Excerpt
Greedy
He Is Not a MonsterT
hey will kill me soon, he thinks to himself. Another hard kick comes, a firm leather toe cracking into his rib cage. He grunts and keeps his eyes closed. The thought of dying doesn’t bother Ed as it once would have; he can’t see another way out of his current predicament. Death would only resolve the problem. An easy exit for himself, eternal rest after so many sleepless weeks. There’s a viciously sharp kick to his shoulder, and he curls tighter into himself, knees to chin. He’s toyed with the idea of joining the ghosts of the Aokigahara suicide forest, of swinging from a hooked branch out of this life and into the next, but he knows it isn’t an option. When Ikagi and his troop of Yakuza grunts are unable to collect what they are owed from his cold corpse, they’ll turn to his innocent wife and child for payment.
Sayuri. The thought makes Ed’s stomach clench with guilt-rusted fear. A glob of spit lands on his arm, hocked up by one of the gangsters booting him in the alleyway where he was jumped.
“Let this be your final reminder. Your payment is due soon. Aniki is waiting,” one of the thugs warns, referring to their boss, Isamu Ikagi. Then, he takes a tanto knife from his pocket, the curved point glinting sharply in the autumn sunlight. He wags it playfully right beside Ed’s nose, which twitches nervously. “Next time you can’t cough up anything of value, we’ll be leaving with your pinkie finger.” He grins, showcasing a silver canine.
Ed curls his hands into fists reflexively and manages to grunt an affirmation. He understands. He knows his time is running out, the interest rate escalating with every breath he takes. The second man throws one final blow to Ed’s side, and he groans, watching as they both stroll away together, leaving him shivering in the fetal position. He needs to bring in some cash, fast. Everyone knows Ikagi always collects his debts, and boy, does Ed owe some debt.
Everyone local has heard about Missing Ricky, the loudmouth American expat who got in too deep with Ikagi and hasn’t been seen since. The rumors say he’s ten feet under the Sumida River, rocks tied to his ankles. Ed laughed about it over pints, made jokes and blamed Sticky Ricky for getting into such a bad deal with such a bad group of guys. But then two short months later, he somehow found himself in the exact same position, driven by insatiable greed and an embarrassingly inaccurate ego informing him that he would be different. He wasn’t. He owes money to Isamu Ikagi, money he cannot pay off, and now he’s waiting to join the fishes with Dead Man Ricky.
After a while, Ed collects himself and slowly rises up off the ground. He winces at the pain in his side and knows that a black bruise will quickly bloom there as evidence of his alleyway dance. Another thing he will have to hide from Sayuri, his wife. He sighs and dusts himself off, picks up his empty wallet and looks down at the photograph on the ID card staring back at him. The man in the photo is young, a twenty-nine-year-old newlywed excited to be the owner of a Japanese ID card, to be pivoting from the dreary suburban UK life he was so bored of to an exciting, new, and flashy life in Tokyo. How things have changed in just eight years.
Ed pockets his wallet and straightens, forces himself to walk without a limp—practice for when he returns home. He finds he can manage it if he breathes slowly and carefully. But he is not yet home, so he allows himself to hunch over, to relish the slight relief of pain that his cragged posture brings, and waddles slowly to the subway, pausing several times and holding on to walls for support as he rests his aching body.
Once outside his front door, he steels himself, ready to perform once more. He lets himself in, removes his shoes, and is immediately met by the sight of Sayuri, who is bustling around the kitchen with Kaori perched on her hip. Ed’s toddler emits a joyful shriek at the sight of her father, and reaches out to him, her little fingers twitching.
“Any luck with the job search?” Sayuri asks as soon as he enters the kitchen. The same automatic six words of greeting that he has heard on repeat for months, her tone bland and bored, not a taste of hopefulness behind them.
He flinches, but quickly recovers. “No, but I’m going to check the papers again,” he assures her, sticking his tongue out at Kaori in exchange for a giggle.
His wife sighs, but says nothing. She doesn’t have to—the disappointment was evident the first time he came home unsuccessful, and the second and third times, too. Now he expects it, and she knows she doesn’t need to bother vocalizing her frustrations. He is letting her down as an unemployed husband enough already, and she doesn’t even know the full extent of their troubles. When they married, he was a shiny promise of security for Sayuri, who had been brought up in a poor household in the outskirts of Osaka before managing to turn her life around, work her way up in hospitality, and get a job managing a hip coffee joint in Shinjuku. Ed was handsome, tall, white, intelligent, and swept her off her feet with promises of a happy, stable life together. It was a whirlwind romance built on the foundations of lust, but quickly became something deeper as they each found hopes of a better life within each other.
Despite their worries about his ability to get a job while not being fluent in Japanese, he quickly managed to get a decent-paying sales job at an English-speaking recruitment company that placed employees in hospitality roles, and for many years they were blissfully stress-free in their easy, comfortable marriage. Now, Ed can feel that just his presence in the kitchen is irritating Sayuri, and she huffs as she places Kaori gently down on the floor to crawl around while she begins to prep dinner. A welcome-home kiss is clearly not in the cards. Not too long ago, she would have glided over to him, taken his jacket, kissed him on the cheek and told a joke, so that the first sound from his lips on arriving home was a laugh. His eyes drop to the ground in guilt. She is not the problem. It’s him, and all his secrets.
Kaori crawls over to her father, grabbing at his trouser hems with pudgy fists. He pats her on the head, and for just a moment is reminded of how he would pat his childhood dog. Embarrassed, he squats down, peers into her smiling eyes and searches inside himself for a spark of paternal instinct. Nothing. He holds his hand out to her and she grabs it. For a moment, Ed is comforted—his child is reaching out to him with trust and love. Then she spots her chicken-shaped Kokeshi doll beneath the table and any interest in Ed is dead, her little bottom wiggling furiously as she tears toward the wooden toy.
“You haven’t been down at the pachinko parlors again, have you? Or betting on those horses?” Sayuri asks, her voice deadpan.
Ed flinches. If only she knew the worst of it. “No, I’ve been looking for a job,” he replies through gritted teeth.
She doesn’t respond, and Ed slinks out of the room, reverting to his hunched posture as soon as he is out of sight, and limps over to the bathroom cabinet. There, he procures three painkillers which he swallows dry, the third tablet sticking to his gullet and causing him to gag silently. He forces it down by slurping directly from the tap, and then goes to sit down at his desk, which is tucked into one corner of the main family room. The floor surrounding him is littered with secondhand toys, and an open packet of rice crackers is lying on the table. He hopes Sayuri had time to cook lunch for herself, that she wasn’t wasting away on rice crackers while Ed sauntered around halfheartedly looking for work all day, approaching businesses with his accented Japanese while frequently checking over his shoulder for Ikagi’s henchmen.
Ed twitches at his desk, looking down at his latest bank statement. He’s run himself dry.
He wipes his brow with the back of his sleeve and thrusts the paper into the bottom drawer of his desk alongside the rest of the evidence, the envelopes piling up. God, if Sayuri were ever to find it all . . . He brings his hands up to his head and cradles himself woefully, allowing himself a rare and private moment of utter despair. She would leave him. He is surprised that she has put up with his six-month unemployment stint as it is. The first few months, she was understanding. The virus hit all industries hard, but especially hospitality. Her café closed for weeks, and she relished the time at home with Kaori. When Ed lost his job, they spent a workless month at home together enjoying their little family unit, taking trips to the park and watching their two-year-old discover the world with eager enjoyment. But after a few months—the borders still closed but the rest of Japan plowing on diligently—she pushed him to find a new job. He was the man of the household, and had to provide. And Ed was not providing. He understands her fear, listened carefully when they were first dating and she explained her childhood and upbringing, working from a young age to help keep the household afloat, picking up odd jobs whenever possible to help her parents pay the bills. She was a woman used to living on the bare minimum, to making do and rationing. She does not want to live that way again, and Ed does not want to be the cause of it.
