desu .”
9
Burn Out
As soon as the doors opened on the train, Nikki hurried from the platform toward the lobby of Kyoto’s station. She had only two hours before the local trains stopped running. She needed to go back to Osaka to get her passport, credit cards, and anything else vital that she had left behind. An express would take forty minutes, and a local would take nearly an hour. It would leave her only an hour to get to her apartment and back to the Osaka train station to catch the sleeper to Tokyo. Her stomach was doing flip-flops over the idea of returning to her apartment with the dead body. Part of her very active imagination envisioned bugs crawling in and out of his mouth, but she knew in the enclosed apartment it would be days before that could start. She focused on the diminishing time before she would be stuck in Osaka without a place to spend the night. Miriam was the only person she knew in Osaka, and she wasn’t going to bring this mess down on her head.
Kyoto Station was a vast modern structure built to be a visual re-creation of the valley that Kyoto nestled in. The lobby was a six-story-high rectangle under an umbrella of steel and glass. The occasional pigeon testified that despite seeming enclosed, one side was open to the elements. The wedge-shaped Isetan Department Store actually started three floors under the station and formed a mountainous slope up and out of the lobby that you could walk up the side of—provided you wanted to hike more than ten floors to the roof-top garden.
The lobby was crowded with people hurrying home from cram school and office socialized drinking. Nikki wove through the sea of Asians, aware she was the only gaijin in sight. The far wall of the lobby was one massive bank of automated ticket machines. Despite there being dozens of machines, lines were cued up.
The only money she had was the hundred thousand yen. She nervously fed one into the machine. It calmly took it and spit back nine ten thousand yen bills and a handful of coins. She gathered them up and headed to the gate to scan the big digital board showing train departures. She wanted an express but she would take . . .
. . . she was in a taxi on the outskirts of a town.
The driver was a typical Japanese taxi driver; a middle-aged man in a uniform and white gloves. The car was spotless, and he was listening to a baseball game between Osaka’s Hanshin Tigers and the Yokohama BayStars.
Why was it that every little piece of the puzzle seemed so orderly and sane and yet the big picture was filled with blood and chaos? Was the order serving to magnify the disorder?
At least she still had her backpack and the money in her jeans pocket, and of course, the katana . It was only her sanity that she was losing.
The taxi stopped. They were on a steep hillside, the orange torii posts of a shrine gleaming in the headlights. The driver said something in Japanese and tapped the digital display of his meter that showed eight hundred yen. Apparently he thought this was where she wanted to go.
She had asked to come here? Where the hell was here? She could see stumbling into a taxi and asking for a hotel, but what was this?
“Nani?” She pointed at the torii .
The driver answered in a flood of Japanese.
“Do—do you speak English?” she cried, interrupting him.
“Eh?”
“English?” She couldn’t even think of the phrase in Japanese. “Where are we? Is this Kyoto? Osaka?”
“Kyoto. Hai .” The driver nodded and then pointed at the gates in his headlights. “Ikuta Shrine.”
Had she asked to go to a shrine? In the middle of the night?
“No, I don’t want . . .”
. . .she was standing under a streetlamp in front of the shrine, alone, the taxi no longer in sight.
“Stop doing that!” she shouted. “It’s scaring me.”
It started to rain. It was a light drizzle, but it washed away what little strength she had left. She walked in a small circle within the pool of light, eyeing the dark
9
Burn Out
As soon as the doors opened on the train, Nikki hurried from the platform toward the lobby of Kyoto’s station. She had only two hours before the local trains stopped running. She needed to go back to Osaka to get her passport, credit cards, and anything else vital that she had left behind. An express would take forty minutes, and a local would take nearly an hour. It would leave her only an hour to get to her apartment and back to the Osaka train station to catch the sleeper to Tokyo. Her stomach was doing flip-flops over the idea of returning to her apartment with the dead body. Part of her very active imagination envisioned bugs crawling in and out of his mouth, but she knew in the enclosed apartment it would be days before that could start. She focused on the diminishing time before she would be stuck in Osaka without a place to spend the night. Miriam was the only person she knew in Osaka, and she wasn’t going to bring this mess down on her head.
Kyoto Station was a vast modern structure built to be a visual re-creation of the valley that Kyoto nestled in. The lobby was a six-story-high rectangle under an umbrella of steel and glass. The occasional pigeon testified that despite seeming enclosed, one side was open to the elements. The wedge-shaped Isetan Department Store actually started three floors under the station and formed a mountainous slope up and out of the lobby that you could walk up the side of—provided you wanted to hike more than ten floors to the roof-top garden.
The lobby was crowded with people hurrying home from cram school and office socialized drinking. Nikki wove through the sea of Asians, aware she was the only gaijin in sight. The far wall of the lobby was one massive bank of automated ticket machines. Despite there being dozens of machines, lines were cued up.
The only money she had was the hundred thousand yen. She nervously fed one into the machine. It calmly took it and spit back nine ten thousand yen bills and a handful of coins. She gathered them up and headed to the gate to scan the big digital board showing train departures. She wanted an express but she would take . . .
. . . she was in a taxi on the outskirts of a town.
The driver was a typical Japanese taxi driver; a middle-aged man in a uniform and white gloves. The car was spotless, and he was listening to a baseball game between Osaka’s Hanshin Tigers and the Yokohama BayStars.
Why was it that every little piece of the puzzle seemed so orderly and sane and yet the big picture was filled with blood and chaos? Was the order serving to magnify the disorder?
At least she still had her backpack and the money in her jeans pocket, and of course, the katana . It was only her sanity that she was losing.
The taxi stopped. They were on a steep hillside, the orange torii posts of a shrine gleaming in the headlights. The driver said something in Japanese and tapped the digital display of his meter that showed eight hundred yen. Apparently he thought this was where she wanted to go.
She had asked to come here? Where the hell was here? She could see stumbling into a taxi and asking for a hotel, but what was this?
“Nani?” She pointed at the torii .
The driver answered in a flood of Japanese.
“Do—do you speak English?” she cried, interrupting him.
“Eh?”
“English?” She couldn’t even think of the phrase in Japanese. “Where are we? Is this Kyoto? Osaka?”
“Kyoto. Hai .” The driver nodded and then pointed at the gates in his headlights. “Ikuta Shrine.”
Had she asked to go to a shrine? In the middle of the night?
“No, I don’t want . . .”
. . .she was standing under a streetlamp in front of the shrine, alone, the taxi no longer in sight.
“Stop doing that!” she shouted. “It’s scaring me.”
It started to rain. It was a light drizzle, but it washed away what little strength she had left. She walked in a small circle within the pool of light, eyeing the dark
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