omohiko Sonomura glanced both ways to make sure no one was looking at him, drew a deep breath, and walked through the automatic doors.

He immediately felt as if his wig might slip and had to resist the urge to reach up and adjust it. Ryo had given him explicit instructions not to do so. The same went for his glasses. Drawing undue attention to either might give away his disguise.

There were two ATMs at the Sankyo Bank’s Tamatsukuri branch. One was currently occupied by a middle-aged woman in a baggy purple dress. She was taking a long time at it; perhaps she wasn’t used to the machine. Occasionally she would look around, searching in vain for a bank employee who might explain it to her, but the cashiers had already locked up for the day. After four it was just the machines.

Tomohiko worried that the plump lady might look to him for help, which would force him to call off the whole operation. This made him reluctant to approach the ATM next to her, but there were no other customers, and it would be even more suspicious if he simply stood there waiting. He realised he should probably turn around and walk out, but then he probably wouldn’t get another chance to go through with the test until tomorrow and he really didn’t want to wait that long.

Slowly, he approached the open machine. Next to him, the woman was still frowning, jabbing at the buttons with her finger.

Tomohiko opened his bag and reached inside. His fingertips touched the card and he was just pulling it out when the woman turned in his direction. ‘Excuse me, I’m trying to put money into this thing, but it’s not working.’

Keeping his face down, Tomohiko waved dismissively and shrugged.

‘They keep telling me these things are easy to use,’ she said, ‘but I’ll be damned if I can make head or tail of them.’ Tomohiko shrugged again and shook his head. Whatever he did, he couldn’t speak to her.

The doors to the bank whisked open and Tomohiko heard the woman’s friend call in, ‘What’s taking so long? We’re going to be late if you don’t hurry.’

‘This isn’t working,’ the woman called back. ‘It’s not giving me the deposit thingy. You ever use one of these things?’

‘Never,’ her friend replied. ‘Why don’t you just come back when one of the tellers is here? It can wait, can’t it?’

‘Yeah, but I had my banker make me a card and everything. It seems silly not to use it. He kept saying the machine was much easier than waiting for a teller at the window, but I don’t know.’ She sighed and took a step back from the machine. ‘Ask me, they’ll get rid of these things in a couple years and everything will back the way it was.’ The woman walked out, muttering under her breath.

Tomohiko breathed a little sigh and went back to his bag – a black purse with sequins along the top edge. Slowly, he pulled out the card. In size and shape it was identical to a Sankyo Bank ATM card, but the face was blank, save for a single magnetic strip. There was nothing printed on it at all: no account number, no name, not even a logo. Which was why he had to make sure the card stayed out of sight of the security camera.

Tomohiko looked up at the keypad, and pressed the button for a withdrawal. The light next to a small label that read PLEASE INSERT CARD lit up. Feeling his heart begin to race, Tomohiko slid the white card into the slot.

The machine asked him for his PIN.

Here goes.

His hands went to the number keys and input the sequence 4-1-2-6. He pressed the ‘Enter’ button.

There was an interminably long interval during which nothing happened. If the machine did anything out of the ordinary, he would have to leave right away. But the moment passed, and the machine asked him how much money he would like to withdraw. Tomohiko resisted the urge to leap for joy and keyed in two hundred thousand yen.

Several seconds later he was the proud owner of twenty ten-thousand-yen bills and a receipt. He retrieved the blank card and stepped quickly out of the bank.

The flared skirt he wore wrapped around his legs just below the knees, making it hard to walk naturally. There were a lot of cars on the road in front of the bank, but not many pedestrians, which helped. His face felt tight under a layer of make-up, as though his skin had been smeared over with glue.

The van was waiting about twenty metres away along the side of the road. The passenger side door slid open when he got near. Tomohiko glanced around, hiked up his skirt, and got in.

Ryo shut the manga he’d been reading, Tomohiko’s well-worn copy of Urusei Yatsura, and turned the key in the ignition. ‘How’d it go?’

‘Take a look,’ Tomohiko said, showing him the purse and its haul of fresh banknotes.

Ryo glanced at the money, put the van in low gear, and pulled out into traffic. His expression didn’t change.

‘Sounds like we cracked the code, then,’ he said, his eyes looking straight ahead. There was no trace of pleasure in his voice. ‘Not that I had any doubt.’

‘Neither did I, but man, when it worked, I started shaking,’ Tomohiko said, scratching his thigh. The pantyhose made his legs itch powerfully.

‘You watch out for the security camera?’

‘Yeah, no problem there, I made sure not to look up. Just —’

‘Just what?’ Ryo glanced over at him.

‘There was this lady there…’

Tomohiko briefly explained their exchange in the bank.

Midway through his story, a cloud came over Ryo’s face. He slammed on the brakes and pulled the van over to the side of the road. ‘What did I tell you?’ he said, angrily. ‘I said if anything out of the ordinary happened, anything at all, you were supposed to get out of there.’

‘Yeah, I know, but I thought it wouldn’t be a problem.’ Tomohiko was unable to hide the quaver in his voice.

Ryo grabbed Tomohiko by the collar of his blouse. ‘I don’t want you thinking on your own like that. This is life or death, man. And it’s not just your ass on the line.’ His eyes flashed.

‘She didn’t see my face,’ Tomohiko said in a squeaky voice. ‘I didn’t talk, either. Honest. There’s no way she knew I was a guy.’

Ryo’s face twisted into a scowl. He swore under his breath and let go of Tomohiko’s collar. ‘Idiot.’

‘What?’

‘Why the hell do you think I made you put on that getup anyway?’

‘It’s my disguise, right?’

‘That’s right. And who’s that disguise supposed to fool? The bank people, the police, right? When they find out we used a forged card the first thing they’re going to do is check the security tape. They’re going to see you, and ten out of ten of them will think you’re a woman. You’ve got a delicate build and a face that started a fan club in high school.’

‘But the camera didn’t see my face —’

‘Maybe not, but it definitely got an eyeful of the chatterbox. So what the police will do is they’ll go find her. And when they find her – which they will, because she was trying to use the machine, and they probably have a record of that – they’ll start asking questions. They’re going to want to know if she remembers anything about the woman standing next to her. What if she says, “But officer, it wasn’t a woman at all. It was a man in woman’s clothes.” So much for your disguise then.’

‘She won’t say that. Look, I swear, she didn’t notice a thing.’

‘How can you know for sure? Women always pay way more attention to other people than they should. She might even remember the brand of the handbag you were carrying.’

‘I still don’t see how that’s a problem.’

‘As long as there’s a possibility she noticed something, it’s a problem. You can’t just hope that you’ll get lucky if we’re going to do this for real. We’re not talking about ripping a jacket off of some boutique.’

‘I know, I’m sorry.’ Tomohiko bowed his head.

Ryo sighed and put the van back into low gear. Slowly, they pulled away from the kerb.

‘Still,’ Tomohiko said, a little gingerly, ‘I really don’t think we have to worry about that lady. She was completely focused on that machine.’

‘Whatever. The disguise was a total waste of time.’

‘C’mon, man —’

‘You didn’t talk to her at all, right? Not a single word?’

‘Right. That’s why —’

‘That’s why it was a waste of time,’ Ryo said in a low voice. ‘What kind of person says absolutely nothing when someone asks them a question? The police are going to know you had a reason why you couldn’t speak. Then someone’s going to get the idea that maybe you couldn’t speak because your voice would give away the fact that you were a guy dressed up like a woman.’

Tomohiko’s mouth flapped open, then shut again without saying a word. Ryo was right, as always.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

Ryo’s eyes were on the road. ‘I’m not telling you this again.’

‘Yeah. You won’t have to. Promise.’ Tomohiko said. He knew all too well that Ryo did not look favourably on people who made the same mistake twice.

Bending himself like a contortionist, Tomohiko wriggled his way into the back seat of the van. He pulled his own clothes out of the paper bag there and began to change, balancing himself against the swaying of the vehicle. He felt a strange sense of freedom as he took off the tights.

Ryo had assembled the pieces of his disguise: clothes, shoes, handbag, wig, glasses, and make-up. He hadn’t said where or how he got them and Tomohiko hadn’t asked. There were many things he had learned not to ask Ryo about over the years.

He had just finished taking off the make-up when the van stopped. They were in front of a subway station.

‘Drop by the office tonight,’ Ryo said.

Tomohiko was supposed to go out with some friends to catch the new sci-fi animation, Gundam, that was playing in all the theatres.

‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘I was planning on it.’ Tomohiko opened the door and stepped out of the van. He waited until the van took off, then went down the stairs to the subway.

The lecture on high-voltage engineering was a pitched battle against sleep. Word had got out earlier in the term that the professor didn’t take attendance and it was easy to cheat on the exams, so the classroom, which could easily seat fifty, held only a dozen or so students that morning. Tomohiko sat in the second row from the front, trying to maintain consciousness while the white-haired professor spoke in a slow drone about the mechanisms of arc discharges and glow discharges. Tomohiko took notes. If he didn’t keep his hand moving, he felt like he would slam head first into his desk.

Tomohiko was, to all appearances, a serious student. At the very least, that was what everyone in the electrical engineering department at Shinwa University thought. He had an excellent attendance record in all of the classes he signed up for. The only ones he skipped were the classes on law, art, and general psychology – courses that had nothing to do with his major. As he was still a sophomore, he had quite a few of these required curriculum courses left to suffer through.

And there was really only one reason Tomohiko paid such close attention to his courses in his major: because Ryo had ordered him to. It was a cost of doing business, he had said.

Ryo had a big influence on Tomohiko’s initial choice of electrical engineering, too. Because his scores in maths and science were good as a senior, Tomohiko had been contemplating engineering or physics. But he hadn’t yet chosen a major when Ryo said, ‘From here on out, it’s all about computers. Learn everything you can about them and that will help me out, too.’

In those days, Ryo had been keeping up his business selling games by mail, with considerable success. Tomohiko had been helping all along on the programming side. But Ryo’s interest in Tomohiko’s choice of major wasn’t about maintaining the status quo. He wanted to expand.

If it was so important, Tomohiko said to him once, why didn’t Ryo apply to college himself? Ryo’s scores in the sciences had been as good as or better than Tomohiko’s.

Ryo had smiled. ‘If I had enough time to go to college, I wouldn’t be working this job.’

It was the first time that Tomohiko had realised Ryo wasn’t planning on going to college. It made his choice easier, in a way. He wouldn’t just be learning about computers and electrical engineering for his own benefit. He’d be helping Ryo out too.

That, and Tomohiko had a debt that would take years to repay, if he ever repaid it at all. What had happened in his junior summer of high school had left a deep scar in his mind.

So it was that Tomohiko paid attention in class and, much to his surprise, whenever he brought his notebooks to the office, Ryo would read them avidly. Sometimes he would open a textbook beside them, going back and forth between the notes and the text. It was safe to say that, though Ryo had never attended a single class at Shinwa University, he knew more about the subject material than most of the actual students.

Ryo had a new passion these days: magnetic-strip cards, like ATM cards and credit cards. He first got involved with the cards right after Tomohiko matriculated and spotted an interesting device while touring his department’s offices. Called an encoder, the device could read and write data on magnetic strips.

When Ryo heard about it, his eyes sparkled. ‘You could make a duplicate of an ATM card with that.’

‘Yeah, you could,’ Tomohiko said. ‘But what would be the point? You’d still need a PIN.’

‘A PIN, huh?’ Ryo seem to be mulling something over for a while after that.

It was two or three weeks later when he came into the computer software office carrying a cardboard box about the size of a portable stereo. The box contained an encoder. It had a slot for magnetic cards, and a panel to display the information they contained.

‘How did you get your hands on that?’ Tomohiko asked, but Ryo just shrugged and grinned.

Shortly after obtaining the encoder, Ryo forged his first ATM card. Tomohiko didn’t know whose the original had been, but whoever it was, they never knew about it. Ryo only needed it for a couple of hours to make the copy.

Ryo used the card twice to withdraw a total of almost two hundred thousand yen. To Tomohiko’s amazement, Ryo had been able to decipher the PIN from the data encoded on the card itself.

There was a trick involved with this – something Ryo had figured out even before he got the encoder. Ryo had shown him how to read the data off the strip without special equipment, as a demonstration. The method was so simple even a child could do it, but Tomohiko had to admit it had taken a genius to figure it out.

For his demonstration, Ryo had prepared some magnetised iron filings. These he dusted on to the magnetic strip of the card. Tomohiko gasped.

The filings had formed themselves into a striped pattern along the strip.

‘It’s like a kind of Morse code,’ Ryo explained. ‘I did this a few times on cards I already knew the PIN to and figured out the pattern. All I had to do this time was work it in reverse. Even if you don’t know the PIN, you can read it from the pattern.’

‘So all you have to do is steal a cash card and dust some filings on it?’

‘Easy money.’

Tomohiko shook his head, speechless.

Ryo must have thought this was funny because he gave a rare belly laugh. ‘There’s nothing secure about these things at all. Those guys at the bank go on and on about how you have to keep your bank book safe and not share any personal information, but get one of these ATM cards and you might as well have the keys to the safe.’

‘And the banks don’t know about this?’

‘Oh, I’m sure a few people know they’ve got a disaster on their hands. But it’s too late to do anything about it now, so they’re keeping it to themselves. They’re just waiting for the next shoe to drop,’ said Ryo. He laughed out loud again.

Despite the potential to abuse his discovery, Ryo didn’t act on it right away. For one thing, he was busy with his software business, and for another, getting your hands on someone else’s ATM card was still difficult. After that one duplicate he made the first night, he didn’t mention cards at all for some time.

Until he had another, even bigger idea. ‘You know,’ Ryo said one day, ‘I was thinking about it and I realised, there’s no need to steal ATM cards at all.’ He was sitting at the desk in their small office, drinking a cup of instant coffee.

‘What do you mean?’ Tomohiko asked.

‘All you really need is a valid account number. You don’t even need a PIN. I’m kind of surprised I didn’t think of it sooner.’

‘Think of what?’

‘It’s like this.’ Ryo leaned back in his chair, putting his feet up on the table. He picked up a business card lying on the desk. ‘Say this is an ATM card. Put it into an ATM, and the machine reads the data on the strip, right? Now, we know that the strip contains an account number and a PIN. Of course, the ATM doesn’t know if it’s the card’s real owner putting the card in or not. That’s why it makes you input a PIN. Input the same number recorded on the magnetic strip, and it spits out your cash. So say we got a blank card, with nothing on the strip, and we fill it in with the necessary data, which is just an account number, then any PIN we want.’

Tomohiko’s eyes lit up.

‘The card is different from a real card,’ Ryo continued. ‘But the machine has no way of knowing the PIN on the card isn’t the actual PIN the customer chose. All it looks to see is whether the code on the magnetic strip is the same as the number the person punches in.’

‘So if you get someone’s bank account number —’

‘You can make a card to take their money,’ Ryo finished his sentence, the corner of his lip curling upward.

Tomohiko got goosebumps all over his body. We could really do this.

They went to work immediately.

First, they did a deeper analysis of the codes on the card. Each began with a starting code, then there was the ID code, the acknowledgment code, the PIN, and the bank identification code all in a line.

Next, they rooted through waste bins at various bank branches, picking up receipts with people’s account numbers on them, and used the patterns they had studied to encode those account numbers and PINs of their own choosing into seventy six-digit-long series of letters and numerals.

After that they used the encoder to encode these series on to magnetic strips, attached the strips to plastic cards, and they were done. The white card that Tomohiko used to withdraw money from the bank that day was their first prototype. They had chosen the account to steal from by picking the account number on the receipt that showed the largest amount of money remaining, reasoning that they’d have the best chance of the account holder not noticing a strange drop in their balance.

Though what they were doing was clearly a crime, Tomohiko felt no guilt. For one, the whole process of making the forged cards felt so much like a game, it was hard to take it too seriously. For another, they never saw the person they were stealing from. More than anything, though, it was because of something that Ryo once said.

‘Say a man throws away an apple he doesn’t want. I could come along and pick up that apple and no one would care, right? Now say he puts that apple down, meaning to eat it later. If I come along and see the apple, I might pick it up, because what’s the difference between the first and the second apple to me? None. If he isn’t watching his apple, he may as well have thrown it away. You snooze, you lose.’

The idea had wormed its way into Tomohiko’s subconscious until it felt like his own, and every time he thought about it, a wave of fear and anticipation washed over him.

Tomohiko headed straight for the office after classes ended for the day. They called it an office, but it was really a single unit in an old apartment building, which didn’t even have a sign out front.

The place held many memories for Tomohiko. The first time he came here, he could never have guessed how familiar he would become with the place.

He reached No 304, pulled the key out of his pocket, and opened the door. Ryo was sitting at the table in the small dining room immediately through the door. This was his base of operations.

‘You’re early,’ he said, twisting a little in his chair to look around.

‘I came straight here,’ Tomohiko said, taking off his shoes. ‘The noodle shop by the station was full.’

A computer sat on top of the table, an NEC PC8001. The words ‘Hello World’ were displayed on its green-tinted screen.

‘This the word processor?’ Tomohiko asked from over Ryo’s shoulder.

‘Yeah, we just got a new chip and software.’

Ryo’s hands moved over the keyboard in a blur. He would type in the regular English alphabet, but the screen displayed Japanese. Using what was called a front-end processor, it first converted letters into syllables called hiragana. When he pressed the space key, it further converted the hiragana into kanji – Japanese characters. Whenever there was a question about which character to use, the screen gave him numbered choices. The whole process took about ten seconds to produce a single word.

Tomohiko scoffed. ‘Quicker to just write it out by hand.’

‘The system is on a floppy disk, and it has to call up a database every time you convert characters, so yeah, it’s going to take time. If you could put the entire processor into memory you’d definitely get a speed boost, but this computer’s not going to be able to hack that. Still, I’m impressed with the read/write speed.’

‘Can’t say I’m going to miss cassettes much,’ Tomohiko said.

‘Yeah,’ Ryo muttered. ‘The only problem left is finding the software.’

Tomohiko picked up the 5¼-inch floppy from the desk. He knew exactly what Ryo was thinking. When they’d started selling the computer games, the response had been incredible. He remembered the breaking point, the day when the orders piled up and the money started rolling in. ‘This will be big,’ Ryo had predicted, and he was right.

Sales continued well for some time afterwards. They had made quite a bundle. And yet they had reached another impasse. They had competitors now, for one thing. But their biggest enemy was copyright law.

Until now, they had been able to sell pirated versions of popular games like Space Invaders openly through ads, but the writing on the wall was clear that this would no longer fly. There were movements to penalise software copiers. Some companies had already been served with a legal notice, and their own company had already received a warning by mail.

‘If any of these cases go to trial, they’re going to ban copying programs,’ Ryo predicted. The US had already enacted copyright reform in 1980. Programs were now ‘a unique expression of the intellectual thought and creative expression of their creator’, and copying them was a crime.

With that business model gone, the only way they could keep going was to make programs themselves. Yet they lacked both the necessary capital and the know-how to make that happen.

‘Oh right, here,’ Ryo said, and pulled an envelope out of his pocket.

Tomohiko looked inside. The envelope held eight ten-thousand-yen bills.

‘Your share from today,’ Ryo said.

Tomohiko tossed the envelope, cramming the bills into his jeans pocket. ‘What’s our next play?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know…’

‘With the ATM card?’

‘Yeah.’

Ryo crossed his arms. ‘If were going to try to make any money off of that, we better be quick about it. Waste too much time, and they’ll come up with countermeasures.’

‘The zero-PIN system, was it?’

‘Right.’

‘But that’s going to cost them a ton.’

Ryo looked up at him. ‘You think we’re the only ones who’ve found the weak spot in ATM cards? Pretty soon what we did today will be happening all over the country. Then even the stingy banks will have to do something.’

‘Yeah…’ Tomohiko sighed.

A zero-PIN ATM card was just what the name suggested: a card with no personal identification number recorded on its magnetic strip. Instead, a customer’s PIN was stored remotely, and each time they wanted to use their ATM card, the machine would have to contact the bank’s central computer to verify the transaction. Though it was much slower and more expensive for the banks than the old way, it made their system for forging cash cards obsolete.

‘What we did today was too dangerous, anyway. Even if we were able to fool the security cameras every time, we’d eventually slip up somewhere,’ Ryo said.

‘Yeah,’ Tomohiko agreed. ‘Not to mention people going to the police when they notice their balance —’

‘Ideally,’ said Ryo, cutting him off, ‘we want to make it so they don’t even know we’re using forged ATM cards.’

It was clear Ryo was already thinking about the next scheme, but that was as far as he got when the doorbell rang. They exchanged glances.

‘Namie?’ Tomohiko asked.

‘She wasn’t supposed to come today. That, and she should still be at the bank,’ Ryo checked his watch. ‘Whatever. Go see who it is.’

Tomohiko walked up to the door and looked through the peephole. A man in grey overalls stood outside. He looked around thirty years old.

Tomohiko opened the door a crack. ‘Yes?’

‘Uh, hi,’ the man said, a blank, bored look on his face. ‘Building maintenance. I’m here to check on the ventilation fans.’

‘You have to do this right now?’

The man nodded without saying anything. There’s a worker bee if I ever saw one, Tomohiko thought, closing the door to undo the chain.

When he opened the door again, the number of people outside had multiplied. A large man in a navy blue jacket, and a younger man wearing a green suit were standing right in front of the door. The man in the overalls had stepped back behind them. Sensing danger, Tomohiko tried to shut the door, but the big man put his hand out to stop it from closing.

‘We’ll be coming in,’ the big man announced.

‘Who the hell —’ Tomohiko said as the man forced his way inside. The breadth of his shoulders was impressive, and there was a faint citrus smell clinging to the fabric of his clothes.

The man in the green suit followed close behind. He had a scar next to his right eyebrow where it looked like he’d got stitches for a cut.

Ryo looked up without standing from the table. ‘And you are?’

The big man didn’t answer. He stepped in without taking off his shoes, took a look around the room, then planted himself in the chair Tomohiko had been sitting in a moment before.

‘Where’s Namie?’ the man asked Ryo, a mean look in his eyes. His jet-black hair was smoothed back across his head.

‘Can’t say,’ Ryo said, shrugging. ‘Who’s asking?’

‘Where’s Namie?’

‘Did you need her for something?’

The big man glanced back at the one in the green suit, who came forward, also wearing his shoes, and went straight into the back room. The big man’s eyes went to the computer on the table. He stared at the screen a moment. ‘What’s that?’

‘A Japanese word processor,’ Ryo said.

The man grunted and seemed to lose interest immediately. He resumed looking around the room. ‘You make much money doing this?’

‘If you do it right,’ Ryo said.

The man chuckled, his shoulders rocking. ‘Looks like you’re not doing it right, then, huh.’

Ryo and Tomohiko exchanged glances.

The green suit was poking through their cardboard boxes. The back room had been converted into a storeroom.

‘If you’re looking for Namie, you should try coming on Saturday or Sunday. She’s not usually here during the week.’

‘We know,’ the man said, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his vest pocket. He stuck one in his mouth and lit it with a Dunhill lighter.

‘You hear from her lately?’ he asked, blowing smoke.

‘Not today. Would you like me to give her a message if she calls?’

‘No need.’

The man was about to flick ash from his cigarette on to the table, when Ryo quickly stuck out his hand to catch the ash.

The man raised an eyebrow. ‘You trying to prove something, kid?’

Ryo shook his head. ‘We have a lot of electronics here. I don’t want ash getting into anything.’

‘So get an ashtray.’

‘I don’t have one.’

The man’s face twisted into a cruel smile. ‘Oh?’ he said, tapping more hot ash into Ryo’s open palm. Ryo didn’t flinch. ‘I say you do.’ He jabbed the lit end of his cigarette into Ryo’s palm.

Tomohiko could see every muscle in Ryo’s body tense, but his face remained blank. His hand remained motionless above the table as he stared the man in the eyes.

‘You’re a tough guy, is that it?’ the man asked.

‘Not particularly.’

‘Suzuki,’ the man called into the back. ‘You find anything?’

‘Nothing,’ the green suit replied.

The man put his cigarettes and his lighter back into his pocket, then he picked up a ballpoint pen and wrote something on the corner of a software manual that was lying open on the table.

‘If you hear from Namie, you call this number. Ask for “the electrician”.’

‘And your name?’

‘Knowing my name isn’t going to do you any good.’ The man stood.

‘What if we choose not to call?’ Ryo asked.

The man smiled and breathed out through his nose. ‘Why would you do something stupid like that?’

‘Namie might not want us to.’

‘Listen.’ The man pointed at Ryo’s chest. ‘There’s nothing in it for you if you call us. But if you don’t call us, you stand to lose…’ He looked around the small apartment. ‘Everything. Or enough that you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Any questions?’

Ryo looked the man in the face for a moment and shook his head. ‘Nope.’

‘Good. Glad to see you’re not an idiot,’ the man said, giving the guy in the green suit – Suzuki – a look. Suzuki left the back room and went out the front door.

The man pulled out his wallet and handed a ten-thousand-yen bill to Tomohiko. ‘Make sure he gets that hand looked at.’

Tomohiko’s fingers trembled as he took the money. The man chuckled, a deep, ugly sound.

Once they were gone, Tomohiko locked the door and fastened the chain. He turned around to Ryo. ‘You OK?’

Ryo went into the back room without answering and opened the curtain.

Tomohiko walked over beside him and looked outside. A black Mercedes was sitting out in front of their apartment building. A moment passed, and the men emerged from the building. The big man and the one named Suzuki got in the back, and the man in the overalls got in the driver’s seat.

Once the Mercedes had left, Ryo said, ‘Try calling Namie.’

Tomohiko picked up the phone on the dining room table. He tried her apartment. The phone rang for a long time, but no one answered. He put the receiver back down and shook his head.

‘I guess if she were at home, they wouldn’t be coming here looking for her,’ Ryo said.

‘Does that mean she’s not at the bank either?’ Tomohiko wondered out loud.

‘Maybe she took the day off,’ Ryo said, opening up the door of the mini refrigerator and pulling out an ice tray. He dumped the ice into the sink, and picked a single cube.

‘Your hand OK?’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Who were they? Yakuza?’

‘That’s a safe bet.’

‘What does Namie have to do with the yakuza?’

‘Who knows?’ Ryo said, picking up a fresh piece of ice. The first had already melted to water in his palm. ‘You should probably go home, Tomohiko. Give me a call if you find anything out.’

‘What’re you going to do?’

‘I’m staying here tonight. Namie might try to call.’

‘I should stay —’

‘Go home,’ Ryo said immediately. ‘They might’ve left somebody to watch. If we both stay here, they’ll start to wonder what we’re up to.

He was right.

‘You think something happened at the bank?’

Ryo shrugged. He poked at the burn on his left hand and winced.

It was already past dinner time when Tomohiko got home. His father was in the TV room watching a baseball game, and his younger sister was in her own room.

Tomohiko’s parents had very little to say about the way Tomohiko lived his life. They were happy that their son had got into the electrical engineering department at a well-known university and that he seemed to be paying attention in class and getting good marks, unlike many of his peers. He had explained his work with Ryo by telling them that he had a part-time job at a computer shop.

His mom put out some fish, vegetables, stewed meat and miso soup for him. Tomohiko got his own rice. He wondered what Ryo would be doing for dinner that night.

Though they had known each other for three years, Tomohiko knew very little about Ryo’s upbringing and family. About the only thing he did know was that Ryo’s father used to run a pawnshop, and that he died when Ryo was still young. He didn’t think he had any siblings. His mother was still alive, but it was unclear whether he was living with her. Nor did he have any close friends, at least as far as Tomohiko was aware.

The same went for Namie Nishiguchi. They entrusted her with the accounting side of their business, but never talked much about her private life. He knew that she worked at a bank, but didn’t even know what she did there.

And now yakuza were looking for her.

He wondered what that was all about.

Tomohiko finished his dinner and was about to go up to his room when he heard the news on the television start. The ball game was over.

‘A middle-aged man was found bleeding from a stab wound to the chest around eight o’clock this morning,’ the newscaster was saying. ‘A passer-by discovered the man and notified the police. The man, identified as a Mr Mikio Makabe, was taken to the hospital, but died of his wounds shortly after arriving. Witnesses reported seeing a suspicious male carrying a large knife in the area just before the attack. Police are now in pursuit of the man as a suspect in the stabbing. Mr Makabe had been on his way to work at the Taiko Bank’s Showa branch not more than one hundred metres from the place he was found. Next —’

Everything up to that part had made Tomohiko think that it was just another random mugging – they’d been on the rise recently. But when he heard the name of the bank branch, he froze. That’s where Namie works. Tomohiko went into the hallway and picked up the phone. He hammered the buttons, his heart racing.

Ryo didn’t pick up at the office. Tomohiko let it ring ten times before hanging up.

He thought for a moment, then went into the living room to watch the news on the off-chance there might be an update on the stabbing. He sat down next to his dad, feigning interest in the other news stories so his dad wouldn’t start talking to him about his ‘future’. The news was almost over when the phone rang, jolting Tomohiko to his feet. ‘I’ll get it,’ he called, running into the hallway.

‘Sonomura residence.’

‘It’s me.’

‘I just tried calling you,’ Tomohiko said, lowering his voice.

‘You see the news?’

‘Yeah. What’s it mean?’

‘It’ll take too long to explain over the phone. Think you can get out?’

‘What?’ Tomohiko glanced back at the living room. ‘You mean now?’

‘Yeah, now.’

‘I think so.’

‘Good. We need to talk about Namie.’

‘You hear from her?’ Tomohiko asked, gripping the receiver.

‘She’s sitting right next to me.’

‘What?’

‘I’ll explain later. Just come, quick. And not to the office…’ Ryo gave him the name of a hotel and a room number.

Tomohiko swallowed. It was the same hotel where he used to meet Yuko Hanaoka, the older woman he’d dated in high school.

‘Be right there,’ he said. He repeated the room number to himself and hung up.

He was still in time to catch the train. It was a route burned into his memory. Yuko had been his first, and for a long time after, his only. He hadn’t even kissed another girl until hooking up with a classmate at a party last year.

Once inside the hotel he made straight for Room 2015.

‘Who’s there?’ came Ryo’s voice from inside.

‘The Kyoto Alien,’ Tomohiko replied. It was the title of one of their poorer-selling computer games.

Ryo opened the door. He looked tired, with stubble on his chin. He indicated for Tomohiko to come into the small, twin room.

There was a table and two chairs by the window. Namie was sitting in one of the chairs.

‘Hi,’ she said. She was smiling, but she looked tired, too.

‘Evening,’ Tomohiko replied and sat down on the nearest bed, its sheets still perfectly smooth. ‘Right, so…’ He looked up at Ryo. ‘What’s going on?’

Ryo had his hands in both pockets of his cotton trousers as he leaned up against the wall by the table.

‘Namie called about an hour after you left. She said she couldn’t work for us anymore, so she wanted to return our ledger and documents. She’s running.’

Tomohiko looked over at her. ‘This have something to do with the guy at your bank who got killed?’

‘Something,’ Ryo said. ‘It wasn’t Namie who killed him, by the way.’

‘I didn’t think it was,’ Tomohiko said, though the possibility had crossed his mind for a second.

‘Apparently that honour goes to one of the fine gentleman who paid us a visit,’ Ryo told him.

Tomohiko swallowed. ‘Why?’

Namie sat silently with her head drooping. Ryo glanced in her direction, then turned back to Tomohiko. ‘Remember the big guy with the navy blue jacket? His name’s Enomoto. Namie was… helping him out.’

‘You mean with money?’

‘Yeah, money. But not her own. She was using the bank’s online system to siphon money into his account.’

‘How much?’

‘She doesn’t know exactly how much. Some of the bigger transfers were in the two million range, though. And that went on for over a year.’

‘You can just do that?’ Tomohiko asked Namie.

She didn’t look up.

‘Yes, you can,’ Ryo answered on her behalf. ‘But it’s not foolproof. Someone caught wind of it. Makabe.’

‘The guy on the news.’

Ryo nodded. ‘Except he didn’t know Namie was behind it when he brought it to her attention. So Namie told Enomoto someone was on to him. Well, Enomoto didn’t like losing his golden-egg-laying goose, so he called in a hit.’

Tomohiko’s heart was thudding in his chest.

‘The good news,’ said Ryo, ‘is that Namie’s involvement never came to light. The bad news is: this Makabe guy’s dead and it’s basically her fault.’

Namie’s shoulders were shaking. She was crying.

‘Couldn’t you have put it a little nicer?’ asked Tomohiko.

‘No point trying to paint it any other way.’

‘Yeah, but —’

‘It’s all right,’ Namie said. She looked up. There was determination in her eyes. ‘It’s the truth, anyway. Ryo’s right.’

‘Which is why Namie realised she needed to cut ties with Enomoto,’ Ryo explained, pointing to where two suitcases sat, both bulging. ‘Now they’re after her. If she disappears, they killed Makabe for nothing. That, and Enomoto needs more money, apparently. She was supposed to send it over today around noon.’

‘He’s got a few businesses he’s running. But none of them are doing very well,’ Namie muttered.

‘So why’d you help him in the first place?’

‘Doesn’t matter now, does it,’ Ryo said, frowning.

Tomohiko scratched his head. ‘OK, then, what are we going to do?’

‘We’re going to get her out of here,’ Ryo said. ‘Problem is, we don’t exactly know where to, yet. If she stays, Enomoto or the police will track her down eventually. So I’m going to find a place today or tomorrow where she can stay for an extended period of time.’

‘You think you can?’

‘I have to,’ Ryo said, opening the fridge and pulling out a beer.

‘I’m sorry,’ Namie said. ‘Sorry to both of you. If the police catch me, I promise I won’t tell them you helped.’

‘You got money?’ Tomohiko asked.

‘Enough,’ she said. There was a bit of hesitation in her voice.

‘That’s where Namie’s a genius,’ Ryo said, beer in hand. ‘She saw this day coming, and set up no fewer than five secret personal accounts, funnelling money away to each of them. It’s impressive.’

‘It’s not something I’m proud of,’ Namie said, putting a hand to her forehead.

‘Having money is better than not having it,’ Tomohiko said.

‘Truth,’ Ryo said, taking a gulp of his beer.

‘So what should I do?’ Tomohiko asked, looking between the two.

Ryo fixed Tomohiko with a stare. ‘I want you stay here for two days with her.’

‘What?’

‘We can’t let her go outside. Someone has to go shopping for her. You’re the only one I can ask.’

‘OK, I guess.’ Tomohiko brushed back his hair and looked over at Namie. She returned his glance. Her need was plain to see in her face. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’m on it.’

For food on Saturday, Tomohiko brought some boxed bento lunches he had bought in a department store food court back to the hotel room. They contained an assortment of rice and vegetables, broiled fish, and fried chicken. He used some of the hotel teabags to make green tea and they ate at the small table. ‘Sorry you have to eat this stuff,’ Namie said. ‘You could just eat at a restaurant or something, you know.’

‘Nah,’ Tomohiko said, ‘I’d rather eat here with you than eat alone. And these bento boxes aren’t that bad.’

‘They aren’t, are they,’ Namie said, smiling.

When they’d finished eating, Tomohiko pulled some pudding he’d bought out of the refrigerator. Namie gave him a girlish smile.

‘You’re very thoughtful, you know. You’ll make a good husband someday.’

‘You think?’ Tomohiko grinned as he took a mouthful of his pudding.

‘You don’t have a girlfriend, do you?’

‘No. I had one last year for a while, but we broke up. Which is to say, she dumped me.’

‘Really, why was that?’

‘She said she liked guys who knew how to have fun. I guess I was too quiet for her.’

‘Well, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about,’ Namie said, shaking her head. Then, just as suddenly, she chuckled. ‘Not that I’m qualified to say anything about anyone’s love life,’ she said, exploring the surface of her pudding with the tip of her spoon.

After a moment she looked up. ‘You’re wondering about Enomoto, aren’t you?’ she asked. ‘Why did I get tangled up with him?’

‘Hey, it’s none of my business —’

‘No, it’s OK. It’s a ridiculous story anyway,’ Namie said, setting down her half-eaten cup of pudding. ‘Got any smokes?’

‘Just Mild Sevens. The light ones, with the filter.’

‘That’ll do.’

She took a cigarette from him, lit it, and took a deep drag. The white smoke curled up into the air.

‘About a year and half ago, I got into a little bit of an accident with my car,’ she began, looking out the window. ‘It was just a scrape. And it wasn’t exactly my fault, either. Except I could have picked a better van to run into.’

Tomohiko raised an eyebrow. ‘Yakuza?’

Namie nodded. ‘They got out of the van and surrounded my car, right there in the middle of the road. For a second, I didn’t know what was going to happen. That’s when Enomoto showed up. He was in another car, but he seemed to know the guys that were on me. He worked it out so I would only owe them for repairs.’

‘Let me guess, the repairs cost millions?’

Namie shook her head. ‘No, more like a hundred thousand. Enomoto even apologised for not being able to work out a better deal. You might not believe it, but he was a real gentleman back then.’

‘You’re right, I don’t believe it.’

‘No, really. He dressed beautifully and always said he wasn’t “one of them”.’

‘So wait, you two were dating?’ Tomohiko asked.

Namie didn’t answer right away. Instead she dragged at her cigarette, her eyes following the smoke trail.

‘I know this sounds like an excuse, but he was really nice. I thought he really loved me. And, to tell the truth, that was the first time I’d ever felt that.’

‘So you wanted to do something for him, I get it.’

‘It was more that I was afraid he’d lose interest. I wanted to show him I could be helpful.’

‘By stealing for him?’

‘It was stupid, I know. He said he needed it for a new business, and of course I didn’t doubt a thing.’

‘But you had realised he was yakuza, right?’

‘Mostly. But by then, it really didn’t matter.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, as long as he was with me, I didn’t care what he was.’

Tomohiko grunted and stared at the table. Namie snubbed out her cigarette.

‘For some reason I keep hooking up with the wrong men. I guess it’s just my luck.’

‘Something like this happen before?’

‘Sort of. Got another cigarette?’

He offered his pack. She took a cigarette and lit it.

‘I used to date this bartender. At least. he said he was a bartender, but he hardly ever went to work. He loved gambling, so he would borrow money from me and throw it all down the drain. Once my savings hit rock bottom, he left. Guess he didn’t have a use for me anymore.’

‘When was this?’

‘Three years ago, maybe?’

‘Three years…’

‘That’s right, it was just before we first met. It’s part of why I went in the first place.’

Went to a place to have sex with young men.

‘I told Ryo about it once, a while ago. I don’t think he listens to me much, though. He’s probably sick of my boy troubles by now.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I would be, if I were him. Besides, he doesn’t like it when people make the same mistake twice.’

‘That’s true enough.’ Tomohiko agreed. ‘Mind if I ask you something?’

‘What?’

‘Was it easy making those transfers at the bank?’

‘That’s a tricky question,’ Namie said, crossing her legs and taking a few puffs. She seemed to be pondering her explanation. By the time she spoke, her cigarette had burned down close to her fingers. ‘I suppose you could say it was easy, yes. Which is what made it risky.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, all you really have to do is forge a transfer slip.’ Namie scratched the side of her forehead, the cigarette dangling precariously between her fingers. ‘Write an amount and the account the money is destined for, get two other people to put their stamp on it, and that’s it. One of those people is the section chief and he’s not at his desk all the time, so it’s pretty easy to grab his stamp without him knowing. The other person’s stamp was easy to forge.’

‘Isn’t there anyone checking that stuff?’

‘There’s a daily ledger that shows remaining balances. The head of accounts is supposed to watch that, but as long as you have the stamp you can just forge documents saying they checked it. That holds them off for long enough.’

‘What do you mean, long enough?’

‘Well, it has to do with the money I was using. It came from a special pool set aside for temporary payments.’

‘What’re those?’

‘Say someone sends money from their bank to a customer at another bank. What happens is the receiving bank pays their customer immediately, then settles accounts with the sending bank later. The money they use to pay transfers up front is called “temporary funds”, which every financial institution has set aside in a special pool. That’s what I had my eye on.’

‘Sounds pretty technical.’

‘Well, to a point, yes. In order to manipulate temporary funds you need specialised knowledge, so only the people who have been working it for a long time know what’s going on. At my branch, that was me. In theory, accounting was supposed to check everything two or three times after I did my work, but in practice everything was pretty much left up to me.’

‘So they weren’t checking it when they were supposed to be?’

‘Right. For example, at our bank, if you transfer more than a million yen, you have to record the amount and the destination in a special ledger and get the section chief’s permission to borrow the key you need to access the terminal where everything happens. The results of the transfer are printed out in a daily report from the computer the following day and the section chief is supposed to check those. However, they hardly ever do. Which is why, if you hide the illegitimate transfer slip and the daily report for that day, and make sure your boss only sees slips and reports from regular days, no one raises a fuss.’

‘OK. It sounds pretty complicated, but I gather the point here is that your boss is lazy.’

‘Yeah, though that only goes so far.’ Namie let out a big sigh. ‘It was only a matter of time before somebody like Makabe found out.’

‘Which you knew. But that didn’t stop you from doing it, huh.’

‘Yeah. It was like I was addicted.’ Namie flicked the ashes from her cigarette into the ashtray. ‘All you have to do is hit some keys on the keyboard and these huge sums fly every which way. You start feeling like you have some kind of magic power. But it’s all an illusion.’

Tomohiko had told his parents the night before that he’d be staying nights at work for a few days, and one of the twin beds became his. He took a shower, put on the hotel bathrobe and got under the covers. Namie went into the bathroom after him. The lights in the room were off, except for the little footlight at the bottom of the bed.

He heard Namie get out of the bath and into the other bed. Though his back was to her, he felt acutely aware of her presence just an arm’s reach away. A faint smell of shampoo drifted through the air.

Tomohiko lay still in the darkness. His mind was racing, trying to figure out ways of getting Namie out of there safely. Ryo hadn’t called them at all that day.

‘Tomohiko?’ He heard Namie behind him. ‘You asleep?’

‘No,’ he replied, eyes closed.

‘Me neither.’

That came as no surprise. She would soon be fleeing for her life to destinations unknown.

‘Do you ever think about her?’

‘Who?’

‘Yoko.’

‘Oh.’ The name sent a shiver down his back. He tried to keep the emotion out of his voice. ‘Sometimes.’

‘I thought so,’ Namie said. ‘Did you love her?’

‘I don’t know. I was pretty young.’

He heard Namie laugh. ‘You’re still pretty young.’

‘I guess.’

‘And I – I just ran.’

‘From the apartment that day? Yes, you did.’

‘You two probably thought I was some kind of reject. To go all the way to that apartment only to turn tail and run.’

‘Not particularly.’

‘Sometimes, I regret leaving.’

‘Really?’

‘I do. I think maybe if I’d just stayed and let things happen it would have changed me, somehow. I know it sounds funny, but I think maybe I would have been reborn.’

Tomohiko lay in silence. There was a weight to her words he didn’t fully understand, but something told him he was about to.

The air in the room felt heavy. She spoke again. ‘I wonder if it’s too late.’

‘Namie…’ Might as well go for it. ‘You saying what I think you’re saying?’

She was silent. Now I’ve done it, he thought.

‘You don’t think I’m too old?’ she said after a long silence.

Tomohiko breathed an inward sigh of relief. ‘You haven’t changed a bit in three years,’ he said.

‘So was I already too old three years ago?’

He laughed. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

He heard Namie get out of bed. Seconds later, she was crawling under his covers.

‘Rebirth would be nice,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘But I’ll settle for this.’

Ryo showed up on Monday morning and began by apologising to Namie. He hadn’t been able to find a safe house for her yet but thought she should move to another hotel for the time being. This one was a few hours away to the north, in Nagoya.

‘It’ll only be temporary.’

‘That’s not what you said last night,’ Tomohiko protested. Ryo had called late with news that he’d found a good place and they would be leaving in the morning.

‘Things changed. I’m sorry. But you won’t have to put up with it for long, I promise.’

‘I’m OK with that,’ Namie said. ‘I lived in Nagoya before, so I know the place.’

‘That’s part of why I picked it,’ Ryo said.

A white sedan was parked in the underground lot at the hotel. A rental, Ryo told them. If he went anywhere in his van, Enomoto or one of his goons was sure to find out.

‘Here’s a ticket for the bullet train. And a map to your hotel,’ he said, handing an envelope and a printout to Namie once they were in the car.

‘Thank you for everything,’ she said.

‘One other thing – you should probably take this with you.’ Ryo held out a paper bag. She looked inside the bag and chuckled.

Tomohiko craned his head over to take a look. Inside the bag was a curly-haired wig, big sunglasses, and the kind of face mask people wore when they had colds.

‘I’m guessing you’re going to use an ATM card to get the money out of your accounts,’ Ryo said, turning the ignition. ‘When you do, you’re not going to want to look like yourself. And whatever you do, make sure the camera doesn’t see your face.’

‘You’re very thorough. Thanks.’ Namie took the paper bag and managed to cram it into one of her already overstuffed suitcases.

‘Give us a call when you get there,’ Tomohiko said.

‘I will,’ Namie said, and she smiled at him.

The car drove out of the car park.

Once Namie was on the train, Tomohiko and Ryo went back to the office.

‘I hope she makes it,’ Tomohiko said.

Ryo shook his head. ‘You hear the Enomoto story?’

Tomohiko told him he had.

‘Stupid, isn’t she?’

‘I wouldn’t say that.’

‘Enomoto had her pegged from the start. He wanted to use her position at the bank. That whole thing with the traffic accident? Enomoto planned that from the get-go. You see? Stupid. She’s always been that way, too. She falls for some guy and can’t think straight.’

Tomohiko swallowed. He had nothing to say, except his stomach felt like he’d just swallowed a ball of lead. He wasn’t sure he would have realised the set-up either. Tomohiko went home early that day and waited for a call from Namie, but none came.

Four days later he read in the newspaper that Namie Nishiguchi’s body had been discovered at a hotel in Nagoya. She’d been stabbed with a knife in the chest and stomach.

Namie had filed for a two-day vacation from work. When she didn’t show up on the third day, people started looking. They found five bank books in her possession. As of Monday, the money in those accounts was well over twenty million yen. By the time her body was found, they had been emptied.

The bank investigated and found out about her illegal transfers. The accounts she had used led the police to arrest one of the directors at the bank on suspicion of embezzlement, making him a suspect in her murder in the process.

The money she withdrew from those five accounts just before her death was never found. A security camera at the ATM where she had made the withdrawals showed a woman dressed in the same wig, sunglasses, and mask that had been found in her luggage.

Tomohiko threw down the newspaper, ran to the bathroom and emptied the contents of his stomach.