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The Past
QUILL1
Love, the iconic sculpture originally designed by Robert Indiana, was made of four giant, red block letters stacked on top of each other: the L and O on top, the V and E on the bottom, and the O tilted on an angle. Was that crookedness just to give the design some personality, or was it a comment on the nature of love? Who knew? The sculpture was a selfie hotspot located in a commercial district of Tokyo, the world’s biggest city with over thirty-seven million people, the art not far from the world’s busiest train station: Shinjuku.
The night sky was a magical dark purple, and the night sparkled, but not from the heavens. Millions of lights made Tokyo seem like a city of stars at night, from the many skyscrapers with offices and apartments still alight at this late hour to the streetlights and signal lights and passing trains and even garlands of white, Christmas-style lights on the trees behind the LOVE sculpture, despite it being summer.
Many couples and groups of friends, enjoying this Friday night, stood in front of the sculpture or even climbed up onto it for their pictures. There were plenty of smiling faces and more than a few flushed red after an evening of dinner and drinking parties. Thousands more people walked up and down the streets. In Tokyo, you were rarely alone. At least physically.
Emotionally, it was another matter entirely.
Quill Krau stood on the sidewalk, enjoying watching the locals having fun around the sculpture. The sound of his colleagues and clients calling a final end to the night brought him back to business. The others were all bowing and nodding and beginning to drift away to the station.
“Otsukaresama desu!” Thank you for your hard work.
“Otsakare!”
“Mata ne?” Later.
“Otskaresama desu.”
“Jaa! Mata.” Well then! Later.
The three Japanese salarymen and one salarywoman bowed, entirely casually at this point because everyone was flushed red from all the beer and sake they’d had at dinner and then at the pub.
Quill smiled at the others, glad the night was finally winding down. “Otsakare!” He only ever nodded his head at many of the Japanese men he regularly dealt with these days instead of bowing like an inferior. It was essentially a silent screw you to the people who might be polite to his face, but he who he knew looked down on him and spoke ill of him behind his back. But to Hana, he happily gave a proper short bow, as between equals and someone whom he respected. She might be ‘only’ the secretary to the guy who’d just sexually harassed her, but he knew she did all the real work. And he appreciated how much effort she always put in.
One of the men, the highest ranking and most senior, one with a pot belly and large bald spot, pretended to be friendly, nodding to the others, patting the woman, his subordinate, on the lower back before his hand ‘accidentally’ dropped to pat her on the butt as well.
Her smile, which Quill was sure had been forced for at least the second half of the evening, grew even more strained. Yet she did nothing because this was the norm in this culture. You did not rock the boat in Japan. No matter how much of a pig your boss was.
Quill suddenly stepped forward and offered his hand to the senior executive. “Watanabe-san. Otsukaresama deshita. Raigatsu, desu ne?” Thank you for your hard work. Next month, yes?
The man’s smile tightened a hair and became even more false than usual, never reaching his eyes. But he reluctantly withdrew his hand from the woman’s ass to shake Quill’s in a perfunctory manner before vaguely grunting and turning toward the station.
The woman, Hana, smiled more warmly at him. “Thank you, Quill. I look forward to seeing you again.” She was the only one who ever spoke English with him. She bowed back and turned on her low, plain black heels and made her way to the station.
The others, despite holding posts in a job dealing with foreigners, always refused to speak anything other than Japanese. It was a point of pride for men like them to always be as ‘Japanese’ as possible and never foreign. Even while they wore Western suits, wanted Western business relations, worked in Western-style office buildings, carried Western-made phones…
Quill loved living in Japan, but as with any culture, there were some things that really got on your nerves. He looked toward the station, but his hotel was within walking distance. No sense only going a couple of stations when it was a beautiful night.
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Also, the idea of going back to his room alone felt…unwelcome. He hung his briefcase over his shoulder and started wandering down the busy street.
He was only here in Tokyo on business for a couple of days, visiting government offices. His home city, for the moment, was Osaka, Japan’s second biggest city with a ‘mere’ twenty million people, only an hour and a half away via high-speed rail in the Kansai region. In Osaka, he served as a liaison for foreign workers in the area, from bankers to businessmen, import-exporters to teachers. He was a government bureaucrat, and his job was very dull.
It was also very lonely. Take tonight. He’d spent the entire day at the office. Then he and the government staff had gone to dinner with business clients. Then they’d said goodbye to the clients and gone to a pub for more food and drink. It was after eleven at night. It was like this almost every single Friday and often a lot of other weeknights as well. Yet despite all that socializing, the superficialness of it left him feeling like he hadn’t really connected with anyone the whole time. It was as if the whole thing had been for show, everyone just going through the motions because it was expected, because it was what they always did, what everyone else did.
Being a foreigner in Japan was incredibly fun in many ways. Just being here, his brain felt stimulated in a way that it never was back in his home country. Everything was just slightly different, and it was a real pleasure to walk these streets, even after a very long day of boring meetings where nothing important ever happened, and hours of formal dining and drinking with other overworked bureaucrats and salary-people.
A trio of scantily-clad young women gathered on the street corner he was approaching.
One danced around, opening her long coat and showing her fashion off to her two friends. “Yabakunai? Yabakunai, deshou? Ne?” Isn’t it dangerous? It’s dangerous, right? Right?
She was probably referring to how low-cut her tiny top was. That was something not often seen in this country, and it drew not only his eyes but those of others passing by as well. Of course, no one batted an eye at how short the mini skirts were on all three women. Though Quill thought they were pretty damned dangerous, too.
One of the girlfriends laughed and clapped approvingly. “Sekushii da yo! Mettcha sekushii.” Sexy! Very sexy.
The other girlfriend playfully raised her hands, her eyes wide, and made to grab the breasts on display. “Oooh, munyu munyu…”
The first girl cackled and totally allowed the groping, thrusting her chest into the hands and making all three laugh.
Quill hid a smirk. What a country. Sometimes it was so conservative and oppressive. Other times, it could be a lot of fun. But though he longed to stop and start a conversation with the ladies, he couldn’t find the courage or the willpower to do so. What would be the point? He’d been given the cold shoulder by girls like that often enough to know what to expect. So he appreciated the view as he passed but continued on, navigating the busy sidewalk as more and more people hustled past him to catch the last train back at the station.
He very much enjoyed the company of many Japanese people, but no matter how long he lived in this country, no matter how hard he worked to speak the language, no matter how well he got along with people at work, he was always gaijin (foreigner), and always on the outside. People were friendly and polite — much more so than back home. But developing real, intimate relationships here was nearly impossible for many foreigners, except with a romantic partner, but he’d not yet met the right person as far as marriage might be concerned.
His first girlfriend here, Rina, was a workaholic career woman. She’d been constantly frustrated by his desire to spend more time together, hours she’d felt took away from the time she could have been spending on client and coworker dinners and drinks or other things that would help her rise in the company that she worked for. She was a corporate ladder climber, all the way.
It had eventually become clear to both of them that what she really wanted was someone with a good income in the background of her life, someone that made her look good to her peers and gave her extra money to live comfortably with, while he’d wanted a real partner and someone to do things with. She was live-to-work; he was work-to-live. It had been heartbreaking to end things with her because he’d loved literally everything else about her but her choice of career over a relationship.
Quill’s second girlfriend had seemed fun, friendly, and caring — to begin with. It had eventually become clear that all she wanted was to make as many babies as possible, as soon as possible, with whatever foreign guy paid her the most attention. And that she was incredibly insecure.
He hadn’t been ready for a family quite yet and had struggled to accommodate her jealousy and clingy need for constant attention. She’d even gone so far as sleeping with other foreign guys in some misguided desire to make him jealous, as if that would have made him fight for her and want her more. He’d walked away. She’d married someone else six months later and gotten pregnant immediately afterwards. Quill felt he’d dodged a bullet with her.
Outside of romance, Quill did work on building friendships. Even if it was difficult to build deep friendships with Japanese people, there were other foreigners in Japan, of course, and that helped. There weren’t many, as the country was still extremely homogenous, with foreigners and mixed-ancestry Japanese together accounting for three percent or less of the population. Unfortunately, most foreigners who came didn’t stay; they returned home after a year or two. So while it was interesting meeting so many new and varied people all the time, it was difficult to form deeper, lasting friendships and a reliable social-support network. He was also of an age when many of his friends were starting families and choosing to stay home rather than meet up. And he hadn’t found the right woman to start that kind of life with yet. Though he wanted to.
Male
36
QUILL KRAU
Class NONE, Level 1
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DEX
Currently lonely.
HEA
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