minus — [-1 month] prior final

It was a week or so before or after my birthday, i don’t remember which. It was actually the last time I celebrated my birthday on that day. After we came here I had a new birthday. They are sitting in the window seat having some lunch in the cafe-in-the-woods, she is leaning against the cold glass. They have gone for a walk by themselves the children at with their english grandma. She is speaking in Japanese carefully and quietly, talking about how they can live in this world. I think it was the month before we met at Tokyo-exe when I accidentally discovered that they were targeting me, I had been named as if I was an authority figure, a conceptual personae important enough to be mentioned as a sacrifice for war and capital, peace they called it, as if i was schmidt, wu-chen or my mother. Though then, in the afternoon and the next day I merely thought that one of the other sides in the war had identified me as a target. [i i i never told them that, and the expert, who was very cautious about these things certainly never did.] Though I didn’t know it at the time these were the last people I killed for dragon, my parents or their faction of the council. I imagine this means it was whilst peace was about to break out, sacrifices were being offered.

it was afterwards, i was about to leave the yacht, when I found that one of bodyguards was still alive on the deck, he was mortally wounded, bleeding out on the deck. The expert had started the engine and he was putting GPS coordinates into the control system. Ten minutes he told me…. The bullet hole was just above his left hip and the exit wound was just above his navel; both wounds were bleeding. Is he alive? the expert asked. Just about I said. Who is he? the expert asked. Looking at me putting the Glock on the floor with the barrel pointing towards him. The expert wisely decided to say nothing more and return to preparing the yacht for its last voyage into the china sea. The dying man was one of us, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time on the wrong side. And his eyes were brown. A bright, light brown, the color of the bark of Japanese Cedar bark on the mountains north of Tokyo. Though that had been long ago when so many had still been alive, a long line of dead people, stretched out over fifteen or seventeen and more years. So many others. The eyes looked at me steadily, he showed no signs of pain or emotion. Whilst the blood spread across the white shirt. “So you’re Nomiko” “Yes I am” “If i had seen you earlier, things might have been different…””Yes things can always be different…”I said. “But fuck you anyway…”I smiled at him. “Too late for that…”|| he almost smiled at this|| “And anyway most of the people (he moved slightly and winced in pain) on your side and ours are not as good as they think. Nothing like as good. Did you kill them?” “Yes, So many dead in this war” I said to him. “yoshi and ozu and the people with them…” I told him.“You were on their list… we should have killed you first.””A pity, your cute…” I said. He laughed, “ Don’t make me laugh, it hurts. No loss really.” and then he shook his his his head. “They all asked for it, they all asked for it. We sent some people after Tensing. I imagine he’s dead now…” “Yes, you’re right Tensing isn’t as good as they think. “ I said. “Me as well, soon…” He said.”Yes.” “Some things I regret though…” “What ?” “Some of the people on the edges of this, shouldn’t have been targeted…” “I feel bad about that, too…” “If we had worked things out right. You would have been killed. I would have stayed alive. We had it all worked out. Something must have gone wrong.. “ He told me. “That’s because I don’t work like that. They give me a target, I don’t work from others plans. Did you plan the work or was it them? “ I asked him. “Yes, me. MY team went after Tensing this morning. I should have gone with them.” “ Things would have been different. “ “Yes…. He wasn’t going to live much longer. The blood was mingling with some sea water that was running into the boat. Red lines. I don’t really like watching people dying. I talked to him quietly, to distract myself. Occasionally checking on what the expert was doing… “I hope they got Tensing… There is another one as well I won’t tell you about that one…” “Don’t i might be tempted to interfere…” I said to him. [… more words and sentences about things, events that lead me to be sitting there with this dying professional… we must have sounded like to engineers talking one from IBM and the other from Meta. By then my being at Tokyo-exe was already inevitable. I think I knew already about the meeting I was supposed to attend…] He stopped, the eyes closed. I leaned forward and picked up his hand and felt for his pulse. It was so quiet I thought he’d died. But when I looked at his face, youngish, perhaps a little older than me his eyes were open. “Stay… please” “What? “Please hold my hand…” “I will…” “Go on. It’s nice to talk to a fellow professional. I was unlucky at the end. …name, number, rank “ He was looking pale, as if he wanted to sigh. “I was going to ask you about that.” “Fuck you nomiko… you can wonder…” “ I thought it might be. Do you want to vanish? “ “Better that way” His head dropped slightly. “Just talk” I wondered what I could say to this dying man, who was probably very like me. Dying as I imagined I would die then, alone, in solitude. Someone made into a, well let’s just say a monster. I was a monster talking to a dying monster… I talked about Shanghai, Hokkaido, Osaka and about a few places where we might have almost run into each other. But I was sure he could hardly hear me anymore. “ Do you have a name that i can think of you as…” He smiled a dying ghost of a smile and offered a final lie. I appreciated it. “Yutaka Ebisawa” “Thankyou”I said. “I wish we’d met somewhere else. Perhaps a bar in Tokyo…” “I wish that as well, saki, beer and chips…” I remember leaning back, thinking I could have offered him some drugs or a cigerette perhaps. I watched him for a minute or two longer. Then I lifted him, and held him for a few seconds, looked back at the expert. “Dead …” I told him. And pushed him over the side into the water. Obviously I never saw him again, alive or dead. I checked, of course, and found there were 40 or 50 Yutaka Ebisawa’s in Tokyo and Osaka, none of them were him… There was nothing sad about the deaths any of the people who died that day… We left on the dingy, the yacht headed out to sea, to sink two or three hours later… i watched it vanish out to sea. The expert didn’t try anything, so I didn’t shoot him. A few days later, during a management meeting i was asked how it went, they wanted to be briefed for some reason but well, you should always be careful and never give away any information, or tell secrets to anyone who has never existed in the world you live in, they thought i was living in the social contract they lived in, but one is with another and they assume they are the only ones who exist but this other one isn’t like that, (she smiles at him across the table pointing at herself) wasn’t like that, and either they let me go and separate or the other kills you and the matter is separated. I told them how we sent to boat out into the china sea but nothing else. Compared to the catastrophes you and I have lived through, they avoided all of them to become Saint Capitalist the ascended… [In another universe you could have been a convenience store woman, I would have walked in with my bad japanese and asked for some instant ramen and coffee…]