Espresso Love (A Dystopian Japan Novel) #Wattys2014

Things Are Changing

When I reach my stop, I don't disembark yet. I let the bus pitch to a halt. It reminds me of a raft buoyant on ocean waves, on old suspension coils, just about as treacherous as the suits around me. The bus isn't a new bus: it's in quite disarray, an old model in the fleet waiting for retirement. It smells of musty gas fumes and sweaty winter coats and cheap cologne, and gives off an impression that it might fall apart at any moment. At the front of the bus, there is a new, polished, state-of-the-art fare machine, out of place and emitting pitched cries for every card brought to it. I'm new, don't touch me, it says. It's an irreplaceable part of life, an extension of the soul, to create convenience and efficiency. Vending machines, convenient stores, train stations, coin lockers. Beverages, bad coffee, cigarettes, instant ramen, porn-to-go, panties, condoms. Whatever one needs, it's likely a smart card can take care of it. Smart cards used by not-so-smart people. I can only hope that I'm not a part of the not-so-smart, and that my watchers, these ten pairs of sunglasses, are.

The passengers get up all orchestrated and well-rehearsed, to file out of the bus in what seems like numbered order, depleting its contents - all but the woman in her Burberry coat, the mother and her child, the guitarist and ten men in suits and sunglasses. Certainly, ten identical men on a bus, wearing sunglasses and black ties must appear suspicious. The first assumption might be that the yakuza is openly taking public transportation to exhibit their team fashion. Hugo Boss? Canali? Brooks Brothers? Made to measure? But perhaps such a thought doesn't cross their minds.

I stay put and count my fingers and make sure my muscles aren't tense. As the last passenger disembarks, at the latest possible moment, I get up as if in a daze, sincerely surprised that it's my stop, and clutch my bag to myself, ducking out, but not without tripping over the guitarist's case and offering an apologetic nod. I don't look back. I manage to slip between the doors of the bus just as the new passengers waiting push their way in. They let on no emotion, but I'm sure they are squinting at me for breaking Etiquette. They may speak now in hushed, informal voices, a stifled laugh here and there, but as soon as they step aboard the bus, Etiquette will come into play and silence will descend like a thick soundproof quilt, the kind a basement musician hangs on his walls. The heights of some of the men I pass by seem to be enough to drown me intermittently, then, I'm tossed back above the troughs of female counterparts. In the blending currents of pedestrians, the only way to tell which way I'm going is by the signs overhead - blue, green, pink, yellow letters, like Andy Warhol's pop art.

All the same, I welcome the morning crowds: I am out of sight. When I turn around, I expect to see no sign of sunglasses or black ties. I suspect there are too many people to track an average citizen of average build, with average hair colour in an average parka, and moments later, I find that I'm not disappointed. I give it a good few minutes, but no suits as far as I can tell. No black sunglasses, no black ties.

It may easily have been argued as paranoia, drug-use or mental illness that I'm not aware of. But from what I recall, I had a good eight and a half hours of sleep, my pulse rate is normal, I do not feel hot or cold - though the air is cold - my breathing is not strained - though I am a little out of breath - and there are no voices in my head - except for my own. Is it possible for a healthy individual to see ten identical men in black suits, black ties and black sunglasses, like straight out of fiction, eight in the morning?

I take one last look around. No men in black.

Kinokuniya is just around the corner.

But so is Shizuka Kaneko.

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