Espresso Love (A Dystopian Japan Novel) #Wattys2014

Double Entendre

"There's no time left." I hear a voice say after some time, but it wasn't my mother who spoke.

I turn around and there's no longer a Chitose Maeda. Instead, a man sits in her place. He's smiling. Tall, lanky man, grey wisps of hair like barbed wire, skin pockmarked and wrinkled, a large oversized nose. He wears thick-rimmed glasses and a messy suit. Half of his face is in shadow, as if it is eating him up from the inside.

My hand grips the survival knife in my pocket.

"Who are you and what have you done to my mother?"

"Your mother?" He pauses. "You wanted to see her?"

"She was here a moment ago."

"Was she? Where I was sitting, yes?" He looks at his fingernails. "I was under the impression you had no interest in the woman who had raised you-"

"Listen, if she meets any sort of ill fate, I will sniff you out like a hunting hound and gut you."

He smiles broader. I see his yellowed teeth spreading like a wad of bills. "Oh, Mr. Maeda, believe me, I do enjoy a good hunt every now and then. The hunter and the hunted sometimes aren't so different from one another, wouldn't you say? It's ultimately a thrill for both isn't it, Mr. Maeda? But unfortunately, there would be no need. I guarantee that no ill fate will befall her. Mrs. Maeda is merely giving you time to think as you had requested. She has probably left already." He stops and his words hang in the air with a peculiar unresolved note, like a dissonant chord on a guitar. Unfinished, unsaid. There's no indication of how she could have left. It's as if she had never been here in the first place. Coupled with the tone of his voice, it leaves an unpleasant sensation, as if I had just come across a sickeningly obscene graphic. While it carries much charisma, it feels like a dramatic reading of some irrelevant text.

It's definitely the same man I had spoken to in the metropolitan library, the man with the old newspaper. The same man who was known as Morikawa according to my classmate. The voice of the man who was on the phone Christmas Eve. Maybe the same man I had met at another time, at anothher place. He must have disguised his true voice somehow when he spoke to each time, but there is no doubt now. I had met him many times.

"What the hell do you want?"

He coughs and clears his throat. "Well as you're likely aware, we've met before but I haven't had the pleasure of introducing myself properly yet."

"I don't care for your highbrow inessential peripheral bullshit."

But he continues anyway, "my name is Morikawa. I am your consultant from the Emoto Research and Development Agency. I've taken over your case from my predecessor, who is now promoted into the upper echelons, I can safely assume. I do hope he is living well. Maybe gorging on delicacies at five star hotel restaurants. One after another the fittest rise to the top. Or so we think. But there are too many factors to determine the value of a man and where he will end up. I am sitting here talking to you because I am of this value, and you are of this value and our values happen to match." I don't follow. "Regardless - I tend to enjoy a good conversation, so pardon my idiosyncrasies - it is tremendously nice," he emphasizes nice, "to formally meet you at last, Mr. Maeda."

I ignore him. "Say what you need to say."

"The rain is coming."

I cross the room, throwing the door open. "Get out."

"That's not very polite of you. Surely, your mother taught you better."

"Get out, if you're not going to tell me what I need to know."