you close is all.”

  “You’re not gay, are you?” I joked, trying to get Kato to slow down. “Hardcore?”

  Kato didn’t even crack a smile. “People like you and me have been handicapped our whole lives. We’re like twins. If people like us are going to get anywhere in this country, we can’t just walk in through the front door. You get that, don’t you? We can lay low in the shadows and make it big and stick it to all the uppity miserable bastards that ever discriminated against us. Because we can do that. Because we’re meant for greatness.”

  I stared at the beads of sweat on the outside of the glass and said nothing. Kato’s body twitched as if to prompt an answer.

  Raising my eyes from the glass, I said, “You and I are nothing alike. We’re different.”

  A deep frown line creased his forehead. Kato opened his mouth to protest when—

  “Stop!”

  There was the high-pitched cry of a girl from the dance floor below. Kato choked back what he was about to say and left his seat. As his resident bouncer, I got up and looked down on the floor from the railing.

  There was a guy and girl tussling in the middle of the dance floor. The guy looked familiar. He looked like a kid—Kobayashi—in the same year as me at school. The rumor had been that the poser was talking trash behind my back about kicking my ass.

  Kobayashi had grabbed the girl by the elbow and was pulling her toward him. The girl cried, “Stop!” again and slapped him hard across the face. With the sound of the slap, almost everyone stopped dancing and began to move away, as if on cue. The DJ stopped the music.

  Realizing all eyes were trained on him, Kobayashi was faced with having to choose between one of two moves. Naturally, he made the wrong one. The sound of his palm connecting with the girl’s face echoed across the floor. Pressing a hand against her cheek, the girl shouted, “Scumbag!” As Kobayashi’s hand went into motion again, Kato’s voice rained down from above. “Hey!” Kobayashi stopped and turned his eyes up at Kato and me. Slowly he lowered his hand. But his eyes were bloodshot, and he looked as if he might come after us at any moment. Kato looked down at him with a sneer smeared across his lips. That was a mistake. Unable to back down amid the stares of the crowd, Kobayashi made another bad move.

  “Think you’re pretty big with that damn Chon next to you?”

  Chon. The nasty Japanese word for a Korean had a familiar ring to it. It was an epithet that I’d had hurled at me at least fifty times, from as far back as I could remember. And I’d responded to it with my fists at least fifty times.

  Kato looked at me. I shrugged. Kato made like he was going downstairs, so I grabbed him by the arm and stopped him. Again Kobayashi shouted from below.

  “Come on down, Chon-boy! Or maybe you’d like to go back to your country with your tail between your legs!”

  A shadow came over Kato’s eyes. I let go of his arm and said, “See what I mean? We’re different.”

  Leaving Kato standing on the loft, I went down the stairs to the dance floor. The entire club was heated with a tension that could burn your skin. I closed the distance between Kobayashi and me until we were a yard apart. His face was twisted into an ambiguous expression. It wasn’t clear whether he was crying or laughing. I stared at the strange look on his face and said, “Do you know the meaning of the country name Japan?”

  For an instant, the strangeness of the question broke the tension in his face. I drilled him in the face dead center with a straight punch, a good right. Kobayashi let out a grunt, covered his nose, and sank to the floor. I looked down at him and waited to finish him off.

  After removing his hand from his nose and seeing the blood on his palm, Kobayashi reached into his pants pocket and pulled out something metallic. Shwing shwing shwing shwing—it unfolded into a butterfly knife in Kobayashi’s hand. The crowd gulped in horror. Kobayashi slowly got to his feet.

  I had no intention of entertaining the crowd with a show, so I landed a right toe kick in the groin, where he was completely defenseless. There was drool coming out of his mouth as Kobayashi doubled over on the floor again. Bringing my foot back down, I circled behind him and pushed the back of his head with my foot. Kobayashi slowly tilted forward until he lay flat, spread out on the floor like a pinned frog waiting to be dissected.

  Kobayashi was still gripping his precious butterfly knife. I brought my foot down on his wrist. The knife came out of his hand. After picking it up, I put one foot on the base of his head—the medulla—and put my weight on it. If he struggled too hard, his spine would snap.

  I said, “If you bring a knife to a fight, you’re asking to get cut by one.”

  What the hell am I saying?

  The lower half of Kobayashi’s body began to tremble.

  “Besides, I could stab you with this knife, and it would be self-defense. You were the one that pulled a knife on me. I have plenty of witnesses.”

  I took a look around. Not a single person would look me in the eye.

  What the hell am I doing here?

  “I should stab you in the stomach, but I’ll let you off easy this time. I either slice off both your ears or cut off your thumbs. You choose. Put up one finger if you say ears, two fingers for the thumbs.”

  This isn’t what I want to say at all.

  Kobayashi balled his hands into fists, refusing to answer. His whole body was twitching almost imperceptibly.

  “Both, then.” I started to move, and Kobayashi let out a girlish scream, causing a chain reaction of cries from the girls in the crowd.

  “Let him go,” a voice called out from behind. I turned around and saw Kato.

  “Let him go,” he said again.

  Kato and I silently looked each other in the eye. I folded up the knife, and after tossing it to Kato, I took my foot off the base of Kobayashi’s head. I walked past Kato, went up the stairs to the loft, grabbed the copy of In Exile I’d left on the table, and headed for the door. Every eye in the club was focused on me. Kato and Takeshita were standing side by side at the door. Takeshita looked down, avoiding eye contact with me. Kato took out a wad of bills from his pants pocket.

  Taking my eyes off the money, I looked at Kato. He looked like he was about to cry any second.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I gave Kato a gentle pat on the back, opened the door, and went out. A muggy
summer wind blew in my face. The moon was hidden behind thick clouds. I started walking in the direction of Tokyo Tower.

  Despite taking several wrong turns along the way, I managed to find the elementary school from that night with Sakurai. As I stood in a daze in front of the iron gate that Sakurai had straddled so proudly, it began to rain. Leaning up against the gate, I let the rain hit me for a while. I recalled the last training session I had with my father.

  “I wonder if heaven really is a good place . . .”

  I thought of jumping up and down like my father did that night but decided against it. The rain coming down was pathetic. It was barely a drizzle. I prayed for it to rain harder, but it was no good. The rain was already beginning to let up.

  Why didn’t I jump then, with my father, when I had the chance?

  Summer vacation ended, and the second semester began.

  I had saved up just enough to go to Okinawa, so Sakurai and I decided to go to the beaches there. Now it was all just a matter of when. We decided to carefully devise a plan.

  Kato stopped turning up. In fact, he didn’t seem to be coming to school at all. I figured he was on another trip and didn’t think much of it.

  The results of the mock exams came back. To my surprise, my academic rating went up from about the calories of an egg white to that of egg custard. Reading all those dense books might have helped. After seeing my scores, Sakurai turned glum and said, “That’s great,” several times. She didn’t show me her scores.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said, with a depressed look on her face.

  We left the fast-food restaurant that was near the cram school. Sakurai’s feet pointed not in the direction of the nearest train station but in a different direction.

  “Let’s walk a little to the next station.”

  I nodded and fell in line next to her. For a while, we walked in silence. Sakurai did all the things that a child might do, like kick at the stones on the pavement and touch every one of the telephone poles along the street.

  We walked for about fifteen minutes and came to a bus stop with a bench.