Chapter Seven

Tokyo Nights

Akane placed the small blue bowl on the table, followed by two dark ivory chopsticks on top of the bowl. She stared at the position of the two objects and then adjusted the placement of the chopsticks so they looked directly parallel to the table. She wanted to make everything perfect for tonight. Once again, another perfect day in Tokyo.

As she prepared for dinner, Akane was also on the phone. “Thank you for the tickets, Ranko,” Akane said. “Yeah, Ranma would fear losing face if he asked so I’ll just say that we won the lottery or something…yeah, he’ll believe anything.” Akane listened intently to Ranko’s squeakings on the phone.

“Yeah,” Akane said on the phone. “Ranma had to do a demonstration at another dojo so he won’t be back till later tonight.” Akane fidgeted.

“Yeah, I’m having a friend over,” Akane gulped.

Ranma took his time walking through the streets of Nerima and back towards his home. He wanted to enjoy the warm weather and peace. It was a sense of peace that he had never felt before. Not when Ryoga and him used to run across roof tiles, chasing each other. For a brief second, Ranma thought he saw the familiar yellow bandana-boy dashing across one of the roofs. But it was only a mirage. Ranma tried to shrug the image out of his head.

“Konban wa, Ranma-san,” Tanaka-san said. Ranma turned around and greeted the elderly man. Mr. Tanaka was the Tendo’ nearest neighbor. He was walking with elderly Mrs. Tanaka, a woman with white hair tied up in a bun. She wore a beautiful red kimono. The couple was going for a quiet stroll on a warm Nerima night. Ranma closed his eyes and pictured that he and Akane would take their place when they turned old and gray.

“Konban wa, Tanaka-sensei,” Ranma bowed politely, “Tanaka-onna.” He also bowed to Mrs. Tanaka. Mrs. Tanaka responded humbly. Mrs. Tanaka’s oval brown eyes, scrunched with age, looked familiarly like those of Akane’s

“I thought you had a training class today,” Mr. Tanaka said.

“I did but they cancelled it at the very last minute,” Ranma replied. “It turns out that they can’t afford my services.” He smiled.

“You do have to repay for the damage you and your friends did to the house,” Mr. Tanaka replied. “And you are doing so well.” Ranma nodded. He had taken responsibility for the dojo and taught classes all over Japan, gradually paying back the mortgage that Soun Tendo used to pay for the dojo.

Out of the corner of Ranma’s eyes, he noticed another guy standing at the corner. The guy was an attractive Japanese man with short black hair and slanted black eyes. The guy was also holding a couple of small blood-red flyers in his hands. Mr. Tanaka took one look and huffed. “Another one!” he muttered.

“The city is becoming corrupt with all of those ‘men’ around here,” Tanaka-san grumbled. “They just come to our peaceful part of the city and advertise prostitution and other such filthy endeavors.”

“Has the mayor done something about it?” Ranma asked.

“How can he?” Mr. Tanaka replied. “These men are here legally!” Mrs. Tanaka simply nodded, approving everything that Mr. Tanaka had said.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Tanaka,” Ranma said as-a-matter-of-factly. “I’ll take care of it,” He turned towards the young guy who was waving a bunch of flyers. In his gruffest, butch voice he asked the guy what he was doing in the peaceful, conservative side of Tokyo. The Tanakas continued their peaceful walk through Tokyo.

After another delicious dinner of Ukyou’s okonomiyaki on Akane’s clean china, the two lovers curled up together in Akane’s living room, wrapped up in Akane’s soft blue blankets. The nights were starting to get colder in Japan and a bitter wind blew outside. Akane felt safe in Ukyou’s arms.

Akane and Ukyou finally agreed on a football game after flipping the television channels for a while. They stared at the blurry fancy footwork of one of the key players from the J-League as he scored another goal. “That’s Nakata Shiroi,” Akane pointed at the dashing football player. He was a clean-cut rugged fellow with spiky brown hair. His bright red soccer outfit suited him well.

“He’s pretty cute,” Ukyou said.

“Ranma is a big fan,” Akane looked down jealously. “So,” she looked up at Ukyou. “Did you like any of Ranma’s other supposed fiancés?”

Ukyou put another chip into her mouth and grinned. “Shampoo was pretty hot, but she had that really conservative grandma.” She smiled at Akane. “We couldn’t do anything.” Akane gritted her teeth quietly. She was jealous of Shampoo.

“You know who I also found hot?” Ukyou leaned towards Akane. Akane’s eyes opened. “But you have to promise not to laugh.” Akane nodded. “Kodachi.”

“KODACHI!” Akane jumped up.

“Yeah, she was a little bit psycho,” Ukyou laughed. “But she had really gorgeous legs. And she could pull off wearing a leotard pretty well.”

“So,” Akane leaned towards Ukyou. “Of all the girls that you know, who do you find the hottest?” Ukyou looked directly at Akane and kissed her.

“Good answer,” Akane smiled when she got up for air.

“So what are you doing here in this peaceful and decent part of Tokyo,” Ranma said gruffly toward the young man. A closer look revealed a lean and muscular Asian guy wearing a blood red shirt that accented his small pectorals and tight blue jeans. “Are you an escort because this is an elderly neighborhood. Only old prevents would want you.”

“As if I wanted them,” snapped the guy back flamboyantly. “I’m just a club promoter for a men’s only event that’s going down tonight.” Ranma wondered if that meant prostitution.

The young man handed Ranma a flyer. The flyer was also an attractive blood red color. Ranma looked at the flyer. It said “Club Red” and the location of the event would be some club called “Dragon” located in an area that Ranma wasn’t familiar with.

“It’s in Shinjuku-Nichome,” the young guy said happily. “All you need to do is take the subway down to Shinjuku. You literally can’t miss it!”

“Isn’t that a red-light district?” Ranma asked. He had never been into that district because many of his friends told him that prostitutes lived there and since he had a fiancé, he didn’t need Shinjuku’s services.

“That’s the stereotype,” the guy huffed. “Even though there are whorehouses and geisha houses, Shinjuku is also known for its male-centric clubs, if you know what I mean.” The guy winked at Ranma, who suddenly felt a cringe in the pit of his stomach.

“Well, I’m going home to my wife,” Ranma said suddenly and very nervously. “So I think I’ll pass on this club for tonight.” The guy looked crestfallen.

“Such a waste of a hot guy like you,” the young man reached out to touch Ranma’s chest but Ranma quickly brushed the guy’s hand off. With a look of shock on his face, he walked away.

The television was now off.

Akane had her face deep between Ukyou’s squirming legs. She had never gone down on Ukyou, or any other woman for that matter. But tonight she wanted to give it a try. And she was actually enjoyed the experience, inhaling Ukyou’s warm scent, tasting her sweet nectar, and feeling her two muscular legs tense up between Akane’s head. Akane could hear Ukyou squirming with pleasure.

Akane continued her tongue-dance around Ukyou’s privates. Ukyou leaned back with pleasure. Her nipples were now hard. With another hand, Akane foddled Ukyou’s perky breasts and was rewarded by more of her soft moans. Ukyou’s long brown hair lightly touched the dining room table.

Ukyou’s moans were so warm and loud that the two women did not hear Ranma’s key fumble with the lock of the dojo. Akane continued to pleasure Ukyou whose loud moans echoed through the small doors of the room. Ranma rushed into the dining room thinking that Akane was in trouble and an unpleasant surprise greeted him. The sight of the beautiful and naked Ukyou Kuonji, her head looking up to the ceiling and the familiar short tuff of black hair that now rested between Ukyou’s long and muscular legs.

Ukyo’s face turned to stone the moment Ranma saw her and she stopped moaning. Akane turned her face around and saw Ranma looking straight at her. Ranma didn’t know how to react. He felt betrayal, anger, heartbreak and fragility all at the same time.

“You…whore!” Ranma screamed angrily and grabbed for a sword, placed conveniently at the top of the wall. Ukyou quickly made a dash for her spatula and wielded it with such fury and dashed in front of Akane, ready to defend her maiden’s honor.

“You touch a hair on her head,” Ukyou said angrily, “And I will kill you.” Akane looked surprised. Ukyou’s brown eyes stared fiercely at Ranma’s. She breathed heavily as she clutched her spatula like her life depended on it.

Ranma didn’t know how to exactly react. He wanted to slash his lesbian wife at that very moment but something stopped him. His conscious that turned rage into confusion. He couldn’t hold his sword any longer. Ranma dropped the sword and ran out of the room with Ukyou’s piercing eyes following him out the door.

Ranma didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t know what he was thinking any more. The brief moment with his wife Akane and his former fiancé Ukyou was enough to cause his head to swim into a deeper vertigo. And now, he was sitting on a seat in the famed Japanese bullet train, heading to blinding speeds to no return.

He tried to close his eyes as the memories flooded through his head. When he was younger, women chased after him. Akane, Ukyou, Kodachi and Shampoo. Even Ryoga wanted him. He was the object of their desire and he shrugged each one off until the Tendo-Saotome tragedy made him realize his duties as a man. He remembered Akane and Ukyou fighting for his affection, Shampoo calling his name in her sing-song Chinese and Ryoga turning red with fury every time the girls hit on him. Then he opened his eyes and realized the truth he had been long avoiding.

It was all a lie.

His life was a lie.

Akane’s betrayal was too much for him to bear at that moment but it was his own betrayal, the betrayal that caused Ryoga to leave Japan, that flew back into his memory. He betrayed his heart for a mirror. A cold, steel, transparent mirror of a clean traditional Japanese lifestyle. But that mirror shattered the moment that Ukyou laid her lips on Akane Tendo some time ago. And thinking about how it could have happened was way too difficult for Ranma.

He held the flyer in his hand nervously and looked around. As the dim lights of the tunnel flickered on people’s faces on and off, he realized that no one was caring what he was doing or how he was feeling at that moment. And among them, a group of men in trenchcoats staring down at the ground and trying not to look at each other.

“Shinjuku Station,” the computerized female announcer said friendly. Ranma noticed that the only people who were getting off this station were men in long, brown trench coats and sunglasses. If one was going to visit prostitutes then they definitely needed to be incognito. Ranma nervously walked off the subway, trying to avoid the cold stares of some of those passengers. It seemed that they knew exactly what Ranma was going to do.

After following the men through a dark, gloomy tunnel that was Shinjuku’s station after hours, Ranma re-surfaced to neon. Neon lights glowing in many different bright colors littered the dark cityscape. Words in hot pink and bold blue decked tall dark buildings and small dingy stores.

Ranma looked around. He noticed the men in trenchcoats were now laughing. They threw off their dull, brown trenchcoats to reveal shirts that clung to their muscular bodies. They looked at each other and smiled as they walked deeper into the neon wonderland. Ranma looked at his own crumpled white shirt and black pants. At least Ranma would fit in, as he followed the men into the club with the Chinese word for “dragon” in neon.

Madonna’s “Holiday” blared in the background and as Ranma walked closer and closer into the Dragon, the music got louder and louder. The room was dark with a few spotlights traveling around the club. Since there were no chairs in this area, the men stood and talked. Ranma looked up and saw a large disco ball that spun the lights around the crowds, revealing both young and old Japanese men laughing and sipping drinks. Ranma wondered where the prostitutes or the geisha were. As he scanned the room, Ranma realized that there were only men in this club. He looked to his left side and saw two guys holding Asahi beers in front of a warm red backdrop. The man on the left was a muscular guy wearing a tight white shirt and blue jeans. His skinnier friend was wearing a black tank top and red leather pants. After they exchanged a few words in Japanese, they made out with each other.

The sight of two men kissing both titillated and mortified Ranma. He panicked. He had entered Ryoga’s world. Ranma quickly slid through several more of the ominous figures and towards the sanctity of a bar where men quietly drank and were not eying each other. Madonna’s crackling voice continued to follow him. Ranma quickly slipped into a chair, avoiding any passive looks towards him.

The bartender was a friendly and muscular Japanese guy with soft spiky hair tinted red. He wore a white muscle shirt with silver streaks across the middle. Ranma slumped into one of the blood red pleather stools as Madonna’s cacophony “Holiday” blared in the background.

“Long day sir?” the bartender asked in polite Japanese. “What would you like?”

“Yeah,” Ranma muttered sheepishly. “Hot sake, please.” The bartender pulled out a warm pitcher and a small teacup and poured the warm white sake into Ranma’s teacup. Ranma started to pull out his wallet and the bartender halted him. “It’s already been paid for,” he motioned toward the shadowy figure close to Ranma. “By him.”

Ranma gulped. The shadowy figure walked up toward Ranma. The lights were too faded for Ranma to figure out who this person was. The man quietly put down his Asahi beeron the table and sat next to Ranma. The dark shadows of dancing figures covered his face. The techno music played on. “I thought you would like some company,” a deep but friendly voice said.

Ranma fidgeted nervously. “I’ve never done this before,” he babbled. “I’m new here and I really don’t know where I am.”

“That’s okay,” the deep voice continued. The spotlight beamed onto Ranma’s strange friend and lit up his warm, friendly face. Ranma’s eyes widened. The lights had revealed a handsome man. He wore a black T-shirt that covered his big muscular body, the black silk sleeves clinged to his globular biceps. But what drew Ranma most to him was even though he looked like an American, his eyes were distinctly those of the Japanese – slanted with brown pupils covered kindly by a hard layer of muscle tissue. It was looking deep into the Japanese guy’s soft eyes that made Ranma realize where he had seen that face before.

“You’re Nakata Shi—“ Ranma gasped. Nakata Shiroi shushed Ranma.

“Call me Naks,” he smiled. “Everyone else does.” Ranma gasped quietly.

NOTES

The character of Nakata Shiroi is based on a popular character found on the a Japanese gay cartoon Web site “Nakatax” (http://homepage2.nifty.com/nakatax/home.html)This web site is a gay cartoon web site so it does involve MALE NUDITY. Viewer discretion is advised.

Writing this section of the novel forced me to do some research on Queer Japanese lifestyle. According to Utopia, Shinjuku-Nichome is indeed Tokyo’s very own Castro. The club that Ranma ends up going to is indeed a real club in the Shinjuku-Nichome district.

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