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  the skin said.

  The Young Master was hurriedly stuffing his belongings into a duffel bag.

  the skin shouted.

  The Young Master tore the leather map from the wall and crammed him into the bag as well. Then he swiped me from my shelf and pushed me inside next. When he took me out again, I could hear sirens nearby.

  “What do I do?” the Young Master cried, his voice carrying a pain I had never heard from him before. “What do I do?”

  Thinking quickly, I put together an escape route. As if hearing my plea, he looked to me as soon as he got some distance from the sirens. Scanning my pages, nodding, the Young Master was the spitting image of his Predecessor. But something inside me knew I must not allow my resolve to waver. Using concealment and emphasis, I turned him down a forest road and took him five kilometers away from the highway. Then, just as we neared the detour for his escape, had that been my goal, we came into the destination I had chosen for us instead.

  For a second, the Land Cruiser seemed to float in air, as if atop a balloon. The tires whirred freely, and the front of the car slowly lifted, as if riding a seesaw. “What? What?” The Young Master cried out, but then the Land Cruiser fell, rear first, sucked into the pit.

  That’s how we ended up here, in the bottom of a hole fifteen meters deep, passenger side up. At first, the Young Master tried different ways of freeing himself, but when he realized that the doors on both sides were wedged shut, he began to softly weep. As a matter of course, I held no intention on helping him out. Instead, I hoped he could claim his Predecessor’s temperament; the admirable ability to respond to any situation in the manner of a gentleman. I had wanted to provide the Young Master with time for ample reflection. I hoped, face-to-face in this isolated space, that the Young Master and I would have a better chance to forge a mental connection like the one I had shared with his Predecessor.

  Much to my delight, the human leather had dried out, and in him I no longer sensed even a fragment of consciousness. A geologic map had once told me that an underground water vein had dried up here, leaving a hollow. It was my belief that to truly be of use to my Master, I needed to know not only what was above ground within my territory, but what was below. Luckily, this forest road was patrolled once every two months, so we would be found easily enough in time. By then, I’m sure our relationship will have matured into something stronger. Of this I’m positive, as I watch over the Young Master, a childlike innocence to his countenance entirely absent the day before.

  1.

  “It’s simple,” said the American. “I don’t know why nobody has thought of it before.”

  “Maybe they have,” said Hiraku, excited, unable to stop himself from interrupting. “How would we know if they had?”

  “If they did it right,” claimed the American, “we wouldn’t.”

  “This is not a good idea,” I said, shaking my head.

  Hiraku ignored me. “Mr. Matsuo,” he said, “please listen to what this gentleman has to say.”

  “Mr. Matsuo,” I said in turn. “It is my duty to remind you that we have no need to take the advice of an outsider. Our agreement with the other clans still holds strong, to our mutual benefit. Why should we take the risk of disrupting it on the advice of an American we do not know?”

  For a long time Mr. Matsuo sat motionless, the light pooling upon his glasses in such a way as to make him appear to have no eyes. “You have done your duty by reminding me,” he said at last, “and you have our best interest at heart. And yet, Hiraku, too, has our best interest at heart. What can it hurt to listen to this man who he has brought to us?”

  And so we listened. The American, more accustomed to academic conferences than to extralegal negotiations, made his proposal in the form of a PowerPoint presentation. He seemed surprised our headquarters didn’t have a projector he could plug his laptop into. He asked to rearrange the room so that all three of us could see his small screen. It took him some time to realize that the only person who needed to see the screen was Mr. Matsuo. Whatever he decided, the rest of us would accept.

  But Mr. Matsuo wanted me to see the presentation as well, for, as he had said, I had the benefit of the clan at heart. Even if he did not in the end take my advice, he wanted me to know he valued me. He asked me to sit beside him. Hiraku, too, was there, on his other side. Not so much so that he could see the presentation—he already knew the details of what the American intended—but so that Mr. Matsuo would not give him grounds for feeling that I had been favored over him. It was always a balancing act between Hiraku and I, brothers though we had sworn to be, and Mr. Matsuo was one of the few who knew how always to strike the right balance.

  “It’s simple,” said the American. “Over the past four years, Godzilla has struck the city seven times, at regular intervals.”

  “Godzilla?” whispered Mr. Matsuo to me.

  “He means Gojira,” I said. “He can’t pronounce it.”

  “Ah,” said Mr. Matsuo. “Gojira. Of course.”

  “This creature does us no damage,” I told the American. “Our territory is sufficiently distant from the waterfront.”

  “Yes,” said the American. “True. But what is interesting is this.”

  He pressed a button and moved the PowerPoint forward to a map of the waterfront.

  “He always comes from the sea,” he said. “And lands here.” He touched another button and three fluorescent lines appeared, very close together. “Each time his path is similar, but not identical. With each attack he shifts slightly, trampling a different sequence of streets. Gentlemen,” he said, “I’m a statistician. I’m here to tell you there’s a pattern.”

  Mr. Matsuo looked at Hiraku, pointedly ignoring the American. “Does it matter that there’s a pattern?” he asked.

  “Indeed,” said Hiraku, nodding vigorously. “It matters a great deal.”

  “Ah,” said Mr. Matsuo, unconvinced.

  “Each attack has pursued a similar but distinct vector, and each vector, particularly in the early stages before the army has been called out, has the same mathematical relation to the vector of the attack before or after it. In other words, I can predict the attack.”

  “When it will happen?” asked Mr. Matsuo.

  “Yes,” said the American. “But, more importantly, the path.”

  Mr. Matsuo turned to Hiraku again. “Do we care what path it takes?”

  “Yes,” said Hiraku. “Please, Mr. Matsuo, listen.”

  The American continued.

  “The next attack will come in several days’ time. His path will go”—he touched a button—“here. Right past this Aozora Bank branch. My modeling equations indicate that there is an 89.3 percent chance that Godzilla’s tail and clawed feet will decimate the bank building, allowing us ready access to the vault.”

  I snorted. “Bank robbery? Of a bank in another clan’s territory? Why take such a risk?”

  “Because of what’s in the bank, Mr. Matsuo,” said Hiraku. “Not the cash there, but the contents of the safe deposit boxes, particularly those that the clan in question”—he remained vague, careful around the American—“hold there.”

  “Ah,” said Mr. Matsuo. “Now I see.”

  “For a percentage of the take,” the American was saying, “I am willing to provide the specific information that will allow …”

  Mr. Matsuo leaned towards me. “Can you negotiate his willingness?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I said, and, quickly rising to my feet, dragged the American to the soundproof room.

  I had to remove only three of the American’s fingernails (left pinky, left forefinger, thumb) and his right cuspid before he became willing to share his specific information with us for free. Conveniently, it was all, foolishly enough, on the laptop he had brought, kept in protected files whos
e passwords he almost immediately gave up.

  “You haven’t done this before?” I couldn’t stop myself from saying at one point, and was not surprised when he shook his head.

  “Do we need your help to interpret the data?” I asked, and he nervously insisted no, it was easy enough, we could release him and read the data just fine on our own. There was no reason to hold him, he claimed.

  “And you promise not to tell anyone, I imagine,” I said.

  Yes, of course, he promised, he would speak to no one, we could trust him.

  Just to make sure, I had him talk me through the data, the specific streets, the specific times. The math I couldn’t understand, and when he started to explain it I stopped him. But the results were simple enough. Even a baby could understand them.

  “You don’t need me,” he insisted, and yes, I had to agree, we didn’t need him. And so I slit his throat. I did it from behind, so the blood would be less likely to spray me.

  When I came back, Mr. Matsuo was waiting just as I had left him, serene, motionless. Hiraku beside him was sweating and nervous.

  “The American had a perfectly legitimate business proposition,” said Hiraku.

  “Yes,” I said, “but he was no businessman. He should have shared it with you, and then you should have shared it with Mr. Matsuo. There was no reason for him to see any face but your own.”

  “Did he become willing?” asked Mr. Matsuo.

  I nodded.

  “We can hold him,” said Hiraku. “Keep him until the job is done and then release him once he can’t do us any harm.”

  But of course he always could have done us harm. Mr. Matsuo looked at me inquiringly. Whatever he read in my face made him smile.

  “As you wish, Hiraku,” he said. “Shall you be the one to tell him?”

  We watched him go. When he came back, he was sweating even more.

  “It was wrong to bring the American here,” said Mr. Matsuo to him, voice still mild. “It was a lack of judgment. You are responsible for his death.”

  I had heard Mr. Matsuo use such phrasing before and knew where it was headed. By the end of the evening, Hiraku would cut off the tip of his finger and present it to Mr. Matsuo as penance.

  2.

  The night predicted for Gojira’s attack was cold, bitterly so. That, Mr. Matsuo suggested, was better: nobody would wonder about two men wrapped in coats and with their hats pulled low to hide their faces. Hiraku was still holding a grudge about the American.

  “We could have kept him,” he said to me as we rode the subway together to the waterfront district. I just grunted. “He could have told us about not only this attack but others. Surely there will be future banks decimated by Gojira’s tail.”

  “They don’t matter,” I said.

  “How do we know if they matter?” he asked.

  “As soon as he walked into that room with his PowerPoint, he was a dead man,” I said. “Be thankful you aren’t dead with him.”

  “I,” he said, rubbing his bandaged pinky, “would never use PowerPoint.”

  Midnight, the model the American provided had predicted, but just to be safe we were off the subway by 11 p.m., and walked the remainder of the way. Hiraku had printed out a screenshot of the predicted vector and we quickly found the place where Gojira was meant to appear, and even more quickly distanced ourselves from it.

  We stood there in the cold, shivering, stamping our feet, waiting.

  “He might have been wrong, you know,” said Hiraku.

  “I hope he was,” I said.

  “Why would you hope that?”

  We found a ramen shop and settled in at the counter. Midnight came and nothing happened. Perhaps the model was wrong, I thought. It would be a relief if it were. I slurped my ramen, watching the second hand spin around the clock once, begin its course again.

  Hiraku kept turning around, craning to look out the window.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “We won’t be able to see when it comes,” he said.

  “Maybe it won’t come,” I said.

  “But if it does?”

  “We don’t have to see it,” I told him. “We’ll hear it.”

  Four minutes and twenty seconds after midnight, it came. We felt a slow rumbling run through the ground—hardly anything to notice at first, little more than if a subway train had passed underground below us. A few seconds later, our plates began to rattle. Many of the customers around us kept eating at first, until the vibration was too strong to ignore.

  I quickly paid for both of us. By the time I had finished, Hiraku was already on the street. The ground was now shaking enough that it was difficult to keep our balance. Then came a strange, raucous cry, deafening us, shattering the glass of the windows. We caught a glimpse of the creature’s hideous reptilian head over the row of buildings on the other side of the street, watched it cough out a gout of flame.

  “Gojira!” yelled Hiraku.

  Paralyzed, we watched it stalk past. The top of a building exploded as it was hit by the creature’s gigantic tail, and we fled back into the ramen shop to avoid the rain of debris. Hiraku was still yelling the creature’s name, over and over. If the American were here, I thought absurdly, would he tell us that this particular tail strike would decrease the chances of a similar one striking the bank? Would he compute a new percentage using his laptop and then quickly create a new PowerPoint?

  And then the creature was past, moving up the street and away from us, leaving destruction in its wake. The name died on Hiraku’s lips.

  “Come on,” I said. “The army will be here soon. Hurry.”

  We rushed to the corner and ran a block over, entering the street that Gojira had taken just in time to see his back and tail looming farther down through the smoke. He was enormous. The street itself was devastated, buildings broken, cars overturned, things on fire, alarms going off everywhere. The few people visible were screaming and running.

  “Where’s the bank?” I asked. Hiraku had the map out, examining it like a tourist.

  “There,” he finally said, pointing. We rushed up the street, toward the monster, moving in the opposite direction of everyone else.

  The building was so broken, most of the façade spread out all over the street, that at first we didn’t recognize it. But then, running past, I caught a glimpse of the vault door and dragged Hiraku back to it.

  We slipped ski masks over our heads and entered. The vault door was intact, but the reinforced concrete panels of one of the vault walls had been cracked and split, the rebar broken far enough up that it was possible to squeeze through.

  “You see,” said Hiraku, smiling. “The American knew.”

  I just grunted. “Hurry,” I said again.

  I took out a flashlight and squeezed my way in. Inside, the air was full of dust, the floor cluttered with rubble. The safety deposit boxes we were looking for, 1760 and 1761, proved to be on the other wall —the wall that was undamaged.

  I picked up a lump of concrete off the floor and hammered the door for one of the boxes. It didn’t leave a dent. I hit it a few more times. No luck.

  “Now what?” asked Hiraku.

  I shrugged.

  “You didn’t bring any explosives?” he asked.

  “Did you?” I responded.

  I thought for a moment, then passed the flashlight to Hiraku, directing him where to point it. I took out my picks and tried to open one of the doors. The locks were tricky, I could tell immediately, but far from impossible—the bank had depended on the vault for keeping people out. It would take a few minutes, but it could be done.

  But as I worked on picking the locks, I made the mistake of letting my thoughts wander.

  I was thinking, If the wall is undamaged and only these two boxes have been emptied, the clan will know they have been targeted and rob
bed. And if they know they have been targeted, they will have a list of likely suspects in mind. And Mr. Matsuo’s clan will be very high on that list. If I open these boxes and remove anything, I will almost certainly bring war upon Mr. Matsuo and his clan. Even if I preserve the contents as they are but pass along the information, how can we use such information without the clan knowing what has happened and bringing war upon us?

  I moved the picks, insinuating them deeper into the tumblers.

  What is my duty here? I wondered. Am I to do as Mr. Matsuo has asked and by so doing destroy the clan? Or am I to obey a higher duty?

  One lock snapped open and, a moment later, so did the other. I slid the door open and pulled out the box inside, tucking it under my arm.

  “We don’t have time for the other box,” I said to Hiraku. “It’s a shame, but it’s too much of a risk. Either the police will be here soon or the monster will be heading back the other way. Either way, it’s too much of a risk.”

  For a moment he seemed poised to argue.

  “I will take responsibility for this decision with Mr. Matsuo,” I quickly said.

  Tightening his lips, Hiraku nodded.

  “You go first,” I told him. Once you’re outside the vault, I’ll pass you the box and then come through myself.”

  He turned and crouched to go through the crack in the wall. And that was when I brought the metal box down hard on his head.

  He did not go down immediately. He swayed and, confused, started to turn, and so I struck him again, harder this time, and then a third time. Finally, he collapsed. Once he was down, I hit him a few more times for good measure.

  He lay there groggy and glassy-eyed as I slid the deposit box back into its slot. I closed it and used the pick to relock the tumblers. Behind me, Hiraku groaned.