Big in Japan by Jennifer Griffith

Author:Jennifer Griffith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jolly Fish Press
Published: 2015-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

十

三

Last Man Standing

July. Tokyo and Nagoya

Bruises darkened his face. Buck cleaned the dried bits of blood the best he could, standing over the running tap water at the sink. The now-stanched blood-flow released its final drops onto the porcelain. Crushed capillaries loosed their river below the surface of his skin, the redness spreading outward.

Stay conscious, stay conscious! Steady, man, steady! His head went woozy. He had to use one arm to cradle the bowl of the sink to keep himself vertical. Clenching his eyes shut, he lifted one brave finger to the bridge of his nose and gave it a gentle nudge. Shattered. A thousand pieces. He couldn’t believe the shards of broken bone didn’t protrude through his skin.

Luckily the toilet—squatter style though it was—sat nearby, and Buck emptied the contents of his stomach—what was left of the southern barbecue—into it. What a waste of a perfectly good cow. He mourned for a split second before barfing again.

“Wah?” A head appeared in the steel mirror above his eye line. “What happened to you? Geez. I’ve never seen a pair of eyes so blacked. Except maybe mine the night I first met Miss One Thousand Autumn Leaves.” Reggie got a look in his eye Buck could discern even in the steel mirror: rage. Buck rinsed the clotty blood down the drain while Reggie shook his head.

“Got in a fight with a piece of metal,” Buck said. The bleeding was beginning to subside. “It’s a good thing you’re not Torakiba or I’d probably kill you.”

“Si. Well, you looks like Alice Cooper or Ozzy Osbourne. Not so pretty with your blue eyes that all the sumo fan girls loves so much. And, ay caramba, it stinks in here,” said Reggie.

“Thanks.” Buck wiped up the blood mess and splashed cool water on his face. “Know where a guy can get a good ice bag around here?”

“Frozen mochi. That’s what you need.” Reggie spoke wisely. Japan didn’t go in for frozen peas much—the ice bag of choice back home. Instead they had frozen rice paste candy rolled into little balls that resembled frozen peas. That’d work. “Who did this to you?”

“I don’t know. Not for certain.” But he could guess, though. And man, could he guess. He followed Reggie to the kitchen and they dug through a freezer for something to curb the swelling.

“Sobakubi let you out of your kohai slave duties today?” Buck changed the subject to calm his dizziness. He thought of Sobakubi’s round, pig eyes, ringed in pillows of fat—a good tangent. The eyeglasses Sobakubi wore when not in the dohyo barely balanced on his nose because of the fat of his eyes. Good thing the guy had so much money and a powerful father; otherwise, he would have nothing to claim—no personality, no wit, looks or charm. Just a sour emptiness. A spoiled man, like a stinky, bad potato Buck’d find under his apartment’s sink, all hollowed out and black.

“No such luck,” Reggie replied. “He sent me on an errand to get a bowl of chanko nabe from your stable’s cook.

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