Osaka (2)
It was before I even had a chance to say anything.
The large yakuza in the middle reached out as if he meant to grab me by the collar.
Obviously, I had no intention of standing still and letting him get a grip on me.
Whoosh—
The instant I stepped back half a pace, his hand swiped through empty air.
Our eyes met. His expression changed in a flash.
“Kono yaro.”
He spread his palm and swung it sideways at me, clearly aiming to slap my face.
And right at that moment, with a short breath, the true qi in my dantian spread through my entire body.
A smooth current as thin as thread, yet unbroken.
It definitely felt different from before.
Not bad.
I leaned my head back and calmly let the incoming palm pass by.
I could see the tips of his fingers slicing past my nose.
Whiff!
Maybe because my inner power had more room to move now, my senses had sharpened a little too.
The direction his shoulder tightened, the angle of his toes, the exact moment his pupils shifted.
I could read it all more clearly than before.
“Haa!”
His face twisted, and he threw a straight punch instead.
This time I let it slide off my forearm. I barely touched it, but the fist bounced outward as if something had knocked it aside.
I quickly slipped another half step inside his reach.
Then I caught the elbow of the arm he’d extended and twisted it in the opposite direction.
Crack!
The joint warped violently, and the sensation of it slipping out of place came through in ugly detail.
The big yakuza screamed before he even realized it.
“Gah—aaah!”
His posture collapsed as his arm twisted with the motion.
Without hesitation, I drove the index and middle fingers of my right hand, charged with internal force, into the point just below his sternum.
Solar plexus. Hit there directly, and the diaphragm spasms, folding the whole body inward.
Thud.
The sound of air being driven out.
His eyes rolled white, and he dropped on the spot.
It was over in just two exchanges.
Click.
The other yakuza watching us from the left pulled something from his pocket.
A jackknife. The sharpened blade caught the sunlight and flashed.
“Korosaretainoka!”
The knife-wielding yakuza looked pretty vicious.
He didn’t seem the least bit hesitant about stabbing someone.
I raised my inner power another notch and focused on his movements.
His pupils, the direction his shoulder muscles tightened, the way he planted his feet.
He’s not a professional.
The hand gripping the knife was stiff with tension.
Most of his weight was on the front foot, and the back foot was light, almost floating.
He didn’t even come close to a guy like Marek, the one I’d seen in Hong Kong.
“Aaaah!”
He slashed wildly across with the knife.
I didn’t move any more than I had to.
I simply tilted my upper body just enough to keep the blade skimming past me.
The tip grazed the front hem of my T-shirt by a hair.
Whiff—
The second attack was a stab.
The line of the thrust was crystal clear.
I knocked the outside of his wrist away with my forearm.
Tap!
At the same time, I caught the space between his thumb and index finger with my hand.
Then I pressed hard on the Hegu point with my finger.
His fingers spread open for an instant.
Clink.
The jackknife hit the ground.
He reflexively bent down to pick it up, and in that exact moment, my knee snapped upward and struck his jaw squarely.
Bang!
The yakuza’s head jerked back hard.
His eyes went slack, and he toppled over backward.
Thud.
That’s two.
The last one was the guy on the right.
After seeing the other two drop in an instant, he looked thoroughly rattled.
He stepped back one pace at a time, then pulled out his phone and began retreating quickly toward the mouth of the alley.
“H-hey…”
If he called for backup, this would get a lot more annoying.
I hurriedly picked up the jackknife from the ground.
I weighed it in my hand.
Compared to a proper throwing knife, the balance was terrible, but it still had a blade.
Been a while.
I drew a thin thread of inner power to my fingertips.
Then I flicked my wrist low and sent it gliding sideways with practiced ease.
Shadow Snake Blade.
One of the Tang Clan’s hidden-weapon techniques, a throwing method that flew like a snake slipping through brush.
Because it bent in from low angles with such a subtle curve, it was hard for an opponent to read.
Of course, with my current level of inner power, I couldn’t unfold it perfectly.
Still, I could imitate the essential principle well enough.
Swoosh.
The jackknife flew a handspan above the pavement.
It wasn’t perfect. But the distinctive curving shift of the Shadow Snake Blade was there.
Thwack!
The blade sank into the back of the fleeing yakuza’s thigh. His speed broke, and his leg buckled.
I grabbed the back of his neck and slammed him into the alley wall.
Crash!
The dull smack of his forehead against concrete echoed through the alley.
He sagged and slid down limply.
That was it.
In less than a moment, all three yakuza were down.
Not bad.
I let out a small laugh.
It had only been a month since I’d been fighting like a hunted dog in Hong Kong.
Now something like this barely even made me breathe harder. If anything, I felt relaxed.
I shook the numbness from my hand and turned around.
Then I asked Haruka, “Are you okay?”
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Haruka had been pressed against the wall, holding her breath.
Over the three years she’d done this work, she had never once thought it was safe.
But that danger had always meant something different—passing information to CIA personnel, running simple errands, the occasional dirty little task.
Standing face-to-face with yakuza like this was a completely different world.
Should I call Ryo now? Or should I call the police?
She was regretting the whole thing, cursing herself for having gotten involved in something no one had asked her to do, when she finally pulled out her phone.
At first, she didn’t even know what had happened.
She saw the big yakuza swing his palm.
And then Dohyun dodging it by some miracle.
Whiff!
When the next yakuza swung a fist at him, Dohyun moved so fast she could barely follow it with her eyes.
He slipped inside the yakuza’s reach, and then his hands moved with such precise coordination it looked as if they’d rehearsed it.
And then—
Crack!
A chilling sound pierced her ears.
It sounded like a tree branch snapping.
“Gah—aaah!”
A scream burst out of the yakuza.
Before the cry had even finished, Dohyun’s fingers drove into the point below the man’s sternum.
Thud.
There was the sound of air escaping, and the huge man collapsed right there.
“Huh…”
Haruka looked at Dohyun’s face.
It was astonishingly calm.
He didn’t look tense. He didn’t look afraid.
He had simply twisted a man’s arm backward as if it were nothing.
Click.
When the yakuza on the left pulled out a knife, the same thing happened.
Haruka felt like screaming, but Dohyun remained even more composed.
Even with the blade passing so close it seemed to brush him, his expression never changed once.
He’s not human.
By then, she found herself seriously thinking that.
After a few more movements, the knife clattered to the ground.
And then the yakuza who’d been hit by Dohyun’s knee crumpled as well.
Thud.
That was already two.
Was it really okay for yakuza to be falling this fast?
Just as that thought crossed her mind, Dohyun threw the knife at the last one.
Then there was another heavy crash.
They’re all down.
It felt like it had taken less than a minute in total for all three yakuza to be put on the ground.
The alley went quiet in an instant.
“…….”
Dohyun, after checking over the fallen yakuza, slowly walked back toward her, dusting his hands off as if nothing had happened.
“Are you okay?”
Haruka stared at him, dumbfounded.
Was this not a big deal to him? Was this just normal?
Until a moment ago, she had thought he was an ordinary man caught in the same situation as her.
Just some regular guy who ate with her in front of the convenience store and smiled awkwardly at the udon shop.
But now she wasn’t sure she knew who he was anymore.
“You said you were a part-timer, didn’t you?” Haruka asked, unconsciously taking a half step back.
Dohyun looked at her for a second, then scratched his neck and answered, a little sheepishly, “I am. For now.”
“…….”
Just as he seemed about to say something more, she sensed movement at the mouth of the alley.
Haruka flinched and turned.
“Um…”
A man was approaching hesitantly from the alley entrance.
He was short, with a gaunt frame and hollowed cheeks, dressed in worn work clothes.
He looked like a foreign laborer from the area.
“Wow…”
He looked down at the yakuza sprawled on the ground and his eyes went wide.
Then he looked back and forth between the two of them and slowly spoke in awkward Japanese.
“Um… you looking for friend? Canadian guy?”
His accent was blunt and clumsy in a way that was unmistakable, but his meaning was clear enough.
Apparently thinking that wasn’t enough, he made a square with his fingers and held it up in front of his face, mimicking a camera shutter with a click-click motion.
“A photo… person?”
At that, Haruka’s eyes widened.
The man smiled awkwardly and said to Dohyun, “Your friend is waiting.”
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
I followed the man through the alley, turning corners again and again.
After a while, the atmosphere around us began to change.
The Japanese residential blocks disappeared, and storefront signs with unfamiliar foreign writing started appearing on the building facades.
Halal grocery stores. South Asian food shops.
Stalls lined with bags of spices and sacks of rice.
The smell of the air changed too.
An unusual mix of spices and cooking oil hung over the alley.
So Osaka has a place like this.
It felt as if I’d suddenly crossed into somewhere in South Asia.
The faces I passed on the street had changed too. Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indonesian.
Old men sitting in front of a little grocery shop, sipping tea, glanced at us and then looked away.
“This way.”
The man gestured to me in English.
It was a run-down two-story building, with a small crescent-moon decoration hanging over the entrance.
An Islamic center.
I saw a few people taking off their shoes at the door.
I removed mine as well and stepped inside.
A prayer hall covered in carpet. The low murmur of recitation.
Three or four people sat together talking on one side, and in the corner a few others were sharing food wrapped in plastic.
No one paid me any mind.
Apparently a strange face coming and going here was nothing unusual.
He was hiding in a place like this?
As I looked around with a dumbfounded expression, the man pointed deeper inside.
I turned my gaze that way.
In the corner sat a man wearing a white round cap and loose, long clothing.
He was laughing as he spoke English with another foreign man seated beside him.
Whenever he met someone passing by, he nodded first. If someone offered him food, he accepted it without a trace of awkwardness.
More than that, his complexion looked good. Too good.
He’s not in hiding. He just looks like a local.
Then I remembered the photo from the file.
A freelance photographer with Canadian citizenship.
His hair and beard had grown out, but the broad frame I’d seen in the picture was still the same.
His back was straight and his shoulders wide, the kind of build that didn’t disappear even when he held a camera.
He looked more like a soldier than a photographer.
“Brought your friend.”
The man who’d guided me over approached him.
The Westerner lifted his head, shook his hand, and got to his feet.
He patted the man on the back twice, and for an instant a bandage wrapped around his own back showed through the loose clothing.
“Oh.”
The Westerner looked at me.
His eyes ran over me quickly—face, hands, stance, position.
The easy grin in his eyes vanished for a second, then returned.
He lifted a hand lightly and spoke.
“You got here faster than I expected.”
Just a brief line.
He smiled like he knew something I didn’t and held out his hand.
“Ryan Brannan. Ryan Brannan.”