This place feels less alien already, though. I’m even finding the girls here cute, which would never have happened before.

And look, this girl walking towards me is super cute in her blue miniskirt and black knee-high socks, and as we pass, we turn our heads to smile at each other, she’s got these mad contacts that make her eyes look huge, it’s a little interaction that makes me feel pretty good, and then there’s a loud, blaring HONK in my left ear, and a car has just screeched to a stop literally fifteen centimetres away from me, the guy at the wheel bashing on the horn, honk, honk, honk, he’s screaming at me, so I step back onto the pavement as fast as I can, and off he zooms down the street in his ninja-silent Toyota Prius.

I look at the stream of people behind me, but the girl is gone.

Just across the street from the hotel, just minutes before nine.

There’s Akemi, coming out the revolving doors, putting on her jacket.

I shout out her name, but she doesn’t hear me. So I start running—

—And then the world flips upside down.

I’m in the air.

I’m tumbling over something hard.

And then I’m right-way round again, and I can feel the cold, hard ground on my cheek.

And my hand is kind of hurting, so I lift it to my eyes, and I see that there’s blood all over it.

And in front of me I see red taillights, glowing in exhaust smoke. The bottle of whisky Charles gave me, it’s smashed into little shards all over the ground.

And above the lights, a cartoon picture of a smiling cow, a tall glass of milk in its hoof.

And I hear a voice, close and then far, call out, Guo lai!

Seductive and singing and sly.

And a little giggle gurgles its way out of my mouth, before everything goes dark.

N

INETEEN

In the corner of the living room, there was a CD player.

Naaamooooo aaaaaaaamiiiiituoooofoooooooo…

Naaamooooo aaaaaaaamiiiiituoooofoooooooo…

Naaamooooo aaaaaaaamiiiiituoooofoooooooo…

The monk drone from its speakers went on and on, all day and all night.

And my dad, well he was lying on his back in the middle of the room, raised up.

And me and my mum, we’re on our knees side by side.

The sick-sweet smoke from the joss sticks swirling, snaking.

My throat is scratchy from all the chanting.

I’m a fifteen-year-old kid with no idea what I’m doing. I mean, I know what I’m doing, I just don’t know why I’m doing it in the place I sneakily play Street Fighter in the middle of the night.

My parents don’t pray, they don’t meditate. I go to a Church of England school, and this is all like some sort of mystical nightmare.

My mum, she’s crying and her chanting’s all broken and choked.

Me, I should be eyes forward, but I can’t look at my dad. I just can’t.

The closed eyes.

The tight, white skin.

The way he seems to have shrunk.

Because I feel like if I look any more my mind will actually

break.

And it’s scary, that body lying still up there.

It sure as hell isn’t my dad anymore and for true I am fucking scared.

All I can do, is chant.

Naaamooooo aaaaaaaamiiiiituoooofoooooooo…

It goes on like this for days.

T

WENTY

My dad says, Come here, son.

And I get up from the chair, walk the two steps towards his bed.

He waves me in closer, closer.

I lean down, smell the fragrance-free soap on his neck mingled with the bitter, antiseptic stench of the hospital room.

He hugs me, hugs me tight. And even though it’s the first time he’s ever really hugged me, I know it’s tighter than he ever would have hugged me back when he was healthy.

When he finally lets go, I see sadness in his eyes.

I smile at him, give his tiny arm a squeeze.