Soy Sauce Face

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

When I rush through the emergency room door, a woman approaches me immediately. She’s wearing a glittery red form-fitting dress, her hair pulled back in a sleek bun. “Nakadai-san?”

I recognize Michiko’s voice. Of course, her appearance also shows who she is. Up close, she appears to be in her mid-fifties, this woman Jun works for. Her heavily made-up eyes are red-rimmed. Streaks of mascara stain her powdered and rouged cheeks.

“Yes. Where is he?” I manage to pant. Oh, God, my beautiful Jun.

Deep lines furrow her brow. Something about her tells me she’s normally a tough, unshakable woman whose personal limit has finally been breached. She’s clearly shaken, which terrifies me. “They’re working on him right now. I called the ambulance as soon as I…found him.”

“I want to go in.” I rush up to the desk and beg to see him, but no one will be admitted until they’re finished and he’s stabilized.

“I must see him.” My voice rises above any other sound. “Let me in now!”

Suddenly, Michiko is at my side. A manicured hand comes out and grasps my arm, an unthinkable gesture in any other circumstance. “Come here,” she says softly. The mama-san guides me to a seat and sinks down next to me. Apparently, my hysteria has had the strange effect of calming her. ”Don’t let my panic frighten you, Nakadai-san. I don’t think he’s hurt badly. On the way over here in the ambulance, the paramedic told me the knife wounds were superficial and that the attacker had probably used a pocket knife. It was just shocking.”

“Please…” My voice croaks in my own ears. “Tell me what happened.”

She pats my hand. “The hosts work very hard,” she begins, “Their work is tiring. This evening, Jun had been most of the time with a regular client, someone who’s spent thousands of yen with him. After she left, he went out into the back alley for a short break.” She pauses and blinks, visibly preparing herself to continue. I see the memory come over her face. “He often takes a quick break when he can. To be alone and regroup. However, tonight, he was gone for too long so I went looking for him. I found him on the ground, bleeding. He’d been…cut.” Briefly she covers her face with a hand. The bright red of her nails is striking. A flash of color that makes me think of blood. “Attacked with a knife.” She lowers her hand. Her sparkling eye shadow looks strange with her red-rimmed eyes. “I called the ambulance immediately, but Jun didn’t want me to call the police. He begged me not to.”

I pull in a sharp breath. A sensation like an iron fist squeezing the air from my body grips me. “I must see him. I must see him.” I start to rise.

She tugs me down and puts her arms around me, rocking me. “I promise I’ll make them tell us when you can see him,” she says.

It’s been many years since a woman has held me. My aunt was the last one who did, at my father’s funeral. The embrace had comforted me then, and Michiko’s comforts me now. Her assurance also takes the edge off my panic. I have no choice. I’m trapped here, in this chair until the doctors have finished with Jun.

When I’m calm enough, Michiko releases me and smiles. “I’ll get us a drink of water.”

I nod, silently chiding myself for being so childish and useless. But I feel frozen. Ghastly images of what may have happened to Jun are assault my mind, and I’m fighting to keep panic from welling up again.

She comes back with two paper cups and hands one to me. The water is cool and slips down my throat. I finish it in a couple of swallows then crush the cup, holding it in my fist.

Michiko sips hers then sits, cup in hand resting on one thigh. In the background, people murmur, and there is a television quietly playing in a corner. “Jun’s a good one,” she says softly. “He works hard and has good manners.” She sits back but takes my hand with her free one and holds it. Her attentiveness surprises me, as if she senses my horror. Or maybe she’s comforting herself too. “They all act mannered because they want the women to spend a lot of money on them, but I can tell when the charm is a put on and when it’s real. Jun’s is real. Someone raised him right.”

“My father,” I hear myself say. Normally speaking so openly with a stranger would seem weird. At the moment, it’s a relief.

Her penciled eyebrows rise in graceful arcs. “Oh, he’s your brother?”

“Yes.” To explain the real situation would take more will than I have at the moment. Besides, I’m not about to tell her how in love with Jun I am.

“I see.”

“Jun’s mother was a hostess.” The words slip from me before I even realize what I’m saying. I’ve never spoken of Jun like this to anyone else but Dad. “She left him when he was a child.” Jun would be horrified to know I’m telling his boss something so personal. Undoubtedly she doesn’t know. Jun is very quiet about himself. Had I not been with him when that all happened, I might never have known either.

“Ah.” She nods as if given the answer to a puzzle she’s been trying to figure out for a long time. “Now I see why he’s so good at it.”

When I don’t answer she looks up at me. “Oh, you think I mean because he learned the grace and charm from her? No, I didn’t mean that. Perhaps he did, but…” She looks down, making me think she won’t finish her thought. But she does. “I’ve never understood quite why there was always something different about Jun. Oh, I’m sure he’s glad to earn the money, but he has something extra. Something sincere, as if each woman he hosts is someone really special to him. As if he’s not just doing it for the money.” She looks down, thoughtful again.

I try to ignore the sudden jealousy gnawing my insides. My father’s words about Jun come back to my mind. Was that why he went into such work? To get back his lost mother? It would explain why he’s worked at it for so long. He’s almost two years past the age when most guys retire from hosting and move on to other careers. This much I know from what Jun has told me about the world he works in.

“What woman could resist such a vulnerable, genuine young man fawning over her?” Michiko seems to have forgotten I’m listening to her. Her musings make me think she had wanted to be a psychologist before her life, for whatever reason, had taken her in the direction of becoming a mama-san of a host club instead.

“Forgive me,” she says and squeezes my hand. “I’ll find out what’s happening with him, if they’ll tell me.” She releases my hand and goes to the front desk. I watch the light catch the glitters on her dress as she bows her smoothly coiffed head toward the attendant, speaking in tones I can’t hear.

My heartbeat rises. I’m desperate yet terrified to see Jun. He’s been knifed. Dad dealt with many cases of someone having been knifed, sometimes fatally. Many times the attacker was a gangster or other addict high on shabu.

I catch my breath. Could Jun have been in the back alleyway, buying shabu from some strung-out junkie or gangster? It would make sense if his work was so tiring. He’d need the lift. Many people who work long hours, even female office workers, take the stuff to keep going. Dad told me all the time about the epidemic of shabu the yakuza bring into Japan from the Philippines.

My chest squeezes violently to think of Jun on drugs. He never seemed to be getting high. It can’t be. All that matters now is that he survives this attack.

Finally Michiko returns. The lines on her face have faded somewhat and she seems relieved. “He’s stable now. What the paramedic said was true. The knife wounds were superficial. He’s had some stitches but he’ll be all right.”

I exhale and slump over, my face in my hands. Relief like a soothing balm floods me. But only for a moment. I must see him.

As if sensing my need, she puts her hand on my shoulder. “You can go in and see him now.”

I stand up and look at her. She’s actually quite tiny. “Thank you,” I say and give her a small bow.

She nods and bows in return. “I’ll wait here until I can see him.”

* * * * *

Jun is lying quietly in the bed when I walk in. His eyes are closed, but when I approach, he looks up from a swathe of bandages covering nearly the entire left side of his face, which is nearly as pale as the starched white linens of the hospital bed.

At the sight of him, my insides lurch.

Jun’s highlighted hair, no longer coiffed to perfection, lies flat, the spiky bangs falling to either side along his temples. More bandages cover his forearms. Obviously, he sustained some cuts from raising his arms to protect himself. Dad used to call those defensive cuts. His torso is bare, except for a few other bandages, one on the left side of his chest and a couple more on his ribcage. The young man in the bed is a far cry from the beautiful, sharply clad host who walked out of our apartment mere hours ago. He looks so small lying there, the blanket tucked up to his waist.

We stare at each other, saying nothing. I see a chair in the nearby corner. I pull it over to the bedside and sit down.

It’s Jun who finally breaks the silence. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

My heart is pounding. To see him alive is my greatest joy. After withstanding those tortuous moments since Michiko’s phone call, rushing to the hospital and then sitting in the waiting room for news, I don’t care about anything else. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, Jun-chan.” What he could possibly apologize for is beyond my imagination. “Nothing at all.”

“Yes, there is.”

I teeter on the edge of arguing with him but decide against it. He’s in no shape for a conversation, and anyway, he’s no doubt speaking under the influence of shock and medication. Instead, I allow myself to pick up his hand, which is resting on top of the blanket, and hold it between both of mine. He swallows hard, his eyes strange and glassy.

I lean closer, until my knees touch the edge of the bed. “Thank God you’re alive,” I say softly. I bring his hand up to my cheek. “Nothing else matters.”

He doesn’t answer but instead looks away, as if he’s ashamed. “Michiko-san called you?”

“Yes.”

He gives an almost imperceptible nod.

“She’s out in the waiting room. She wants me to tell her how you are.”

“Oh.”

If the woman’s concern means anything to him, I can’t tell.

I clear my throat. “They said you’re going to be all right.”

“I’ll never be all right.”

I squeeze his hand gently. “Yes, you will. I’ll help you. I promise.”

“You always do.”

“Don’t talk now, Jun-chan,” I say. “Just rest.”

He rolls his head so that he’s facing straight ahead. Something about his words makes me think he doesn’t want me here, but the way his fingers curl around mine says the opposite. So I remain there, holding his hand and listening to the sounds around us. The emergency room is a busy place, full of doctors and nurses moving about on those whispery-soled shoes, murmuring to patients. This white noise mingles with the constant beeping of medical machinery and the occasional disembodied moan or cry of pain from another section of the emergency facilities. In our corner of the room, the only sound is the beep of the blood pressure and heart rate monitor.

His clothing is folded on a nearby shelf. Through the clear plastic bag, I can see bloodstains on what was once his dapper silver ascot and vest. The sight sends a shudder through me. Images assault my mind—images of what the scene possibly looked like. Poor Jun, being viciously attacked with no way to defend himself. Even if he’d been buying some shabu to keep him going, he didn't deserve this.

Finally a nurse comes in, checks the chart hanging in a wall holder and tells us that Jun will be watched for a few more hours and if he has no problems in that time, he’ll be released.

I send word to the waiting room for Michiko. Jun is given another dose of pain medication, which makes him so sleepy his eyelids flutter closed. The nurse tells me he’ll be asleep for several hours so I decide to use the time to go home, dress and get clothes for Jun in case they release him later.

I find Michiko waiting by the hospital doors. Her oval face is drawn, her makeup faded. In the light of day, her elegant glitz looks dreadfully out of place. When I tell her Jun is asleep, she says she’ll come back later to see him. In that moment, I feel how kind and concerned she’s been with both of us and offer to take her to breakfast. It’s the least I can do.

We go to breakfast at a coffee shop near the hospital and then I head home. I pray he’s well enough to come home later, although truthfully, I’m worried more about the wounds to his soul from this attack than the wounds to his body.