Chaos in Kadoma Ward – Chapter 14

“Don’t be nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.”

“Yes, you are.” Rin’s fingers play with his imaginary hair. I wonder what he would look like with hair. How often does he shave his head? Does he do it so people will see his scar and think twice about crossing him?

I drop my hand from my hair and pick up my roll. Rin suggested we eat breakfast together at a café not far from the Kiiroi Yama Headquarters, and I agreed because I was tired of being in his apartment, as much as I like the place. Their sweet buns melt in my mouth, and the coffee is a dark roast with fatty cream. I wish I could come here every day.

“What’s that look?” Rin asks, setting his coffee cup down and crossing his legs.

“What look?”

“The one where you tilt your head, and your eyes glaze over, and your forehead wrinkles.”

“Ah. That’s my I’m-asking-one-thousand-questions-in-my-head look. I know better than to ask them out loud anymore.”

Rin’s face hardens as he sets down his coffee cup, and the moment reminds me of when he stood over me in the ravine on Kurai, right before he knocked me unconscious and sold me off to Narumi. I inch away from the table.

“I know, I know,” I say, holding up my hands. “I should keep my mouth shut, so I do. You as good as told me I’m annoying. I’m trying hard not to be.”

“I thought…” He trails off. “I’m an idiot.”

I shake my head, waving my hands in front of me. “I never said that.” I push back my chair, giving myself space to bolt. He took care of me during my migraine, and he pulled strings to get those charges against me dropped, but my trust only goes so far. He made very clear the other day that my questions were unwelcome.

“No, you didn’t. I’m sorry,” he replies, reaching across the table to touch my hand. I snap it back to myself.

“Why would you be sorry?” Anger leaks into my voice. “You’re just like everyone else. Annoyed with me and my curiosity. My repugnant personality.” I snort a laugh, remembering Gen Miyazawa saying the same thing not long before I punched his sorry face. “I told you you’d regret this whole arrangement.”

I’m cognizant of the diners around us, drinking their coffees, eating fat pieces of toast, reading their tablets. They probably don’t have problems with their androids or purchased help.

Rin is silent for several moments, so I keep my eyes to my plate.

“Have you ever noticed how easily conversations between us go sideways? You always presume I’m going to attack you, either physically or verbally.”

I pull out my best deadpan voice. “Whatever gave you that impression?”

“I know fight-or-flight instincts when I see them. You pushed back from the table. Your eyes searched the room for exits. Your breathing rate increased. You shun physical contact.”

“I…”

He’s right on all accounts. Do I tell him the truth? I think I need to.

“I don’t trust you yet. We had all that time on Kurai to get over what happened, but it hasn’t been enough. I have dreams that you’re drowning me.” The words rush from my lips like a waterfall in spring. I look left and right, hoping no one heard me. “I can’t stop them. I wake up in a cold sweat, desperate to breathe.”

I hate that I never know where a conversation with Rin is going to go. I hate that I can’t read him. If he were anyone else, he’d yell at me to pull myself together, be angry with me for not trusting him.

Because he deserves my trust. He’s been patient and helpful. He’s given me my own space in his apartment. He’s taking me to his work, though that will probably get him into trouble.

But at night, when my brain is processing things, it remembers his hand on my head in the river. It remembers him laughing at me when I tried to fight him during my failed escape. It remembers his tone of voice when he cornered me about asking questions, and on and on.

“I apologize for my short temper the other day. I should’ve been more tolerant. You had just arrived here, and you were curious. There’s nothing wrong with that,” he stresses.

Yeah, right. I don’t believe that for a moment.

“How long have you been guarding yourself with me? Never asking the questions you want to ask?”

“Uh, from like minute one. I nearly got cut down the first day I asked any questions of a native, remember? It was your hand on the sword. I don’t ask a lot of questions because I value my life.” I lift my coffee cup from the table, hiding my mouth behind it. “What little life I have left.”

Rin is silent for a moment, his chest heaving up and down, but his face remaining stony.

“Ask me anything.”

“Hmmm, nope. I think I’m better off keeping the questions in check. Thank you very much.”

He narrows his eyes, turning his head. “Really.”

I take another bite and consider this. “If I start now, I may never be able to stop, and then you’ll be sorry.”

His face gives no room for argument.

Okay, then.

“Why do you shave your head?”

He raises his eyebrows, the ridge of his cheek curling along with it. “There was this job about four years ago. We were tracking errant androids through the bowels of Matsubara Ward. You haven’t been there yet —”

“I haven’t been anywhere yet.”

“Yeah, you haven’t. Hmmm. Anyway, Matsubara is a lower caste ward, people living on top of other people. Six people to an apartment half my apartment’s size. I lost an android in a converted apartment building. There were people everywhere, and I didn’t see that he ducked behind a stack of shipping crates. I ran past him, and he reached out and grabbed me by my hair. Nearly scalped me. At the time, my hair was long, and I kept it pulled up. I hated this scar.” He rubs his head, and I realize that he does it because he wishes it wasn’t there. “And didn’t want people to see it. But after that, I started shaving my head. I couldn’t afford to lose a fight with an android because of my own vanity.” He shrugs his shoulders and sips his coffee.

“What about…?” I lift my left hand and wiggle my pinky.

“Ah, this.” He rubs his hand, the tiny missing tip of his finger is barely noticeable unless you’re looking for it. “I kinda thought most of your questions would have to do with Shin-Osaka, not me.”

“Well, I have a million questions about that too, but I’ve always been more interested in people, their lives, their pasts, and their motives for doing what they do. I want to learn about how people live in Shin-Osaka.”

I want to learn more about you, Rin. The man I’m indebted to. The man I live with in a strangled and frustratingly platonic way that Ayamé would call ‘on the verge.’ Because shit, I have to admit that I’m captivated by him and scared to death of him at the same time, and I hate myself for it. How can I be attracted to someone who tried to kill me?

We’re two magnets held apart from each other by an invisible force. One of us has to flip our attitude over, or we’ll repel one another for the rest of time.

Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

He grunts, looking out the window, not at me.

“See? I told you you’d be sorry. Maybe we should finish up and get going.” I gather up our plates. There’s a slot in the wall next to us where we can feed our dirty dishes in and they’ll be whisked off to the kitchen.

“It happened when I was a kid.”

I settle back to my seat as Rin picks up his story.

“I was playing in a park with a bunch of other kids from the orphanage. It was one of those rare beautiful days. The grass was green, and the trees had finally grown leaves after the end of our dry season. I loved animals, especially dogs, and it was one of my dreams to grow up and make enough money to own one. But being in the orphanage meant I didn’t have much interaction with dogs. They couldn’t afford to buy them for a bunch of non-earning kids. Anyway, I don’t remember how it happened, but I managed to piss off some wealthy person’s dog, and it bit me because I had caught its ball. Lost the top of my pinky finger and my taste for animals along with it.”

“Wow,” I say, cringing. “That’s awful. What happened to the dog?”

“How would I know?” he asks, annoyed.

I backtrack. “If something like that happened at home, there would be a huge inquiry. Almost all of our domesticated animals are extremely docile, and many of them are paired with human beings, so they’re able to communicate. If it turned out, after a board inquiry, that an animal was murderous or his or her temperament was beyond repair, then that animal would be put down. It doesn’t happen very often, only twice as long as I can remember.”

“Nothing like that happens here. The man who owned the dog was wealthier than I am. He probably kept the dog.” Rin leans forward, dropping his voice. “That’s really how your world is run? Democratic?”

“Yeah. Strange, huh?” I can only imagine.

“It’s alien.” He’s serious for a moment before bursting into a laugh. I like his sense of humor. “But I like it. Your world is just so… fascinating.”

The way he says that my body warms with the comforting memories of my family’s house, the streets during a summer festival, and I picture myself there with Rin.

No. He belongs here, with his fancy apartment and job.

“Why…” I hesitate because this is really personal, and I’m afraid of his answer. “Why were you orphaned? Did your parents die?”

This time his smile is sad. “Unfortunately, many kids are orphaned here on Hikari. You know why?”

I shake my head.

“Because after the second baby boom, about a hundred years ago, when there weren’t enough jobs to go around, Aka Matsuba decided to institute a child tax, to try to keep people from procreating. It became cost-prohibitive to have and raise kids unless you were wealthy. So, if you were poor, are poor, and got pregnant, you could always have the baby and drop it at an orphanage so you wouldn’t have to pay.”

My cold dead heart dies some more.

“What about abortions?”

He raises an eyebrow at me.

“They’re expensive,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “Wouldn’t doctor visits to care for the pregnancy be costly too? And then Aka Matsuba would know you were going to have a baby.”

Rin gathers up our plates. “There are underground medical facilities where women can go for medical care off the record, a lot less expensive than an abortion. Or they don’t go to a doctor at all. They hide their pregnancy as much as possible, birth the baby at home, drop it at an orphanage, and then head to the emergency room. That’s even cheaper. Most doctors turn a blind eye.”

“For fuck’s sake…” I’ve seen plenty of awful things in the last six years of full-time journalism but this takes the cake.

“I have no idea who my parents are, if they’re alive or dead, or where they may be. I could get DNA testing done, but I don’t really care,” he says, standing up. He tilts his head so he can look down at my face. “Does that answer your questions?”

“Yes,” I say, my voice cracking.

“Are you glad you asked?”

I nod, unable to trust my voice. Yes, I’m glad I asked. I need to know what I’m up against, and this is worse than I imagined. I thought maybe people weren’t having kids because they don’t interact with each other or they’re overworked. But no, they’re being taxed into infertility. They probably don’t have sex for fear of getting pregnant. Do women here use birth control? I have an implant that takes care of my cycles and fertility. It was free. I bet the same technology here would cost a fortune.

I look up at Rin and register the pain in his eyes. This is what I need to remember instead of the other bad moments that have separated us so far. Forget about the almost-drowning, the fights, and the abandonment. Remember the rescue, the kind gestures, the pain he feels baring his secrets to me.

“Let’s go. I don’t want to incur any wrath from Atsumi by being late.”