I packed a ball of toilet paper into the hole my teeth had ripped out on the inside of my cheek. I spat often, adding to the red puddle at my feet. I squatted in the corner of the strange room and watched the door, waiting for it to open, listening for the sounds of footsteps or voices. My left hand throbbed and hummed with pain, swelling visibly as the blood collected around my broken middle knuckle. The ice had melted and become a bag of tepid water that I held against my finger, not bothering to seek out more ice. I simply sat there, waiting for them to come for me. At that moment, my finger, my mouth, and everything else seemed a million miles away and unimportant. I knew, that when the door opened, that I would be killed. After all I had done, after leaving behind the fame and admiration of my home town, I would die nameless, irrelevant, and forgotten in a dirty basement in some Tokyo high-rise.

Thinking back on it, I knew that my first mistake was letting them know my name.

[Part 1]
1999

The office building looked like any other from the outside. And if the corruption went as deeply in that country as it was suggested, it was like any other. It crawled with silent men in business suits who hovered around with slight bulges in the small of their backs, under their arms, or just behind the breasts of their jackets. I realized what I was walking into, and did everything in my power to remain indifferent. So long as I did as I was told, those bulges would not be my concern. It wasn’t the first time I would become the tool of very dangerous men, and I doubted it would be the last.

“Before we go in to meet the man we come to meet, I want to remind you that you are a guest here. You are not here to ask anything of us, nor expect from us any favors. You will do what we instruct you to, you will accept your task, and you will leave. Anything else will be an offense. Understand?”

Sorimatsu spoke without looking at me as we rode in the elevator, and I listened. In a strange way, he was my only ally. Far from friends but closer to it than anyone else, both of our asses being on the line made us dependant on the other.

The large room that I was led into bustled with waiters carrying mountainous portions of food from the kitchen to the long tables full of patrons. Women flittered from one lap to the next, flirting and giggling each time they landed. There were television screens on each wall, broadcasting a strange montage of music videos, pornography, and ultra-violent movie scenes. Yet the men in that room seemed uninterested in the screens, more focused on the conversations, food, and women that were keeping them preoccupied.

A woman in a slightly-off version of a cheerleader’s outfit snaked her hands around my waist, and blew kisses at me before Sorimatsu pushed her away, sending her to pout and find another customer. He then ushered me to the head of the table, where an older man greeted him with an annoyed grunt.

The older man carefully placed a mouthful of eel into his mouth before facing Sorimatsu. Sorimatsu bowed deeply, and the man allowed him a few moments to earn his attention before he would turn back to his meal, dismissing him. The small man spoke quickly, and the old man listened. Then, after hearing what he had to say, he turned his eyes to e, and asked me a question I did not understand. Sorimatsu quickly interjected an answer, but the old man waved his answer away and asked me again. This time, I did my best to decipher his question, but could not. My Japanese was limited, and even so, he spoke with a mouth full of eel chunks and sake-slurs. This time, Sorimatsu responded again, and the old man nodded his approval. Sorimatsu bowed again, and dragged me to a table nearby.

“Mr. Shibukawa is giving me the chance to put you in his next fight. Stay here while I work out the details. Don’t move, and don’t talk to anyone. Just keep your mouth shut, your hands to yourself, and stay out of my way. If you offend him, even if you don’t know how you did, you’ll blow this. Stay here.”

So I did. I sat at the table Sorimatsu told me to, and did as I was told. The music was too loud, the women too aggressive, the food odorous and overwhelming, but I sat there with my eyes closed, wanting very much to get this over with and to go home. And then everything went silent.

The doors to the dining room were thrown open, and before anyone could react, a rain of bullets swarmed the room. Bodies scattered and fell, tables were overturned and turned into useless shields. Those who were able to scramble past the men were shot by other men in the hallways. A man ran right into me, and his face contorted as the gunfire killed him as he stared at me. He fell on top of me, and I fell with him. I saw the life drain from his eyes, and held my breath and stayed as still as I could.

I listened for the gunfire to stop, but it never did. Well-planned and practiced, as one set of men changed their clips, the other set kept firing, and vice-versa. The men walked in a single phalanx, kicking over tables, rolling over bodies, and executing anyone who dared move or fight back. I lost track of time as these men systemically cleared the room of all life. For all I could tell, it was an eternity.

[Part 2]

I remember the smell of the man’s cologne. It smelled of oranges, honey, and cinnamon. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell by itself, but the burning hair and gunpowder that was rising from the hole in the back of his head was a bad combination. I closed my eyes and let his dead weight hold me down as the men scanned the room, looking for survivors. Every minute or so, I could hear a rush of movement, a shouted Japanese curse or a plea for mercy, then the THWIP-THWIP sound of their pleas being ignored.

Then there was silence save for the television screens that still played obliviously to the carnage they lay in the room, and I would question if I should attempt to move. Each time, right before I placed my hands on the dead man’s chest to push him off, I would hear a footstep, or a far-off instruction on one of the men’s walkie-talkies, or the sound of another person in the room calling for help only to be executed. So I lay there, holding my breath and enduring the torturous itch as my new companion’s brains dripped onto my face.

But it as a waste of time, I was discovered. By some chance event, one of the men positioned in the room was searching for a lighter, and the dead body near me had died with a cigarette in his mouth. Assuming that a smoker would have a light, the killer squatted next to me, and began to pat the man down. As he did so, his MP5K strap slid from his shoulder, and the gun clattered next to my head. The image of the firing mechanism being tripped made me forget to play dead, and I pulled my hands up to shield myself from the gun emptying its magazine into my face.

I was yanked to my feet, and the man who the others had called Koji pushed me up against the wall, driving the muzzle of the gun under my chin. I was obviously different from other men that had been exterminated in that large dining room, and that bought me some time. Speaking Japanese too fast for me to understand, I repeated that I didn’t understand, I didn’t know what he wanted, and I just wanted to be let go. Before I could get another quivering word out, he dragged me to the floor, stepped down between my shoulders, and pressed the gun against the back of my head. I tried to move, to roll away, to fight back and not die like the others had, but was stilled by fear and his body weight.

Then Koji was called back by the voice that had been directing the entire ordeal. He pulled me to my feet, and shoved me to walk ahead of him, toward a very tall man who was smiling widely. The man gestured instructions to Koji, and I was lead into another room, where three other men had been placed in chairs. All three men slumped where they sat, blue-gray smoke escaping the holes in their foreheads, and singed wads of blood and gray matter running down their stoic dead faces. One of the men was Sorimatsu.

I was shoved into an empty chair, and the door was closed behind me. Two other men, who I gathered were Toru and Satoshi flanked the door and stared at me. The tall man placed his handgun on the table, and smiled at me. His smile was like a razor wound, and as he casually wiped the blood from his hands, I felt very afraid. He was a killer; I was just an idiot wrestler from Mexico.

Somehow, I found the ability to speak. “Whatever it is that are looking for…I don’t know anything.”
A row of knuckles slammed into the side of my face from behind me, and I could feel a gush of blood flood my mouth from where my teeth had involuntarily clamped down on the inside of my mouth.

The man who had struck me barked something to me in Japanese. I then heard the flick of a lighter, and knew who it was. If this was a movie, I’d remember Koji, and say something witty and lingering before enacting my revenge on him. But this was not that type of story. I was no John McLean, and this was not Nakatomi Plaza. I was just some low-life hustler’s sure bet and now I was useless to anyone, including myself.

The tall man looked at me for a long time, then made a remark to the others, of what he said, I was able to pick out the word for ‘fighter’, and realized that maybe he knew who I was. But when the one called Toru responded, he shook his head and waved off the suggestion. The man then asked me, speaking slowly, if I spoke Japanese. I shook my head, and he chuckled.

“So you’re not one of the bodyguards, I don’t think. There is no way any one of these men would trust a foreigner with their lives. So who are you?”

“I’m no one.”

The tall man’s smile faded, but returned quickly, “Okay, Mr. No-One, my name is Kenji Haimoto, and I need your help. Will you help me, Mr. No-one?”

“I don’t think I can help you. I am new to your country; I don’t know anyone, or anything.”

Kenji Haimoto rose to his feet and kicked me hard in the chest, sending me rolling backwards over the chair. He then kneeled next to me, jamming the muzzle of his gun against my lips, and smiling wider than before. He took the lit cigarette from Koji, and took a long drag before blowing the smoke in my face with his next words.

“So you are useless to me alive or dead. Why shouldn’t I kill you?”

I was fucked and he saw it in my face. I suppose that was why he was smiling. He was getting a kick of it all.
“Now unless you can tell me which one of those dead men in there are Mr. Shibukawa, I will have no reason to spare your life.”

My mind raced through the room, scanning the faces that I remembered, placing the strange features to those who I remember scrambling around. The cheerleader made it as far as the door before one of the men kicked her in the stomach and then shot her. I remember the skinny man with the dyed blonde hair pulling another skinny man with thick glasses in front of him as a shield before the machine gun fire split both men in half. There was the man with the very expensive watch who tried to charge the gunmen with a knife before his hand, and the watch, was separated from the rest of him in meaty ribbons. And there were countless other deaths that I saw in that instant of violence, but I did not remember seeing the very fat man with eel and sake on his breath being shot. And even as I was being lead from the room, and I was trying to ignore the stringy puddles that we were walking through, I did not remember seeing Mr. Shibukawa. But if it kept me alive, I’d be willing to look.

“Okay, I met the man once, so maybe I can find him.”

Kenji raised an eyebrow. “These other men felt that protecting his identity was worth dying for…why should I believe you?”

“I have no reason to protect anyone but myself.”
My desperate honesty made him laugh, and he flicked his cigarette away before pulling me to my feet.

[Part 3]

I was lead into the room for the second time that day. The television screens still played their visual and audio cacophony, but this time the room was silent. Bodies littered the floor in various stages of completeness, and the stink of food, cologne, and cigarette smoke now mixed with the stench of gunpowder and burned meat.

I have often witnessed bodily damage, but this was well beyond the damage a steel chair inflicted. Perhaps it was the food, or the stink of the dead man’s cologne in my nostrils, but I struggled to keep from vomiting as I walked through the room, searching for the body of Mr. Shibukawa. When my foot slid into the gaping hole that used to be one of the patron’s chests, I lost my constitution, and threw up everything not nailed down.

The men took a step back, cursed at me, and handed me a hand towel to clean up before we continued our search.
My eyes fell upon a familiar image. It was the golden tail of an eagle on a wrist that jutted out from under a pile of tattered wood and table cloth linen. It was the tattooed wrist of Mr. Shibukawa, and I told the tall man that I was positive.

He then kicked the table over, and looked into the swollen face of the man he had come to assassinate, then at mine.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded, “That was the man I was introduced to.

Apparently, he was having a fight that my friend was interested in betting on. That’s all I know”

The tall man smiled, and narrowed his eyes, “And of what interest is that fight to you?”

I said too much.

“I just came to accompany my friend to talk to him. That was it.”

At that moment, the men that had been sweeping the building came to the door of the dining room. About twenty men, each carrying guns, each awaiting instructions watched Kenji’s face. But he acknowledged none of them. His focus was on me, and I had let him smell blood in the water.

“So your ‘friend’ brought you to a private party full of very criminals and told you nothing? And even more interestingly, you were given an audience with Shibukawa, and you know nothing of the even he was planning?”
I did not answer.

Without saying a word, he charged me, and grabbed me by the throat, pinning me against one of the tables. I fought back, wrapping my hands around his to escape the choke but he casually pried my finger away, and tugged it, breaking it. Agony filled my vision, but I continued to fight back, knowing that as soon as one of his men had a clear shot, they would take it. Kenji gripped my wrist, and twisted it, spinning me around and pressing my face against the blood-soaked carpet. He then shouted something in Japanese, and I could hear the guns in the room lowered. He then pressed the muzzle of his gun against the base of my skull, and pulled back the hammer.

“We did what we came to do. You were free to go. But you were stupid, Mr. No-One. You proved yourself to be as dispensable as the others. But I will say that you are brave. Cowards die a thousand deaths but brave men just one. So take honor in that.”

I then heard Toru say something, and Kenji paused, responding with a question.

Toru must have finally placed my face, and I heard him say ‘fighter’. Kenji turned me around and looked at me.

“It seems that you are a wrestler. Toru says that he has seen you fight before. What’s your name?”

I answered.

“Interesting. This is a very interesting turn of events.”
I was allowed to stand up, and Kenji instructed two of his men to take me someplace while he reported to whoever had sent him of the new development.

As I was escorted away, I heard him call to me, “Do not think your life spared, Mr. No-One. No, your life now belongs to me to do with what I choose. Give me some time to decide what that will be.”

I turned to get a final look at him, and he playfully shot me with his fingers.

[Part 4]

I was dumped into the back of a van, and surrounded by six of the men that had massacred a gangland orgy less than an hour before. They spoke to me and about me in Japanese, and I remained quiet, defiantly not understanding their language until they grew bored of toying with me.

When the van came to a stop, I was dragged out into the parking garage, and lead away.

I was brought to the basement, and tossed into a room. He grunted, and slammed the door. A few minutes later, he returned with a bag of ice, and slid it into the room. I held it against my broken finger and waited, knowing that the next words spoken to me would most likely be the last. I had seen what these men were capable of, and I realized that I was of no significance to them. Keeping me alive was an act of over-precaution. Kenji had been sloppy once, and he wanted to be sure before doing anything else.

When I heard the door open again, I snapped out of a sleep
I didn’t realize had come to me. Kenji walked into the room, and he was followed by two men I had recognized from the van. He was holding a folder, and a gym bag.

“Mr. No-One, I have decided that you will once again help me with something. It’s a favor that I will appreciate greatly.”

He opened the folder and drew a photograph of a man.

“His name is Han Ryoshi, and he is scheduled to fight in a match in a week. If he wins that fight, he will cost a lot of important people a lot of money. So, we need to be sure that he does not fight. One way to do that is to stop him from making it to next week.”

Kenji then dropped the gym bag at my feet.

“Because he is so important, his supporters have done a great deal to keep him safe. So our usual methods will not work. However, this is where you can be of assistance. He fights a few warm ups in the gambling circles to stay warm, and he will be fighting tonight at the Golden Rose Tavern. He won’t fight anyone new, but from what we have learned about you, you have quite a name for yourself, so he will probably let you fight him.”

I didn’t look up at him, knowing what he was going to say next.

“You will injure him, Mr. No-One. You will break an arm, break a knee, or paralyze him. You will do whatever it takes to make sure that he does not get out of that ring on his own power. Do you understand?”

He took a hard pull of his cigarette, then flicked the butt at me.

“This will not save your life, but it will keep you a live long enough to repay your debt to me for lying to me.”

He then stepped out of the room, and left me to change. I didn’t, but that didn’t matter. A man came in shortly afterwards and taped my hands tight. He held the shorts up to me, and commanded that I change into them. When I refused, he cut away the sleeves of my shirt, and pushed me into the arms of the two men waiting to bring me to the van.

As we drove, Kenji sat up front, telling jokes and playing the music very loudly, to the annoyance of the two men that rode with us. Kenji, from what I could gather, did not know these men, but was eager to get them to lighten up. He felt untouchable at that moment. Even though the van was speeding down the streets, the policemen who saw it looked the other way. That is when I realized that even if I ran, I wouldn’t get far.

The van pulled into the parking garage of the Golden Rose Tavern, and I was given a final warning to do as I was instructed. Any deviation from the plan would be met with a very harsh punishment.

As we entered the small tavern, a team of bodyguards patted down everyone who entered, and took away any weapons they found. Even Kenji was forced to hand in his gun, which he did with a smirk.

I was brought to the table of Han Ryoshi and he nodded, agreeing to the fight, and then demanding of Kenji to pay the bet upfront. With the terms decided on, I was brought to the small room where I would await word of our match. Before then, there would be smaller, less important matches to get the crowd gambling.

I sat in that small room, again at the mercy of a strange man in a strange country not knowing anything of what I was going to do next. I was the property of a madman, and each time I escaped death, I was drawn deeper into his insane game.

[Part 5]

The announcement of our match was made, and we stood in the makeshift ring that was created in the center of the bar. It was basically stacked plywood with a layer of canvas and cotton stuffed beneath it. More stage than ring, it was roped off by hemp ropes and wooden posts. Even as we stood at opposite corners, we were less than ten feet apart. So we circled, and the match began.

The man moved like a bull. Easily tipped off-balance, and his blows easily avoid, I was able to glance shots at will until he grew tired. Except for a few times in which he tangled me up and brought me to the mat with a hard clothesline or a kick to the midsection, I kept him on the defensive, and waited for my chance.

I could see Kenji in the corner of my eye, and I waited for him to signal the moment. I wanted to perhaps break a wrist, or hyperextend a joint; nothing career-ending, but enough to do my job and be done with it. A few weeks of recovery for him, and I’d deal with whatever came next.

When Kenji gave me the signal, I gripped Han into a side headlock that I shifted into an arm bar. Then, sliding my forarm across his elbow, I yanked his wrist upwards, separating the head of the radius from his the humerus, and quickly releasing it.

The man screamed, and I rolled away quickly. A man charged into the ring, and stopped the fight, and I could already feel arms reaching into the ring to get at me. In the corner of my eye, I saw Kenji slip away, leaving me to the rage-filled mob.

A hundred fists landed on me as I was pulled from the ring. Feet, hands, and spit showered me as they growled curses. By some miracle, I was able to fight my way through the crowd, and make it to the outside. I pushed a large garbage bin in front of the door to by myself time.

The snow had begun to fall around us, and I staggered towards the van that had brought me there. I could see Kenji ordering the two men he had brought with him into the back. They handed him a weapon, and grabbed their own.

“Kenji!” I called to him, wanting to face my fate. I would rather be killed than live under his watchful eye, waiting for his mood to shift and being killed at his whim.

“You bastard, come back here!”

A man that I hadn’t seen, who had escaped the bar charged me from the side with a knife. The blade drew a thin line across my ribs as I dropped away reflexively. Before he could raise the knife again, I pulled his wrist forward, and brought me knee into his sternum. He dropped to the ground with a sick thud, and the knife skittered away across the snow-covered pavement. I grabbed it, and continued to stalk Kenji. He saw me, and had lit a cigarette as he leaned against the van.

“Mr. No-One, you are very resourceful.”

He raised his gun at me, and smiled.

“I never promised that I’d spare your life. But consider your debt paid.”

I didn’t blink as I walked toward him. If he shot me, I’d die trying to kill him.

I was a few feet away when he pulled the trigger. There was a loud click in the night air, and he pulled the trigger again, his face a mask of disbelief.

He looked at the man who had handed him the empty gun, and the man lifted his own weapon, shooting the man in the chest. Kenji slid down the side of the van, but did not die.

“You were given directions to kill Mr. Shibukawa, not slaughter a room full of very important allies of Mr. Aoki. You are a disgrace to the family.”

Kenji tried to handwalk away from his killer, but the snow and blood made him slide back to his elbows. The man pointed the gun at his head, and the other man ran around to the driver’s side, starting the van.

Kenji rose to his knees, and accepted the fate that his carelessness had brought him. But I did not stop charging. My target spun at the last moment, taking his aim from Kenji, but not fast enough. As I plunged the knife into his collar, he stared at me with wide eyes of confusion.

Kenji grabbed the gun that fell in front of him. He then squeezed three shots into the chest of the man I had stabbed, and then turned it on the driver who stepped out of the van, sending him backwards with gunfire.

I spun to face Kenji, and saw the barrel pointed at me. I gripped the knife, challenging him. He kept the gun pointed at me as he rose to his feet, and until the moment before he slid into the driver’s seat of the van.

I heard a roar of voices behind me, and as I turned, I saw a brick slam into my face. The world tumbled around me, and the last thing I heard were a mob of Japanese voices getting closer.

I no longer cared.

[Part 6]

I opened my eyes and realized that I was in a bed. The walls were covered with posters of Japanese pop stars and actors. The blanket that covered me was pink and yellow, and the alarm clock next to the bed was a talking Hello Kitty. I sat up, and saw pictures of a familiar face. They were school photos of a young girl who I had met and spent time with. Hers was the last face I expected to see.
Matsuko stepped into the room carrying a tray of miso soup and rice noodles. She smiled at me cautiously, placing the tray on the dresser.

“What happened?” I asked, but she seemed to disregard my question.

I spun my legs off of the bed, feeling the ache of my hand, my mouth, my ribs, and my head colliding into one systemic shock. I let the pain pass, and stood up. Matsuko gently pushed me back to sit, and handed me a bottle of pain killers without speaking.

“Matsuko, what’s going on?”

She gave me a glass of water, then retrieved the tray. “Eat.”

I refused, demanding that she tell me.

She put the tray down, and sat next to me.

I repeated my question.

“My brother is dead.”

I remembered the sight of Sorimatsu among the three men lined up and shot in the room where I was questioned. My stomach clenched.

“He got involved in things he should not have, and he got you involved in those things. I am so ashamed.”

I took her hands, and she looked at me with tears in her eyes.

“I was there last night. I was looking for Sorimatsu. I saw what you did to Han. I knew that you did not do that on your own. I knew that, but when the angry people came for you, I knew that I had to stop them. I didn’t know how to. But then a man, a man dragged you into his van and drove away. I knew that he was a killer, but he saved your life.”

She lowered her gaze. “I followed the van, and found you in the van with him. He was dead. You were in the back, bleeding. So I brought you back here to take care of you. This is my home.”

I stood up again, and searched for a window, throwing it open and letting the cold air snap me from the very strange dream I was having.

“Damien, please, there is more.”

I looked at her.

“There was a lot of money in the van. So I took it. I took the money so that we can leave Japan. I can go to America and you can go back to Mexico.”

I shook my head.

“No. I can’t go back. You go. I want you to take that money and go to America. I have to stay here and finish what I began.”

She rose and stood next to me. WE both looked out onto the snow-covered city. The lights and the people and the chaos of Tokyo bustled beneath us. But in the distance was a horizon of snow-capped mountains. For Matsuko, that was her Japan. For me, it was the Neon Palaces. I had a lot to do.

[Part 7]
PRESENT DAY

Matsuko never questioned my decision. She simply helped me to meet the right people. Her friend knew a guy who knew a guy who ran a gym for the Japan Wrestling Club. It was a small-time federation, but it was the real thing. No basement fight clubs, no back alley gambling. The wrestlers were piss-poor, but were there for the sport. I took my chance on it, and it lead to other opportunities and other companies. Soon, I was in the Neon-lit arenas, winning championships in the the largest promotions in Asia. Matsuko had made sure I was taken care of.

She, meanwhile, went to the United States to fulfill her dream of being a fashion designer. I haven’t seen her name in any magazines, or headlining shows during Fashion Week, but I don’t doubt that she will one day. At least, that is what I hope. I'm sure she escaped, where no one could find her.