Whitewash High: Rising Sun

"Where am I?" Nik slurred out, dazed and confused.

The back of his skull throbbed in pain, a result of the blow that struck him without warning. The room looked vacant of people. Water dripped from a leaky pipe. Tied to a chair, Nik couldn't move. Any attempt unbalanced the chair, almost causing him to fall over.

"Anri? Are you here?" he called out. "If you are, say something. Anything."

A door creaked open, ajar just enough for sound to seep through the darkness.

"Nik, help me. Please! Help me. Where are you?" Anri called out, afraid and crying.

"Anri! I'll help you. Don't be afraid. Where are you?"

"Nik, please, you've got to help me. Don't abandon me. Where are you?"

"Looks like your girlfriend is in a dangerous predicament, gaijin," a slithery man commented, walking through the door.

A tape recorder in one hand, and a hammer in the other. Two thugs flanked him.

"She is in distress. Won't you be a good boyfriend and help her? Or do you only help strange women?"

"Who are you? I don't know who you are," Nik said. "I didn't do anything to you."

"Oh, but you have. I remember you all too well, Nik Knight. Maybe all Japs look alike to gaijin. Rare for a gaijin to work the front of a club."

"Wait, you're the man I escorted to Musashi."

"Got it in one," Ueno chuckled. "Twice you've caused problems for me, gaijin. First, when you played hero and prevented my boys from kidnapping Yamato's cunt of a sister. The second when you put my son in the hospital."

"Who? I didn't put anyone into the hospital," Nik replied.

"Oh, but you did. Left the scene before the cops and ambulance showed up, but my boy was the punk you beat the shit out of in the park."

"He tried to rape my girlfriend. I didn't go picking a fight with him. Look, I'm sorry I caused him harm."

"He is dead. Too late for apologies."

"He's...dead?"

Confusion swam all over Nik's face. He didn't know what was happening. Yes, he beat the living pulp out of the guy, but he didn't think the damage would kill.

"So what am I going to do with a foreign devil that can't keep his nose out of my business. Even randomness is drawing us together. If you were another Japanese, I'd just put a bullet in your skull and end it. But you worked for Yamato. Poor choice of boss. You're caught in the crosshairs."

"I'll leave the country tomorrow. Hell, you can have your boys drive me to the airport and watch me get on the plane. Just don't hurt us. Let Anri go. She is innocent."

Ueno laughed out loud, rubbing the hammerhead against his skull.

"Let you go? After all this trouble? You are a dumbass, aren't you? You're a message to Yamato. If you didn't fuck up the kidnapping, I'd control his entire vice business. The bastard cares about his family above all else. It is his only weakness."

Ueno walked up, arm outstretched and gave a long windup. Nik could see the hammer cock back, and the shine from the head bullet forward. Nik closed both eyes, and turned his skull in a vain attempt to protect himself from the inevitable. But the pain train failed to arrive on schedule. One eye open, he saw the shine an inch from skull bone.

"Stupid dumbass. You fucked me, I'm going to fuck you. I've got your piece of ass in another room. My boys are going to give her a real honeymoon, and you're going to get to hear every delicious second of it. It is old technology but tape recorders sure are great."

Ueno chuckled, walking off to leave Nik in forced misery.

"Don't you fucking touch her! You hear me!" he shouted. "I'll kill you if you lay a single finger on her!"

Despite the dire circumstances, that commanding and controlling piece of his brain flipped on and broke off. Even when the chair tipped over in a futile attempt to break free, the rage still streamed from his mouth.

"You Japanese piece of shit! I'll cut out your heart and feed it to you!"

More obscenities continued flooding from his mouth, up to and including when a hefty man walked in, carrying various instruments of pain.

X

"Dammit, what am I going to do Ryuji?" Musashi asked, throwing a bottle against the wall.

"Nothing you can do unless you want the clan thrown out of the Aichi Alliance. Ueno played a bad hand to perfection."

"He played me like a fiddle is what he did. I told Nik I owe him a life debt, and here I am debating mounting a rescue mission."

"You're being a smart boss, Musashi," Ryuji commented, calmly. "Anything else and you'll fall into another Ueno ploy."

"Do we know where Nik got taken?"

"Two choices, my contacts informed me. If we were to mount any kind of rescue, it'd involve securing both at once, assuming my information is correct. But right or not, we're going to war with the Ueno clan."

"We're already fucking at war with them. At least my sister got on a plane so that asshole can't touch her."

"You still think it was wise to send her overseas? We can't help her."

"Kaze is smart. She knows the situation. Keishu is with her. She swore a blood oath to protect her," Musashi said.

"Get Tanahashi or Akechi to join us. They hate Ueno as well. All we need is a reason to expel Ueno and we can make a move."

"Ha, if only it were that easy. Dammit. I don't know how much time Nik will have before he is executed."

Musashi sat down on the expensive leather office chair. Feet on the desk, hands in his hair, he wracked his brain to think of a solution that would make everyone come out ahead one hundred percent.

"I'll give Akechi a call," Musashi said.

Ryuji nodded.

He took out his cellphone, dialing a number from memory.

"Akechi-san, we need to talk."

"Worried about the gaijin, Yamato-san?"

"Let's dispense with the pleasantries. I need your help. What do you want to rescue him?"

"Why would I want to get my clan expelled for you?"

"Name your price."

"What does a gaijin matter to you, Yamato? Need another for the club, then hit the streets."

"You know why."

"Honor? Honestly, I don't see how you're not dead yet, Yamato. Your honor makes you write checks your body can't cash. He saved your sister's life, but do you owe him that much?"

"If you had a family to care about, you'd understand."

"True, but all I care about is cold, hard cash."

"You and I both know that Ueno is a wild dog. He only joined the alliance because he helped fight against the syndicate. He is a mercenary family. A thug who revels in hurting people. How much profit are you losing because we're using our limited political resources cleaning up after him."

"You do realize you'll owe me, and I always collect."

"Name your price, Akechi," Musashi replied, annoyed.

"If I do this favor, we'll be going to war with Ueno. Not today, but soon. I can come up with a plausible reason to attack his torture shops..."

"How do you know he is in one of Ueno's torture joints?"

"Neutrality has its benefits. I have contacts you'll never know about, Yamato. I know exactly where your gaijin tomodachi is this very instant. I also know he has a couple days before he will be killed. My price isn't convoluted. Don't claim any of Ueno's territory, and support me when I consume it."

"That's it?" Musashi asked.

"That's it."

"Done. Do it."

"That simple? No negotiating?" Akechi asked, surprised.

"You want the truth, Akechi?"

"Always."

"I've zero interest in being a gambling king. I'm just a pimp, after all. His territory, except for a couple choice locations, doesn't interest me, and personally, I don't care about replacing Takeda as chairman of the Aichi Alliance."

"I misjudged you, Yamato. I took you for someone with higher ambition. Fine. We'll keep this conversation between us. I'll send my best lieutenant to rescue the gaijin and ferry him to you. After that, I suggest you keep him some place secret."

Akechi hung up.

"Sounded like that chat went well," Ryuji stated.

"Akechi is going to bloody his hands for once."

"What'd it cost us?"

"Only Ueno's territory and our support in letting him take it."

"He must think Ueno is going to die through all this. Am I missing something here? If we are not the ones rescuing Nik, why would we need to go to war with Ueno?" Ryuji asked.

"Either Akechi thinks the rescue mission will leak out, implicating us and/or him, or he already had plans to take on Ueno and we're a convenient excuse."

"That Akechi is something else. Fucking Swiss bastard."

Musashi laughed uncontrollably. Ryuji raised an eyebrow, curious at Musashi's reaction.

"This situation is fucked beyond belief, Ryuji. I'm a glorified pimp caught up in high-level, yakuza politics. Life was simpler on the streets."

"Simpler but dirtier. I like the view from atop. Just stop getting involved with life debts."

X

Nik coughed up blood onto the cracked cement floor. Pain felt too weak a word for what he was feeling right now. One of Ueno's thugs gleefully swung the hammer down onto his ankle.

"Dammit!" Nik screamed out.

Bone shattered into dust. Arms tied behind his back, shimmying a couple inches vainly led nowhere. Escape was impossible.

"Ugh! Dammit!" he shouted again.

Unlike Ueno, the thug didn't speak any English. Whatever mocking words enunciated harshly were lost into the aether. The only thing Nik understood were the screams of pain and sorrow from a tape recorder resting casually on a crate.

Tears streaked his face, created from a corrupted mixture of anger, pain, and lamentation. The thug grabbed Nik by the hair, mocking the tears. Defiantly, Nik spat on the man's face. Blood and saliva splattered and streaked.

"Fuck you, Jap asshole. You better hope you kill me good or else I'll fuck your life."

The valiant but unsuccessful act led only to more pain. The thug swung the hammer continuously onto the afflicted ankle, shattering bone fragments into more fragments. Nik bit his lip. The pain was unbearable but nothing compared to the dreadful feeling of failure inside his soul.

For the past twelve hours the tape played on repeat. Ueno took joy and turned it into corrosive acid. What could be heard on the tape should not be repeated in any civilized world, let alone on an infinite loop.

Nik wouldn't give Ueno the satisfaction of breaking him, of seeing him cry for her. Inside, he wanted to, to alleviate the inadequacy of protecting Anri. But doing so would give Ueno the ultimate victory. Defiance, spite, any other synonym, combined to give Nik strength to endure.

Twelve hours of torture transmogrified a once flawless body. Cuts lathered skin like clothing. Chunks of hair ripped out by the roots. Nails hammered into acupuncturist placements. Fingernails ripped out by plyers. He should be dead but the thug hung a PhD in torture on the room wall.

Nik laughed. The pain broke his guilt addled mind. Laughing seemed the appropriate response. Bravado the only shield remaining.

"I'll fuck your whole family. Sisters, mother, wife, wife's sisters, all of them. I'll hurt them like you hurt An...ugh!"

The doctor of torture interrupted the speech by cracking Nik across the jaw with a backhand.

"Ha...haha...come on...is that the best you can do? Out of nails to hammer? No fingernails to rip out? You're pathetic! Ha...Ha...Hahaha..."

The torturer cracked him one more time for good measure before taking a walk. He spent an hour without break, and so left the foreigner to the sounds of real pain; a real man's pain.

Nik didn't understand the words spoken on the tape but he didn't need to. Anri's voice sang torment. There is a fine line between protection and control, one that Nik flirted with daily in his relationship with Anri. Fighting Ueno's son spooked him, releasing an inner demon. They say that a person doesn't know their true self until put into the situation. Will a soldier stand and fight, or run and hide? Until the first shot is fired, or sword unsheathed, it is mere speculation.

Ueno's son attempting to rape Anri fired the shot across the bow of a sleeping dragon. A dark demon awoke to kill an interloper. Even though the situation, from Nik's perspective, was hopeless, that dark demon grew stronger inside his soul. Each time the final scream called out like a siren, another piece of his soul sunk into the dark depths of Hades to heed its call.

A short time later, the torturer strolled back inside the blood soaked room. A cocky smile beamed brightly as he flashed a new instrument of fun and merriment. Nik's eyes, glossy in derangement, stared at the man. Laughter, pained laughter, sung a duet with the tape when the glint of steel stained red.

X

"Yamato really must owe that gaijin a lot," a stocky man commented, assembling a pistol.

"Yamato has one flaw. He is old school. Words like honor matter more to him than money. He owes the man a life debt."

"He told you that?"

"Didn't need to. Crystal clear during the meeting. Do you know how he made his bones, Tanaka?"

"Rumors, but nothing concrete."

"He blew the brains out of a Diet member's skull."

"Talking about the Hiroshimata murder a couple years ago?"

Akechi nodded.

"Yamato is a killer. He'd kill us without hesitation for his own objectives. To care about the well-being of a foreigner makes it obvious, at least to me, that he owes the man a great deal. Otherwise, he'd have cut the man off at the knees without hesitation during the last meeting."

"I'll leave in an hour after my men are prepared. No witnesses, and I'll torch the operation to hide any evidence," Tanaka said.

"Including any of our men who get killed."

Tanaka nodded in agreement.

"It'll be nice to expand our operations. I walk through Ueno's territory and he wastes so much of his potential. I could make a mint," Tanaka mused.

"Everyone is in agreement with Yamato that Ueno is a jumped up chimp. I hate stalemates. Yamato's gaijin gave us the perfect excuse to pluck a thorn."

Both men laughed in the spacious office. Neon lights projected through the blinds from the business district outside.

X

Blood dripped onto the floor. A slow, methodical, plopping into an ever growing pool of lost vitality. Arms strung up. Body hanging from a hook, half-conscious and fully delirious, he kept laughing. The only medicine for the life altering pain.

"Going to finish me off now? Tired of torturing me?" he slurred out, barely audible.

Two IVs pumped blood and nutrients into his worn out body. Ueno's fun would last until Nik's body would give up on its own.

"Knife or gun?" he asked.

Deserted, he spoke to stale air in the room.

"I'll fucking kill you and your family," he continued. "I'll triple the pain you caused to Anri. I'll avenge her."

The door suddenly crashed open. A body dropped onto the floor in a heap. A dozen bullets caved in the kidnapper's skull beyond recognition. Nik saw two men walk towards him, dressed in fine suits. Any other finite details were blurred. Even keeping eyes open required more strength than his body could handle. A gloved hand waved, trying to attract attention. Blackness answered back as Nik passed out.

An unknown time later, Nik's eyes opened up again. The entire room shone white, so much so it hurt to focus. Bodies moved around, scurrying about with charts and medication. A doctor stood over him, syringe in hand. A nurse spoke fast, ordering another nurse around.

"Whe...where am...I?" he blurted out.

"You're awake. Good."

Nik recognized the voice. Sitting on a chair next to the bed, he saw Musashi relaxing there with a book in his lap.

"You look like shit but you're alive. You're in a hospital. Don't worry, you're safe."

"An...ri..."

Saying her name triggered the last cognizant memory in his brain. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

"I'm sorry. There wasn't anything I could do. I heard the tape," Musashi said. "I can't stay long, and you're in no shape for visitors yet. I'll be back once the doctors tell me you're stable. I just wanted you to see a friendly face. Rest well."

Nik passed out again in the hospital bed. Musashi looked him over. Bandages covered almost every inch of his impressive physique. Cuts, stabs, gouges, burns. Wars did less damage to the human body. One foot in a cast. Musashi wasn't shocked at the medical bill the nursing station gave him.

X

"Yamato-san, how is your friend?" Akechi asked on the phone from his office.

"He'll live. He shouldn't be alive but he is."

"My associate told me he raved like a lunatic in the van, whenever he wasn't unconscious. Ueno's expert torturer wasn't around when the extraction commenced. He broke the gaijin's mind something fierce."

"Did you listen to the tape?" Musashi asked.

"My associate did. I didn't. He told me it wasn't very nice."

"Understatement of the century. They gang raped and tortured her to death."

"Are you getting sentimental, Yamato-san?" Akechi asked. "Aren't you a glorified pimp, as you like to put it?"

"I'd like to think even I have a line I wouldn't cross."

"It is unfortunate the gaijin's lover got caught up in it, but that is spilled milk. We won't be moving against Ueno for the foreseeable future. I don't want him to think any of us were involved in his warehouse getting torched."

"I understand, Akechi-san."

"Relax, Yamato. Sometimes you need to make a deal with the devil to defeat a greater devil. I'll see you at the next council meeting. The remnants of the Chubu Syndicate need to be dealt with harshly. That'll occupy us greatly."

Akechi hung up, leaving Musashi to brood over the situation. Ryuji walked into the room just as Musashi poured himself a drink.

"I take it we got back news, boss?" he asked.

"No, not really. We wait. Akechi is waiting. Chubu comes first."

"Fine by me. I have more than enough interest to collect from those assholes."

"How are the film goings?" Musashi asked.

"Fair. Not getting the same pop we used to. Market is drying up. Competition from Tokyo is hurting us. We're going to need to think outside the box to bring in more cash and girls."

"We can hit up the clubs and..."

Ring Ring...Ring Ring...Ring Ring...

"Hello?" Musashi asked, answering his phone.

"Hello, this is Hirotaro Yamaguchi. I was told to call this number about Mr. Nik Knight."

"Yes, thank you, Yamaguchi-san. The school secretary informed me you handle matters regarding him at the school. I'm a friend of his. He got into a terrible car accident."

"Is he okay?" Yamaguchi asked, concerned at the news.

"He'll live but the doctors told me he'll be in the hospital for months. The car he was a passenger in flipped and tumbled into a tree."

"I understand. That is terrible to hear. If you can give me the hospital's address, I'd like to visit him."

"I'm sorry, Yamaguchi-san, he isn't in the city. He is in another prefecture far from Aichi, in Kyushu."

"Do you have the phone number of the hospital? I'll need records to satisfy the principal he is in intensive care, and didn't slip out of country."

"Records? I can have them faxed over to your school office."

"Thank you, I'm sorry, I wasn't given a name."

"Yamato."

"Thank you, Yamato-san. Knight-san should be proud to have a good friend to look after him. I'll watch out for the fax."

"Enjoy your day, Yamaguchi-san. If any problems occur at school because of Nik's absence, please let me know."

"Thank you again. Good bye, Yamato-san."

Musashi tossed the phone onto the desk.

"Trouble in paradise?" Ryuji asked.

"Paperwork dealing with Nik's school job."

"If you don't say a word they will think he just upped and vanished."

Musashi gave Ryuji a stern stare.

"I know, I know, life debt. I'll leave you to that and finish the next scene."

Ryuji sat up and walked out of the office. Musashi sat there, looking out the window into the neon lights. The office stood on the fourth floor of an office building in the city's red light district. Square in the middle of the flesh trade.