Sharp Shooter Tokyoite Read online

  Darkness closed in on my vision. I tried to tell Taka I was passing out. I heard him shout in alarm, and everything went black.

  Through the silence, I heard Taka's soothing voice cut through.

  "It's okay, Gojira," he said, petting my arm. If he was using one of his many nicknames for me, Godzilla, then everything must be all right. "That's my Gojira. Everything will be okay."

  *~*~*

  I jerked into consciousness. Taka was snuggled up behind me on a hospital bed, snoring in my ear. Thanks, man, I thought in fond exasperation, grateful that Taka was alive. That I was.

  I heard voices in the hallway and strained to hear them. I recognized our police chief's voice. Maybe that meant we were back in Tokyo, but the person she was talking to definitely spoke in the Kansai dialect.

  I felt like I had been hit by a truck, but there were no IVs or any other medical equipment connected to me, so ultimately I must have been okay. The leg shot must've just been a graze, though I was currently too drugged to feel a damn thing. My eyes finally focused and I reached over to the bedside table and grabbed my cell phone, hoping for an update on my grant applications for doing air-quality research in East Asia. "Who's Grant?" I remembered Taka saying with suspicion when he saw an email regarding my application flashing on my phone before I'd told him I'd applied. I smiled. Some good news at a time like this would be nice.

  I unlocked it, and saw that I had alert messages. I smiled—maybe Patrick had taken the initiative to ask how I was doing. I clicked on the alerts to find updates to Patrick's online profile, specifically to his photo album. I scrolled through what looked like a dinner party that was followed with quite a few drinks until one photo made me stop.

  Wrapped around Patrick, practically sitting in his lap, was a man, holding a bottle of wine up in cheers while kissing Patrick on the cheek. The voice in my head told me to withhold judgment; this didn't mean anything, unless it did. I scrolled through more photos. The new man got more and more touchy. I clenched my jaw. The last photo I looked at had him undoing Patrick's belt, a playful smirk on his face. I clicked back to Patrick's online profile to check his relationship status and saw that he was single, or rather, still single. He'd told me back in Vancouver that he didn't change his relationship status online unless he was sleeping with someone, so even though we'd been dating for several weeks, he had not declared us as a couple to his friends and family online. Now, though, I was glad for it. He could keep his relationship sex standards to himself.

  I turned my phone off and set it back down. That picture burned in front of my eyes, and my heart ached. For all of our complications, Taka would never do something like that. I closed my eyes, willing myself to fall back asleep so I wouldn't have to deal with the huge apology I owed Taka.

  Taka stirred behind me. "Hey, sharp shooter."

  "Hey, bullfrog."

  He cleared his throat and chuckled. "How are you feeling?"

  "Better than I thought I would, but still pretty sore," I said honestly.

  "You can blame me for that," Taka said, tucking his head against my shoulder blades. "You're all black and blue, but luckily you've got no broken bones or internal organ damage. I helped wheel you into the X-ray room, then in for an MRI. I thought your collarbone would have been shattered for sure."

  "I wasn't shot in the collarbone," I said. What a random body part to pick from all of that.

  "No." Taka coughed. "But you fell off my bicycle. I couldn't catch you in time. Hit the pavement like a slab of meat."

  Oh god.

  "Did you get more contraband?" I asked, changing the subject. "What were you doing all the while we were in there?"

  "I wasn't searching for DVDs," Taka said. "There weren't any. But I got something even more valuable."

  I tried to roll around to face him, but my body screamed in protest. I settled with halfway there, flat on my back, so at least I could turn my head and see him. I panted in pain and waited for him to continue.

  "I took a video," Taka said.

  That took me back. The silly vice captain of the archery team, Taka the film major who went on to cop school, finally making his own films. If I hadn't been shot a couple times, I would have said there was a ring to it.

  "What was so valuable in the video?" I asked.

  Taka locked eyes with me. I saw something was haunting him and any words died in my mouth.

  "A person," Taka said. "She was in the back room behind us, but the door was open. She was tied up, and tied to the bed. I can't tell if she's the one from the DVD, but I got a video of her trapped in that room."

  I gasped. "That's human trafficking."

  "Absolutely," Taka said. "Not just a DVD that they can disclaim. I got my phone rolling and had just finished filming enough of the surrounding room to make it clear where she was taken when you tossed that smoke bomb with your oxygen tank as a chaser and promptly stopped breathing. You scared me to death."

  I had scared myself to death, too. A shiver ran down my spine thinking about that girl. I knew I'd have nightmares from this.

  "I need to get back to Vancouver," I said. "My lungs took a beating yesterday."

  Taka's mouth tightened. "You'll want to get back to your new guy."

  I grimaced. "I'm not going back to Patrick. He… appears to be moving on in my absence." Taka's head lifted and his mouth opened, but I kept going before he could ask about it. "But I still have to go back."

  Taka watched me thoughtfully. "What about those grants you applied for?" He eventually asked. "The ones where you'd go around and measure air quality?"

  The Fulbright and National Science Foundation grants. "I submitted them, but the application cycle is for a year in advance. Nothing would start until next summer. I have to make a living until then." I didn't even have enough savings to buy oxygen tanks while job searching in Tokyo.

  "I'll get you a job at the station," Taka said softly. "I'll show the Chief the video of you wielding your complete badassery, and you'll be officially hired."

  I scrubbed my tears and looked at his hopeful eyes. "I can't breathe in Tokyo. I'd have to wear that mask every day." I couldn't face living like that just to be Taka's work partner when I wanted more.

  "I'll make the precinct get a strict smoking room policy," Taka argued. "I'm sure the chief would approve it."

  I pushed back. "There's research coming in that tank over-users are getting flooded lungs and developing allergies when exposed to natural air. They don't even know what the long-term effects are yet. The only large-scale studies have focused on the elderly who've not lived more than five years since going on the tanks, but Taka, what if it's not due to their old age but due to the tanks? What if I'm sentencing myself to five years?"

  Taka got up and shut the door, then sat back down on my hospital bed. There were tears in his eyes. "I don't want that."

  "I know you don't." I put a hand on top of his. "I'm sorry that you've flown me all the way here and all I've done is whine. I've not been myself lately."

  "I love you," Taka said in English. Then he said it in Japanese. Sukidaiyo.

  My chest tightened. "You don't mean that." He didn't. Did he?

  "Yes I do." He choked on a sob and covered his eyes with his hands. "After you left last time, I didn't know what to do. Every time you leave, I throw myself into work like a madman, searching for leads so I can get the approval to bring you back. I don't have any time to spend my own money, so I've saved like crazy for a larger apartment."

  To live together. In Vancouver I was living paycheck to paycheck, stockpiling anything left over into my medical savings account so that I could afford my inhalers, with nothing left over to plan a future. It didn't make sense for Taka to harbor those kinds of dreams for a person like me, and acknowledging I had dreams like that was digging into a place too deep and vulnerable.

  "You're just saying that," I said, pulling my hand away.

  Taka glared. "That's not true!"

  I had expected anger, but hi
s wounded expression gave me pause. Had I been wrong?

  "I'm sorry about Patrick," I whispered, hope rising in my chest. "It was never really him I wanted."

  Taka's features changed from hurt to empathy. "I'm glad. Make your home here with me. Chief told me the department always talks about how cute you are."

  I snorted.

  Taka crawled over to me, linking our hands back together again. "Believe me when I say how much I care about you, Kei. This Tokyo setup won't be forever. Just come with me until we can find a place with clean air to live and work."

  He'd read my mind. With that, the dam opened up within me. My face contorted and I fell apart. "I'm sorry!"

  Taka took me in his arms. I winced from the pain, but gripped him tight.

  "I'll be with you," Taka said, rocking me side to side. "I'll be with you when the whole world clouds over and you can't breathe anywhere anymore. I'll stay with you, Kei."

  One year later

  "Here it is," Taka said with a sweep of his arm.

  We walked through the huge flood gates beneath Tokyo. The true Tokyo underground. I'd always wanted to see it, so we'd flashed our badges to get an express tour. Definitely an abuse of police authority, but after scoping out another location for a hit, we weren't eager to get back to the office and push the paperwork for it.

  I walked around one of the gigantic pillars, unable to convince my brain of the enormity of what I was seeing.

  "It's so huge," I said. "I could live down here."

  "Not when it's filled with water."

  That was a terrifying thought. I suddenly wanted to sprint back above ground.

  Taka's phone beeped. He pulled it out and checked it.

  "From the chief? What's she say?" I walked deeper into the flood gate corridor.

  Taka gave a growl of frustration. "The board can't approve us for a year of base salary on leave while you investigate aircasting."

  I cupped my hands and called down the corridor, "But it's to save the world!" The echo was magnificent.

  Taka smiled. "Looks like you'll have to go without me."

  "Never!" I spun around, giggling at the reverberations of my dramatic comic-book voice.

  The grant I'd received from the National Science Foundation to measure air pollution all over Asia was only enough for me to go—and eat carrot sticks for a year. However, after a year of living together in our Tokyo apartment, Taka and I were unwilling to be separated.

  But Taka's base salary was necessary for him to survive. I'd need my police job back or something else once the grant research was done too.

  I checked my cell phone for the PM2.5 levels in here. The app lit up blue—Tokyo air was surprisingly clean down below.

  I tore my mask off and left it on the ground, breaking into a sprint down the giant cement underground. A keening scream emitted from my throat, my arms wide as I felt the wind rush against my face. The glorious feeling of running with full breath in my lungs pulled in from the beautiful planet around me rushed through my body, freely given. If I could measure everything and everywhere I possibly could in one year's time, maybe I could get Asian air to go clean enough that Godzilla wouldn't have to come and destroy us after all.

  The security guard called some warning that I did not heed. Taka's footfalls ran in my direction, but I did not slow. If a world of water was heading my way, I'd just have to deal with it then.

  "Kei!"

  I slowed to let Taka catch up with me. I sunk to the concrete floor, staring up at the solid gray ceiling under Tokyo and wishing it was the sky.

  After a solid minute Taka finally trudged up behind me, his face and neck crimson and drenched in sweat. He bent over his knees and heaved air.

  "How can you run like that?" he wheezed out.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket and I checked the alert. "Shit."

  "Kei?"

  I shut my phone off and crammed it in my pocket. "My job in the States just let me know I was not eligible for re-hire. Talk about holding a grudge."

  "So they hired another cop who actually stayed?" Taka asked.

  I sighed. "Yup." No going back now.

  Taka smiled. "Just stay here."

  Taka's phone beeped again. I heard him pull his phone out, push some buttons and give a chuckle, then shove it back in his pocket.

  Taka stooped down and crawled on top of me, propped on his forearms. "Let's have sex."

  "Right here in front of the security guard." I smirked and bucked my hips.

  Taka gave me that look he always did when he thought I was being evil.

  "Or maybe we can have sex in dirty, smoggy Beijing, under the acid rain…" he said.

  I snorted. "Or on the Ulaanbaatar subway, huh?" I said with a wink.

  Taka kissed me slowly and gently. I wondered what the security guard must be thinking of the cops he let down here.

  "Wait," I said, breaking the kiss. "Why are you talking like you're going with me to Beijing?"

  "The chief said the department couldn't pay for both our base salaries for a year of your air-quality research abroad," Taka said with his wicked grin, "but she did say headquarters could pay for one of us and give the other unpaid time off with guarantee of a job when we get back."

  My eyes bugged out. "You got the paid leave?"

  Taka kissed the corners of my gaping mouth. "Ready to bust up Asia with me, baby?"

  "Annie, get your gun," I said, pulling him into my arms.

  FIN

  About the Author

  Charlie Godwyne has lived in the US, Canada, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. A writer-teacher-activist, Charlie's favorite thing is finding a beautiful spot in nature and curling up to take a nap. Charlie loves to read and write characters both unique and vulnerable who do what they can for the world.