April 29 Kimihiko Kimizuka
That day, when I finally dragged myself home, I found a guy lounging around the Japanese-style room as if he owned the place. "Hey, you're late. Does your school have class for nine periods? Japanese students must work real hard." The man glanced at me; he was smirking. He knew roughly what I'd been going through before I made it home, and he was still acting this way.
"I got pulled into a little trouble, as usual."
"I see. You could have had Danny Bryant the handyman here clear that up for you, you know."
"I figured you'd charge some ridiculous retaining fee, so I decided not to," I said bluntly.
Danny gave a dry, cheerful laugh.
Still, who'd have thought I'd get pulled into another incident right on the heels of that car chase two days ago? Heaving a big sigh, I lowered my battered self onto a floor cushion.
There was pizza on the low table; Danny had probably ordered it. There was only a quarter left.
"Smoking too much will take years off your life," I warned Danny, pouring myself a glass of soda. On the other side of the table, he was about to light a cigarette.
"Oh-ho. You're saying you want me to live for a long time?" "It was just a general comment. I won't say it again."
"Ha-ha! It may be poison for the body, but it's medicine for the spirit, see." Joking around, Danny exhaled a generous puff of white smoke. The guy was always so easygoing; even he needed medicine for his spirit sometimes? …I couldn't ask him, so the question was pointless to consider.
"Once you're done eating, we're headed to work." Still smoking, Danny pulled a document out of his beat-up bag. It was a long list of names and phone numbers.
"Just call all the numbers on that list."
Every so often, Danny would come back to the apartment and have me help out with jobs like this. He paid me for it, and I'd been saving up so that I could live on my own someday, but…
"This isn't fraud, right?" I asked, suddenly uneasy.
Exactly what kind of list had Danny brought me? He'd better not be planning to make me call people and say, "I messed up and embezzled company funds…" or something.
"Ha-ha. Your voice is a bit too high for impersonating a blundering office worker."
He was right. My voice wasn't done changing yet. "Then what do you want me to do?"
"Just call those numbers and ask if their kid can come over and play."
"That makes no sense…" What is this, a volunteer effort to help me make friends? "How does this job get us any money?"
"The world isn't that simple," Danny lectured me. "It's like they say: 'When the wind blows, barrel makers get rich.' At the very end, when everything comes full circle, sometimes the results aren't what you'd expect."
He'd told me he was from America, but he knew his Japanese proverbs pretty well.
Was he trying to tell me that it would make sense to me someday? I felt like the saying he'd used to illustrate that didn't quite convey what he wanted, but whatever.
"You could also call it the butterfly effect. When a butterfly flaps its wings in your backyard, later on, after all sorts of twists and turns, it'll cause a hurricane in some distant country." Danny set a bottle of beer on the table and gazed out the window; the curtains were open.
There was a magnificent full moon tonight.
"That said, it's a fact that I'm short on money. I'll have to do a big job soon." Apparently, the job he'd just brought in really wasn't going to earn us any
money. Even so, Danny gave a big yawn. He didn't seem stressed.
"If you're short on money, then don't go out and buy stuff you don't need. How much did that picture cost?" I pointed at a landscape painting by an unknown artist that Danny had brought back one time as a "souvenir."
It was a bad habit of his. There were lots of similar works of art in the apartment.
"Oh, I happened to run into a young woman who said she was an art dealer on the street near here. It sounded like she was having a hard time making ends meet, so I bought it at her asking price."
…So he'd actually picked up his "souvenir" in town? Geez. "You sure she didn't just trick you?"
"What? Is it not okay to get tricked?" With a straight face, Danny tilted his head. "Even if I was, the woman who was down on her luck was able to earn money. Now she'll be able to have bread and yogurt for breakfast tomorrow. Was what I did wrong, in human terms? If you don't at least help the people you can see, what's the point?" he asked glibly. He said that all the time.
Even if he had been scammed, his loss would be someone else's gain. It wasn't as if happiness was lost; the wealth had just shifted from the haves to the have-nots. Even if someone called that hypocrisy, Danny would probably stick to his convictions.
"You mean getting conned is better than doubting somebody, huh? That sounds like you."
I didn't actually know what sort of person Danny was. It wasn't like we'd been together constantly for the past few years. But that was sort of how I viewed him.
"You still have a ton of growing up to do, kid."
I thought I'd wrapped the conversation up nicely, but for some reason, Danny got mad at me. Why, though?
"'Even if you get conned, it's better than doubting somebody'? Ha-ha. Okay then: Say you fall for a scam, and they take your money. Where does that money go? For the most part, fraudsters like that have a boss. Your stolen money ends up funding more organized crime. Could you still say that line then?" Danny asked.
Was it fair to say that getting scammed was worth it as long as it made someone happy?
"Falling for a grift is basically committing a crime," Danny concluded, staring at me sternly.
"Say that in the first place, then."
Danny had a point, though. "Getting conned is better than doubting somebody" really might be just a shallow idea that sounded nice.
"…Wait, but that makes it worse. Why'd you buy that painting?" He had to have known it could've been a scam, right?
"Because sometimes I want to prioritize pretty platitudes, even if it means committing a crime. After all, I'm human." Danny laughed. "Besides, if you ever need money, try putting that painting up for sale. I bet it'll save your butt."
Sheesh. So was the painting worth anything or not?
"Everything is case-by-case. The world's not just black and white. There's pink and gold and sapphire, too. Sometimes you'll have to use your eyes and ears, experience, and sixth sense to make a call on something," Danny muttered, more to himself than to me. Then he drained the rest of his beer, drinking it right from the bottle.
What he was saying sounded like a bit too much to ask from a kid like me. "The one thing I'm sure of here seems to be that you have no money."
"Ha-ha! You got that right." Danny laughed, then lay down on the floor. The beer might have been getting to him; he closed his eyes.
Maybe he really was going to sleep here tonight.
"So, since I've got no money, I can't pay your wages for a while." "Um, they're going to shut off the water soon."
"And that's when you start drinkin'."
This guy is an idiot.
Danny was falling asleep, so I placed a thin blanket over him. "There may be somebody after me again."
Danny murmured out of nowhere. His eyes were still closed.
He probably meant somebody besides the guys from the car chase. "If you run into them…"
"I'll say I don't know where you are. Right?" That was our promise.
"Yup. If somebody sketchy makes contact with you, go ahead and lie. That's how you'll get ahead in life," Danny advised me from his spot on the floor.
"You're telling me to become a con man?"
"Given your little predisposition there, if you're going to take on the cops and detectives, you're gonna have to be either a con man or a phantom thief."
"…So we're assuming I'll be dealing with cops and detectives, huh?" "Ha-ha. It's your destiny. Suck it up."
If that were true, being a corporate drone who had to work around the clock would be a hundred times better.
"Oh, right. While I'm at it, I need to tell you one more thing."
Sheesh. I wish he'd decide whether he's going to sleep or continue talking.
"I'll be traveling again for a while. Watch the place while I'm gone."
"You don't need to tell me to watch the place by now. Where are you going?" I wasn't that interested, but the conversation was naturally heading in that direction.
"To see the Sea of Japan," Danny responded.
It was a pretty abstract answer, but if that was what he wanted, I guessed he'd be headed for the Hokuriku region.
That said, sightseeing was never Danny's main objective.
"This job's going to be kind of a hairy one. Don't worry about it, though; you just do your thing and keep getting pulled into bank robberies and bus hijacks."
Danny had disappeared on a moment's notice before, multiple times. He'd never lived in this apartment regularly. I just responded with a brief "I see."
"I'm going to do what I want. That's what I've always done, and I don't intend to stop now. So do whatever you want, too. You're not even my kid, and I'm not your dad. I've got no plans to tie you down."
I seemed to recall him saying something about being my father figure just a little while back, but apparently, that had been an offhand joke.
"That's what humans are like, though, right? Yeah, and that's how it should be. If I gave you any big-headed lectures today, yesterday, or in the past, just ignore 'em all. If you start listening to a rapper tomorrow and decide to make life choices based on the lyrics, then that's one way to live."
"Your convictions are about as firm as a marshmallow."
"Ha-ha! Well, if your convictions are as solid as iron, you'll have one hell of a time when they break." Resting his head on his arm, Danny smiled with his eyes closed. "The stuff you like is a series of coincidences, and the way you live should be, too. I told you to become a phantom thief or a con man, but you could be a police officer or a detective if you want. The important thing is what you personally want to do in the moment, and that's it."
"Normally only kids can get away with that kind of selfishness."
"Ha-ha! Yeah, maybe. Maybe so." Danny sat up, gazing at me with a small smile. "But don't forget: You are a kid. Pester more, want more, be self-
centered. That's a special privilege reserved for those your age. It's the cost of not smoking or drinking."
"…Even if I cause trouble for other people, you mean?"
"Humans cause trouble for someone or other just by being alive, whether they want to or not. If you can't live clean, then at least live selfishly before you die. That's what being human is all about."
As Danny Bryant said that, his eyes seemed to be fixed on a view I couldn't see.