Tokyo Demons Book 1: Chapter 3

‬Being nervous was a new feeling for Jo. Granted, he’d been in his fair share of sketchy situations in his life, but the short-lived panic of nearly getting your teeth broken by a robbed businessman was something Jo could live with. But a day or two of general discomfort, followed by several hours of actual near-worry?

Hell no. Jo glided through his risky lifestyle with a practiced and comforting ease, and he wasn’t about to let a series of asinine events rattle him. So when Seiya caught up to him in the bathroom again that day, and Jo stepped out to find a crowd by the window and Ayase tumbling down the stairs, he made a decision.

“Seiya.” Jo turned from the scene of Sachi crying out and running after his pseudo-girlfriend. Jo reached out and gripped Seiya by both shoulders, an action that made Seiya blink.

“I…I’ll join your stupid gang.”

Seiya’s eyes lit up. “Yeah?” he asked excitedly, his unwashed hands closing over Jo’s.

Jo quickly broke the contact. “Don’t make a big deal out of it,” he muttered. “Just bring me to whoever’s in charge. School’s over in a period; I’ll meet you in the lounge.”

“All right!” Seiya laughed, revealing his crooked teeth to the fluorescent school lights. Jo managed to maneuver himself out of the way of Seiya’s inevitable back-slap. “Yeah, in the lounge after school!”

Jo stomped back to class with his eyes locked forward. It’ll solve my problems, he told himself as he went back to his seat. He fell back into his chair and grabbed his pen, ready to finish the last class of the day and move forward with his new plan.

He noticed, with extreme distaste, that the pen shook in his fingers.

He slammed the pen down on the desk and ran his hands through his hair. He had to calm down. He could hear the students around him chattering about some big guy and some old lady seen on school grounds, but Jo still wasn’t convinced he was in immediate danger. No one could get him while he was in class. If the thug from the club had chased him down, Jo would probably be fine as long as he stayed in populated places.

He had no idea why the thug was after him. Considering the man had ditched after the drug deal went sour, Jo had assumed that the thug didn’t give a rat’s ass about the whole thing. Jo wouldn’t have believed the man was after him had he not heard that kogal describe him. It went against all of Jo’s common street sense.

Which left him with one possible answer: the thug held a grudge. Grudges could be fleeting, if acting on them proved to be too much trouble.

Jo just needed to relax. That, more than anything, was why he was ready to join the stupid street gang or no-girl’s-allowed club or whatever the hell it was Seiya was always bugging him about. Jo wasn’t a team player, and to be honest, the thought of joining some clutch of loiterers was almost too embarrassing to stand. But he also knew that if he started hanging out with street kids, potentially kids with reputations, it would offer him the crowds and possibly even the protection he needed to make the thug lose interest.

Luckily, Sachi and Ayase didn’t return to class that day–the teacher said they’d gone to the hospital so Ayase could get a few stitches. Jo was able to go to the lounge after school without having to answer the annoying questions they would have been sure to ask.

Seiya was waiting for him in the lounge, a pleased grin on his face. “Hey!” he called. “Ready to enter the big time, Jo?”

Jo murmured a non-committal answer. Shut up, he thought.

Seiya started rattling off names and “rules” and something about a handshake as he led Jo off school grounds. Jo completely blocked him out. He wasn’t in the mood, and he wanted to pay close attention to where they were going. It wasn’t until they were on the subway that Jo suddenly realized Seiya had asked him a question.

“Huh?” Jo finally looked Seiya in the face.

“Weed.” Seiya gave one of his crooked smiles and mimicked holding a joint to his lips. “Do you burn?”

Of course he’s asking about pot, Jo thought darkly. What else does this kid care about?

“No,” Jo answered, turning back to the window. “Tobacco’s expensive as it is.” He neglected to add that he didn’t like to look and act like an idiot.

Seiya laughed. “I never took you for being straight-edge!” he said. “Too bad, man. Byakko guys get their hands on good shit.”

“Byakko?” Jo repeated.

Seiya wilted slightly. “The gang?” he said, sounding disappointed. “I already told you that’s our name.”

Jo sighed silently. He had to act slightly interested, or his new plan wasn’t going to go well.

“Sorry,” he said, turning back to Seiya. “I didn’t hear you. Byakko, like the tiger?”

Seiya nodded. “Byakko’s the Chinese god of the west sky. And our turf’s the west side of Tokyo, get it?” He smiled, clearly pleased.

Jo refrained from saying that naming a gang after zodiac mythology was painfully lame. He sincerely hoped that whoever had thought that was a good idea had since left the organization.

Jo swallowed hard. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Does Byakko have any…colors or anything?”

Seiya shrugged. “Not really. But one of the signs that you’re in the gang is something white tied around your left wrist.” He held up his own wrist, which was adorned with a zip tie. “Like this.”

Jo suddenly remembered one of the kids from his class wearing a white bandana around his wrist. Jo had always assumed it was some fleeting fashion trend, but apparently it was a gang thing. He mentally filed that bit of information away.

Seiya eventually led Jo off the subway and into a district Jo was slightly familiar with. Dingy pubs and hole-in-wall noodle shops lined the streets, broken up by the occasional convenience store or beauty parlor. Jo noticed a restaurant he’d gone to a few days before the beginning of school.

“Over here, Jo.” Seiya was already halfway across the street before Jo noticed the crosswalk signal had changed. Jo followed, refusing to match Seiya’s jumpy pace, and watched Seiya disappear into a pub labeled Kiseki.

The pub was little more than an open room with half a dozen tables strewn around. Two tables were occupied with pairs of people eating, and a few drunks were already slumped over the bar at the front. Seiya stood at that bar and chatted with a well-dressed bartender. The bartender looked up, focused his eyes on Jo, and smiled.

“Oh.” Seiya followed the bartender’s eyes. “That’s Jo, Kenta-san. He’s with me.” Seiya beamed. “He’s a new recruit I found.”

The slight curl to Kenta’s lips showed a sort of friendly amusement. “How nice,” he said politely. “Why don’t you go ahead and bring him to Miki, Seiya-kun.”

Seiya beckoned to Jo and disappeared into a back room. Jo gave a half-bow to the bartender as he passed, and the bartender nodded in response.

Seiya pushed aside a throw rug and pulled up a handled panel in the floor. He gestured for Jo to go down the revealed set of stairs first. When Seiya followed, he pulled the floor opening down behind him.

“Kenta-san owns the bar,” Seiya explained. “He’s here most of the time, and he’ll let you in the back.”

The basement to Kiseki was huge and renovated, with a large central room and a hallway leading off to one side. The main room had a number of locked crates and boxes pushed up against a wall–probably storage for the bar above–and two couches and several chairs crowded around a plasma TV. A pile of discarded jackets and snack wrappers lay beside the TV, atop the mess of wires that snaked from several game consoles.

Seiya continued to the hallway. Jo passed a door that was closed, one that was just open enough to release the smell of tobacco and a few voices, and one with a large padlock on it. Seiya eventually opened up a door at the very end of the hall.

A slight teenage boy sat in a beat-up recliner, his attention entirely focused on the PDA in his hands. He didn’t seem to notice Seiya walk in.

“Miki?” Seiya asked. “I brought him.”

Miki didn’t look up. “Brought who?” he asked flatly as he continued to tap at his tiny screen.

“The guy who beat up Suzuki’s guys. Remember? I said I told him about us, and he–”

“Do you have Soushi’s game on you?”

Seiya blinked. “Yeah,” he said at last, fumbling through his pockets before pulling out a plastic case filled with tiny video game cartridges. “Why?”

“He says you were supposed to give it back a month ago.” Miki pulled a small key out of his pocket and tossed it in Seiya’s general direction. “Drop it off in the game box so he’ll stop bitching.”

Seiya barely caught the key. “Don’t you wanna meet Jo?” he asked.

Miki finally looked up, his dark eyes locking on Jo. He stared a moment, then moved his glance to Seiya.

“I’ll give him the run-down in private. Come back in ten minutes.”

Seiya seemed satisfied with the answer. He slapped Jo on the back, an action Jo was too slow to avoid, and left the room.

Miki stood and slid the PDA into his jeans pocket. Jo was surprised to see that Miki was tiny; barely 160 cm tall, if he had to guess. He had hair to his shoulders, and the dark strands of it fell over his overly large tee-shirt. His unfortunately tight jeans emphasized his boyish hips. With his slight build and large eyes, the unimpressed look on his face was the only thing that made him seem older than twelve.

“What was your name again?” he asked.

“Jo Oda,” Jo said.

“And you kicked Suzuki’s ass?”

Jo shrugged.

“You smell like nicotine.” He held out a hand. “Gimme one?”

Jo paused, then pulled the box out of his pocket. He passed a cigarette to Miki and followed it with his lighter. Jo followed suit, then lit up one for himself.

Miki took a long drag, then let it out with a sigh. He visibly relaxed. He dragged again, then focused his childishly big eyes on Jo once more.

“I’m trying to quit,” he explained.

Jo shrugged again. I don’t know you or care, he thought. He took a long drag himself, hoping that he could go home after meeting Miki. There was something creepy about the small boy in front of him. That, combined with Jo’s general distaste for joining the gang in the first place, was making Jo almost as uneasy as he’d been at school.

Miki hung his thumbs in the pockets of his skinny jeans, puffing the cigarette locked in his lips. “Jo,” he murmured around the stick, “I’m gonna be straight with you, all right?”

Jo waited.

“This is a gang of complete shitheads. We’ve got maybe five, six kids who can hold themselves in a fight, and two kids other than me who can pick locks worth a damn. Most members of Byakko loiter, smoke weed, and make general asses of themselves. If you’re as badass as people are saying, you’re probably gonna be disappointed.”

Jo paused. At least he’s being honest, he thought. Jo felt slightly better that he didn’t have to try so hard to look interested.

“How many people do you have, total?” Jo asked.

“About three hundred.”

If fewer than ten of them had actual thug merit, Jo wasn’t sure he was in the right place.

“How’s your…street cred?” Jo asked after a moment, wondering if he was asking the right question and slightly hating himself for saying the word “street cred” in a proper sentence.

“Mine, or the gang’s?”

“The gang’s.”

Miki rolled the cigarette between his lips. “Better than it should be. That’s mostly because the old gang actually got shit done. Actually…” He let out a puff of smoke. “Let me start at the beginning. Have you ever heard of Seiryuu?”

Jo shook his head. “I’m guessing that’s another gang,” he said sourly, remembering that Seiryuu was the Chinese dragon god of the east.

“Our old rival gang. Seiryuu got off on vandalizing stuff–graffiti, trashing motel rooms, taking down street signs, that kind of thing. They got paid pretty good money by insurance fraud low-lifes for it.  We used to be big on stealing. Since it was hard to prove which gang was more badass in its respective field, we would just kick the shit out whatever rival gang members wandered into our turf.”

Jo’s interest was slightly piqued. Byakko was the burglary gang?

“Anyway, that’s the way it was when I joined–when Takeshi was in charge. About two years ago, the cops did a shake-down of Seiryuu after they caused some big accident by taking out a streetlight. About half the kids went to juvie, and the other half were watched so carefully by the police that they couldn’t do shit. The gang eventually fell apart, and all of a sudden we were the dominant gang by default.

“A few months after that, Takeshi had to leave Tokyo because there was a warrant out for his arrest. His little brother Ban took over Byakko, even though Ban is completely useless. He lets pretty much anyone join the gang now.” Miki took a final drag, then dropped the cigarette to the stained, littered concrete floor and ground it with his shoe. “We’re soft, disorganized, and half our members are potheads now. It’s a disgrace to what we used to be.”

Jo dropped his own cigarette to the floor. He thought a moment as he pushed the heel of his shoe against the still-smoking butt.

“You let anyone join the gang?” he asked after a moment.

Miki grimaced. “If you kicked even one ass, you’re more qualified to join than most of the guys here.”

“I didn’t really kick anyone’s…” Jo sighed. “Look,” he muttered. “Everything at Blue Light with what’s-his-face. The drug dealer.”

“Suzuki.”

“Whatever. I didn’t go there looking for shit, but shit happens, y’know? And I don’t like trouble.” He idly fingered the cigarette pack in his pocket. “But I think it may’ve gotten me in trouble with someone there.”

Miki furrowed his eyebrows. “Who?” he asked. “Suzuki’s little pissant friends are locked up with him, and no one else on the street takes him seriously.”

Jo hesitated. “It was…another guy,” he said. “A really big guy. A foreigner with sunglasses who was working as a bodyguard or something. The police definitely didn’t pick him up.”

“A foreigner?” Miki repeated. He rubbed the back of his neck. “That doesn’t sound like…hang on.” He raised an eyebrow. “A big foreigner wearing some kind of disguise?”

“Well, he had a baseball cap on. If you count a baseball cap and sunglasses as a disguise.”

Miki whistled. “Wow,” he said. “So you met the Gaijin Timebomb.”

“The Gaijin what?” Jo definitely didn’t like the sound of that.

Miki brushed off Jo’s question. “You’re fine,” he said matter-of-factly. “That guy’s not after you.”

Jo was starting to get annoyed. “How are you so sure?” he snapped.

“Because that guy’s on borrowed time.” Miki dropped his thumbs back to his pockets. “Everyone knows the meanest, dirtiest drug lords in Tokyo want him dead as soon as possible.”

Jo paused. “Really?” he asked after a moment. “What for?”

“Hell if I know.” Miki sighed. “The point is, he has way too much shit on his plate as it is. He’s not after you. You’re fine.” He dropped back into his recliner, looking as bored as the first moment he’d looked up from his PDA. “Anything else bothering you, Jo Oda?”

Jo took a minute to digest that.

He wasn’t sure he could believe Miki. He didn’t know Miki, and he definitely had no reason to trust Miki. The kogal in Jo’s class had described the thug from the club so accurately. It couldn’t be coincidence that the guy was asking around about Jo.

Jo stood a minute, his fingers twitching, before sliding another cigarette out of its pack.

“He asked somebody about me,” he said at last, touching the flame of his lighter to the end of his cigarette. He snapped the lighter closed. “What do you make of that?”

Miki shrugged. “Honestly, it could’ve been anything, but I doubt he’s stupid enough to track you down because he wanted to kick your ass–attacking a minor draws way too much attention. Hey, he may’ve been looking for you because he needed help. I heard he’s reached out to some pretty bizarre people over the years.” He paused. “If he was working for Suzuki, he must be really desperate.”

Jo grimaced. That guy wanted his help? He didn’t buy it–no matter how much his stupid classmates thought otherwise, he had not come across as a badass in that club skirmish. Jo was pretty self-aware; he knew when he came across as particularly slick. The night in Blue Light was not one of those times.

Still…if there was truth to what Miki said about the thug being a wanted man, Jo’s current plan for Keeping That Guy The Hell Away From Me would still apply. Jo would avoid dark alleys and the like, since someone in hiding would definitely avoid stalking a teenage boy in a crowded place. And if the thug was running for his life, he would probably lose interest in Jo pretty quickly.

“Does this guy have connections?” Jo asked. His plan wouldn’t work if the man had sub-thugs.

Miki snorted. “Are you kidding? No one wants to get near that guy. Having the drug lords after your head makes you about as popular as a hooker with teeth in her box. No one wants to be the poor fucker the drug lords think is hiding him.”

Jo, finally, felt himself relax a little.

Maybe I am okay, he thought. The Byakko gang had numbers and a reputation, at least. It would help him. And the thug somehow did manage to track down Jo, all Jo had to do was stay in a crowded place and threaten to expose the guy. It was lame, but it would work.

Jo took a long, relaxing drag. I’m okay, he repeated in his head.

“Are you high, Oda?”

Jo’s thoughts were suddenly cut off by Miki’s voice. Jo left his reverie so abruptly that the cigarette dropped from his lips.

Miki pulled out his PDA again. “You can go,” he dismissed.

Jo, miffed that anyone would mistake his deep thinking for being stoned, angrily ground his half-finished cigarette into the concrete floor.

“There has to be more about this gang you need to tell me,” he said, pointedly looking at Miki’s distracting PDA.

Miki glanced up. “Not really,” he answered. “You’re in, Kenta will let you back here if he’s working, and don’t tell anyone about our location. If you need anything, talk to me–I don’t like giving Ban any responsibility if I can help it.”

“I thought you said Ban’s in charge.”

“I also said he’s useless.” Miki began tapping on his PDA again. “I’m technically second or third in command or whatever, but rank doesn’t mean anything these days. If you need something, you come to me.”

The comment of Byakko’s old talent for stealing, and Miki’s own admission to being good at picking locks, still interested Jo…a little.

“What do you mean, ‘if I need something’?”

Miki sighed and dropped his PDA to his lap. “You go to Fukuhashi, right?” he asked irritably.

“Yeah.”

“So do I. I’m a second-year.” He pointed at Jo with his digital pen. “If you need pot, go to Seiya or one of the other stoners. If you want something useful, like information, come to me in the fifth period cafeteria.” He dropped his attention back to his PDA. “I know everyone.”

Miki’s comment about being a second-year confirmed Jo’s suspicions–that Miki wasn’t as young as he looked. It was disturbing that a 16- or 17-year-old looked like that, but the analogy with the hooker was a bit sophisticated for a middle-schooler.

“That’s…all I wanted to know,” Jo mumbled. “I guess I’ll see you around.” Jo turned for the door, hoping to make a swift exit from the little clubhouse and away from the creepy boy-child.

“Wait.”

Jo sighed. “What?”

Miki pushed himself out of his recliner and held a hand out at Jo. “I have to…show you something,” he muttered. “If you’re in Byakko now. Hold out your hand.”

“What?”

“Just hold out your hand, asshole!” Miki’s eyes flared with some severe emotion Jo couldn’t quite place.

Jo slowly walked back to Miki, then reached for his hand–which he assumed was out for a handshake. Miki pulled back.

“I told you to hold out your hand, not grab mine!”

Jo had just about had it with Miki’s attitude. He held out his hand rigidly, in a mimic of Miki’s, and tried very hard to not jam it into Miki’s solar plexus.

Miki slowly slapped the back of his hand against the back of Jo’s twice. “Now make a fist,” he muttered.

Something Seiya had ranted about suddenly came back to Jo. “Wait a minute,” he said carefully. “Is this…a secret handshake?”

“Just make a fist!” Miki roared, his body trembling with emotion.

The stupidity of the whole thing was so overwhelming that Jo could barely believe it. Miki’s poorly-disguised anger told Jo that the handshake was yet another aspect of the gang Miki didn’t approve of.

“Uh…I’m guessing this is another new policy,” Jo said after a moment.

“Yes. But now you’re making me talk about it, and for that I hate you. Make a goddamned fist!”

Jo slowly complied, wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into.

Proceed to Chapter 3, page 3–>
‪