Cynthia was quickly becoming fed up with Furyo’s antics. It’s one thing to run around fighting and getting into conflict with the police. It’s another thing to try to force her into taking care of an unwashed dog and its brood of puppies, then breaking into a haunted house covered in police tape. This morning there was a clean up crew, dispatched to sanitize houses where lonely deaths have caused a stigma with neighbors and potential investors in the area. Murder, Suicide and rumors of great sadness cause specialized care from specialists who rip out walls, grind down cement and fumigate windows for body fluids and miasma released when corpses bloat and burst from prolonged neglect. One such team was here today fumigating the walls and throwing the contents of the house into a dumpster. 

Cynthia is quiet the whole way back to her apartment. She doesn’t let the dogs in until they are scrubbed down and dried in the alley beside her apartment. She is kind of alarmed at the staples and oozing wounds on Furyo from his accident at the skateboard event. But she is won over at least temporarily to see the signed pictures and phone numbers left while Furyo was in the hospital from her grunge hero’s. She day dreams about the rock star life if Furyo started a band with these connections and she became his manager. Her neighbors give her uncomfortable looks at the American she has dragged home. Japanese by birth means very little when they see aggressive looking gang tattoos and baggy clothes that remind them of チンピラ, Chimpira, 番長, Banchō, and スケバン, Sukeban. Here it is common to leave nasty notes saying 死ね “Shi’ne!” (Kill Your Self!)

Giving Furyo some driving lessons broke the bad vibe in the air, still she harbored resentment and the evil notes of the neighbors were pushing her over the edge. She had to leave again for work and was reluctant to trust him with her key, but she didn’t want him to end up dead in an alley or getting beaten up by Yakuza for walking around belligerent in the night. They ate some local versions of American food, pizza, Mexican food and hamburgers all day. Furyo had come up with a check list of things he wanted to see like the giant Buddha from in Kamakura, Japanese Disneyland, where they make Gundam and several violent anime studios like Madhouse where they were turned away but given a couple free posters. Furyo never realized exactly how much he loved Japanese movies until he started thinking about cartoons of his childhood, Ike Reiko and Miki Sugamoto “girl gang” movies. Suddenly he was on a quest to rent every Yakuza, Sukeban and Hentai Horror tentacle porn. 

Cynthia had never seen so much perversion in her life. Her childhood was made up with being treated like a princess and learning to paint and play classical instruments like piano, violin and trumpet. Furyo casually blurted out horror stories of abuse, violence and neglect. Every story he told was mentally harmful and likely to have produced a dangerous sociopath. He had scars all over his face and chest from being stabbed, shot and burned with boiling water by his own parents. His father had let him play with a gun at 4 years old and only took it away at the last minute when young Furyo shot him self in the corner of the mouth. How awful, she imagines what he could have been with out drugged out and absentee parents. A famous painter or scholar, not a skateboarding vandal who did 6 years in prison for stabbing a drug dealer who refused to give up a stash of money. Hidden in the dry wall until 6 of his toes where broken with a hammer with one eye totally unsalvageable. She wonders what he would do her if she turned her back on him.

Furyo was not at all in his deep introspective mood. He was on a quest to buy video games, drink him self to death and catch up on lost years of his youth. He came up with lists of manga and vhs tapes he wanted to buy. Before long Cynthia’s little studio was full of dozens of boxes of action figures and presents she didn’t even want. He bought her jewels and dresses but also gross sex toys and perverted geisha and French maid outfits, lingerie and cartoonish makeup. At least he is concerned about animals. He also wanted to scour the area he walked when he first arrived looking for a monk and a kitten he had saved from drowning. Cynthia cant help but think it was cute he had dived in a drainage ditch to resuscitate a dying animal.

While Furyo had been drinking all night reading instructions to build something he bought and drinking sake all night… Cynthia had a missed call from a strange number from an uncommon area code. The message was hard to make out, the volume was so low it sounded like birds chirping or a tea kettle shrieking in the distance but there was a sweet sounding female voice behind all the noise. Cynthia could only make out a couple words for “ dirty foreign dog, giant, Korean, song, sin and grandmother.” Cynthia was haunted since she played the message. Furyo was asleep on the floor in his boxer shorts like a wild animal. Snarling and making accusations in his sleep… at least he wasn’t a violent sleeper. Cynthia had a grandfather who fought in ww2 and used to howl to lost comrades and fight off demons in his sleep. While Cynthia was thinking of these sad memories the phone rang again.

Picking it up, she is greeted by the soothing voice of a nurse. She asks for Furyo but Cynthia says he does not speak Japanese. Walking over to where Furyo is asleep in the middle of the floor, she nudges him with her foot. Taking a message and contact info, the nurse tells Cynthia she works in a care home in Aomori at the Northern tip of Honshu. Furyo has a grandmother who is not well, but when Furyo came on TV she was instantly certain he was her lost grandson from America. Cynthia hangs up but is unsettled by the whole thing. How did they get her phone number? Cynthia prepares lunch and tea for them and presses her foot over Furyo’s face until he opens his eyes. Furyo looks unearthly for a second, his bloodshot eyes showing anger and his legs spasm for a second before he smiles and drags her to the floor for a kiss. Cynthia recoils as his breath and body smell like sour alcohol.