Part II: 糞爺 (The Old Goat)
> “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try, sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.”
>
> -Mick Jagger, Keith Richards
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Chapter Eleven: I Woke Up This Morning and I Just Hated Everything.
June 24, 2010
The phone was beeping again.
Trash rolled over on the bed, located the offending device, then attempted to crack open his eyes to check the time. This turned out to be a harder task than he expected it to be.
His eyes simply did not want to part and allow light to sear his brain. Trash wanted to agree with his eyes, but he remembered that he had something to do today.
Something he did not want to do.
Trash longed to adopt the lifestyle of a stereotypical shut-in. Simply living in a single room, never letting the sun touch his skin. Food left on a tray in front of his door. Sneaky midnight trips to the bathroom to avoid awkward hallway encounters.
That was the life to have, just not the life he had.
Cursing inwardly, Trash squeezed open one eye, then the other. Light invaded his peaceful world of dreams as the real world slowly took control of his senses.
It was indeed morning. Light filtered into the only window in the room through ancient window blinds. Now that his senses were active, he could hear all the noise. Trucks on the street below, The trains were zipping back and forth just above the window line.
When he first started sleeping here, he couldn’t get a full night’s sleep at all due to the train noise. There was only a four-hour gap between the last train and the first train every day. Now, he wondered if he could ever learn to sleep without the comforting low rumble.
He even slept with the window open during the summer. The morning air was still cool, but it would soon turn hot and stuffy.
Trash looked at the phone in his hands.
It read 9:23. He had set the alarm for 9 AM the night before. In retrospect, that was too early. He still had time.
Unlocking the phone, he checked for messages.
A quick filter got rid of the junk and the ads. That just left the ones from Danny.
[Ryo is an asshole. Screw him!]
Five minutes later, another message.
[Fucker can lose out for all I care. I’ll find someone else.]
Another ten minutes elapsed before the next message.
[SHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT!!!!]
Trash scrolled down. This went on for quite a while.
The last message came in shortly after 7 AM.
[Talked to investors. Need the code or I am fucked. See you at Harajuku @ 10:30]
Trash sighed. He checked the train schedule app on his phone. He had to leave the Apartment by 9:41, then catch the 9:54 Chuo-line westbound. That should put him at Harajuku at exactly 10:30.
He had plenty of time. Sitting up in bed, he shook the remains of sleep from his head. He stood up and stretched a few times. Things with his body were still fine; getting up wasn’t a problem, but if his body went the way his father’s did, he was sure that wouldn’t last for too many years.
Avoiding alcohol might help, though. Trash took pride in his ability to abstain from drinking and smoking. Mostly, it was because it seemed like a waste of money to him.
He walked over to the small kitchenette. It was just an old sink and a cheap refrigerator, though. The sink was original from when the building was constructed, an old industrial-style sink, but that worked well for him. It was big enough for him to stick his whole head in and run it to wake up.
The water was freezing. The only heated water he had was in the bathroom on the first floor.
After washing his face and drying off with a hand towel, Trash grabbed a can of room-temperature coffee from a box beside the refrigerator. A few shakes and breakfast was served.
He realized that the coffee and instant noodle diet was probably undoing all the benefits of an alcohol and tobacco-free lifestyle, but he had to get some calories from somewhere.
Rummaging through the piles of clothes on the bed and the floor, he found a clean-ish shirt and the last of his clean underwear. He’d need to make a laundry run soon. After he dressed and downed the coffee, he checked the time.
9:39
How was that even possible? Why did time in the morning always go three times faster?
He technically brushed his teeth. More like gargled for a few seconds with toothpaste water, but he was late. He grabbed his jacket and bag.
Luckily, he remembered to shut the window. Whenever he forgot, he came back to bugs or sometimes birds trying to take over the space.
His shoes were outside his bedroom door. The first floor was an old workshop, after all. He had to wear slippers when he went to the bathroom to take a shower.
Slipping on the shoes, he ran down the stairs, then out the front door of the factory.
It was a small, two-story building, the site of his Grandfather’s old abandoned business. It had been vacant as long as he could remember. Vacant, but hardly empty.
The first floor was full of old machinery. Not modern stuff, but old hand-powered tools. Trash didn’t even know what they used to make. Some gear or metal fitting that nobody used anymore. He had no idea why the family hadn’t sold off the factory years ago. Instead, they used it as a dumping ground for old junk. The second floor had the room that Trash used as an apartment, and another, larger room that was packed with who knows what. Boxes and old junk.
Once, a few years back, Trash had thought up a plan to search through the mess. Maybe there was some hidden treasure, or valuables that had been stored there and forgotten.
After half an hour, he gave up. It was all worthless garbage. Why it wasn’t just tossed out, he had no idea. Old broken furniture, mountains of ancient moldy magazines, boxes full of suspicious looking machine oil.
He had once had ideas of cleaning it all out. Maybe turning the space into a store of some kind. His uncle had quickly shot down that plan.
「You’re nowhere near the station. Facing the train tracks. No foot traffic at all, and what do you think you are going to sell? To open a store, you have to make something. Produce something useful. Stop wasting your life and stop mooching off of your family.」
His uncle was a normal, boring salaryman. An assistant director blahblahblah at some pointless, soulless company, doing something so boring, Trash had no idea what it was, in spite of hearing his uncle drone on about it countless times.
His aunt was a housewife. She had married some faceless robot at the company she had worked at shortly after college. Now, she spent her time turning her two future robots into respectable members of society, and trading investments with her housewife investment club. They both hated Trash’s father, the youngest child, and their disdain for him had seamlessly transferred to Trash.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
Now, they were finally getting rid of him. In less than a week, he had to move out of this place that had been his home for five years.
Trash locked the front door. A plain-looking glass door underneath a faded, painted wooden sign that read,
Ooba Industries (Co.Ltd.)
Looking down at his phone, Trash cursed.
9:42
He was going to have to run.
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As the train pulled into Harajuku Station, Trash checked the time again.
10:27
Well, at least he wasn’t late this time. Still, knowing the American, Danny was probably outside waiting for him.
Trash ran up the stairs, then over the elevated bridge, then back down the steps that led to the exit.
Exiting the ticket gate, he immediately spotted Danny and quickly rushed over to meet him.
“Sorry, I should have gotten here sooner.”
“Don’t worry about it. Just got here, in fact.”
Trash was wondering if that was true when Danny pulled a slip of paper out from his jacket pocket and showed it to him.
“See, I got here right on time, no problem at all. Tokyo is crazy easy to get around, isn’t it?”
Trash looked at the paper. Written in a very clean, and somewhat feminine script was a set of instructions on how to get on the train at Yurakucho, which platform and train to board, and where to exit, complete with a miniature map and a timetable for the train. At the bottom of the paper was a personal note.
> Thank you for staying at the Victoria Hotel, Mr. Landis. We hope you enjoy your stay in Tokyo❣️
Trash had no difficulty imagining some cute receptionist at the hotel cheerfully crafting the directions while Danny waited in the lobby. The heart at the end was a bit too gregarious, though.
“This is the old-school style. Before everyone had cellphones, it was hard to get around, so people would draw maps and help with the trains.”
“It’s really not that hard. I got here with no problem at all, and everyone is so incredibly nice. Well, except for our mutual friend.”
Trash grimaced at the reminder of his failure to get Sakamoto to budge.
“With smartphones, it’s much easier now. All the schedules and maps are built in. So you just plug in your destination, and the whole route pops up.”
“Yeah, I really need to get a local phone next time I visit.”
Trash felt an odd chill at that casual statement.
“Are you planning more trips to Japan then?”
“Probably. Food’s good, girls are cute, everyone is so nice.”
“Polite and nice are no-“
“I know, I know, I heard you yesterday. But, really, for me, it doesn’t matter. People are polite to me and help me do what I need. That’s all that is important, right?”
Trash was not sure why that statement had unnerved him. It shouldn’t bother him if Danny came back to Japan often, but for some reason, it gave him an odd feeling.
Perhaps it was because if he came regularly, then he wouldn’t need Trash to help him locate and purchase items as much, or perhaps at all.
Maybe he just felt unease at the idea of future troublesome tasks for this man. Danny seemed nice. He was smart, obviously, and was, in many ways, a true comrade. A closet geek who knew what to say online, at least. But his erratic and potent temper unnerved Trash. There was something dangerous about the man.
Or it might just be that he was too good-looking. That was definitely annoying. In fact, they were already drawing attention.
Trash had to keep on his toes. He was in enemy territory, beyond the front lines. He was in Shibuya, where no honest and upright man should ever step foot.
“We should go.”
“Wait! Do you think we have time to see… umm. Meiji Shrine?”
“Huh?”
Danny was reading off of another identical slip of hotel stationery. Trash wanted to curse that receptionist. Tour guiding in Akiba was bad enough. Doing it in Buya would force him to question his entire identity.
Reading Trash’s reaction, Danny seemed disappointed.
“Is it too far from here?”
Trash sighed.
“No, it’s right over that bridge. We can go, but just for a few minutes.”
“Cool! That bridge?”
Gritting his teeth, Trash followed Danny across the footbridge that spanned the train tracks. He could feel the eyes following them, or more specifically, the Western movie-star-like individual walking in front of him.
Trash had been to the Shrine when he was young. He had even come once for New Year’s, but he hadn’t been back in ages.
After his father had passed away, he was told to stay away from shrines for a couple of months, and the same when his grandfather died. Other than the hidden shrine in Akihabara that he visited, and Kanda Myoujin, he had gotten out of the habit.
The path to the shrine was longer than he remembered it. The last time, the path had been packed with people, and everyone moved slowly as a group, but today, there was hardly a person in sight.
It was eerie, despite being in the center of Tokyo; once you entered the outer grounds of the shrine, the sounds of cars and trains completely disappeared. The inner shrine was completely surrounded by tall trees that must block the sounds of the outside world.
It was similar to the high walls of the buildings surrounding the hidden shrine. In that secluded corner, all the cars and loudspeakers from the stores faded to whispers.
Here, they could only hear the sound of the gravel covering the path, making a crunching noise with every step.
They didn’t have much time, so Trash didn’t take him all the way into the inner shrine. He did give Danny a chance to take a few pictures, however.
“Wait, is that the Sound Princess phone?”
“Huh? Oh yeah! I was fiddling around with it last night. It doesn’t have a SIM card, right? So I can’t use it to make calls or anything, but the translation files are all local, so I brought it in case I need to know what’s going on with the negotiations.”
That made sense, but it also made Trash nervous. If anything happened to that prototype, he’d get blamed.
“Actually, I did get a local SIM; the receptionist at the hotel helped me. But I don’t think I got it working right. It won’t make calls or do text messages, at least.”
“Ryo… He won’t be happy that you are messing around with the prototype.”
“Ryo can sit and spin on it. He’s the one screwing me. I don’t care if he doesn’t fucking like what I do with his precious prototype. If he wants it back, he can come and take it from me like a man.”
“Maybe we should go; we shouldn’t be late for the appointment.”
Danny looked around and seemed to be a bit chagrined by the solemn atmosphere.
“Sorry,” he apologized to no one in particular.
They arrived at Takeshita street a few minutes before the appointment, but Trash realized he didn’t know where the record store was.
The street was unique. It started a block from the station, then sloped down away from the tracks. The street itself was narrow, with small shops creating walls on both sides. It was more of a large alleyway, than a street for vehicles, and indeed, he saw no cars or trucks driving there. Some tourists were milling about. Even Trash had heard about the famous Takeshita Street, the heart of Harajuku and the birthplace of Shibuya fashion culture.
For obvious reasons, Trash had never been there before. It actually injured his pride to step into it now. He felt that it lessened him in some invisible, intangible way.
It actually looked rather normal. Trash had half expected to see high-school girls in blackface running around with crepes and giant thick socks. Instead, it was not too unlike most shopping streets in Tokyo.
Sure, most of the stores seemed to involve cheap jewelry, hats, t-shirts, and shudder lingerie, but he couldn’t see anything that looked too crazy or unique. It reminded him more of Nakano, another geek-friendly neighborhood in western Tokyo that he and Pazu used to go explore when they still lived in Setagaya.
In fact, it appeared that there were more foreigners and tourists here than locals, though had to catch himself from gawking at what appeared to be half a boy’s high school baseball team, standing in front of a food truck eating dessert crepes.
It was not what he expected, but it was certainly a different world from what he was used to.
With no way to get his bearings, he fell back to using the GPS feature of his phone. Luckily, Pazu’s link gave him an approximate location on his phone’s map.
A few blocks in, and on the left side, he saw a small staircase leading up around one building and up a hillside. It appeared that the entire street was contained within an old ravine or canal.
Attached by wire to the handrail was a small white sign with black lettering in English.
[Denmark Street Records —>]
He checked the clock. They were 5 minutes late. He felt that this was probably a bad way to start things off.
Well, this was his idea, so he needed to see things through.
Danny seemed to be as fascinated with Takeshita Street as he had been with Akihabara. He swiveled around, trying to take it all in. Trash had to tap him on the arm and point to the sign to get him to stop moving around.
He looked at the sign.
“What is it?”
“This is what we are here for.”
“What?”
“The owner of that store. We are going to ask him to help.”
Danny gave Trash an empty look.
“What are you talking about? Here?”
Trash nodded.
As if he had been waiting for Trash to tell him it was a joke, Danny stood there silently.
“We are late already. We should go up.”
“Are you fucking joking? I thought we were going to some kind of… I don’t know. A serious place. Not some fucking record shop from a Gwen Stefani music video!”
“What?”
“You know, Gwen Stefani? Harajuku Girls. Even I know… Goddammit Trash. What are you trying to do? Is this seriously your plan?”
Trash was sick of this. Why did everyone else expect him to solve their problems when he obviously couldn’t even take care of himself?
“Look. You want a lot of cash, but don’t want to transfer it like a normal person. ‘No questions’, right? This is the ‘no questions’ place. You say you want a bank. I’ll take you to a bank!”
“Trash…”
“No! I’m fucking sick of this c-crap. It’s not my fault Sakamoto blew up the deal. I’m just trying to take care of my business, and you guys are fucking with me, and I’m f-fucking sick of it… ahhh! FUCK!”
“Damn Trash. What kind of coffee did you drink this morning?”
Trash calmed down and realized what he had just done.
When his relatives verbally beat him down, he never fought back. He just took it. The same back in school. He never fought back.
The past few days, something had changed. He was just so sick of having to put up with everyone else’s nonsense. He was out of time, out of money. Just once, he wanted the word to listen to him. Stop screwing with him and his life and have things work the way it’s supposed to.
“Hey, that was fun, but aren’t we late?”
Trash stared blankly at Danny.
“Come on, are we going or not?”
Danny wasn’t mad. He was actually grinning. He walked past Trash and started up the stairs.
“Here, right? Let’s go.”
Trash blinked a couple of times, then followed Danny up the stairs.