Koushounin Vol 4: Chapter 4

Title: Koushounin series 04 | Koushounin wa Hamerareru [交渉人は嵌められる]
Chapter: 4
Page: 118 – 138
Author: Eda Yuuri [榎田 尤利]
Illustrator: Nara Chiharu [奈良 千春]
Publisher: Taiyō Tosho
Year of Release: 2010

Disclaimer:

Eda Yuuri is the original author of this work, and this is a fan translation. Feel free to re-post this elsewhere if you like but please credit this site. Some Chinese sites don’t, and just rip content from this page. It is discouraging but I can’t do anything about it (short of stopping work on this project altogether). I did buy the original copy of this book, along with the rest of the series, so it’ll be great if you can support her by buying her books.

This work contains BL, or homo-eroticism.

Note:

As I have no formal training in translation theory nor am I an expert in Japanese (nor English, for the matter), I cannot guarantee the quality of this translation work, but I promise I did my best.

I have been a big fan of the Koushounin series by Eda Yuuri ever since I got my hands on the BLCDs for the first and second instalments of the series, and have been waiting patiently for the BLCDs for the third instalment onward… to no avail. It has been 8 years since the sensei published Koushounin wa Furikaeru, and I am beginning to accept that there might be no BLCD after all.

Nevertheless, the fujoshi doesn’t give up. The following is my attempt at the English translation of the rest of the series.

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Chapter 4

It was near the end of January when Azuru Remi finally agreed to come to see me at my office. Not that I had been ignoring her up to that point; I called her to apologize the day after our skirmish outside that hotel, but all I got from her was a curt: “I don’t even want to talk to you.” Yet I persisted, and apologised repeatedly for the way things turned out, and bit by bit her frostiness began to melt.

A week later she finally told me that she would meet me once again but asked me to give her some time to set up the meeting as she was busy, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I called Shizu to tell him that though it would take a while more it seemed like there was light at the end of the tunnel, and Shizu would not stop thanking me.

It was around the end of the month that I thought of making a courtesy call to Remi that she suddenly turned up at my office. 

“Oh, please don’t mind me. I won’t be staying for long,” she said with a bow of her head to Sayuri-san, who had brought out some coffee for her. 

She seemed different from the last time I met her; while her outward appearance and her choice of expensive clothing looked the same, her sharp edges seemed softer, somehow. It looks like she won’t be calling anyone a pervert again anytime soon.

“Did something good happen recently?”

“Why?” she asked, with a smile.

“You seem… happier.”

“If that were true, then you are in luck. I feel more inclined to forgiving Kyouichi-kun now.”

“Eh?” I leaned forward.

Remi pulled out a cigarette with fingers that had rhinestone and pearl-studded nails. “Do you have an ashtray?” she asked, followed by “Oh, you’re a big one,” when Kiyo brought over an aluminium tray for her.

“That’s our part timer. So Azuru-san, regarding Shizu-san…” Without thinking I took up a lighter and lit her cigarette for her. This wouldn’t do. It must be instincts honed from my days working as a host kicking in. 

“I was thinking that it was better to just let bygones be bygones,” Remi said, in between puffs of smoke. She was calm, since she now had the upper hand.

“Shizu-san is deeply sorry for his actions as well. I’ll have him make it up to you the best he can,” I said.

“By way of monetary compensation? Oh please, no. I wouldn’t want him to think that that was what I was after all along.”

Since she already warned me against taking that move, all I could do was to put on a smile and acquiesce.

“I wouldn’t say that you have to agree in return for me not asking for compensation from Kyouichi, but I have a request to make of you, Mebuki-san.”

Oh boy, here it comes. One cannot hope to obtain an acquittal for a guilty person and expect nothing to be asked in return. The world is not that forgiving a place.

“Of me, and not Shizu-san?”

“I can’t be bothered with that third-rate swindler, really. The fact that you bed men was a far larger shock.”

“Ahaha,” I laughed weakly in return. Laughter was probably an inappropriate response here but what was I to do? If I insist that I wasn’t homosexual, she would never believe me. Yet in the first place, what am I? I don’t hate women, in fact, I still like them, yet it was true that I was having a sexual relationship with Hyoudou. Does that make me bisexual? I did think about it, but that still doesn’t sound right. It’s not like I have the capacity to like both men and women; I don’t think I would want to have anything to do with another man other than Hyoudou. Does that mean my sexual preference lies with women and alpha men? And by ‘alpha men’, men like Hyoudou?

“Mebuki-san?”

“Right, my apologies.”

I had been spacing out. Pushing such thoughts aside, I proceeded to ask Azuru what her request might entail.

“I have something that I would like to keep in your custody.”

“And what would that be?” I asked, all smiles, but dreading that she might say, illegal drugs, a gun, or possibly someone who has been dead for days.

Remi, however. undid the clasp on her handbag and pulled out something that she had casually stuffed in one of the internal pockets. “This,” she said.

“A pen?”

It was a pen in a light shade of gray with a cap, and it looked like a fountain pen.

“It looks like a pen, but it isn’t one. See?” She gave the pen a twist and where the clip was supposed to be, the opposite end of the nib, came apart to reveal a USB connector. I very nearly said, “This, again?” as I beheld the USB stick, disguised as a pen.

“I suppose it is something you use with computers,” said Remi, seemingly unconcerned. She did not seem to be familiar with the idea of a USB stick. She carried and used a mobile phone but perhaps she did not have a personal computer.

“It’s a portable drive that contains information that can be read by a computer.”

“Huh, I see.”

“Eh. Azuru-san, I would assume that it is not yours?”

“Nope,” said Remi while flicking ash off her cigarette. “Someone left it in my care, but I can’t tell you who… he said it was important, though.”

“Is it okay to leave it with me, since it was entrusted to you?”

“I actually don’t think it is okay, but I have to go to a villa.”

“Villa?”

One of her regular clients had repeatedly asked her to go on a vacation with him, and she didn’t want to turn him down this time as she was afraid it might spoil their relationship. Yet she wasn’t comfortable with bringing with her such an important item on the trip, and to leave it at home when she did not have a safety deposit box didn’t sound like a good idea, either.

“Would that be okay? Once I come back from the vacation I’ll come straight to get it back from you.”

Usually, I would hesitate to take on jobs like these; keeping custody of an item for which the owner is unknown. It’ll be hard to deal with trouble should it come with any, and in the first place, I was a negotiator, not a bank. However, I was not in a good position to decline; if I did, Remi might threaten to report Shizu to the police again.

“I understand. Please leave it with me.” I decided to lay down my resolve. “I will take on the responsibility of looking after it while you are away. If you don’t mind waiting for a while longer I will issue you a receipt for this.”

“Thank you,” she said with a nod, and I had Kiyo hurriedly do up a claims receipt for her. It felt like the Shizu situation was getting messier and messier and I made a mental note to never have anything to do with Shizu again. 

The documents were not legally binding but it was better than having no paperwork at all. Remi signed on both copies and left the office.

“You have two pens now,” Sayuri observed, as she cleared the cups of coffee. I nodded, and took the other pen out of the tea canister to look at them as they lay side-by-side on the table.

The white ballpoint pen which was sent to me by mail, and the slightly fatter pale gray pen that was placed in my care. Both can function as pens but conceal a USB stick. The fact that both of them are in my possession should have been a mere coincidence but… something feels off, somehow.

“Yeah. Where should I keep them? The safe might be a dangerous place to keep them, and if I put both of them in the tea canister I might get tea powder in them, too…”

“Chief. They say that the best hiding place for a tree is in a forest,” said Sayuri as she threw a suggestive glance at pen holder on my desk. It was an old, wooden pen holder in the shape of a totem pole that I made in an art lesson in middle school.  I don’t even remember what I was modelling it after, but even after so many years it still worked fine.

“I see. I could just simply stick them in here and no one will be wiser.” 

And so the gray pen went into the pen holder on my desk, and there it shall stay for two weeks. The white pen went into my chest pocket as I stood up.

“Alright, I have to go out now.”

On the whiteboard next to my name I wrote: Out of office. Will return at an unspecified time.

“I think I might be back rather late, so could I leave the locking up to you, please?”

“Sure. It’s cold outside, so stay warm.”

I grunted good naturedly by way of answer, waved at Kiyo and left the office. The cold wind tousled my hair as I stepped out onto the streets, and I briefly wished that spring would come soon. I felt for the ballpoint pen in my pocket, just to assure myself it was still there—because I was going to meet its owner.

The train on the JR line brought me to Gotanda station where I rode on the privately owned subway lines to the station I wanted to alight at. A ten minute walk later and I was standing in front of Ebara Police Station, where he was employed, four years ago.

“Could I speak to Hashimoto-san from the Criminal Investigation Division, please?”

The lady at the reception said: “We don’t have anyone in that department with that name.”

I wasn’t surprised, as policemen get transferred all the time. I proceeded to turn the full wattage of my smile on the young policewoman in front of me. 

“I see. I am a lawyer and my name is Mebuki, and I worked with him on a case about four years ago. Would you be so kind as to check for me which station he has been posted to?”

Strictly speaking, I was no longer a lawyer, but at the moment it was more convenient that I was one. While the policewoman was on the phone asking his whereabouts, someone familiar walked by.

“Mebuki-san. It has been so long since I last saw you.”

“Eh? Hirayama-san? Whoa. You look more… more regal, now.”

“You mean, I have put on weight,” he said, with a laugh. Hirayama at present was short in stature, had a decidedly stout figure, and also sported a goatee. Back then when he was working under Hashimoto he used to be a skinny, undependable novice detective still trying to figure out how to do his job.

“I’m glad to see you are doing well. Has Hashimoto-san been transferred?”

“Well, about that…”

Hirayama’s face fell, and I could tell that what will follow will not be good news. 

Hashimoto was not transferred; he had resigned due to ill health, he said. 

“About a year and a half ago, I think… he discovered he had cancer. Back then it was still in its early stages and he told me that surgery would fix it, but after that the cancer metabolized faster than they expected. I heard that he took a break from work in order to focus on treatment.”

“Is he recuperating at home?”

“He called me about ten days ago to tell me that he was going to the hospital. I haven’t spoken to him in almost a year prior to that call, so I told him I will visit him but he only laughed and said, ‘I look terrible right now so please don’t come see me. But in exchange⁠—”

⁠—If Mebuki-san… Yeah, that lawyer from before. If he were to come by looking for me, Please tell him which hospital I am at. Don’t tell anyone else where I am. Promise me.

Ten days ago… would mean that he was hospitalized almost immediately after he sent the USB drive to me. My skin crawled with foreboding at that thought.

He then told me the name of the hospital and I rushed out of the station right after thanking him. I then flagged a cab and told the driver to please hurry to the hospital.

Hashimoto-san had retired from the force but I suspected that he had continued his investigation in that case all by himself, at the same time fighting his illness… I was sure he would not have given up.

I could still remember how he looked, idly picking at his eyebrows as he said, I have a weird feeling about this. I don’t have any evidence of wrongdoing. Everything is in perfect order, like it had all been arranged for.

He had a habit of picking at eyebrows whenever he was deep in thought, thus he never really did have much hair left on his brows. He was forty years of age at that time, and while he was blessed with height he was also a bit of a hunchback. He was a detective with remarkable insight, but unfortunately he looked like a villain straight out of a movie, with hard and unyielding features. He was wary of me when he first met me, but as time passed I began to see a kinder side to him.

⁠—So his name was Wakabayashi, you said? He’s young but he was saying that he liked the Tora-san series, yeah? I loved those movies too. But even people my age don’t watch them anymore. Have you watched them, sensei?

I watched every single movie in the series because Wakabayashi made me, I told him, and Hashimoto burst into a guffaw. He still looked like a villain, even when he laughed. For the most part, policemen and lawyers did not interact much at work, and furthermore, I was not fond of the police as an organization. However, Hashimoto was special. Or should I say, he was very significant indeed.

The cab I was in reached the hospital in around forty minutes, and at the reception I asked for Hashimoto Shuuji to find out which floor he was on. Once on the correct floor, I asked for his ward at the nurse’s station.

“Are you a relative of his?” asked the nurse. She was tiny in size but looked like she had years of experience under her belt.

“No. I’m not related to him. Is he in a serious condition now?” If he was in intensive care then only relatives may visit him.

The nurse stood looking up at me, and suddenly all trace of human emotion vanished from her face. In a calm voice that professionals use when relaying bad news, she said: “I regret to inform you that he has passed this morning.”

“This morning…?”

I was prepared for the worst when I heard that he had cancer. I was determined not to not look rattled no matter how thin or pale Hashimoto looked. However, I didn’t expect him to have already left us… and just this morning, too. I was just one step too late.

“When he took a turn for the worst, I tried to contact his family members, but everyone was too far away to make it in time to see him before he passed. They should be on their way here now. But his younger brother is here… That’s him, over there.”

In the corner of the waiting room sat a young man. He was looking dazedly at something in hands. I thanked the nurse and approached him.

“Please excuse me. Are you Hashimoto Shuuji’s younger brother?”

The man slowly looked up. He had on a pair of black rimmed glasses, and was clad in a black sweater and jeans. He looked nothing like Hashimoto; while his dressing was plain he had comely features behind those glasses. His eyes, swollen from crying, grew a tiny bit rounder. “I am,” he said hoarsely.

I handed him my business card, and explained to him that I was a lawyer who once worked with Hashimoto on a case.

“Mebuki-san… Are you the lawyer who fought the Musashi-Koyama case?”

“Yes. I was defending the accused, Wakabayashi.”

I was surprised that his younger brother knew who I was. 

The man stood and bowed. “My name is Seiji. I heard about you from my brother. He said you were a strange one for a lawyer… Oh, but you are no longer one. You are a negotiator now, you say…>

“Your brother told you about me?”

He nodded. “We weren’t very close before, but after he fell ill we spoke about many things. I was overseas most of the time, so I was the last to know about his illness. We didn’t get to spend a lot of time in each other’s company, though.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“My brother was, well… You know him.” With a wry smile, he continued: “He didn’t even tell my parents that he was sick. He only said that his liver was bad, or some rubbish like that. Only I knew that his cancer was progressive. Maybe that was why he told me… that even after so many years on the force there was one case that concluded in a way that didn’t sit very well with him.

He means, the Musashi-Koyama murder.

Seiji looked at his watch. “My parents should be here soon,” he said. “We probably shouldn’t be talking about that here… Say, may I see you at your office tomorrow, Mebuki-san?”

“Of course you can. Please come.”

I, too, wanted to ask Seiji how much he knew about the case, and if he knew anything about the USB drives. Hashimoto did in fact once told me that he had a brother that was much younger than his thirty odd years. He also said that they don’t get along very well. He doesn’t watch Tora-san, too, he had grumbled good naturedly.

“There is information that my brother would definitely have wanted me to pass on to you,” said Seiji. He was calm, but I could sense that something was up. I nodded. There were so many things I wanted to ask him now but this wasn’t a good time. I have to let him and his family say their goodbyes.

I wondered if he had been thinking about that case—and carried his regrets to his grave.

A memory of Hashimoto’s familiar hoarse voice hit me then, and my eyes stung with tears. I looked down and quickly blinked them away.

“I owe you brother a great debt,” I told Seiji.

Seiji looked slightly taken aback to hear the tearfulness in my voice. But he straightened himself and bowed to me, his hand covering his mouth as he thanked me. His voice quavered. I asked for his contact details before leaving the hospital, just in case.

The sky was overcast, and powder snow was falling from the sky, melting as soon as it touched the ground. There was a certain loneliness in the way the specks of ice flitted down from the sky. As I watched them dance through the air and disappear into the ground, I thought of Hashimoto’s weary smile.

–

—Boy. It couldn’t be helped that you aren’t very bright. This isn’t your fault.

This was something Grandpa used to say as he smoked one of his unfiltered roll-ups.

It’s in the genes, you know, the genes. Do you know what genetics are? It means that the offspring of a toad will always be a toad. And a kite will never breed a hawk. I was never very academically inclined. Your father wasn’t very well put together as well. That is why it isn’t at all strange that you don’t know what is nine multiplied by nine. Our blood runs in your veins.

They taught the multiplication tables for nine in elementary two, but even at the end of the third year Shizu couldn’t remember them. He could barely remember his tables up to five, anything above six would draw a blank.

His ineptitude was not limited to mathematics, unfortunately. He could not write his kanji well, and his reading was also subpar. To ten year old Shizu, kanji characters were like mysterious hieroglyphs from outer space. No matter how many times he practised writing them in his exercise books the radical and the body of the character would break up and run into each other and after a while he would have no idea what he was scratching into the pages. Even after he became an adult reading complicated kanji was still difficult for him, and he might occasionally misread even the simplest of characters.

They say that the only cure for a fool is death, but Shizu thought that even death wouldn’t cure stupidity,

He didn’t know if he was right about that, however it was clear that Shizu was a bit of a dullard. The fact that he chose to be a swindler despite his lack of mental acuity demonstrated it perfectly. This shows that fools would sometimes forget they were fools.

Someone who was once Shizu’s housemate once told him:

—Kyou, you can’t become a swindler. Don’t you have other talents you could use?

His name was Kan, and he was seven years older than Shizu. He had a gift for deceiving people; he could lie as naturally as he breathed, and he could make up stories that were more intricate than a novelist could tell. He was also well-versed in the art of disguise; he was an attractive man that could effortlessly turn himself into a dirty vagrant, if he so wished.

Shizu once spent a period of time in the employment of an underling of an underling yakuza, and that was where he became acquainted with Kan. Shizu admired Kan a great deal, and pestered him to make him his disciple, but he was mostly ignored until Kan discovered that Shizu had a hidden talent. Shizu’s grandfather was an expert pickpocket, and Shizu’s pickpocketing abilities were also first-rate. Though Shizu never received any instruction from his grandfather, he learnt the techniques by watching him from up close. The first time he managed to pilfer a wallet from an office worker on the train, Shizu was five. His grandfather had berated him for it, with a sad expression on his face. After the thorough telling to, however, his grandfather had sighed, “I guess it couldn’t be helped.” He was his grandson, and it was his fault. If stupidity ran in their genes then he must have passed on his nimble fingers, too.

He was never caught by the police for pickpocketing. Only once did the person he was stealing from noticed him, and it was when he was twelve. He had thrown the wallet aside and bolted from the scene like a rabbit.

Never get too greedy, his grandfather repeatedly told him.

—Take just a little from many people who have plenty, and take just enough to get by. Do not think of living a life of luxury with the money you steal. We are already leading shameful lives, earning money for the unscrupulous, and we cannot afford to be greedy ourselves.

Shizu did not forget his grandfather’s warning, but his earnings were growing day by day. No longer did he pick pockets for wallets, but pocketbooks and mobile phones, under Kan’s guidance. From the stolen goods he extracted personal information to assist with Kan’s work as a swindler.

—Kyou, I really must thank your grandfather. He raised such a remarkable grandson, Kan had said, with a laugh. There was venom in his smile, but Shizu could not take his eyes off him. Kan had a strange charisma that drew people to him. Yet Shizu knew he wasn’t a good person. Kan never felt guilty deceiving someone else, nor did he hesitate to tell any kind of lie. Perhaps Kan never thought that the untruths he told were ‘lies’. Perhaps all first-rate swindlers were like him.

Shizu spent a year unde Kan’s tutelage, but something happened that made him swear never to have anything to do with Kan again, and to strike it out on his own.

Kan probably had wished to use him for a while longer, and he remembered the sour expression on his face when he told him he wished to leave. While Kan did not attempt to try to stop him, he didn’t hold back the verbal abuse that followed.

—You’re just a miserly thief. What are you trying to prove? If you had stayed with me you’d earn so much more than what you are doing now… What do you hope to achieve, by yourself?

With a chilly smile Kan had said, if you’re going to leave then get out now, as he threw Shizu out without giving him so much as time to pack his belongings. It was startling to see how little he cared for Shizu once Kan had determined that he could not use him anymore.

After that Shizu did one part-time job after another but could not keep any job for long once it was clear that he could not even write his letters well. It was during this time he received news that his grandfather, who was then institutionalised, was in critical condition.

Please, just for my sake, do not take up the same trade as I did. Stop being a pickpocket. These were the last words his grandfather said to him in parting, before succumbing to old age. Thus Shizu, who loved his grandfather, resolved to never pick pockets again, and instead decided to become a swindler. He thought he had learnt the basics of deception from Kan, and since he was once an aide of such a brilliant swindler, being a marriage swindler should be easy. He was, of course, gravely mistaken. Simpletons will never make good swindlers.

“… Then, what can I do?” Shizu muttered wearily to himself, dragging his feet as he walked.

He had just gotten himself fired from his job at a convenience store. The job was simple; all you needed to do was to use the same set phrases when interacting with customers, and scan all barcodes when you check out their items. Yet sometimes he would make mistakes when doing sums in his head, or would not be able to provide the customer with a receipt because he could not write, and it wasn’t long before complaints about him were made to the administration. The kindly manager had told him he was sorry to let him go, but the younger part-timers laughed behind his back, saying that they expected him to be fired a long time ago. He can’t even count. We might as well hire a college student, they sniggered.

—It sounds weird coming from me, but you do have a strange charm to you. I think you can find a job that will suit you better than cheating people, perhaps in the service industry, or in sales…

That was what Mebuki-san had told him, but perhaps this was the end of the road for him. He knew he wasn’t very clever, but it still hurts when people laugh at him for being an idiot. It hurts to think that no one would care if he were to disappear from the face of this earth. He cursed silently to himself as he hunched his shoulders against the cold as he walked. The balance in his account was a grand total of 741 yen after he withdrew money for rent at an ATM just now, and his pay for the month will only come in a couple of days later. His stomach was empty, and he wasn’t sure his wallet would be any fuller. He briefly thought about the bowl of rice cake soup he had in Mebuki’s office, about how warm and tasty it was.

As grateful as he was to them, and no matter how hard he tried to live respectably, it wasn’t going to work out. Rent had to be paid again at the end of the following month, and if he could not find the money they were going to evict him from the apartment. Where was he going to go? He didn’t have any family left. Since he had been doing work that he couldn’t tell anyone about up to now, he didn’t have any friends he could turn to, too. If he were to ask for help from the kind of people he knew, who knows what they’ll demand in return?

He stopped at the front of a train station. It was a terminal station that was usually bustling with people, and the evening rush hour had begun. The area in front of the ticketing gates was a chaotic mess of moving bodies bundled in thick coats, going about their business.

Shizu glanced down at his right palm. It was numb with cold, so he rubbed his palms together vigorously for heat and flexed his fingers. It was a long time since he had done this, and was feeling a tiny bit nervous. Guilt  and uneasiness washed over him when he thought about how not long ago he made a promise to someone to set himself straight. Rice cake soup once again crossed his mind, and then his grandfather’s dying wish. It can’t be helped, he decided. This was his reality, and in his reality he had no choice but to turn to picking pockets again in order to have money to buy food. He had a PASMO train card, but he won’t be using it, as he did not intend to get on a train. He was just going to walk through the station, entering from the South exit and exiting from the North. There would be any number of sitting ducks amongst the crowd of people on the station concourse. Perhaps one of them was that man over there with a bulge in the back pocket of his trousers, or that lady carrying a bag she had left open and unzipped, or perhaps that salaryman who might think that nothing can be stolen from an inner pocket in his jacket…

Shizu sucked in a deep breath.

He weaved his way into the crowd and looked carefully around him without moving a muscle on his face. His 20/20 vision allowed him to spot the long wallet sticking out of the breast pocket of a man walking towards him from quite a distance away. He was also engrossed in conversation with someone on his phone—how careless.

Shizu took out his own phone and pretended to engage in lively conversation as well, while determining, at a glance, the exact route he had to take to pass by his victim. In the art of pickpocketing, breath control was key. One had to rely on an instinct that was almost animal, in order to synchronise your breathing with the victim’s. There was no time to plan exactly what he had to do in his head. The moment he lines up shoulder to shoulder with that man, his body will act.

The only thing that actually does move would be his arm, from elbow down. Without the slightest movement from his neck, and while looking straight ahead, he would slip that wallet into his own pocket, like it was his own. His victim will be none the wiser. Shizu’s fingers were just as nimble as ever. All he needed to do now was to go to the nearest toilet and remove all the cash in it before discarding the wallet, leaving all cards still in it. This was easy. This was how it should be. He found the sign that pointed the way to the public toilet, and a tiny smile formed on his lips. He sensed some kind of movement behind him, but resisted the urge to turn to look. The crowd was still carrying him along as if nothing happened, and his victim must be far behind him by now. Just a few more steps away from that toilet. He’ll be fine. His pace quickened. 

Then someone grabbed him by his arm, and he froze. He then spun around.

An old lady, tiny in stature, was glaring at him. In a pained voice she said, “What am I going to do with you?” 

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