Shoko reached into the bag she brought with her to lessons and pulled out a small white pastry box.
“Ever seen these before?”
She opened the lid. The little box was full of bite-size squares, like teeny-tiny fancy-pants granola bars. Their sweet smell filled the compact car.
“Are they sweet?”
“They’re cookies. What do you think?”
Shindo apologized and drove the car. She wasn’t particularly fond of sweets, though it was getting close to dinner time; the aroma of roasted almonds prodded at her appetite. Taking a normal breath, no sniff, she detected other sweet scents floating underneath the smell of the French cookies. Bar soap. Shampoo. Fabric softeners. Womanly smells. Why did everything they sold to women have to smell like a dessert?
“Once I have kids, I’m going to bake all of their desserts. From scratch, obviously. Every day, I’ll put my heart and soul into a tasty treat to serve after the tasty foods I make exactly how they like them. Because that’s a mother’s job.”
Shindo turned the wheel, offering the bare minimum of a response.
“Yeah.”
“For the Peach Festival each year, Mother always made us sakuramochi. Even pinker than the cherry blossoms. Just a hint of salt to make the sweetness glow. Wagashi is much more difficult than yogashi, like these cookies. If I end up having a daughter, I want to make her sakuramochi too. But first I need to have a son. What did your mother make you? God, you’re like a bear. What does someone have to feed a kid to turn them into such a hulking brute? Did your mom make you yummy desserts too?”
“No idea. I never even saw my mother’s face.”
The car was silent. Oh, well. Shindo could care less, though she could tell that Shoko was, shall we say, not so comfortable. Must be more sensitive than she thought. So there. Shindo turned the wheel, so amused she could have whistled.
Back at the ranch, she drove them right up to the main house. Twin sconces blazed into the night, lighting an entryway more spacious than the lobby of the building Shindo lived in, or used to.
An alert pair of white shirts flanked the steps. Shindo hopped out first and went around to open the car door. Shoko got out looking sullen and handed her the pastry box.
“I don’t need these. Throw them away for me.”
Shindo took the box of cookies, warm from the oven, and watched Shoko tiptoe off into the depths of the main house.
FROM THE GARAGES, Shindo made a beeline for the annex. By showing up for meals like she belonged there, she eventually convinced the guys to save enough for her each night. The junior staff took turns doing the cooking, working in shifts that they posted on a wall like something out of elementary school.
This was her first experience with any kind of yakuza establishment. Things were much more regimented than she would ever have imagined. If you could forget for a second how these guys made their money, it was almost disappointing how professional they were—waking up early, washing their faces, putting on a crisp white shirt. Fail to clean up after themselves, and they would get a smack upside the head from their superiors. They were expected to show proper manners pouring tea and serving guests. The guys at the “top” and the regional bosses, like Genzo Naiki, seemed to do whatever pleased them, but the guys living in the annex may as well be inmates or, at their age, kids in juvie. If they could follow rules so well, stiff upper lip and all that junk, why not find decent jobs on the outside? Shindo had to wonder, although now and then an answer arrived in the form of the familiar heat, or aura, she felt radiating from them if she got too close. The heat was something that you never felt around a normal person with a normal life, an honest job. It was familiar because she had it, too, the same heat, spilling out of her. She was unsure of what to call it, but aware of what it did, or made her do. It fed on violence, chased it down.
When she showed up in the dining room that evening, the other guys were finishing their dinner. Tonight was curry rice. At this point, so long as she came in without a word, they didn’t really bother her. Granted, they stared at her, pretty much constantly, but she was technically working for Yanagi, so they couldn’t get away with giving her a hard time. Having people ranking under her or over her was not how Shindo ever hoped to live her life. But if it helped reduce her headaches in the short term, she could live with it for now.
Out in the kitchen, she dished some rice into a big bowl and flooded it with soupy curry that she topped off with two raw eggs. There was mugicha in the fridge, so she poured herself a cup. Rather than sit in the dining room with all the guys, she pulled a stool up to the countertop and started shoveling down food.
They were watching TV in the next room, talking and laughing about whatever was on. It made her feel uneasy. Spooning curry into her mouth like a curry-eating machine, she looked over the pastry box set on the counter. Was the girl pulling her leg or what? Shindo wasn’t used to cutesy little French cookies like this. The whole box, unchewed, could have fit into the roof of her mouth. At the house that she grew up in, all she ever had to snack on were the strips of kombu left in the stockpot after making dashi, or the occasional batch of dried sardines simmered to a sticky paste in mirin and shoyu. She had not so much as licked a piece of cake until she came to Tokyo. It amazed her that some kids grew up eating this stuff every day.
Speaking of.
Shoko had mentioned “Mother” in the car. The first Shindo had heard of her, much less seen. Nobody else had said a word about her either. Apparently she wasn’t living with them anymore. Could be divorced, maybe deceased.
“What’s this? Can’t be yours.”
Shindo looked up. It was Nishi. The guy who had been holding the dog leash on her first day. He flicked the pastry box with his finger.
“Miss Shoko gave them to me.”
“Liar. I bet you stole them, didn’t you?”
Nishi seemed like he’d been drinking. A little older than the other members of the staff, he had an odd face, like his eyebrows had been shaven off. Since her first day at the compound, Nishi had been giving her particularly hostile looks.
“If you wanna check, go ask her.”
“Don’t fuck with me! I’ll fucking kill you.”
Nishi smacked the box off of the counter. Cookies spilled across the floor. Hearing the commotion, white shirts rushed into the kitchen.
“Listen up, you fucking pig! I don’t like you! Hear me?”
He grabbed her cup of mugicha and dumped it in her bowl of curry, a third of which remained uneaten.
“Oomph!”
A sound like someone battling a hiccup came from Nishi’s teeth. Shindo was standing in his face with both her hands closed around his throat.
“That was perfectly good food you ruined. My food.”
Shindo could feel the bones of his Adam’s apple moving underneath her thumbs. She worked them through the sinews of his neck, driving the floating bones into his throat. A desperate squeaking sound came from his hot pink lips. Nishi was clawing at her arms, trying to break her grip. It was no use. Shindo was not letting go. In no rush, she lifted him by the jaw. Nishi’s toes danced on the kitchen floor.
“I’m not trying to pick any fights here.”
She heard the pitter-pat of something dribble, like the start of rain. Nishi was pissing himself. Feet kicking the air. A warm cloud of ammonia wafted from the tiles.
“But if you pick the fight, I’ll double down.”
