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

entrapment of this one little ant that had failed to escape to how he had felt just after the war ended, that sense of shivering in total darkness. The very space and time in which he existed were contracting with each moment, as if that time and space were running out, a feeling akin to impatience. The mild yet puzzling bouts of frustration he experienced daily, the way he became lost in thought like this, and the abstraction he unconsciously fell into as he pondered these many things—all of it made him feel jittery, a sort of relentless torment.

Monoi wiped Lady’s mouth with the towel—she was drooling and smacking her lips as she ate the cream bun. His hand reached out to her automatically, but to be honest, at the same time he could not help feeling repulsed by the sight of her shirt collar covered in drool and breadcrumbs. Next to her, Nunokawa, silent and still, kept his eyes on the racecourse, while behind him Koh took the conversation in a completely different direction.

“Can’t you move some money into fixed deposits this month? A hundred thousand yen would do,” he said to Handa, trying to get a modest deal out of him.

Beside them, Yo-chan held out a carton of fruit-flavored milk he had just come back with, saying, “Here you go.”

Monoi helped the girl drink the milk through a straw, which she clenched with her teeth as she squealed with delight. At home, she was never given anything sweet since fixing cavities was such an ordeal, so the only-on-Sunday cream bun and fruit-flavored milk were her favorite treats.

Nunokawa, finally looking more like himself again, lifted his head. Just as he seemed to cast a glance at his daughter, his gaze passed over her head and settled on the three men sitting behind them.

“Hey, Koh-san. Where would you say the real money is in this country?” Nunokawa suddenly asked.

“City banks, major securities companies, life insurance companies, a sector of the large corporations, religious organizations. Why do you ask?”

“As I drive all day along the Tomei Expressway between Tokyo and Nagoya, I like to kill time wondering which one I’d take down, if I could. Like you said, all you need to look for is a flash point, right?” Nunokawa had turned to face forward again, and he muttered as if he was talking to himself.

“If that’s the case, then it’s manufacturers you want,” Koh responded without missing a beat.

“Why manufacturers?” It was Handa who asked this.

“Companies that make things understand the value of money. Manufacturing begins with calculating the cost of a single rivet or screw. Once the product has been created, they have to sell them one by one for a specific price. With a gross profit of two or three percent—it’s backbreaking work.”

“So?”

“Because they understand the importance of money, they suffer the most when it is milked out of them.”

“That would be heartless,” Handa said, laughing.

As he listened to the idle chatter, it occurred to Monoi that he himself held various deep-seated grudges against manufacturers in general. The foundry in Hachinohe where he had become an apprentice at the age of twelve; Hinode Beer, where Seiji Okamura had worked half a century ago, the same company his grandson had recently tried to join; and the factory in Nishi-Kojiya that was once his workplace for a quarter-century. The reason these grudges still smoldered deep within his gut was unclear to him—it wasn’t as if he had particularly strong feelings about each company, yet certainly the hue of his own life spent observing these various entities in their respective heydays had been somber, devoid of color.

Behind him, Yo-chan mumbled, “What would you do if you got their money?” and then fell silent again.

“Manufacturers, huh?” Handa said to himself, and he too fell silent. The fanfare as the horses entered the starting gate sounded, and Lady let out a joyous scream from atop the bench.

The four-year-old colts and fillies started off the 1,400-meter race on the backstretch of the turf track. For the fewer than ninety seconds he observed the race, wondering which one would pull out ahead, Monoi’s mind was blank.

The horses’ legs stood out in bright relief as they ran on the spring turf. As the front line of the pack’s progression shifted forward and backward freely, the eleven horses rounded the far turn, advancing and retreating by a nose. Two front runners had slipped ahead. Another horse closed in on them from the outside. And in that flash of a moment, when Monoi narrowed his eyes and wondered if this horse would overtake them, he thought he saw the horse’s legs stumble, then the jockey was suspended in the air before careening sideways. The streak of the jockey’s green helmet. The number seven on the saddlecloth of the horse that had lost its rider.

A cry issued from the girl’s throat, and her head and arms began to whirl violently. The movement of the spectators’ rising from their seats in the grandstand formed a tsunami. The crowd roared as the pack of horses crossed the finish line, then stirred and shook with excitement as the stretcher was rushed out.

Monoi checked the racing column in his newspaper and confirmed the name of number seven’s jockey—Shibata. He was from Aomori, the same prefecture as Monoi’s hometown, and he had been riding horses for as long as Monoi had been attending the races, more than twenty years. He was not a flamboyant rider, but Monoi was rather fond of the way he drove his horse, a style that conveyed his grit and passion. The jockey was always careful at the start of the race, but he had misjudged it today and Monoi felt regret as he watched Shibata being carried away on the stretcher.

The buzz in the grandstand refused to settle down, and Koh said, as if just now thinking of it, “If we’re talking about a manufacturer, go for something big. Toyota, Nippon Steel, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries . . .” He