Chapter 14: The Man in the Mud
"Hiding something in your heart, young man?"
A rough voice sounded from behind. Lu Mingfei turned his head and saw an unfamiliar face.
The stranger was somewhere between middle-aged and elderly, with a square face and a few scattered gray hairs sprouting at his temples. His eye sockets were deep and dark, but what drew the eye most was his pair of old, black eyes, filled with the weight of vicissitudes and worldly experience.
The man gave Lu Mingfei the impression of an old, dust-covered book with a worn cover, making one feel a sudden urge to brush away the dust and open it up to read.
"Brother Story—ah, no, Uncle, who might you be?" Lu Mingfei asked politely, secretly shocked that there really was someone in this world whose face seemed to say, 'I have a lot of stories.'
"My name is Kenzirō, and I run this izakaya." The man smiled and pointed at a wooden plaque that read 'Tokyo Izakaya'.
"I was just wondering what kind of person with such Yamato features could be here, and it turns out he really is an izakaya boss." Lu Mingfei stood up and smoothed out the wrinkles on his shirt.
"To think I've been in China for quite a while now, and people can still tell at a glance that I'm Japanese. Am I really that much of a failure?" The izakaya boss scratched his mixed black-and-white hair.
"Actually, your Chinese pronunciation is already great. It's just that your aura and outfit still stand out a bit." Lu Mingfei thought to himself, *You're wearing a Muromachi-period black haori, and your plastic Chinese is mixed with a harsh Kanto accent—if people couldn't tell you were Japanese from that, they'd have to be ghosts!*
"Hahaha, I've actually gotten used to living in China, and I wouldn't wear a kimono except for major occasions like festivals and memorial offerings. But that Miss Chen earlier insisted that I wear it, and even made me pull out another one for her to change into, saying it gives her the true feeling of dining in Tokyo," the izakaya boss said with a smile.
"So, Uncle, did you really come all the way from China—ah, from Tokyo to China—out of thousands of miles to chase your wife?" Lu Mingfei asked, full of curiosity.
"Hmm... You could say that. My wife always talked about the homeland where she was born and raised before she passed away, so I accompanied her back."
In the warm slanting sunlight, the man's stern face was full of tenderness.
"Sorry, I didn't know your late wife was..."
"No need to apologize. Don't you Chinese have a saying that the ignorant are not guilty?" The izakaya boss gently patted Lu Mingfei's shoulder. "Besides, this matter has never been a taboo for me, because even after her death, I can still feel that she is always by my side, accompanying me day and night."
"Where?!" Although it was broad daylight, hearing these words sent an uncontrollable chill creeping up Lu Mingfei's spine. He looked around vigilantly.
"Right here." The izakaya boss pointed his left hand at a crescent-shaped pendant hanging in front of his neck. "I've always carried her ashes close to my body, so I stayed here to live with her in her hometown."
"I see. Uncle, you certainly are deeply affectionate! A true man!" Lu Mingfei breathed a sigh of relief, then gave the man a thumbs-up with deep emotion.
"If I were a true man, I should have been more decisive back then, and then Kiku wouldn't have met her end on that rainy night." The man spoke in an utterly ordinary tone, without any depression or self-mockery, sounding as casual as if he were talking about a plate of sashimi in his shop selling for 1,500 yen, rather than something as monumental as the death of his wife.
"Kiku? Is that your wife's name?" Lu Mingfei asked softly.
"No. When I first saw her in Kabukicho, I felt like this girl was like a tiny cornflower. The language of the cornflower is encounter and happiness, and I hoped she could always remain like that plain little flower—pure and beautiful." Recalling the scene of his first encounter with the woman he loved, a sense of nostalgia flowed through the man's weathered eyes like a quiet river.
"Kabukicho..." Lu Mingfei thought to himself that this probably wasn't the kind of place where decent girls hung out.
As if sensing Lu Mingfei's doubt, the man explained, "She wasn't a geisha or a dancing girl; she was just a girl standing at the entrance of a movie theater selling roses. From the very first day I met her, I fell completely."
"Just like in those old manga plots, where a young sailor sees a girl on the deck and turns to his companion to say: *Hey, do you see that beautiful girl? One day, I'm going to marry her and bring her home!*"
"But unlike Kiku, the me of back then was a filthy person living in the mud." The man put away his reminiscing look and put back on that stern face; it seemed that only when mentioning his late wife would he reveal a trace of lingering attachment to the beauty of this world.
"Why do you say that?" Lu Mingfei asked, slightly frowning.
"Because our first meeting wasn't ideal. I went to Kabukicho to collect protection money, and Kiku was one of the people we collected from." The izakaya boss pulled down the collar of his kimono with one hand, revealing a patch of indigo-colored body art.
It was a tattoo—the symbol of the Japanese Yakuza.
Lu Mingfei nodded slightly, but his heart was shaken violently. He hadn't expected that the izakaya boss he met by chance at a dinner gathering was actually a bigwig who used to run with the Japanese Yakuza?
And the izakaya boss said he came from Tokyo. The Tokyo Yakuza... most likely had an inseparable connection to that family.
The emperor deeply rooted in the dark world of Japan, and also the longest-surviving main family of the Japanese Yakuza—the Shieki Eight Families.
"And then?" Lu Mingfei suppressed the stirring in his heart and pressed on.
"Back then, I was actually sent by the family to the grassroots to live in anonymity, tempering myself and striving upward. But I didn't live up to their expectations; in just three years, I had already become a well-known boss of that generation. The men under me collected protection money, and if people couldn't pay, we threatened and warned them. If they still didn't pay, I would personally step out and slash them. Looking back now, it turns out my youth was soaked in crimson blood!"
Lu Mingfei thought to himself, *Well, duh! Other people's teenage years at most involve arguing and bickering with their parents, but look at you—you ran wild in your youth and took joy in slashing people. Calling yourself someone who lived in the mud shows you actually have some self-awareness.*
"Until I met my Kiku. I ordered my men not to collect extra protection money from her, and whenever I passed by that street, I would deliberately avoid her. I was afraid she would see my filthy side, because after all, she was so spotless."
"You know, for people like us in the Yakuza, women can just be taken by force, but I didn't dare. I was afraid that my sin-stained hands would defile that pure white flower."
"But it was as if some god was toying with me—the more I avoided her, the more frequent our encounters became. I was terrified of meeting her clear gaze. Every time I passed by her, I would keep my head down and walk away quickly, until that day."
"It was a night with very few stars. The clouds were thin and shallow, making the moonlight exceptionally dazzling, and Kabukicho was still brilliantly lit. I had just killed an enemy, and there was still un-wiped blood on my face, but at that moment I couldn't feel a shred of joy. I only realized then that I was no longer that hothead who shouted about fighting and killing all day long. Gradually, I grew tired... and terrified of that life of licking blood off a blade."
"When I passed through the alley, my worst fear came true. I met her eyes. Under the illumination of the moonlight and neon lights, my face was stained with blood and my chest bore scars, making me look like an Asura just crawled out of hell. I thought to myself, *It's over, I'm dead.* Seen in my most humiliating state by the girl I loved, I wanted to commit seppuku on the spot."
"Yet she simply held a bright red rose, walking quietly toward me like a flawless angel..."
*"Sir, forget everything about today, and give the night to yourself. I wish you sweet dreams; tomorrow will be better."*
*"That's what she said."*