19.
We changed trains at Hakata Station in Fukuoka and took a short, two-hour jaunt to Nagasaki that arrived in the early morning hours. We pulled into the city of Nagasaki just before dawn, and the quiet was … almost disconcerting. I counted my blessings that I hadn’t had to deal with any time freezes while trapped in my window seats, because if I’d had to get up to use the bathroom, I might have broken Harry or Kat’s kneecaps while trying to climb over them to go pee.
Now that we were free, I debated our course—head straight for the exit and get out onto the streets of Nagasaki, or try and figure out what do first? As fun as blindly striking out into a completely unfamiliar city sounded, I meandered up to a tourist kiosk instead, Kat rolling her bag along beside me.
“Hi,” I said to the woman manning the counter. She was young, probably in her twenties, and looked at me very attentively. “Speak English?” I asked hopefully. She nodded. “Uhm … I’m looking for an island around here …”
She frowned at me. “There are … many islands around here,” she said in slightly accented English. “Are you looking for a special one?”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to decide how best to phrase my request. “I’m looking for … kind of a haunted island. One that people try and avoid.” I felt incredibly stupid just saying this aloud.
She stared at me a little blankly for a second. “You … want to visit a haunted island?”
“Yes,” I said.
She cocked her head at me, as though she was trying to decide whether this funny westerner was attempting to pull her leg. “There are several island tours from nearby … you could visit historic Hashima Island—”
“If lots of people visit, it’s probably not the island I’m looking for,” I said, trying to be helpful and not snarky. She seemed very sincere. “Again, I’m looking for one people would tend to avoid.”
She looked uncomfortable for a moment, then moved to the series of brochures in a display behind her, pulling out a map and bringing it over to the counter. She unfolded it and placed it between us, a nice, full-color picture of the nearby Japanese coastline, with names in Japanese characters with English subtitles beneath. “Many of the boats leave from the docks, here,” she said, pointing at a place right on the water. “We are here,” and she circled what I presumed was the train station with her pen. “I do not believe I can help you with finding a haunted island tour. This not something I have heard of, but … there are many boats available for chartered tours at the docks.” She bowed her head at me and pushed the map gently toward me. “Perhaps you will find what you seek there.”
“Wakarimashita, ” Kat said, sliding the map further toward me, and bowing her own head toward the girl. “Domo arigato. ” She said something else that I didn’t understand, then turned away from the counter. I picked up the map and followed her away, back to where Harry was standing with his arms folded—still—waiting for us.
“I think we’re better off going to the docks and asking a local fisherman about haunted islands,” Kat said once we were back within earshot of Harry. “Asking the local tourist guides isn’t going to be super fruitful. Their job is emphasizing the good parts of Nagasaki. They’re not going to be keen to discuss a real haunted island in most cases, it’d be kind of a smudge on their reputation.”
“That’s … so very different than it would be in America,” I said.
“Because this is Japan,” Kat said, way too seriously, and then she turned and started pulling her rollerbag toward the exit.
“She’s gotta be a way different person than you knew,” I said to Harry, meta-low, before I started after her.
Harry grunted at first, but then, almost so quiet I couldn’t hear it, said, “Nope.” And trailed along in her wake, his own bag slung over his shoulder.
Nagasaki’s train station was a sprawling thing, and the exit was like an entry to a mall or stadium, a kind of courtyard with shops on either side covered over by a cantilevered arch. It was a pretty cool piece of architecture, and it led right out to where cabs waited to pick up passengers, even in these early morning hours.
My view of the city was somewhat limited; I was looking for signs of the destruction that had fallen upon this place on an August day in 1945, but I couldn’t see much of the city from where I stood, and it all looked pretty normal and citylike from here, nothing like the wastelands from those post-nuclear games Reed played. Not that I’d expected that, exactly, but I figured there must be some sign here somewhere of what had happened.
Before we even made it halfway down the forecourt mall, Harry’s hand fell on my shoulder, an iron grip that almost yanked me around in place. I started to look back at him to call out my aggravation at his sudden arresting of my momentum, but Kat had stopped in front of me, and her suitcase fell from her grasp, landing with a thunk on the pavement.
“Uh, Sienna?” she asked, not looking back at me. “You have a problem.”
And I damned sure did, I realized a moment later.
Because standing there, blocking our exit to the cabs, that same hollow, wide smile on his face and backed by a half dozen yakuza accomplices … was Prettyboy.