Osaka (1)
The next morning, in front of a convenience store near our lodging.
I went out after getting her message, and Haruka was already waiting for me.
She had a can of coffee in each hand, with a convenience-store bag looped around one wrist.
When she spotted me, she gave an awkward little bow and greeted me.
“Good morning.”
Then, after hesitating for a moment, she made a soft sound of realization and held out one can of coffee and the bag.
“I thought you probably hadn’t had breakfast yet.”
I took the bag and opened it. Inside were onigiri, sandwiches, bread, pudding, and snacks—more than enough to count as a proper meal.
It was a lot for one person. When I glanced at her, she explained herself as if she were making an excuse.
“I didn’t know what you’d like. And I’m going to eat too.”
In the end, I chose an onigiri with grilled salmon.
I peeled off the wrapper and took a bite. The salty taste of salmon spread through my mouth.
Good.
I washed it down with a sip of sweet canned coffee.
Haruka saw me eating and took a sandwich out of her bag as well.
“……”
So the two of us sat side by side on the railing outside the convenience store and ate breakfast.
We watched the people hurrying off to work in the morning, while we took our time.
“So, what do we need to do today?”
Haruka finally asked after a while.
When I stared blankly at her, she added, “I was told I should help according to Mr. Lee’s instructions.”
So she wasn’t just here to show me to my lodging and call it a day.
It said local guide, and apparently she really was acting like one.
“Ah, well—”
Haruka glanced at me cautiously and said,
“You’re with that organization, right?”
It was a very roundabout question.
She hadn’t asked exactly what I was, but at the very least she seemed to know CIA existed.
“No, I’m just—uh, sort of doing a part-time job too.”
At my answer, her eyes widened.
“A part-time job?”
“Yeah. I mean, just simple work for pay. Haruka, what about you?”
At my question, her expression brightened a little as she answered.
“Same here.”
After that, Haruka looked noticeably more at ease.
Some of the tension had finally left her shoulders. She was definitely different from the awkward expression she’d worn yesterday.
I finished the last of my onigiri and stood up.
“Then shall we get going?”
“But what exactly are we supposed to do?”
Ah. I hadn’t told her yet.
I thought about how much I could say, then answered bluntly.
“Well, first we probably need to find someone who’s disappeared.”
“A missing person?”
Her eyebrows rose.
Now that I looked at her, she seemed like the kind of person whose thoughts showed right on her face.
I gave her a brief version of what I’d learned yesterday, keeping only what seemed safe to share.
A freelance photographer with Canadian citizenship. Last seen around Naniwa-ku. No contact for a month.
“A month, then that means—”
Haruka seemed about to say something, then looked at me and nodded.
She seemed to have some intuition about this line of work.
“We’re probably assuming he’s hidden himself. That’s what I was told.”
I added the explanation I’d received in advance.
That was enough. Haruka didn’t ask anything else.
“Then shall we start with Naniwa-ku like you said? Conveniently, I know this area pretty well.”
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Naniwa-ku and the surrounding streets.
Near the boundary where Nipponbashi gives way southward toward Shinsekai.
The atmosphere was completely different from the bright, bustling district of Dotonbori I’d seen the day before.
Just a block or two south of the tourist-packed avenue, the streets became quiet.
The buildings got lower and lower, and before long the whole area had the unmistakable feel of an old residential neighborhood.
Two-story houses and apartment buildings stood packed tightly along narrow alleys.
Between them were the occasional convenience store, laundromat, and barbershop.
Signs written in Japanese, old bicycles parked under eaves, cats sitting deep in the alleys.
Because of the rainy season, puddles had collected everywhere.
Small potted plants sat outside each house, and every corner where the lane bent had a vending machine standing there as if it had grown from the pavement.
It really felt like the kind of neighborhood you’d only ever see in a Japanese movie or manga.
Cute, neat, and incredibly quiet.
“Do you come around this way often?”
I asked as we walked.
Haruka nodded.
“This area is close to where I grew up. Ikuno, that side.”
She pointed toward the mouth of an alley.
“That butcher shop you can see there, I’ve known the owner since I was little. And there’s a Korean grocery store in that alley over there too.”
Just as she said, I could really see Korean signs—things like “Korean Food” and “Kimchi.”
It felt strange. Korean writing, right in the middle of Japan.
“So there are a lot of Koreans living here?”
“There used to be a huge number. Through my grandmother’s generation, anyway. There aren’t as many now.”
Haruka answered calmly.
I had no intention of digging further.
“By the way, you said you’re doing a part-time job too…”
Haruka let the sentence trail off a little awkwardly, as if it felt strange to call this work a part-time job.
Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she asked me,
“So you’re doing this for the money?”
I glanced at her. She didn’t seem to have any special motive behind the question.
She was probably just the type who got uncomfortable when conversations ran dry.
Even since yesterday, I’d felt that she was very considerate of other people.
“Well, yeah.”
I thought of the 1.25 million dollars waiting in a Singapore account and answered her.
Then I added that I was a doctor of Korean medicine, though right now I was only preparing for work after graduation.
“Anyway, this is pretty lucrative as side jobs go.”
Haruka gave a little snort of laughter and agreed.
“It is. I’m actually a freelance interpreter, but that alone isn’t enough to live on in Osaka. Thanks to this work, I can at least keep food on the table.”
Keep food on the table. It had been a while since I’d heard that expression.
She’d said her grandparents had taught her Korean, and every now and then old-fashioned phrases would slip out like that.
We were walking shoulder to shoulder, talking as we went, when—
“…”
Our eyes both shifted to one side.
There were men in suits standing at the mouth of an alley.
About three of them.
Just from a glance, it was obvious they weren’t ordinary people.
Their faces, their clothes, the tattoos peeking beneath rolled-up sleeves.
Yakuza.
We both looked away naturally.
There was no reason to make eye contact and invite trouble.
We walked a little farther and saw more men.
This time two were exchanging something in a secluded alley.
Haruka spoke first in a low voice.
“You’ve been seeing them too, haven’t you?”
I nodded.
Her lips had tightened slightly.
They were probably the Kageyamagumi guys we’d seen in yesterday’s paperwork.
We weren’t the only ones searching for the missing CIA man.
“They’re coming again.”
Just as Haruka said, three yakuza walked toward us from across the street.
The moment they passed us, one of them gave Haruka and me a sidelong look.
We quickly lowered our heads and stepped aside, looking like harmless tourists with no interest in anything.
The men cut off their gaze and strode past.
Looks like they’re already combing this area.
I clicked my tongue softly as I watched their backs.
As expected, this wasn’t going to be easy.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
We decided to keep lunch simple and grab some udon at a small shop nearby.
It looked like the kind of place mostly frequented by locals, but the owner immediately handed me a Korean menu the moment he saw me.
“Do I really look that obviously Korean?”
At my question, Haruka tilted her head for a second, then burst out laughing.
And in a small voice, she answered,
“No. But your eyes were shaking like crazy when you saw the Japanese menu.”
Ah. So that was it. I smiled awkwardly.
After thinking for a moment, I ordered kitsune udon.
It came in a clear broth with a thick slab of fried tofu on top, and the soup was simple but rich.
Whenever the owner said something, Haruka answered fluently.
I just ate my udon in silence. I could understand Mandarin, at least a little, if someone spoke standard Chinese, but Japanese was still at the level of total ignorance for me.
Good thing they sent Haruka with me.
I might have spent the whole day relying on a translation app otherwise.
When we left the shop after finishing our meal, Haruka spoke first.
“Um, if it’s okay with you, Mr. Lee, may I look into it a bit? I know a few people around here.”
Of course I’d be grateful if she did that.
Still, just in case, I asked again.
“Would that be all right? You probably noticed, but those people we saw earlier seem to be looking too.”
I deliberately shaped the word with my lips instead of saying “yakuza” out loud.
Haruka answered as if it were no big deal.
“Of course it isn’t all right.”
Then she added,
“I’m just going to see if there’s a place where a foreign friend could stay for about a month. A place that wouldn’t stand out to those men, where they could buy food once in a while and where a foreigner walking around wouldn’t look strange. In a neighborhood like this, that alone would narrow the options a lot.”
I was impressed by how neatly she laid it out.
So this was why they’d specifically assigned her to me.
“Let’s hurry. We should make the rounds before it gets dark.”
After that, I followed Haruka around a few places.
A shop owner she knew, a laundromat auntie, a real estate office tucked into the backstreets.
I simply trailed a step or two behind her and waited.
We were on our fourth stop, a convenience store, when something in Haruka’s expression changed as she came back outside.
“Let’s go.”
A little farther into the alley, she stood in front of a vending machine and bought a can of coffee while speaking.
“People in this neighborhood are afraid of the yakuza. A lot of them pretend they don’t know anything because they don’t want to get dragged into trouble. So when those kinds of people start asking questions, it can actually make them clamp up even more.”
Hiss—
She handed me one can, cracked open the other, and kept going.
“At the moment, there aren’t many places around here where a foreigner could stay long-term without catching the yakuza’s eye. There are cheap business hotels and guesthouses clustered south of Ebisucho and around Shin-Imamiya, but most of those are one- or two-night places. Backpackers come in, sleep a night or two, then move on.
Haruka was narrowing the possibilities with careful, methodical logic.
“If you want me to find a place where someone could stay for over a month, that’s not easy. And if he really was hiding himself, he wouldn’t have wanted to show a passport or ID, would he? If we assume he chose somewhere like that, then this area probably narrows down to three or four places.”
It was a pretty plausible theory.
After taking a sip of coffee, she went on.
“I asked one of the store clerks a little while ago when we stopped by. I asked if there were any foreigners staying around here long-term. He said there’s a big foreign man who sometimes comes to buy food near a guesthouse south of Ebisucho Station. He’s been coming for over two weeks, hardly speaks at all, and is always alone.”
Haruka even added that the candidate lodging seemed to be somewhere around here.
That was enough to make it worth checking.
“Let’s go.”
Haruka nodded and took the lead.
We turned into the alley leading south of Ebisucho Station, and the surroundings changed noticeably.
Old business hotels, coin laundries, and shuttered shops began to crowd in.
“From here on, be careful,” Haruka said in a lowered voice.
That was when we saw three men in suits walking toward us from farther down the alley.
They were the same guys we’d seen a few times already in this area.
Hmm...
But this time, their eyes were different.
Even from far away, they were openly fixed on Haruka and me.
“Oi.”
The man in the center stopped walking and called out to us.
The other two spread out naturally to either side, blocking the path.
The man in the middle said something in Japanese.
I couldn’t understand the words exactly, but from his tone alone I could tell what he meant.
Haruka, flustered, tried to explain something to him in halting Japanese, but it didn’t help.
Instead, he just flicked his hand at us with an even harsher tone than before.
Haruka’s face had gone pale as she turned to me.
“I-I told them we’re tourists, but I don’t think they believe me. They want us to follow them…”
She relayed the situation to me in a shaky voice, eyes uncertain.
At that moment, my mind went cold. I took a quick look around.
First, the three in front of us.
The man in the middle was the biggest.
Tattoos showed beneath his rolled-up sleeves.
The scars on his knuckles said he was used to throwing punches.
And his weight was pitched forward. He was ready to spring and use his fists at any second.
The man on the left was smaller, but his right pocket sagged.
Something heavy was inside. Most likely a weapon like a jackknife.
The last man on the right was standing half a step back.
He didn’t look like he intended to get his hands dirty himself. He was blocking the retreat instead.
As for the rest...
The alley was about three meters wide.
A vending machine was on the left. On the right, two bicycles were parked against the wall.
If we backed up, it was fifteen steps to the intersection we’d just passed.
Haruka was half a step behind me on my left.
Too many bad conditions for a clean escape.
It took less than a few seconds to assess everything.
I stepped slightly forward and steadied my breathing.
“Hoo...”
Deep in my lower abdomen, internal energy began to circulate quietly.
My center of gravity naturally dropped.
Then I said softly to Haruka,
“Step back a little.”