Removed – Chapter 6

I spend ten hours per day in the Data & Communications building for five weeks before coming to any clear conclusions of how the clans work in Nishikyō. I’m not required to work long shifts, but Sakai has ordered me to keep telling people I work at my old job. I can’t come home early, so when I’m done at Ku 1 every day around seven, I go out to dinner and continue working. This way no one notices the difference. Aunt Kimie and Lomo tend to only eat at home so this is the best way to keep the lie going. I hate secrets and lies. I feel awful when I work straight through Aunt Lomo’s birthday in early February. I promise to make it up to her soon and write myself a reminder to ask for a day off from Sakai.

I don’t meet up with Miko or Helena, though we chat online as much as possible while I’m out working and eating every evening. Miko is dating Yoichi. Actually dating, not just having dinner and going straight to a love hotel. I have the urge to ask about Jiro, but don’t. Why bother? I don’t have time for a social life.

My routine never wavers. I join Sakai each morning at the dōjō. We eat breakfast together, and he escorts me to Ku 1. Sakai leaves me to my work and comes back at noon with food for us both, though sometimes he skips lunch for meetings.

After years of working with teams of people, I’m uneasy being alone every day. I talk to myself all the time. I miss real conversations about life or love, even sports or news. It’s exceedingly lonely.

During the first three weeks of my research time, Sakai was impenetrable and remained passive and quiet. He listened to all of my hypotheses, shot down those he deemed unworthy, and set aside the ones I had hit on correctly. Now he seems to be warming up to me and giving me his opinions instead of waiting for mine. But this whole job ordeal is truly frustrating because I have no idea what the hell I’m really doing. My research seems like such a silly waste of time. What do the inner workings of Nishikyō’s society have to do with the colonization efforts?

The one thing that shocks me the most while examining video surveillance every day is how different Ku 6 is from other wards. It’s even more Japanese than I could have imagined. Almost every sign on each building lacks the English translation. The non-Japanese races are few and far between, practically nonexistent. I’ve even seen many men carrying swords. Swords! How do they get away with that?

Yesterday, as I was leaving the theater, I pulled a hair clip out of my bag and twisted my hair up into a secured knot before slinging my bag over one shoulder.

“Sanaa?”

I wasn’t paying attention to Sakai, but when I focused on him, he was sad.

“What is it, Sakai?”

He winced as if I had struck him. “I want you to call me Mark. Sakai, Mr. Sakai, and Sakai-san are what people call me when they want something from me.”

“Okay. Whatever you want, Mark.” I smiled at him before I left, but his lips stayed in a straight line.

Today, he leans over my shoulder and examining the data I compiled on the Minamoto family. In the beginning, Sakai was good enough to point me in the direction of the clan leaders, but tracking Yoshinori Minamoto, my first subject, required time. His family is big and following him through the Nishikyō Japanese population is an enormous task.

It took five weeks to figure out what I could pull from the GDB and develop a routine, but I have a good idea of what Minamoto’s daily activities involve. I watched where he ate and tracked all the people who worked and ate there. I pursued the people he ate with and developed programs to accumulate data on those families. I followed his daily movements from home to the transitway to the restaurant he owns in Ku 7. Every night, he travels to a bar or okiya and, most times, back home afterward, if he didn’t spend the night in a love hotel or passed out in his office at the restaurant.

He is a family man: one wife, one son. He had applied for a permit for a second child ten years ago but his wife never gave birth again. His wife is never on camera with him, and I have no idea what his son looks like because they don’t spend time together. I should set up database searches for each of them but I’ll have to do it later. Minamoto is in good shape but drinks and eats too much. I can’t be sure without seeing for myself, but I’m almost positive he’s had at least three tattoos and a scar on his mid-section from a stab wound he received five years ago.

“What do you think of this man?” Sakai asks as he examines the dossier I put up on the big screen.

“I think he’s powerful. He commands a lot of respect from the people that work for him. Every one of his employees at the restaurant shows up on time and works late. He has bodyguards who tail him wherever he goes, even though Minamoto is a black belt in karate. He has a thing for this blonde woman he meets at a love hotel every week, and he’s never with his family… Hmmm, there’s a lot here.”

Sakai studies my data and nods. “Yes, but you should dig deeper into this man’s life in any way you can. You’ve done some good preliminary work here. It’s going to come as no surprise to you that all of these clan leaders are involved in criminal activities the police can’t deal with.”

“Why not?”

“Because the clans are powerful. Every time the police get close to them, something happens and the investigations go away.”

“So, people are already working on this like I am? Why don’t you let them do all this research?” I ask.

“I don’t trust them. I trust you.”

A blush creeps to my face. I have gained a measure of his respect. If he respects and trusts me now, then now is the time I can figure out more of why I’m here.

“Mark, why are there still areas of the GDB I can’t access? I’d like to analyze my family tree.”

Sakai observes my eagerness and sighs. “I’m sorry. I’m not allowed to release any data that doesn’t pertain to these clans we’re studying.” He stops when I pout in disappointment. “What do you want to know? I can tell you won’t rest until you ask me.”

“Can you tell me more about my parents? They died when I was so young, and Aunt Kimie doesn’t talk much about them anymore.” I’ve tried for years and years to break the silence in my house with no luck. I have my photos and my memories, but that’s all.

Sakai thinks for a moment. “I know your whole family. Kimie misses your mother very much. As kids, Junko and Kimie were inseparable. Junko was bright, so smart, and fun. The apple of everyone’s eye.” I swear Sakai blushes for a split-second. He must have loved her, my mother. When he told me to call him Mark and not Sakai yesterday, he was probably thinking about how much I resemble my mother. It’s not a stretch to believe this. Everyone says this about me. I’m a little heartbroken for him.

“Is this why you chose me for this job? Because you knew my parents?”

“Yes, partly. I knew your parents. I trusted them both, and you got the best of both of them. You’re also completely trustworthy on your own.”

I can accept this, I think, though I still want my old job back desperately. “What happened between my parents and my grandparents? I’ve always wondered.”

Sakai sits back and folds his arms across his chest. “Kimie never told you?”

“No. Just that she and my grandfather did not get along.”

“Well, your grandfather was shocked when your mother chose to marry a non-Japanese. He was a traditionalist…” Sakai sighs. “I’m being kind. Your mother always called him a racist, and I don’t think she was wrong. Then Kimie married Lomo, and he up and disowned them both. His rejection was hard on your parents and your aunts. They kept trying to come back to visit him, and he would always turn them away.”

My grandfather’s reaction to Aunt Kimie is shocking. It’s rare for anyone to care about men loving men or women with women anymore. People do what they want. With Nishikyō in zero population growth mode for the past one hundred years, having children is a luxury only heterosexuals can afford, though. Hospitals stopped infertility treatments over one hundred fifty years ago. This was probably the reason my grandfather disowned Aunt Kimie. She couldn’t give him more grandkids. But still…

“What a stubborn old man. What kind of arrogant bastard disowns his two daughters over something so dumb?”

Sakai laughs at me. His face is so much more likable when he’s happy. “I see both your parents gave you your fire and your wit.”

“And my temper.” I narrow my eyes at him with a smile.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He sits forward and smooths out his shirt. “I knew your father, too. We all grew up around the same ward. Max’s family was almost exclusively British, but they chose to live in Ku 6 with the rest of the hardcore Japanese because they believed in integration. Your father was bilingual, actually trilingual — he spoke German, too — to the core. I think he dreamed in Japanese. Your parents were in love from the first moment they met, no mistake about that.” Sakai, his eyes far off, is sad again before he cracks the smallest of smiles.

“Do you know what your name means?”

“It means ‘brilliance’ in Arabic. My name was chosen because it wasn’t English nor Japanese.”

“Yes. You are a multicultural mix, and your parents believed in the multiculturalism of Nishikyō, as do I. This is why understanding the inner workings of these clans is so important. They are strong and will try to rule for their own sake when we reach Yūsei. They want an exclusively Japanese nation, and we can’t afford that with the human race on the brink of extinction. We need all of this information, and you’re going to help us keep them in line.”

I pause and hold my breath for a few seconds before releasing it. I’ve been so engrossed talking about my parents that I forgot about this job of mine I’m supposed to be doing.

“Mark, if you knew my whole family, why have I never met you before now?”

“Because I’ve kept my distance since your parents died. Kimie wanted me to have nothing to do with you or her family anymore. I respected her wishes for the longest time. But now you’re an adult, and this is all information you should know. Everything you do and learn here each day will be something you should have learned growing up in Ku 6 but were never able to. It’s what your mother would have wanted. Kimie took you away from all that was meant to be a part of you. Your mother would never have done such a thing.”

I’m not sure what to make of his statement. I love Aunt Kimie and Lomo more than anything. My father’s family immediately wanted nothing to do with any of us once he was dead, and only my Aunt Sharon from my father’s side hung on in my life until a few years ago. Aunt Kimie and Lomo respected my parents’ wishes and raised me. If what Sakai is saying now is true, then Aunt Kimie went against my mother’s wishes for my upbringing. Who is telling me the truth?

“Come. It’s lunchtime, and I think you’ve made a lot of progress here.”

He stands up and straightens out his shirt. When he adjusts his collar, I get the slightest glimpse of a tattoo peeking over the edge and turn away quickly. I don’t want to embarrass Sakai when we have this understanding between us.

“You have gathered a lot of data on Minamoto, though more work needs to be done. Now we have other things to attend to.”