Hey Mortality Read Free

Taiwanese Guy and Korean Guy. They often discuss what they think of the other guests, but the conversation generally swings to the man in 505, or the thirteenth room of the house. Something about this person seems generally amiss. He is Japanese, perhaps in his late forties, and always stamps his feet when he walks. You can hear him coming from a distance as the sound of stamping feet echoes through the stairs to each floor of the Plum Ship. He wears a white bandana and dresses in clothing that could not closely be considered fashionable. Deteriorating chinos, and a scruffy white vest with various stains that he wears far too low, revealing a forest of chest hair. The man looks dirty. I have never once seen him smile, his face continually painted with despair. He will never greet anyone as they pass him on the stairs or as he comes home and passes the crowd of chatting smokers. He is unusual in every sense.
    One day, Canadian Guy — who I will just add is an English teacher and an alcoholic who has been living in Japan for ten years — saw me waiting on the steps and staring off in the direction of the box. That day, he came and sat beside me and offered me a can of very strong beer. Canadian Guy does like to drink, and often in the late evening or early hours of the morning he has a one-way conversation with me in a state of inebriation. His conversations are usually about how he got arrested again, or how his ex-wife won’t let him see his six-year-old daughter. Always pessimistic, and a real broken man. On the day in question though, he wanted to talk about the man on his floor, the room two away from his, 505, now known as Yakuza Guy.
    He told me that a few days previous he had noticed the door to 505 slightly ajar. His curiosity lead him to the entrance offering a rare opportunity to look inside the room, and what he saw inside that room, the thirteenth room of the Plum Ship, shocked him. Not because the scene therein contained anything that could be considered disturbing, it was in fact the opposite; a room so spotless, so full of minimalism and cleanliness, that Canadian Guy was taken aback by surprise. He said that in the room was a small single bed with perfectly folded sheets, and linen that sparked white. The wooden panelled floor was beautifully cleaned, no trace of dust or hair or anything for that matter. The window was pasted over with newspaper. And, as if as a centrepiece, the only other object was a clothing rack in the middle of the room. The clothing rack was the most mysterious of all objects, because hanging from the rack were five identical black business suits, white shirts, black ties, black folded trousers, and five pairs of polished black shoes. An outfit that I, or no other member of the house had seen him wearing. An unusual sight and another strange mystery of the Plum Ship, or of Nihonzutsumi, or of the Tokyo slums.
    I found it strikingly ironic that Yakuza Guy was the only person with a No Junk Mail sticker on his letter box, and it made me wonder where exactly he got all of the newspaper to paste across his windows. Regardless, it was learning this information about the man in 505, that led me to even more distraction from losing Liar, and from being so alone and lost. Obsessing still about the red box, but now a new obsession had crept into my mind. But it would not be ending there either.
    It was on the suggestion of Canadian Guy that I should go outside and take a look around Tokyo. He was right, and being holed up in the house with only alcohol as my friend, and paranoia as my enemy, was a good enough reason for me to start doing something that would help to distract my mind. I decided to start, as anyone would, with the area around my house. The unusual arcade.

3
    As one obsession becomes suppressed, another one creeps to life, and it is with this new obsession that I find myself on a late warm July afternoon with a pen and paper in my hand, as I map out the arcade to the finest of