The next day at work the salaryman feels soulless and empty. He stares at the cursor blinking slowly on the screen.
He types out “this has to end.”
He hits enter, and after a pause, he adds, “Whatever hold they have over her ends today.”
With determination he gets up from his desk and leaves work, and without saying a word, he rides the train; he stares out the window. At the station he walks to the host club. But the magic of the place has worn thin. The sleaze hidden by layers of paint has bled through. He keeps his head down and pays the cover charge.
“Name?” The young woman the maitre’d kept trying to pawn him off on asks.
The salaryman looks around panicked. “Can I use the bathroom before we do this? It’s an emergency,” he says.
She sighs, “Yes, but you have to promise to come back and see me after.”
He nods his head and steps inside to see the stable of men and women who are free for chatting; they all watch him as he approaches. He doesn’t see Yoko in the lineup.
He calls out her name loudly: “YOKO.” He looks around, hoping she will pop out and they can make their escape. But no luck. The lined-up people look concerned at first, then scared.
The salaryman turns to a random girl in the line. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says with fear in her eyes.
The maitre d’, now finished in his own bathroom, rushes over. “You must leave. How did you get in here? Security was ordered that you would never step foot in here again,” he demands. He wipes his bald head, sweat running down his face in panic.
“Not without Yoko. YOKO!” He shouts louder. Security lining up ready to pounce.
“Last chance: leave peacefully and save us both the added embarrassment,” the maitre d’ demands.
“Not without Yoko,” he shouts, and as the words leave his mouth, the maitre d’ motions for security to get rid of him.
Two large men pick him up off his feet and carry him as he kicks and screams out the side door into the alley, where the dumpster sits; far above is the window to Yoko’s dorm.
“Boss warned you,” the cruel-looking man snickers. That’s when the first punch lands. He shouts for help, but no one is going to help him in a back alley in the pleasure district.
Then He shouts out “YOKO” right before they blast him in the stomach, making His diaphragm muscles spasm violently. He can’t breathe; the world turns red as his body starves for oxygen.
In her prison cell of a room, Yoko looks out the window to the street below to see him being held up while they take turns practicing punches on him. She feels an anger growing in her, one so fiery. She momentarily forgets about her contract and about everything except helping her boyfriend.
‘He is mine,’ she growls in her head as she transforms. She jumps down and lands next to their feet, then quickly transforms back.
The men stare at her. “What the hell?” One of them says his arm is stopping cocked back, ready to see if they can do some unlicensed dentistry.
“Let him go,” Yoko shouts, balling up her fists.
“Get back inside, Yoki,” the maitre d’ says from behind her.
“NO, let him go,” she growls, her ears sticking out of her hair. She sees his hand coming. But it’s too late to move. He slaps her, and the alley rings with the sound, then it goes absolutely quiet, the bonds clamping down on her, dragging her to the dirty street.
They beat him senseless as she watches, tears flowing quietly down her cheeks. A rage unlike anything she has felt in her life is burning, turning an ember of resentment into a bonfire. “Bonfire,” she smirks.
She watches as the goons carry him out to the street and throw him into a cab.
“See, we all get to have what we want. You get to stay alive, and he gets to stay alive. And I get to stay alive. You are never to be within 500 feet of him ever, or you will die; your heart will stop, and you will die,” he says, the contract being rewritten. The scroll added a new line on the ancient paper locked away in the gang’s headquarters.
“Now Yoko Kitsune, I command you to get back to work,” the maître d’ says, and she obeys. She has no choice.
But she has a choice; her fox spirit delights in the ways she will get revenge. She waits, letting things settle down; she aches at night when she sleeps alone. She smiles and has a pretend good time with the guests. Secretly pocketing a lighter from a guest. Smiling while she waits for a quiet night when the bosses come to collect the earnings.
Two weeks later the bosses arrive on the last night of the week; the club is closed at 4 in the morning when they arrive. 3 big men with bigger suitcases.
She accidentally turns the sprinklers off. ‘Oppsies,’ she smirks. Then she feels so clumsy tonight; she keeps falling and handcuffing the doors closed. She smirks as she transforms and slinks to the bar, accidentally spilling some alcohol onto the carpet.
She smirks and lights the carpet on fire. “Oh, so clumsy,” she grins, her teeth that of a fox. She watches the fire rapidly spread and heads to her dorm prison. Then out the window.
She watches from a nearby building, waiting for her contract to burn up so she can be free. But as the building burns to nothing, she realizes the contract is still enforced.
“How could? They didn’t keep it here?” She sighs in her human form, sitting naked on the roof, shivering slightly at the cold.
The next night the deceased maitre d’ has a gas leak in his house, and it explodes. Yoko cleans her tail with her tongue, grooming herself while she watches.
She feels a pit in her stomach opening when the contract is still in place. A fancy car drives up and idles as firefighters try to control the blaze.
She scampers down to listen. She puts her head to the roof of the car and can hear what they are saying.
“It wasn’t an accident; someone is coming for us. Any word on where that yokai went that was working there?” male voice number one says.
The fox flicks her tail. ‘Yes, someone is coming for you; it’s me,’ she thinks.
“No word, no body either.” male voice number two says.
An older-sounding voice, still male, says, “We should check the vault at the office and see if the contract is still in place.”
She digs her claws into the rubber seal on the sunroof and tucks herself down tight to the roof. She rides as they pass the doors to a building with men guarding the door; they turn and go down into an underground parking lot in the basement of the medium-rise building. Where more men wearing suits guard the underground entrance. She smirks, ‘Must be important.’
The headquarters of the infamous Nori family burned that night. She watches from a building half a block away. Smiling as the bonds break, leaving her free.
She visits him that night, excited.
She gets to the window and is ready to go inside when she sees the window is closed. She imagines he is trying to move on. She claws at the window trying to get in. ‘So close,’ she thinks. The first snow falls.
She can see him lying there with ugly bruises faded to an even uglier yellow; the stitches are removed, and the scars look like they are healing nicely. She sits on top of the air conditioner naked and beats on the window till he wakes up.
He opens the window wordlessly.
“You didn’t have to protect me.” She says, pushing him backwards. He stumbles and falls onto the bed. “You should have just left me alone. Why did you pick me?”
“I wanted to; I want to be with you,” he says. “I just wanted to be with you.”
“Do you still want to be with me? I did some bad things to be here,” she says, her eyes looking down at the floor.
“Yes,” he whispers, holding her to his chest.
“We can’t stay in Japan anymore; it’s not safe,” she says back, kissing his cheek.
“What do we do?” He asks, panicking. He doesn’t even have a friend in another country, let alone one that would shelter him and an unknown girlfriend.
She offers him the choice, “Come with me to America; there must be a place for people like me there, or never see me again.”
“I will go, but how will you find the place?” he asks, confused.
“I know a cat who might be able to help,” she says, her brows tightly forced together.
“A cat?” he asks.
“Not just a cat or any cat, but The Cat,” she whispers.
