Sharp Shooter Tokyoite

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Book Details

  Dedication

  Sharp Shooter Tokyoite

  About the Author

  Sharp

  Shooter

  Tokyoite

  CHARLIE GODWYNE

  It's 2035 and Kei is a half-Japanese, half-American asthmatic forced to relocate to Vancouver in order to breathe. Despite the difficulties that being in Japan entails, Kei goes back time and again to spend time with Taka, best friend and confidante, and help him hunt illegal pornographers. But no matter how badly Kei wishes they could be together permanently, life seems determined to keep them apart.

  Sharp Shooter Tokyoite

  By Charlie Godwyne

  Published by Less Than Three Press LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by Amanda Jean

  Cover designed by Natasha Snow

  This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  First Edition April 2017

  Copyright © 2017 by Charlie Godwyne

  Printed in the United States of America

  Digital ISBN 9781620049860

  To My Dad

  I hit the jackpot with my dad.

  I wish I could take the traits of my dad and share them around. Dad, I am so sad that my writing is getting out in the world so late that you will only get to read my first book, but here goes:

  Thank you for teaching me to play basketball. Your cheers were so loud I always heard you while playing.

  Thank you for coming to every marching band competition and every concert.

  Thank you for sitting me down in high school and telling me that no matter the gender of the person I'm dating, that I have to bring them by the house so you can meet them, because I'm a terrible judge of character, and you have to make sure I'm not dating a scumbag.

  Thank you for rolling around in family tag football when the other dads were too cool to get in the dirt with the kids.

  Thank you for leaving work and coming home for dinner.

  Thank you for sitting with me every Sunday morning for years while I studied for the ACT. It took nine tries to get the scholarship, but that was all you.

  Thank you for showing me Anadarko, Oklahoma.

  Thank you for car rides with the windows down belting St. Elmo's Fire at the top of our lungs. Thank you for Roll Me Away, and for Lola, on full blast, dancing around the living room.

  I'm so sad that my partner barely knows you, and that my future children will never know you.

  I'm a little too atheist to believe in heaven, but I've reconciled myself to hoping that everyone gets what they want. In your case, I'm sure it's that great football stadium in the sky where Oklahoma beats Texas every day, and I'm always playing in the Pride.

  Thank you for teaching me that life is a praise chorus.

  Thank you for being my dad.

  This one's for you.

  Thank you to Less Than Three Press for printing this.

  Sharp Shooter Tokyoite

  Five years ago, 2030

  I washed my dishes after dinner with the window open to let out the smell of stir fry so I could actually sleep in my tiny shoebox apartment. Late fall in Yonezura was definitely cold, but the heat from cooking had warmed my place, and I needed the stir fry smell to dissipate before bed or I'd dream of nothing but food.

  I heard a clink outside, very close, which was strange on the fourth floor.

  On the metal bar bolted above my window—each apartment had one designed for hanging futons to dry—a rope arched over and looped through like a pulley. I stared in shock as a piece of paper safety-pinned to the rope rose to the middle of my window.

  I walked to the ledge, pushed aside the screen, and reached out to grab the paper.

  Look down! it said, in spare and precise kanji.

  I did.

  The vice captain of the archery team stood in the parking lot, waving both arms over his head like a fool.

  I leaned out. "Takahashi-senpai?"

  "Sumisu!" Taka-senpai called up, the Japanese pronunciation of my name, Kei Smith. Mom had insisted on giving me a Japanese first name even if my last name was my dad's American one.

  Good lord. I looked around to see if anyone else had their window open. A few of the other apartments at the international dorm did. I would catch flack for this. Taka-senpai always doted on me during archery team practice. He claimed to merely be on the lookout for my Western technique—despite the fact that my mother is half-Japanese and I spent most of my early childhood, including my first archery lessons, in Japan—but the captain and our other teammates always teased him for it.

  I stared at him, not wanting to say "Can I help you?" and draw even more attention.

  "Sumisu-san!" Taka-senpai called again. "Want to come down here and chat with me? I have something cool to show you!"

  I blinked around my apartment. "Do you want to come up?" The security door was usually propped open—he could have just come in and knocked on my door.

  Taka-senpai shook his head so hard I worried it would twist right off.

  Goodness, I could never understand rural Japanese modesty. I shut the window and threw on a jacket. Downstairs I stepped into my shoes while Taka-senpai watched from outside, trying, and failing, to look nonchalant.

  "What did you want to show me?"

  Taka-senpai shrugged on his backpack and whipped around to glance over the dorm. "Shhh, this way."

  I followed him down the streets leading to the station, through the station and to the other side, along the path that led to the town park.

  I started feeling wary. What could we possibly do in the park at night? I'd heard people went there to commit suicide, and that the police would check the trees each morning before opening the park for the day. Was Taka-senpai actually some kind of creep?

  "I don't want to go in," I said, slowing down.

  Taka-senpai stopped, his eyes searching my face. "I can't show you this in plain sight of buildings. There might be a camera."

  Oh hell no. "Then I guess you're not going to be showing it to me," I said.

  He furrowed his eyebrows. "Are you afraid of the dark?"

  "Not exactly."

  He blinked and then ran a hand over his face and through his hair. "We'll just go to the edge of the park."

  "I'm not losing sight of the street," I said.

  "Fair enough," Taka-senpai said, leading the way again.

  All of my senses were afire. He clearly didn't get why the trip was making me nervous. This park was the only place people in Yonezura could go to do something unobserved. The one murder case in the town's entire history had happened in this park in the middle of the night. I had no desire to become murder story number two. I slowed down, forcing Taka-senpai to also slow or else leave me behind.

  "They tend to congregate at the castle," Taka-senpai said as we crossed the bridge over the moat to the park. "It'll be harder to find them from the edge."

  "Who's they?"

  "You'll see."

  I clenched my teeth. All of my muscles tightened, ready to sprint off at a moment's notice.

  We stopped outside the edge of the park.

  Taka-senpai surveyed the area. "There's one."

  I squinted my eyes in that direction, not finding anyone. Was Taka-senpai really crazy?

  Taka-senpai knelt by the side of the bridge, at the juncture to where it met ground again. I hesitantly lowered myself beside him, wary tha
t he might turn on me and toss me in the moat. The water was cold and shallow, the bottoms and sides of the moat paved, and it was a long way down.

  Taka-senpai zipped open his backpack and pulled out a crossbow.

  I scrambled away, my breath caught in my throat.

  "Shh!" Taka-senpai said. "You'll startle it away."

  I struggled to form words. "It?"

  "Yeah, the crow." Taka-senpai waved me back over.

  What?

  Taka-senpai fiddled with his crossbow, clearly ignorant of my distress. I watched as he affixed a bolt into the groove, my interested piqued.

  "Here." Taka-senpai held the bow out to me.

  I didn't move. "What do you want me to do?"

  "Shoot the crow with that bolt."

  I took the crossbow and inspected the groove. It was a high-quality crossbow, old but well-kept. It would do the trick. I didn't know Taka-senpai well, but from his gentle demeanor, it seemed just like him to want kill the thing swiftly and as painlessly as possible, though it didn't explain why he wanted it dead. But it did make me remember that I did know him, and he probably wasn't planning to hurt me.

  "You know what being vegetarian means, right?" I asked as I scooted over to where Taka-senpai knelt. "I don't eat meat. I'm not just gonna shoot some crow."

  Taka-senpai placed a hand on my shoulder and pointed across the wall of the moat on which a crow perched some meters away. "There, can you hit it?"

  "Are you even listening to me, senpai?" I was having trouble focusing on the crow, a black smudge against the city haze-polluted night sky, instead of the warm arm around my back and the hand holding me close.

  "Listen," Taka-senpai said. "I did some research. Crows are way overpopulated in this area because they've lost their natural predators. This is just restoring the balance. Like Gojira."

  "Godzilla? It's not up to us to do that," I said.

  "I did some calculations," he continued. "Just one a night for three hundred days would get them down to what scientists consider to be a manageable level for a small urban area. I've been trying to do it myself, but my eyes can't see that well in the dark and every time a dart misses its target I have to go find it so some child won't stumble upon it in the park. Plus, well, you're the sharp shooter on the team. Even though you're just a sophomore and I'm the vice captain, you're better at this than me."

  Based on how close he was holding me, how his unwavering grip on my arm forced me to lean into his side, I guessed that my sharp eyes weren't his only motivation. My heart picked up its pace, but I told myself it was only due to the adrenaline rush a moment ago. But either way, I was better than the vice captain—go me.

  "Also, I heard this on the news," Taka-senpai said, his voice low. "A swarm of them attacked a girl in a town nearby. She was just walking home from school, and for whatever reason a group of them attacked her and clawed up her face real good. They said she was going to need reconstructive surgery. I can't just stand around and do nothing."

  I watched his face as he told me this. The sincerity in his eyes was genuine.

  I lifted the crossbow.

  Present day, 2035

  "That whole thing about not being conspicuous," Taka said. "It's kind of negated by your gas mask. Might as well strike a pose and enjoy it."

  I glared at him. My mask was a pale blue, strapped around my head to cover my nose and mouth. It had a thin hose leading to the oxygen tank on my back. I tried to cover things with a backpack setup, a thin scarf around my neck to distract from the mask, but it was still pretty obvious. People on the Yamanote-sen train to Akihabara surreptitiously snapped photos of me with their cell phones, pretending to text but still holding the device just so, but when we got off at the digital district no one batted an eye. In Akihabara, the nerdiest digital district of Japan, people just assumed you were cosplaying some video game character and asked you which one. My character's name was asthma from the game why the hell does Tokyo have so much air pollution?

  Akihabara was lit up with stories-high LED billboards advertising arcades, maid cafés, pachinko slot machines, movie theatres, and comic book stores. Sparkling fairy dust of all the nerd fiefdoms towered above us on the sky scrapers in pinks, greens, and yellows. To the geeks of the world, Akihabara was paradise. We passed by the Dreamy Fairy Land next to the station, Taka's and my favorite French-maid café. If we had a good run, Taka promised we'd go. I loved the maids.

  We walked past the main block where all the tourists lurk, on to the second and third blocks where the typical city landscape starts but is still sprinkled with nerdy shenanigans: giant robots on billboards, magical girl figurines in windows. It was no surprise to me that Taka found us a hit here. Taka rounded a corner at a stooped jog and I slipped in behind.

  We entered a high-rise filled with shops shut down for the night. I looked up the map of the ten floors on my phone: all BDSM gear.

  Goodness.

  Taka edged down a dingy stairwell. We came out on a dark basement floor with doors numbered like apartments and heard voices. I sidled up to a door and listened in.

  "Go through that door, yeah—"

  "Wait, where—"

  I shook my head and whispered "They're playing a game." My voice rasped out of the speech box on my latest edition gas mask.

  Taka grinned wickedly. "You sound like such a badass when you do that."

  "Could we focus, please?"

  I strained my ears for any other signs of activity on the floor. Just geeky talk of video game levels and power ups.

  "Gamers is a good sign," Taka whispered and scooted up next to me. "The address I found was this one, but you never know if the records are up to date."

  "This isn't a video-porn manufacturer, though, right?" I whispered back.

  "No," Taka said. "Just a mega fan. If illegal porn is being made in Tokyo, this fan probably owns it."

  This person was also fan enough to live in a tower filled with shops for BDSM gear. Sheesh. An aluminum can crinkled and another voice spoke in the room. I listened in close. A gamer drinking party. Taka crept down the hall and listened at each of the doors. His deductions were always right on the spot.

  "Ah, sorry!" A tumble of plastic could be heard scattering across a hardwood floor.

  I tensed. From the hollow sound, they could have been games or DVD cases.

  "Have you seen that?"

  I coiled like a viper ready to spring. Watching. Maybe those were DVDs…

  "She's young."

  I gritted my teeth.

  "Wanna watch it?"

  I hissed to Taka, jerking my head toward the door. He scuttled back to my side.

  "There's at least one huge stack of DVDs," I murmured.

  "This is Akihabara," Taka whispered. "Everyone uses DVD stacks as furniture here."

  I nodded. It could be the wrong place. "But they're talking about the movie, and how the actress is very young."

  "Let's do this," Taka said, eyes lit up.

  "What made you decide?" I asked.

  Taka smirked. "I just want to see you kick down this door."

  I cursed.

  Taka pounded on the door. "Police! Open up!"

  I drew my gun.

  "Phasers set to stun, Spock," Taka said.

  "Nerd," I growled.

  "I mean it, Kei."

  At the sound of my name, I clicked my 2028 Winchester revolver over to the taser setting. No rubber bullets today.

  Taka pounded again. "Police! Open up!”

  The room had fallen silent. There was a tense moment, then the door opened just a crack until the chain caught.

  A chin poked through with a neon blue shock of hair sticking out. "Cops."

  I rolled my eyes.

  "Special Ops film division. We have a search warrant," Taka said. "Open up."

  "Let me see the warrant," the blue-haired boy said.

  Taka lowered his gun and fished in his jacket, then held up our warrant with a sigh.

  "Hold it closer so I
can see," Blue whined.

  "All right, have a good look," Taka said, a quirk to his lips and knowing glint in his eyes.

  I kicked the door in.

  The punk boy tumbled backwards and flopped onto the floor. Clouds of DVD and game cases fell like confetti on New Year's followed by an aftermath of food wrappers and garbage puffing around us.

  It looked like a geeky sleepover. Four boys stared up at us. I surveyed the area while Taka rushed over to the bookshelves lining the far wall. DVDs and manga comics were stacked from floor to ceiling in the small space. This was a decent collector. He belonged in Akihabara. Another young man crouched in a doorway and fumbled with his phone.

  I pointed my gun at him. "Drop it."

  The phone clattered onto the hardwood and he put both hands in the air. The blue-haired boy on the floor raised his hands.

  "Just stay where you are," Taka ordered. He flashed his badge at them. "This is just a mandatory search of the premises. Don't move."

  Taka turned his back to me and examined the shelves, tucking the barrel of his gun in the back of his waistband. So sexy—I loved it when he did that.

  Taka scanned the shelves, fingertips tracing the spines.

  "What are you looking for?" the blue-haired boy asked.

  We didn't answer.

  He propped an arm on the filthy floor and gave me an impatient look. "Who's the chick in the mask?"

  "Shut up!" Taka shouted.

  I switched the safety off and shot the stack of DVDs with a rubber bullet for good measure. And to watch it explode.

  The young man flinched as DVDs tumbled everywhere and Taka moved to the next wall.

  Another college-aged boy walked in from the kitchen with a stack of grungy magazines. "Who's that guy in the mask?"

  "Shut the hell up!" Taka said.

  "Whoa! Cops?!" The young man sank to the ground next to the blue boy.

  I smiled with pleasure. I loved it when Taka played the bad cop, though he was a paper tiger.

  The boy in the doorway started getting up.

  "Don't move!" I shouted.

  "Seriously, though," the blue-haired said, "what is that mask? Cosplay?"