I light a JPS. 'You are so tough, Ai.' She shakes her head. 'The gap between how other people see you and how you see yourself is... a mystery, for me. I think you you are tough. I think are tough. I think I I am as tough as your shake which is nine parts pig lard, incidentally. I desperately want my parents to be proud of me. Real strength is not needing the approval of other people all the time.' On a Roman balcony one slanting evening a girl puts sunflowers in a terracotta jar. She sees the cameraman, scowls, pouts, flicks her hair and vanishes. Ai dangles her teabag in and out of the hot water. 'I honestly think they would have been happier if I had done a two year course in applying cosmetics at a women's college, married the family dentist and spawned a hive of babies. Music. You eat it, but it eats you too.' I swallow hashbrown-and-fries cud. 'Still. Compared to the Miyakes, your family are the Von Tripps in am as tough as your shake which is nine parts pig lard, incidentally. I desperately want my parents to be proud of me. Real strength is not needing the approval of other people all the time.' On a Roman balcony one slanting evening a girl puts sunflowers in a terracotta jar. She sees the cameraman, scowls, pouts, flicks her hair and vanishes. Ai dangles her teabag in and out of the hot water. 'I honestly think they would have been happier if I had done a two year course in applying cosmetics at a women's college, married the family dentist and spawned a hive of babies. Music. You eat it, but it eats you too.' I swallow hashbrown-and-fries cud. 'Still. Compared to the Miyakes, your family are the Von Tripps in The Sound of Music The Sound of Music.' Ai spins her teabag. 'Von Trapps.'

A five-year-old comes up to our table from nowhere and looks at Ai. 'Where do babies come from before they get into their mummies' tummies?'

'Storks bring them,' says Ai.

The kid looks dubious. 'Where do the storks get them, then?'

'Paris,' I tell her and get a smile out of Ai. The girl's father appears at the top of the stairs carrying a tray of bright food and she runs off. He looks like a good dad.

Ai looks at me. I see her face as a very old woman, and also as a very little girl. I never looked into anyone's eyes this long since my who-will-blink-first games with Anju. If this were a movie and not McDonald's we would now kiss. Maybe this is more intimate. Loyalty, grief, good news, bad days. 'Okay,' I finally say, and Ai does not say 'okay what?' She rubs her thumbnail over a McTeriakiburger scratchcard. 'Look. I won a baby robot turkey lunch box. Must be a good omen. Will you let me buy you a new baseball cap?'

'This one was a present from Anju,' I reply before I change my mind.

Ai frowns. 'Who?'

'My twin sister.'

Ai frowns more deeply. 'You said you were an only child.'

No going back now. 'I told you a lie. Only the one. I want to untell it. I have a whole load of other stuff to tell you too: my grandfather contacted me thanks to the personal ad you suggested and my stepmother and half-sister met me. More of an ambush than a meeting, actually. I also figured that trying to find someone who obviously doesn't want to meet me, even if he is my father, will only make me miserable, so I quit... What is it?' Ai is frying with exasperation. 'That is so you you of you, Miyake!' I try to understand. 'What is?' Ai knocks on her forehead with her knuckles. 'Okay, okay. Start with your twin sister. Then do the stepmother. Go.' of you, Miyake!' I try to understand. 'What is?' Ai knocks on her forehead with her knuckles. 'Okay, okay. Start with your twin sister. Then do the stepmother. Go.'

I float back to Shooting Star around noon as buoyant as a light wave. Ai has classes for the rest of today, but she is coming round to my capsule tomorrow... Wednesday' I have to stop to remember which day I am on. I am thinking about Ai about ninety times an hour. It was funny when we said goodbye at Shinjuku we got hopelessly lost because I was following her while she was following me. The walk from Kita Senju station is pleasant today. Shrubs, autumn trees, kids in pushchairs slurping lollies today they defeat the bog ugliness of Tokyo. 'Good morning, Eiji-kun,' says Machiko pleasantly, 'you reek of cheese.' She is watching a Beat Takeshi movie set in Okinawa. 'Good director, but only truly cool actors dare act uncool roles.' Machiko shows me her holiday photos and gives me a picture I like of an orange orchard vanishing up a rain-hazed hillside. We talk about Nero's for a while. Machiko has this gift of making me feel I am interesting and I nearly tell her about Ai but I am afraid I would sound slushy, and besides, there still is not much to tell, so I climb up to my capsule.

'Eiji-kun! I forgot to give you this. It was delivered this morning.' I turn around, and go back down for the package one of those padded envelopes, the smallest size they come in. The addressee is Mr Fujin Yoda who? living in Hakodate up in Hokkaido. An INCORRECTLY ADDRESSED INCORRECTLY ADDRESSED message has been stamped on the front. On the back is my name and address, printed under message has been stamped on the front. On the back is my name and address, printed under SENDER SENDER on a stick-on label. 'Anything wrong?' asks Machiko. on a stick-on label. 'Anything wrong?' asks Machiko.

I keep my wits about me and say, 'Nothing.' Something is wrong, however I never posted it. Up in my capsule a shredded tea towel puts the mysterious package out of my mind Cat, purely out of spite, because she slept alone last night. I hope she stops shredding before she starts on my shirts. I shower, tidy up the scraps of clawed cloth and thrash out a Howlin' Wolf version of 'All You Need Is Love' on my guitar. I should be dropping with tiredness, but I am immune to sleep. Then I remember the package. I slit it open. Inside is a computer disk wrapped in a letter. I twist some ice from the ice-tray into a glass and fill it with water. I love the sound the cubes make as fissures shoot through.

Tokyo, 1st OctoberMy name is Kozue Yamaya. However unlikely or brutal this account of the last nine years of my life appears, I ask you to read it until the end. In your hands is my final testament. I shall ask you to be my legal executor.Endings are simple, but every beginning is made by the beginning before. The one I shall choose is a night in the rainy season nine years ago. In those days my name was Makino Matani. She was a housewife with a two-year-old son, and married to the owner of a financial services company. She was a recent graduate in Business Studies from a respectable women's college in Kobe. Every New Year she exchanged greetings cards with her ex-classmates who were married to dentists, judges and civil servants. An ordinary life. The rainy season came. I remember those last moments perfectly my son was playing with a plastic train set, and I was cleaning the rainy-season mould in the shower cubicle. I could hear the television reporting flash floods and landslides in western Japan.The doorbell rang. I answered it, and three men barged the door and snapped the chain my husband had trained me to use. They demanded to know where my husband was hiding. I demanded to know who they were. One slapped me hard enough to dislodge a tooth. 'Your husband's case officers,' he snarled, 'and we we ask the questions.' He and another searched the house while the third watched me try to reassure my screaming son. He threatened to maim my son if I didn't tell him where my husband was. I called my husband at work and discovered he had phoned in sick that morning. I called my husband's mobile and discovered the number had been disconnected. I called his pager dead. I was nearly hysterical by now the thug poured me a shot of my husband's whisky, but I couldn't swallow it. My son watched with big scared eyes. The two other thugs returned with a box of my husband's personal effects and all of my jewellery. Then the bad news really began. I learned then my husband had run up debts of over fifty million yen with a Yakuza-backed credit organization. Our life assurance policy had been doctored to name this organization as sole beneficiary in the event of his suicide. The house and contents were their property if my husband defaulted on repayments. 'And that,' said the most violent of the three, 'includes you.' My son was taken into the next room. I was told I was now responsible for my husband's debts. I was then beaten and raped. Photographs were taken 'to guarantee my obedience'. I had to endure this torment in silence, for the sake of my son. If I failed to obey their orders, the photographs would be sent to every name in my address book. ask the questions.' He and another searched the house while the third watched me try to reassure my screaming son. He threatened to maim my son if I didn't tell him where my husband was. I called my husband at work and discovered he had phoned in sick that morning. I called my husband's mobile and discovered the number had been disconnected. I called his pager dead. I was nearly hysterical by now the thug poured me a shot of my husband's whisky, but I couldn't swallow it. My son watched with big scared eyes. The two other thugs returned with a box of my husband's personal effects and all of my jewellery. Then the bad news really began. I learned then my husband had run up debts of over fifty million yen with a Yakuza-backed credit organization. Our life assurance policy had been doctored to name this organization as sole beneficiary in the event of his suicide. The house and contents were their property if my husband defaulted on repayments. 'And that,' said the most violent of the three, 'includes you.' My son was taken into the next room. I was told I was now responsible for my husband's debts. I was then beaten and raped. Photographs were taken 'to guarantee my obedience'. I had to endure this torment in silence, for the sake of my son. If I failed to obey their orders, the photographs would be sent to every name in my address book.A month later I was living in a single windowless room in a Buraku area of Osaka. I was indentured to a brothel, and I was not allowed to leave the building or have any contact with the outside world, beyond sex with my customers. You may doubt that sexual enslavement is practised in twenty-first century Japan. Your ignorance is enviable, but your disbelief is precisely why such enslavement can prosper unchecked. I myself would have doubted that 'respectable' women could be turned into prostitutes, but the owners are masters of control. I was dispossessed of every item from my old life which could have reminded me who I was except my son. I was allowed to keep my son this prevented me from escaping by suicide. My customers not only knew about my imprisonment, they derived pleasure from it, and would have been implicated in the crime had it become public. The final wall between me and the real world was perhaps the strongest: a phenomenon psychologists label 'hostage syndrome' the conviction that my fate was deserved and that no 'crime' was being perpetrated. After all, I was a 'whore' now what right did I have to bring shame to my old friends or even to my mother by appealing for assistance? Better that they carry on believing I had disappeared overseas with my bankrupt husband. Six other women, three with babies younger than my son, shared my floor. The man who raped me was our pimp it was to him we had to beg for food, medicine, even nappies for our children. He also supplied narcotics, in careful quantities. He administered them personally to ensure we couldn't overdose. We created fake names for ourselves, and in time our old lives became detached from what we had become. All of us dreamed of killing the owner at some vague point in the future after our escape, but all of us knew we would never dare return to Osaka. We were required to take care of each other's children while their mothers were working. The pimp told us that after we had worked off the amounts the defaulting members of our families had embezzled we would be free to go, so the harder we worked to please our customers, the quicker we would be out of there. In autumn, a girl who had been working in the brothel for two years was released. So we thought.My 'release' came sooner, because over the following new year my resilience exhausted itself and I suffered a nervous breakdown. The customers complained to the pimp that I was no longer trying. The pimp talked to me for a while. He could be gentle when he chose. It was one of his weapons. He said he had talked to my creditors and that I would be transferred with my son to another branch that night. We drank gin and tonic to celebrate.I awoke wrapped in a blanket in a black airless place. My head was groggy and drugged. My son was not with me. I was still in my brothel nightshirt. For a terrible moment I thought I had been buried alive, but groping around, I realized I was in the boot of a stationary car. I found a jack, and finally forced an exit. I was in a lock-up garage. I saw the pimp's reflection in the wing mirror and froze. He was asleep. Then I saw that his nose was missing. Someone had put a gun to his nostrils and pulled the trigger. There was no sign of my son. I ran but before I had got out of the garage my senses began to return. I was lost, penniless, believed to have vanished by anyone who remembered me. My former owners would jump to the conclusion that I had been taken or killed by the same gang who killed my pimp. I hesitated but I ran back, groped inside the pimp's jacket for his wallet. I found a travel bag strapped around his groin. The bag contained a wad of ten-thousand-yen notes inches thick. I had never seen so much money. When I found my way out of the lock-up I found myself in the precincts of the vast Osaka central hospital, the only place in the city where a woman with a sick-as-death complexion in nightclothes could blend into the background.I do not have time to tell you much about the years that followed. I lived for a year in women's refuges, cheap hotels. My bank accounts were in false names. The meaning of my life had become the search for my son. My ex-husband was now a ghost I never thought of. I hired a private investigator to investigate the Yakuza branch that had incarcerated me. The investigator returned my advance one week later he was warned away. Out of sympathy and guilt, he ended up hiring me as a secretary/accountant. This was a smart business decision, because three-quarters of his customers were women wanting their husbands trailed to fatten divorce settlements. They preferred discussing the sordid details with another woman. As with gynaecology, so for marital infidelity. They recommended our agency to their friends, and business thrived. I began accompanying my boss on fieldwork. Women are virtually invisible, even to the most paranoid of men. (Furthermore, I discovered that the brothel organization had deleted every computer reference to me and my son. I enjoy the privileges of being a non-existent woman.) My life in the brothel had hardened me as deeply as it had scarred me. After three years my boss offered me a partnership, and when his cancer finally killed him I took over the business. All this time, I was researching the organization that had killed Makino Matani and her son, and created Kozue Yamaya. It is gargantuan, nameless, and many-headed. It has no name. Its membership is in excess of six thousand. I swung introductions to its leaders, even invitations to the weddings of their children. I entered its employ as a freelance researcher. My status as a semi-insider gave me greater access to its secrets, and deflected suspicion.My son was murdered in order to sell his organs to extremely rich, desperate parents of the elite in Japan. The home market is most lucrative, because the parents will pay for pure, home-grown stock, but the export market to eastern Asia, North America and Russia is also significant. This fate is shared by the children and eventually the women enslaved in the brothels. The disk I have enclosed in this package contains the names, digital images and personal histories of the men who head this organization; the law enforcers who protect them; the surgeons who carry out the work; the politicians who blanket the operation; the businessmen who launder the money; the men and customs officers who freeze and transport the organs.Tomorrow is October 2nd. It is the day I plan to go public. I shall hand my data over to my contacts in the police and the media. One of two things will happen: the media will scream, and Japanese public and political life will be hit by a vice scandal which will send shock waves from hospitals in Kyushu to the parliament building; or I shall be killed by those I seek to expose. If the latter comes to pass copies of this disk and letter to be sent on to an audience I have selected for widely differing reasons.Understand this: you are holding a letter from a dead woman. My revenge on the men who abduct women and children to harvest their organs failed. My hope and life's work are now in your hands. Act with your eyes open, as your conscience dictates. I cannot advise you my best attempt has already failed. The Yakuza is a ninety-thousand strong state within our state. If you attempt to use ordinary police channels, you will achieve only the issue of your own death warrant. You are holding a high card for a very dangerous game into which you never asked to be dealt. But for the repose of the soul of my son Eiji Matani, who was killed by these people, and for countless others, past, present and future, I implore you to act.Please.Kozue Yamaya Why me? Her son and I share a name with the exact same kanji ei ei for incantation, for incantation, ji ji for earth. I never encountered this combination before, but this alone cannot account for Kozue Yamaya putting me on her trustee list. I sift my memory of the time we met for clues, but find none. for earth. I never encountered this combination before, but this alone cannot account for Kozue Yamaya putting me on her trustee list. I sift my memory of the time we met for clues, but find none.

No way to find out, either.

I call downstairs. 'Machiko? Any big stories in the paper today?'

'What?' says Machiko, 'Don't tell me you haven't heard?'

'What?'

Machiko reads from the front page: '"Top Politican in Honesty Shocker 'I'm Not on the Take!' Integrity Revelation by Minister Stuns Colleagues!"'

I manage a smile, and close the door. So Kozue Yamaya is dead too. I feel hollow with pity for that scarred person who visited me during my week at the study of tales. But I would be a fool to get involved in this. Keeping this disk is suicidally dangerous. I stow it in the most unused corner of my apartment my condom box under my socks until I figure out what to do. If no foolproof idea comes today or tomorrow, I should drop it in the river and hope another addressee is in a wiser, stronger position. Uneasily, I imagine us lined up in a row on the bridge, all dropping our disks in, acting on the same cowardly impulse. I change the water for Cat, switch on my fan, unroll my futon and try to sleep. Despite not having slept for twenty hours, I keep thinking of Mrs Yamaya. I sense a weird week ahead, one with sharp teeth. My pulse thuds. An unbreakable spear striking an impenetrable shield.

I arrive at work as Tuesday gasps its last. By the time I have changed into my chef apron and white bandana Wednesday is born. A big group of off-duty taxi-drivers stops by to order an office-party quantity of pizzas, and I am kept busy for ninety minutes. The FM radio keeps changing frequency at whim, swinging between Chinese-, Spanish-and Other-speaking stations. 'Tagalog, man,' reckons Doi. 'The stratospheric ether is hyper-pure tonight, man, I can feel it in my sinuses.' He waits for the inferno to deliver his pizza, smoking a cigarette of his own creation in the cage. He rubs his eye. 'Miyake, I got something stuck in the corner here pass me a toothpick, man?' I ignore my misgivings and pass him a toothpick. 'Thanks.' Doi uses it to pluck his eyelid down. 'No good. Would you mind looking? I think a tiny fly flew in.' I walk over, and peer close. Doi suddenly sneezes, his head jerks down and the toothpick punctures his eyeball. A jet of white fluid spatters my face. 'Shit!' screams Doi. 'Oh shit! I hate hate it when that happens!' I just stand there, unable to believe that reality is this grotesque. Sachiko appears in the hatch. I gibber she shakes her head I stop gibbering. 'Falling for him once is cute, Miyake, but two strikes and you're Mr Gullible. Doi, if you waste many more of those coffee whiteners you're going to force me to be Ms Assistant Manager and dock your salary. I mean it.' Doi snickers and I realize I have been had again. 'Hear and it when that happens!' I just stand there, unable to believe that reality is this grotesque. Sachiko appears in the hatch. I gibber she shakes her head I stop gibbering. 'Falling for him once is cute, Miyake, but two strikes and you're Mr Gullible. Doi, if you waste many more of those coffee whiteners you're going to force me to be Ms Assistant Manager and dock your salary. I mean it.' Doi snickers and I realize I have been had again. 'Hear and ooo ooobey, chieftainess.' Sachiko addresses a supernatural agency above the inferno. 'Is it my karmic destiny to oversee lunatic asylums, lifetime after lifetime, over and over, until I get it right? Miyake one double Titanic, thick base, extra shark meat.' I box up Doi's pizza. He leaves in total victory. I keep thinking about the package from Mrs Yamaya. Tomomi slinks into the cage for one of her perpetual coffee breaks. She tells me how frantically busy her life is 'busy' is definitely her favourite word and asks how I know Ai doesn't fakes her orgasms when we have sex, because while she was having her affair with Mr Nero she felt obliged to busy busy things up on a number of occasions, because men are so insecure about performance. Tomomi has a tarantula-in-underpants effect on me. She sharpens her fingernails and keeps prodding for an answer. I am sort of saved by a toy-helicopter-sized wasp that flies in Tomomi shrieks 'Kill it! Kill it!', and runs back through to the front. The hatch doors slam shut. The wasp buzzsaws around for a minute, warily sussing me out through its multi-lens eyes, and lands on Laos. Hard to concentrate on the pizzas, but I prefer its company to Tomomi. I stand on the counter and clap a plastic tub over south-east Asia. The wasp strikes up a death-by-flugelhorn noise and tries to knock a hole through the side I get unbearably itchy and, instead of making a portable wasp release-box, semi-panic and shove the tub over the extractor fan, which is flush to the wall. The flugelhorn stops with a nearly inaudible crackle. 'Last of the action heroes,' says Onizuka, fingering the spike in his lower lip. He always arrives in the cage quiet as a ghost, and he speaks so softly I have to semi-lip-read. He nods at the inferno, where a pizza is waiting to be boxed. 'That my Eskimo Quinn for the KDD building? Customers give me shit if their pizzas get cold.' The hatch opens a crack. 'Is it dead?' ask Tomomi. 'The wasp is fine,' says Onizuka, 'but Miyake got mushed trying to leave through the extractor.' Tomomi performs an overture laugh to see if she can rile me. Onizuka departs with his pizza without another word. Doi arrives back a minute later I could swear his things up on a number of occasions, because men are so insecure about performance. Tomomi has a tarantula-in-underpants effect on me. She sharpens her fingernails and keeps prodding for an answer. I am sort of saved by a toy-helicopter-sized wasp that flies in Tomomi shrieks 'Kill it! Kill it!', and runs back through to the front. The hatch doors slam shut. The wasp buzzsaws around for a minute, warily sussing me out through its multi-lens eyes, and lands on Laos. Hard to concentrate on the pizzas, but I prefer its company to Tomomi. I stand on the counter and clap a plastic tub over south-east Asia. The wasp strikes up a death-by-flugelhorn noise and tries to knock a hole through the side I get unbearably itchy and, instead of making a portable wasp release-box, semi-panic and shove the tub over the extractor fan, which is flush to the wall. The flugelhorn stops with a nearly inaudible crackle. 'Last of the action heroes,' says Onizuka, fingering the spike in his lower lip. He always arrives in the cage quiet as a ghost, and he speaks so softly I have to semi-lip-read. He nods at the inferno, where a pizza is waiting to be boxed. 'That my Eskimo Quinn for the KDD building? Customers give me shit if their pizzas get cold.' The hatch opens a crack. 'Is it dead?' ask Tomomi. 'The wasp is fine,' says Onizuka, 'but Miyake got mushed trying to leave through the extractor.' Tomomi performs an overture laugh to see if she can rile me. Onizuka departs with his pizza without another word. Doi arrives back a minute later I could swear his left left leg was limping yesterday, but today it is his right and Tomomi tells him about the wasp. The drug pusher and the queen of all evil discuss whether I am guilty of the murder of a life form. 'It was only a wasp,' I say, 'there are plenty more where they came from.' This is not good enough for Tomomi: 'There are plenty more humans where we come from, so does that make homicide okay?' This is too stupid to argue about especially as Tomomi was shrieking 'Kill it! Kill it!' so I watch pizzas inching through the inferno. When I tune in again Doi and Tomomi are talking about crows. 'Say what you want,' Tomomi says, 'crows are cute.' Doi shakes his head. 'Crows are winged Nazis, man. The porter in our building, he chased one away with a broom. The next day, the same crow dive-bombed him and pecked his head hard enough to draw blood, man. A crow? Attacking a uniformed porter? Freaky, man. Kinda short-circuits nature.' Tomomi sharpens her eyeliner pencil and snaps open her hand mirror. 'The weak are meat, the strong eat.' leg was limping yesterday, but today it is his right and Tomomi tells him about the wasp. The drug pusher and the queen of all evil discuss whether I am guilty of the murder of a life form. 'It was only a wasp,' I say, 'there are plenty more where they came from.' This is not good enough for Tomomi: 'There are plenty more humans where we come from, so does that make homicide okay?' This is too stupid to argue about especially as Tomomi was shrieking 'Kill it! Kill it!' so I watch pizzas inching through the inferno. When I tune in again Doi and Tomomi are talking about crows. 'Say what you want,' Tomomi says, 'crows are cute.' Doi shakes his head. 'Crows are winged Nazis, man. The porter in our building, he chased one away with a broom. The next day, the same crow dive-bombed him and pecked his head hard enough to draw blood, man. A crow? Attacking a uniformed porter? Freaky, man. Kinda short-circuits nature.' Tomomi sharpens her eyeliner pencil and snaps open her hand mirror. 'The weak are meat, the strong eat.'

Ueno to Kita Senju is easy, even during rush hour, because outbound submarines are empty except for night-shift workers and eccentric billionaires. The subs heading the other way into Ueno are human freight wagons. Tokyo is a model of that serial big-bang theory of the universe. It explodes at five p. m. and people-matter is hurled to the suburbs, but by five a. m. the people-matter gravity reasserts itself, and everything surges back towards the centre in time for the next day's explosion. My commute is against the natural law of Tokyo. I feel dead-beat. Giving up on my father is taking some getting used to. Ai is coming over to my capsule after her rehearsal, at about five in the afternoon. Her dinner is my breakfast. To my relief she asked if she could do the cooking she prefers to choose what she eats because of her diabetes. To call my culinary repertoire 'limited' would be boastful. As I walk back from Kita Senju to Shooting Star, a weird cloud slides over half the sky. Cyclists, women with pushchairs, taxi-drivers stop to stare up at it. Half the sky is clear October blue the other half is a dark funnelling churn of storm-cloud. Plastic bags get caught in vortexes and fly out of sight. Buntarois in the shop early to bring the accounts up to date after his week away. He looks up at me and sniffs. 'I know,' I say, 'I know. I stink of cheese.' Buntaro shrugs, all innocence, and goes back to his calculator. I crawl upstairs. Cat bids me good morning and slips away to her own dimension. I wash her bowl, change her water, shower, and decide to have a quick nap before cleaning up for Ai.

My face is melted out of position. My tongue is a pumice stone. Saliva, collected in my tongue-root gully, drools out on to my pillow. At my table, Ai chops carrots and apples. For a moment I think I married Ai, and she is making dinner for our nine children but then I smell the apple. Nutmeg too. Cat is licking her paws and watches me. Buntaro lets Ai up, she knocks, I am too deeply asleep to wake up, Buntaro confirms I am definitely up here, Ai peers in, sees me, goes out and buys food for a salad. Life is sheer bliss when it wants to be. Ai must trust me, to be alone with me in my capsule while I am dressed or not dressed how I am. Being trusted makes me trustworthy. Carrot and apple go together great. She is chopping walnuts I never much cared for walnuts until this moment and raisins, and sprinkles them over lettuce. She is wearing old jeans and a faded yellow T-shirt lighter than her skin, and her hair is up. Here is that mythical neck. She scrapes peelings into the garbage bag. She wears thick black-framed glasses that suit her in a quirky sort of way. Ai never, ever tries to impress, and that impresses me so so much. She has a pirate silver earring. 'Hey, Kyushu Cannibal,' she says I realize all this time she knew I was watching her and chords inside me change from A flat to loose-string D minor. 'Why do you keep letters in your freezebox?' much. She has a pirate silver earring. 'Hey, Kyushu Cannibal,' she says I realize all this time she knew I was watching her and chords inside me change from A flat to loose-string D minor. 'Why do you keep letters in your freezebox?'

'Watch out,' says Ai, 'I think there may be fish in these bones.'

'It tastes great.'

'Do you live entirely on pot noodles?'

'I vary my diet with pizza, courtesy of Nero. Mind if I finish the salad?'

'Do, before you die of scurvy. You never told me about your view.'

'That is no view. Yakushima has views.'

'It beats the view me and Sachiko have now. We used to overlook a low-security prison exercise yard. That was quite nice. I used to leave the windows open and play Chopin waltzes back to back. But then I returned from class one day to find a vertical rotary carpark had sprung up since breakfast. Now we have a view of concrete six inches away. We want to move, but paying a deposit would wipe us out. Even honest estate agents, if that isn't an oxymoron, skin you alive. Plus, it's nice to know that if a fire broke out we could climb out of the window and abseil to safety by breathing in and out slowly.'

The telephone riiiiiiiiings. I answer: 'Hello?'

'Miyake!'

'Suga? Where are you?'

'Downstairs. Mr Ogiso tells me you have company but would you mind if I come up?'

I do, to be honest. 'Sure'.

When Suga enters my capsule I gape. He has had a body transplant. His eczema has vanished. He has a contoured haircut that must have cost ten thousand yen. He is wearing the suit of a Milanese diamond robber, and has the hip rectangular glasses of an electric-folk-singer. 'Are you going for an interview?' I ask. Suga ignores me and bows shyly at Ai. 'Hi, I'm Masanobu Suga. Are you Miyake's Korean girlfriend?'

Ai bites the head off a celery stick and looks at me quizzically.

'No,' I garble 'Suga, this is Miss Imajo.'

Ai munches. 'Suga the Snorer?'

Now Suga looks confused. 'I er Miyake?'

'Uh... Some other time.'

'There won't be another time for a long time I came to say goodbye.'

'Leaving Tokyo?' I chuck a cushion down for him. 'Near or far?'

Suga slips out of his sandals and sits down. 'Saratoga.'

'Which prefecture is that in?'

Ai has heard of it. 'Saratoga, western Texas?'

'Heart of the desert.'

'Beautiful,' Ai munches, 'but wild.'

I find a sort of clean cup. 'Why are you going to a desert?'

'I'm not allowed to tell anyone exactly why.'

I pour his tea. 'Why not?'

'I'm not allowed to tell anyone that, either.'

'Is any of this to do with your Holy Grail?'

'After I left here last week, I went to my office and I got my brain back in gear. So offensively obvious. Write a search program, smuggle it into the file field, and get it to scan through the nine billion files to see if a real Holy Grail site had been hidden anywhere, right. My first attempt backfired. In megabyte terms it was like trying to squeeze China through the Sumida tunnel. The Pentagon immune system recognizes the program as an alien body, zaps it and launches a tracer program. I only just get out in time.' 'The Pentagon?' Ai asks. Suga twiddles his thumbs, modest and boastful. 'So I sleep on the problem for a couple of days, then deep genius busts the door down. Dawn raid of inspiration. I break into the Pentagon immune system, softjack its own OS, muzzle it, and get Pentagon?' Ai asks. Suga twiddles his thumbs, modest and boastful. 'So I sleep on the problem for a couple of days, then deep genius busts the door down. Dawn raid of inspiration. I break into the Pentagon immune system, softjack its own OS, muzzle it, and get it it to search the very files its job is to protect! Like retraining your enemy's sniffer dogs to show you his hidey-hole. I make it sound easy, I know, but first I had to boot my flight path through six different zombies across six different cellphone networks. Second-' to search the very files its job is to protect! Like retraining your enemy's sniffer dogs to show you his hidey-hole. I make it sound easy, I know, but first I had to boot my flight path through six different zombies across six different cellphone networks. Second-'

'You did it?'

Suga lets the details slide. 'I did it. But the number of Holy Grails it had to check was, right, deeply cosmic. Think about it. Nine billion files, at the apex of nine billion pyramids, each one built of nine billion files as far as I had dared to look. After turning loose my search program, I drowse off. Deep Sleep City. It is eleven in the morning by now, right I worked at my computer since seven the evening before. What next? I wake up to find three men searching my office. Mid-afternoon, deep shock. One guy a hacker, I can tell is downloading all my personal files on to a hand-held drive I never even saw before. Second guy, an older headmaster type, is making an inventory of my hardware. The third is this fat sunburned foreigner in a cowboy hat leafing through my Zax Omega mangas and drinking my beer. I was too amazed to be scared. The headmaster guy flashes some ID at me Data Protection Agency, ever heard of that? and tells me I have violated the Japan/United States Bilateral Defence Treaty and that I have the right to remain silent but that if I don't want to be tried for espionage under US jurisprudence at the nearest military base, I had better get down on my knees and blab for dear life.'

'Is all this true?' Ai asks me.

'Is all this true?' I ask Suga.

'I was wishing to hell that it wasn't. The buggery scene in Shawshank Redemption Shawshank Redemption keeps flashing before me. The headmaster gets out a matchbox-sized recorder and starts firing questions. I'm expecting him to strap electrodes to my balls. How had I got into the Pentagon in the first place? How had I softjacked their anti-viral OS? Was I working alone? Who had I spoken to since? Had I heard of any of the following organizations I hadn't, I can't even remember them now. They know what schools I went to, where I live, everything. Then the hacker guy talks technical data I can see he is impressed with my zombie ring. Even so, it gets dark, and I don't know what they plan to do to me. Finally, the foreigner, who has been flicking through my photo albums and keeps flashing before me. The headmaster gets out a matchbox-sized recorder and starts firing questions. I'm expecting him to strap electrodes to my balls. How had I got into the Pentagon in the first place? How had I softjacked their anti-viral OS? Was I working alone? Who had I spoken to since? Had I heard of any of the following organizations I hadn't, I can't even remember them now. They know what schools I went to, where I live, everything. Then the hacker guy talks technical data I can see he is impressed with my zombie ring. Even so, it gets dark, and I don't know what they plan to do to me. Finally, the foreigner, who has been flicking through my photo albums and MasterHacker MasterHacker, speaks to the headmaster, in English. I realize he is the one in charge here. I ask if I can take a leak. The younger hacker accompanies me I ask him for some more lowdown but he shakes his head. We get back to my office and headmaster offers me a job or prosecution under some very scary-sounding law. He describes the job, and the money serious wooow! Artificial intelligence, missile shield systems-' Suga bites his lip. 'Oops. That's the only downer. I can't go around telling anyone about it.'

'What about IBM and your university?'

'Yeah, that was my next question. Headmaster nods at the foreigner the foreigner barks an order into his mobile. "Already taken care of, Mr Suga," the headmaster tells me. "And we can arrange a PhD if your parents are worried about qualifications. Would MIT be acceptable? Other details can be worked out later." In fact, I fly out the day after tomorrow, so I have a million things to do. I brought you a present, Miyake. I considered tropical fruit, but this is a bit more personal. Here.' He produces a square case, flips it open and unclips a black flat thing. 'This is my finest home-cultivated computer virus.' For the second time in two days I am being given a computer disk. 'Uh... thanks. Nobody ever gave me a virus before.' Ai mutters something, and then speaks up: 'If those things get into hospital systems they put lives at risk. Do you ever think about that?' Suga nods and slurps his tea. 'Ethical cyberexplorers are responsible, right. Ghosts in the machine, not nerdish vandals. We are a growing breed. Over sixty-five per cent of top-flight systems explorers are ethical.' Ai gives Suga a black look. 'And over eighty-five per cent of all statistics are made up on the spot.' Suga soldiers on. 'Take this virus "Mailman", I call it it delivers your message to every addressee in the address book of whoever you send it too. Then it duplicates itself and delivers itself to all the addresses in those address books and so on, for ninety-nine generations. Neat or what? And totally harmless.' Ai looks unconvinced. 'Spreading junk mail to tens of thousands of people doesn't strike me as especially ethical.' Suga has a proud-father beam. 'Not junk mail! Miyake can spread whatever message of joy and peace he wants to hundreds of thousands of users. It isn't the sort of thing I can take to Texas, being as how Saratoga is a top-secret research installation, right, and it would be a shame to let it go to waste.'

Suga leaves, I finish the salad and slice a melon for dessert. I take some down to Buntaro, who nods at the ceiling, and waggles his little finger questioningly. I pretend not to understand. No way am I going to make a pass at Ai. There is a sort of not-yetness between us. I tell myself. She is clearing a space on the table. 'Time for my insulin. Want to watch, or are you squeamish about needles puncturing human skin?'

'I want to watch,' I lie.

She gets a medical box from her bag, prepares the syringe, disinfects her forearm, and calmly slips the needle in. I flinch. She is watching me watching her as the insulin shoots into her bloodstream. I suddenly feel humble. Making a pass at Ai would be as uncouth as yelling at a flower to hurry up. Plus, if she rejected me I would have to microwave myself out of existence. 'So, Miyake,' says Ai as the needle slides out. 'What's your next move?'

I swallow dryly. 'Uh... what?'

She dabs a droplet of blood with sterilized cotton wool 'Are you going to stay in Tokyo now you've changed your mind about tracking down your father?' I get up and wipe my frying pan. 'I... dunno. I need money before I can do anything else, so I'll probably stay at Nero's until something better comes along... I want to show you a couple of letters my mother wrote to me.'

Ai shrugs. 'Okay.'

I brush the ice granules off the plastic she reads them while I finish the dishes and take a shower.

'Long shower.'

'Uh... when I take a shower I feel I'm back on Yakushima. Warm rain.' I nod at the letters. 'What do you think?'

Ai folds them neatly into their envelopes. 'I'm thinking about what I think about them.' Fujifilm says ten o'clock. We have to leave Ai wants to be home before the stalkers leave their bars, and I have to get to work before midnight. Downstairs, Buntaro munches Pringles and watches a movie full of cyborgs, motorbikes and welders. 'Have a nice salad?' he asks so innocently I could kill him. I nod at the screen.

'What are you watching?'

'I am testing the two laws of cinematography.'

'Which are?'

'The first law states "Any movie with a title ending in '-ator' is pure drivel".'

'The second?'

'"The quality of any movie is in inverse proportion to the number of helicopters it features."'

'In a way,' Ai says as we arrive at Kita Senju station, 'I wish you hadn't shown me those letters.'

'Why not?'

Ai jangles loose change. 'I don't think you'll like hearing what I really think.' The last moths of autumn swirl around a stuttering light.

'Hearing what you really think was the point of showing you.'

Ai buys her ticket I show my pass and we walk down to the platform. 'Your mother wants you in her life, and your life could be a whole load richer with her in it. Your standoffishness isn't helping you or her. Those letters are a peace treaty.'

I feel sort of jabbed by that. 'If she wanted me to contact her, why didn't she give me her Nagano address?'

'Did it occur to you she might be afraid of giving you the power to reject her?' Ai hunts out my eyes. 'Anyway, she did tell you where she is "Mount Hakuba".'

I shake my gaze free. '"Mount Hakuba" is no address.'

Ai stops walking. 'Miyake, for someone so bright' bzzzzzzzzz! goes my sarcasm detector 'you are one virtuoso self-delusionist. There can be no more than ten hotels at the foot of Mount Hakuba. Compared to finding a nameless man in Tokyo, finding your mother is a breeze. You could find her by tomorrow evening if you actually wanted to.'

Now the girl is trespassing. I know I should leave it but I can't. 'And why exactly do you think I don't want to?'

'I'm not your shrink.' Ai shrugs curtly. 'You tell me. Anger? Blame?'

'No.' Ai is clueless about all this. 'She had seven years to unabandon us, and another nine years to unabandon me.'

Ai frowns. 'Okay, but if you don't want to know what I really think about your issues, then talk about the weather instead of showing me personal letters. And hell, Miyake-' I look at her. 'What?' Ai semi-snarls. 'Do you have have to smoke?' I put away my MacArthur lighter and slide my Parliaments back into my shirt pocket. 'I had no idea it bothered you so much.' Once the words are out I know they are way too snide. Ai snarls, full on. 'How could it not bother me? Since I was nine my arm has been a pin-cushion, just so my pancreas doesn't kill me. I endure a hypo twice a year while you line your lungs with cancer and the lungs of everyone downwind just so you can look like the Marlboro Man. Yes, Miyake, your smoking to smoke?' I put away my MacArthur lighter and slide my Parliaments back into my shirt pocket. 'I had no idea it bothered you so much.' Once the words are out I know they are way too snide. Ai snarls, full on. 'How could it not bother me? Since I was nine my arm has been a pin-cushion, just so my pancreas doesn't kill me. I endure a hypo twice a year while you line your lungs with cancer and the lungs of everyone downwind just so you can look like the Marlboro Man. Yes, Miyake, your smoking really really bothers me.' bothers me.'

I cannot think of a single thing to say.

The evening is in pieces.

The train arrives. We sit next to each other back to Ueno, but we may as well be sitting in different cities. I wish we were. The jolly citizens of advertland mock me with their minty smiles. Ai says nothing. We get off at Ueno, which is as quiet as Ueno ever gets.

'Mind if I walk with you to your platform?' I ask, as a peace offering.

Ai shrugs. We walk down a corridor as vast as the suspended animation chamber in a space-ark. A rhythmic fierce whacking noise starts up from ahead a man in orange is pounding something with a sort of rubber mallet. Whatever whoever is being minced is hidden behind a column. We both alter our course to give the man a wide berth we have to walk past him to get to Ai's platform. I seriously think he is beating somebody to death. But it is only a paving tile the man is trying to coerce into a hole too small for it. Whack! Whack! Whack Whack! Whack! Whack! 'That,' says Ai, probably to herself, 'is life.' From the tunnel an approaching train wolf-howls and Ai's hair swims in its wind. I feel miserable. 'Uh... Ai...' I begin, but Ai interrupts me with an irritated shake of her head. 'I'll call you.' Does that mean "It's okay, don't worry", or "Don't you dare call until I decide to forgive you"? Perfect ambiguity from the Paris Conservatoire scholarship student. The train comes, she gets on, sits down, folds her arms and crosses her legs. Without thinking about it I wave goodbye with one hand, and with my other hand pull my Parliaments from my shirt pocket and lob them down the gap between the train and the platform. But Ai has already closed her eyes. The train pulls away. She never even saw.