Lady Joker, Volume 1 by Kaoru Takamura (lightest ebook reader .txt) 📕

When his wife, an early riser, got out of bed, he had to pretend to be asleep for a while. She deftly arranged her hair in the half-light that passed through the shoji screens and left the room without making a sound. Moments later, he heard her movements in the kitchen. Beside his pillow, there was the sound of his son’s breathing as he enjoyed a deep sleep, and above his head, among the trees in the garden, the high-pitched chirp of the first sparrow of the morning. When Shiroyama smelled the moist air waft in from the gap between the closed shoji screens, a sense of impending suffocation made him want to dash outside, but he shifted his head on his pillow instead.

Even if no one raised their voice, when people gathered in large numbers their presence was palpable—the movements of the press corps staked out beyond the ground of his home had reverberated all the way to his bedside throughout the night. What’s more, the home to which he had returned last night after three days was beset with the traces of countless outsiders who had been coming and going during his absence. He also learned that the police had outfitted all the house phones with recording devices that were wired to outside lines. His wife acted nonchalant, saying, “They all mean well,” but as the man of the house, Shiroyama could not easily dismiss the incursion into his own domain. Last night, after convincing his wife to get some rest, he stayed up for a whisky with his son, Mitsuaki. Father and son, neither of them much for talk, conversed briefly before succumbing to the power of alcohol.

His wife had been worried that, since she couldn’t go out shopping, she would be unable to prepare anything special for their daughter, who hadn’t been home in quite a while, and his son relayed that he planned to pick up some things on his way home from work. During thirty-three years of marriage, the family had established a familiar pattern, but last night—with the return of his son, who lived nearby but seldom visited, and his self-sufficient daughter, who rarely sent so much as a postcard—Shiroyama had witnessed a sudden shift that was both physical and emotional. Had the head of the household not been kidnapped, he doubted there would have been a chance for the family to reconnect this way. Recognizing this as the true, unfeigned image of the family he had worked so hard to create, Shiroyama adjusted his head once again on his pillow.

Mitsuaki, sleeping peacefully with his mouth half-open, was approaching the ripe age of thirty-two. As of the first of April, he would be director of the tax office in Ibaraki prefecture. Over the next few years, he would make his way from one regional agency to another, eventually returning to Tokyo, where he would join the Budget Bureau at the Ministry of Finance, and if all went according to plan, his promotion to budget examiner would be guaranteed.

Shoko, who was two years younger than Mitsuaki, was the same—both of his children had been capable since they were young, never causing trouble for their parents or seeking attention and indulgence, and before he knew it, they had decided on their path in life and set out on their own. Shiroyama had his share of parental opinions but his offspring were more than fully fledged before he even had the chance to express any of these, so that on the rare occasion when he did see them, it was all he could do to mutter a few questions about what kind of work they were doing now.

Conversely, there weren’t many opportunities to talk to his son about his own work, and Shiroyama thought about how last night he had missed another occasion to do so for a while. Perhaps at some point he would tell his son about the various emotions that led him to act in a manner so unbecoming to his position and choose to breach his company’s trust, but he could not imagine when that day would come. More importantly, he had to worry about how the course of events and his own actions might affect his son’s position at the finance ministry.

Such thoughts occupied Shiroyama’s mind until the hands of the alarm clock read 6:15 a.m. He then rustled the futon beside him and said, “Come on, time to wake up.” Shiroyama also wanted his son to retrieve the morning paper for him.

Breakfast was a simple affair—miso soup with daikon radish and seaweed, soft-boiled egg, and simmered fish—and although it had been four days since he had sat at this table, neither the scene itself nor the way things tasted nor the tenor of his emotions were much different from before. His wife and son were both taciturn by nature and, as Shiroyama set aside the now-acquired morning paper, the topics of conversation during the meal did not venture beyond Shoko, who would be coming home to Japan for the first time in two years, and Mitsuaki, who would be leaving for his new post in Ibaraki prefecture the day after tomorrow. Apparently, due to the unforeseen circumstances, Mitsuaki hadn’t had time to pack his things, and so now he said, “I guess I’ll just do without them for a while.”

“Don’t forget to pick up the mentaiko tonight for Shoko,” his wife reminded Mitsuaki. “There’s a counter that sells it in the basement of the Mitsukoshi department store in Nihombashi.”

From this snippet Shiroyama gleaned that the salted cod roe was his daughter’s favorite, but it seemed as if this were the first time he was hearing such information.

Mitsuaki headed for the office shortly before 7:20 a.m., leaving his parents at the dining table. They sipped a second cup of green tea without much to say to each other, then Reiko, who looked as if she were in good spirits, stood to clear the dishes. Shiroyama opened