A Lonely Resurrection

The bathing area was empty—peak time would be in the evening—and, like the locker room, spartan in its unpretentiousness: nothing more than a large square space, a high ceiling, white tile walls dripping with condensation, bright fluorescent lighting, and an exhaust fan on one wall that seemed to have given up on its long battle with the steam within. The only concession to an aesthetic not strictly utilitarian was a large, brightly colored mosaic of Ginza 4-chome on the wall above the bath itself.
    We sat in front of the spigots to scrub. The trick is to use hot water, filling the
sento-
supplied low plastic pail with increasingly painful bucketfuls and pouring them over your head and body. If you bathe using only tepid water, the soaking tub will be unbearable when you first try to enter it.
    Tatsu completed his cleaning cycle with characteristic brusqueness and got in the bath ahead of me. I took a bit longer. When I was ready, I eased in beside him. Immediately I felt my muscles trying to shrink back from the heat, and knew that in a moment they would give up their fruitless struggle and surrender to delirious relaxation.
    “Yappari, kore ga saiko da na?”
I said to him, feeling myself begin to unwind. This is great, isn’t it?
    He nodded. “An unusual place for a meeting. But a good one.”
    I settled deeper into the water. “You’ve been drinking all that tea, so I figured you’d appreciate a place that’s good for your health.”
    “Ah, you were being considerate. I thought that perhaps this was your way of showing me you had nothing to hide.”
    I laughed. I briefed him on the
dojo
and the underground fights, and on Murakami’s connection with both. I gave him my assessment of Murakami’s strengths and weaknesses: deadly, on the one hand; unable to blend, on the other.
    “You say the promoters of these fights are losing money,” he said, when I was done.
    I watched the mural, my eyes half closed. “Based on what Murakami told me, yes. At three fights a night with two-million-yen payouts to the winners, plus expenses, they’ve got to be in the red. Even on those nights where they have two or even one, they can’t be doing more than breaking even.”
    “What does that tell you?”
    I closed my eyes. “That they’re not doing it for the money.”
    “Yes. The question, then, is why are they doing it? What is the benefit they derive?”
    I pictured the bridged, predatory smile. “Some of these people, like Murakami, are pretty sick. I think they enjoy it.”
    “I’m sure they do. But I doubt entertainment alone would be sufficient motive to create and sustain this kind of enterprise.”
    “What do you think, then?”
    “When you were with Special Forces,” he asked, his tone musing and thoughtful, “how did you treat personnel who performed a vital function for the unit?”
    I opened my eyes and glanced at him. “There had to be redundancy. A backup. Like an extra kidney.”
    “Yes. Now put yourself in Yamaoto’s shoes. With you, he could quietly eliminate anyone who proved uninterested in his rewards, or invulnerable to his blackmail, or who otherwise presented a threat to the machine he has established. You served a vital function. Following your loss, Yamaoto would have learned not to allow such reliance on a single person. He would seek to build redundancy into the system.”
    “Even if Murakami had been a total replacement.”
    “Which you say he is not.”
    “So the
dojo
Murakami is running, the fights. . .”
    “It seems they constitute a training course of sorts.”
    “A training course. . .” I said, shaking my head. He was looking at me, waiting, one step ahead as usual.
    Then I saw it. “Assassins?” I asked.
    He raised his eyebrows, as if to say,
You tell me.
    “The
dojo
is the course introduction,” I said, nodding. “And with the kind of training they do there, they’ve already selected for individuals predisposed to violence. Exposure every day, sometimes twice a day, to that regimen desensitizes the individual further. Being a spectator at actual death matches is the next step.”
    “And the fights themselves. . .”
    “The fights complete the process. Sure, the whole thing is just a form of basic training. Better, in fact, because only a relatively few soldiers who pass through basic training experience combat and killing afterward. Here, killing is part of the curriculum. And the cadre you create is composed only of the ones who survive, who