Let me get this straight. It was “innocents” who put me in the hospital?
Why the hell should I pay them anything? Isn’t that a little extreme?
While I was knocked out, the victims sang their innocent tune. Altogether now: “Money money money money!”
Then the media circus jumps in—singing in a round: “La-la-la logic can go fuck itself! Go fuck itself la-la-la-la.”
Justice had left me hard-up.
From my hospital bed, I watched the pile of bills grow. Meanwhile, reporters camped outside my Suginami home and interviewed every housewife in the neighbourhood, asking them what kind of kid they thought would do something so heinous. (My dear neighbours never failed to bring up my dropout past.) Whatever. Who cares?
My mom, it turns out.
“Moron!”
The first word out of her mouth when she came to the hospital.
Then, icy as a freezer: “You’re paying for this yourself! Everything. Your hospital bill, whatever you owe the people you swung at in the train. From now on, don’t even think about asking me for anything. That means tuition—if your school will even have you back. And once you get out of this bed, you can find your own place to live. You’re not coming home. You show your face and the TV crews will never leave. We’re going out of our minds dealing with them. Really, what the hell’s wrong with you? You’re a goddamn train wreck!”
Train wreck… My mom sure has a way with words.
Then what happened?
I worked like a horse—I had debts to pay. I borrowed what I needed to settle up my hospital bills, then paid my “victims” in monthly instalments. I found jobs. Day jobs, night jobs. Sometimes, I had three-shift days: morning, swing and graveyard. Sleep? I wasn’t sleeping much, to be honest. On average, I probably got a little over three hours a night. Maybe four. Just enough to keep a body moving. The only thing I had going for me was my youth—the inexhaustible energy of a nineteen-year-old. Nothing else. Just the stamina to fuel me through the sleepless years to follow.
I didn’t have time for rest, so I learnt to sleep deep. Quality over quantity. Meaning “no distractions”. Everything had to go. Including dreams.
I had almost no dreams in my workhorse years.
Not even enough to fill a short film.
It’s really strange. When I was ten or eleven, I did nothing but dream—now I was totally dry.
Life has a way of doing that—restoring balance. That’s how I see it, at least.
My mom really did kick me out of the house. I moved into a small, cheap place in Shinjuku. Kami-ochiai, ni-chome. The closest station was Nakai, on the Seibu Shinjuku Line. It was in a two-storey building several decades old. It was all wood, so I guess it had to be built after the war. Shared toilet, no bath. The sort of place where people live when they don’t have money—where rent’s stuck in the golden age of Godzilla. Financially, I cut every corner I could, spending next to nothing on food, almost never using electricity, never turning on the gas. I streamlined my bathing routine, which involved trips to the local bath and the coin shower (note: three minutes for the price of a coffee). I made it a priority to find jobs where meals were provided—which had the added benefit of helping me balance my diet. Clocking out of my last job for the day, I went straight home and slipped right into bed. No heat, no lights, no nothing. That’s how I survived. I didn’t have a phone, but my building had a line in the hallway, so I could receive calls from the outside world—as long as somebody was around to pick up. After a couple of years of hardcore work, I bought a PHS. One of my bosses (at a courier company) said I needed to get it, and told me where I could find one for almost nothing. My first briquette of plastic. At long last—the cellular age!
I spent all my time making money. Wages in, damages out. Soon I was twenty—a full-fledged adult. Not that I stopped to celebrate my entry into adult society or anything.
Outside of work, my life was a perfect blank.
My early twenties. Filled with a peace I’d never known.
The calm of nearly dropping dead from overwork.
Click. The digital calendar flips, the century ends. From 12-31-1999 to 01-01-2000. A whole lot of zeros. Some feared the date. Like the Rapture was upon us. Others celebrated. Couples dying to have “millennium babies” sought pharmaceutical assistance to get the timing just right. Still others, partying in high-end hotel rooms, uncorked ultra-high-end champagne bottles. Pop, pop, pop. Even more people burrowed into underground bunkers, waiting to see if the computerized world would descend into anarchy. They really thought that, in one apocalyptic moment, bank accounts would vanish, aircraft would drop out of the sky and nuclear missiles would destroy the planet as we know it. Good old Y2K. The Japanese government didn’t help—telling families: “Be sure to stock up on mineral water and emergency food supplies.” Panic. Sheer panic. The world was in jeopardy—double jeopardy—whether it was God or computers was inconsequential.
OK, my Y2K. For me, the collapse of the world’s banks was the big fear. A matter of life and death, if you think about it. So, on the first of January, I got in line to receive my ATM oracle, like everyone else.
I hadn’t bothered checking my balance in years. What’s the point, right?
Then my turn came, and—what the hell—did Y2K do this?
This couldn’t be right.
But it was. I had been too busy working to notice that I had settled my debts… a good eighteen months back. I was in the black. The ATM was showing me a number I never saw coming.
Seven, almost eight, million yen?
That’s how I entered the new millennium.
All right. Time to face the music. I’ll never make it out of Tokyo. Two massive failures have made that abundantly clear. Guess it’s just my fate. But even if it is, I’ll have to fight fate on this one. Fight against my shitty karma. Granted, I’ve been a shitty person. But, as a human being, I’ve got inalienable rights, right?
At least I have plenty of cash for my third escape attempt.
Let’s think this through. Prior experience tells me that any attempt to exit Tokyo ends in violence.
If I can’t get out, I’ll have to bring out in. Enter the Trojan Horse of Tokyo.
My master plan.
I need a fortress—an impenetrable, impregnable lair. My own stronghold right in the heart of the city. A place with the power to keep Tokyo out—an autonomous region, if you will. A place to fill with all the music and smells and flavours that Tokyo can’t handle. Everything Tokyo can’t have. I need a place all my own.
You might call it a business.
I had to do something, right?
To keep on fighting. With everything I had.
Not like I had anything left to lose.
March, 2000 A.D. The Power of Kate opens in Asagaya, Suginami ward.
Magazines called Kate a café. In reality, I was going for a place that defied definition; I had no interest in opening a “café”—or any place you’re supposed to spell with a cute little accent mark. But why should I care? I had misread the world my whole life. So what if the world misread me back?
All that mattered to me was that Kate had the power to fight against Tokyo. Food and drinks were secondary—just a part of my cover. The Power of Kate. Sounds like a Hollywood romcom, doesn’t it?
Where did the name come from?
From life. I needed a name when I submitted the paperwork to the broker. I clearly wrote: “The Power of Hate (temporary).” But some bespectacled pencil-pusher misread my handwriting—and Kate was born. Why was I trying to call my place The Power of Hate? Because I hated the world with every fibre of my being.