The Man in The Bullet Train

I stood there, rooted, watching the point Wataru's Shinkansen had disappeared into. There was absolutely no reason to move elsewhere ... at least not until the next train appeared at the platform and both the giggling girls and Mr Manga and his distinct bulge finally vacated the goldfish bowl to pile in to their respective carriages.

My feet took me back to my seat in the almost empty waiting room for want of anywhere better to go and l found myself receiving a sympathetic look from the sole remaining occupant, the tall, elegant lady of before, who obviously clearly understood what had happened. I dropped onto the seat and looked at the bare tiled floor, my heads in my hands.

'The bow was very deep, you know.' 

She looked at me, trying to gauge if I had any understanding of the obvious significance of this.

'And?'

I decided against adding the 'so bloody what?' the voice my head was screaming. Her demeanor and tone of voice were kindly and she didn't deserve a hostile response, however much l might want a scapegoat.
I suppose too I knew deep down this had significance but in the immediacy of his loss, I hadn't considered it, too caught up in my own pain and guilt at my behaviour.

'It wasn't a bow of goodbye you see but one of deep apology and regret.'

'But he said nothing. Not one word. NOTHING.'

'In Japan especially, words are perhaps like froth on coffee. They can be blown into your face or to the side to help you see the coffee, said with one meaning, yet heard with another. In the West, do you not also say that actions speak louder than words?'

Not having an answer, l looked away. An answer in itself.

I remembered then his tears. An action certainly. But one to replace what words? The same words that I had started but failed to say? And, what might he have heard in those words of mine?

My eyes filled. My hands ransacked my pockets and rucksack, vainlessly searching for one of those free packets of poor-quality tissues that, in Japan, are dished out at stations by poorly paid students as a form of advertising.

She tapped my forearm with just such a packet fished out from a understatedly elegant Gucci handbag and said gently:  

'They are like sandpaper i warn you but they are absorbent enough.'

I accepted, dabbing my cheeks dry and thanked her. I stood up, wondering how I had found myself in such a mess in such a short time. I sat down again, feeling my eyes about to fill once more.

Her penetrating gaze softened again and instead she changed tack:

'I think perhaps an icecream or a coffee is required? Especially as the next train will be a busy one.'

I glanced outside and indeed the platform was starting to see tidy queues forming at the exact spots where carriage doors would open. The sheer self-discipline of this people in sharp contrast to my lack of control.

'Thank you but I'll be fine. I've embarrassed myself enough already.'

'Yes, you will be. But I would like the company. You are the first person I have spoken to in days!'

She tilted her head to one side and leaned forward conspiratorially:

'Hee hee, and don't worry! You're not being hit on. I'm a lesbian. Not typical Japanese either, eh?'

With that, a wry smile appeared on her face as she rose elegantly to her feet and held the door open for me, any further refusal clearly being out of the question.

***

10h00 pm found me at best walking in a crooked line, at worst staggering in a straight line back to our ryokan. Who was l kidding? My ryokan. And it found me distinctly horny, thinking about Wataru. And, admittedly, about Kei-kun's pert little arse.

Alcohol has its dangers, undeniably so, but also its uses. Tongues loosen and confessions are made, intimacies shared. Banter becomes more risqué. Inhibitions recede. All combining to make either 'a good evening' .... or 'a huge mistake'. But, all in all, this had most definitely been the former with the conversation flipping from serious one minute to bawdy the next, free of all the usual positioning and rôle-taking which burdens most interactions between the sexes. There was no hidden agenda and therefore no need for pretence.

Katsumi-san was indeed both lonely and alone and certainly atypical. Her unhappy marriage had ended eleven years previously on her 46th birthday when her doctor husband had suffered a heart attack whilst staying at a love-hotel with a 'whore' (Katsumi's words!). 'The only birthday present he ever gave me in nineteen years of marriage!' Despite the evident bitterness behind these words, she'd been hugely pleased with my involuntary snigger at her wise-crack and picked up her glass to toast:

'To alcohol allowing me to say the unsayable!'. 

This turned to outright laughter when l returned her toast with:

'To alcohol allowing me to laugh at the unsayable!'

We'd started off with an iced coffee in an upmarket cafe come icecream parlour in the station concourse. When I complimented her on her flawless English, she immediately slipped into a Sarf Landan accent where she dropped so many letters, it was anorexic!

'My husband worked at the St Thomas' Hospital in London as a consultant and, as a 'dutiful wife', l was allowed to do nothing apart from shop, which l assure you l did with a vengeance, and carry on with my university studies of English. It used to vex him hugely that my English was superior to his and l could switch from refined to working class accent in seconds.'

The double shot of liqueur over the ice cream that followed found me in stitches as she explained how, to irritate him, she used to answer the phone pretending to be 'Shirl', their non-existant cleaner.

'Nah, Mister Yamanooki ain't able to come to the phone at the mo', 'e's in the lav!'

Apparently, 'Shirl' was never able to get her tongue round 'Yamazaki' and most of his golfing partners took to calling him Mr Yamasucki after one of Shirl's more memorable efforts.

At half past six, we were still squatting the cafe, much to the outwardly polite but evident annoyance of the three waitresses who took it in turn to ask every two minutes if we needed anything further. Eventually Katsumi-San turned the sweetest, most poisonous smile onto one of the poor girls and spoke in the soft tones you would use to a newborn. I watched the waitress flinch, her face turn ashen as she bowed repeatedly and deeply, quickly returning with the bill but not daring to look Katsumi in the face.

'What did you say to her?' I asked as we left. 

'I believe that's what's known as a good dressing down from the boss. Shirl owns the business.'

She'd then confessed to spending wildly on her husband's credit cards, buying two or three of everything but keeping only one, returning the other goods for cash. Her favourite upmarket shop not adverse to assisting a valued client with their laundry, it would appear! This she then used to develop real estate already inherited from her parents in Kyoto, and shrewdly it would appear.

From the sophisticated icecream parlour, we went to an outwardly shabby izakaya buried under the arches of Shinkansen tracks, seemingly as down market as you can get in Kyoto. But the food was anything but. Delicious sushi! Yakitori! And .. and ... and! It went on and on!

The first beer was inconsequential small talk about Japan and food and so on. The arrival of the second however had her probing me about Wataru like an experienced, professional therapist. A professionalism which didn't stop her teasing me unmercifully when my eyes wandered up and down the young, rough 'n ready looking waiter.

'Your type?'

'I'm so new to this, I don't have a type!'

She giggled. 

'Yet!' came the retort as we both looked at his bubble-butt sauntering off with our order.

'Top him? Or bottom for him?'

I nearly choked on my mouthful of beer!

'That is not the sort of question one asks as a polite Japanese lady!' I responded in my best upper-class, mock indignant tone!

'Nah! Maybe not! Bu' our Shirl doan give a flyin' fuck!'

Laughing loudly, l managed to avoid giving an answer (but not a further beer!) by asking her why she'd stayed with her husband, provoking an intense stare as she debated whether to divulge the truth or not.

'In Japan, there's a saying that a woman is like Christmas cake ... after the 25th, no-one wants any. I was 27 and suitors were not exactly queuing! I was bringing shame on my family for that reason alone. Unmarried at that age! And, there were rumours too. So, it was a contract of mutual convenience. I gained 'respectability' for my family, a very generous allowance and, importantly, didn't need to allow a penis into my bed! He, in turn, gained my silence about his 'predilections' for grubby encounters in 'soapland'. I just had to make sure he knew nothing about mine or the lovely credit cards would have disappeared. Which would have been such a pity! As Keiko had been forced by her family to leave Tokyo and return to Kyushu, l was making the best of a bad set of cards. Or so l thought!'

With that, for the first time, uncomfortable silence reigned. The regret and loss palpable. The stark waste of those years needed no words to express it.

'Go after him!' 

Even now, drunk outside the ryokan, l could feel how Katsumi's eyes had bored into me like thin dark brown lasers, again and again piercing through whatever excuse l attempted.

'If you love him, if you want him, follow him!'

Conscious of the need to be discrete and quiet as l was a bit drunk and it was late, l slid back the ryokan's front-door gingerly, stepped inside, slid it closed and tripped over the step up into the foyer. The noise wasn't too bad, one or two medium-sized elephants rather than an entire herd but more than sufficient for Kei-Kun to come running from the office to find me elegantly speadeagled over the carpet like a spatchcocked chicken.

'Ben-san, Ben-San! Daijoubu? [Are you ok?]'

His concern merely made his elfin features all the more cute. He held out his hand and helped me up but, once standing, I scooped him up in my arms and, his face inches away from mine, told him 'Kei-Kun no ketsu wa kawaii desu' ['Kei's got a cute bum'.]

He giggled as l carried him into the office telling him:

'I'm going to fuck you and if l'm too drunk, I'll suck you!'

He laughed 'And then l fuck Ben-san!'

No sooner were we inside the office and Kei-Kun had slipped his pants down just sufficiently to reveal his perfect bubble butt, gathered his tunic up around his waist and stuck his arse out at me as he braced his forearm against the wall. No preliminaries required. This was to be an urgent, quick fuck. I undid my fly and pulled out my dick, already thickening nicely. I wet the fingers of my right hand and slipped one, two and then a third inside him. He opened up quickly and my mushroom head entered him easily. The sight of my dick beginning to disappear between his round buttocks brought me to full hardness and l began to push in and out gently to be met by Kei rocking backwards and forwards in return. I reached around to cup his tight, hairless sack, looping my wet thumb and forefinger around his rock hard dick. As l fucked him, I wanked him. Stuck between my legs and constrained even more by his pants still being tight around his thighs, his inability to move was even more of a turn on. For us both because far too soon afterwards l felt my hand become slick with his cum and only seconds before my own orgasm erupted into his soft depths. Alcohol does nothing for self-control!

Sated, we stuffed ourselves back into our trousers and caring young man that he is, Kei insisted on taking the drunk foreigner up to his room. Just as his tight little bum disappeared back down the stairs, my mobile pinged the arrival of a message. From Katsumi.

'Follow him!'

Annoyed at her bossiness in thinking it was that easy, l stabbed a curt message back:
'Yes, if you look up Keiko! And you happen to know where to find him in all of Kyushu!