Prologue - Ten years earlier
Taro is crushed once again. Every damn morning! His skinny 160 cm, 65kg body squished in a mass of black suits and white shirts on the morning super express commuter train in the stinky heat of a Tokyo July.
Why don’t they put more trains on, or have people take a number, he thinks wryly. Then, the logical side of his brain chides in, just how will this number system work, exactly? Would you do it by age or by how long people were waiting on the platform....
“Baka idiot!” Taro’s admonition to his over-analytical self is loud enough to evoke glares from stately middle aged kimono-ed women who do have a plush velvet seat nearby. These women are the brave ones who didn’t all swarm to the women’s only train. Or maybe they are too matronly for the chikans -perverts- to be interested in. The young babes are in the back car of the train banding together for strength in numbers.
Not that Taro cares too much. He’s trying to scan the crush for at least a cute boyish face on these worker bees. That would give his mind some small escape. Some of these trainee boys right out of university are not bad to lean against. Like a big brother taking care of me. Taro’s face is pressed against a tall middle-aged salariman’s shoulder. This worker bee’s breath reeks of miso soup and, like most Japanese salarimen, his bath was not this morning but a whole twelve hour stretch into last night. Small flakes of dandruff dust the shoulder of the man’s dark jacket.
On a curve they lean with the sway and the whole domino effect starts. Taro’s back is shoved against the glass of the door. The jumbled gray boxes of houses whiz by outside at 120 km an hour.
Wouldn’t it be typical if the door opens and I fall out, Taro mused. Just like that kid, three years ago, who tried to get on a bullet train, shinkansen, at the last minute. The doors closed in his face and caught his school tie and he was dragged through the station, then along the tracks, at 200 kmh by the time his body was tossed to the side, into the gravel, tearing him to bits.
Another Japanese school lad offed by this society. For a kid that boy’s age, if it isn’t bullies bashing you for lunch; or some psycho outdoor education teacher making you swim a freezing river current in Spring; or having some chimpira gang trainies carving their gang symbols into your body as a rite of passage with a razor blade; or the depression of impending finals causing you to want to take a flying leap under the tacky orange Chuo train; it’s a wonder a kid could make it to adulthood in this hellish city. It’s a fucking wonder I made it through senior school to some dumpy cram college.
Taro turns to face the window and raises his hand over his head to grab the ledge of the door. The train sways again and he is smushed against the doorframe. There must be fifty people in the doorway space behind him. There is a slight pressure against Taro’s butt cheek. The dull pressure turns to individual fingers. Moving along his butt cheeks. Oh kuso fuck, its always me. Every other month. Let me stand in the women’s train! Make it for pretty boys too! But the cops wouldn’t believe the risk is the same anyway. How do these perverts KNOW me! Kuso fuck, do I look so much like a pretty boy?!
Actually, like most twenty year olds of slender frame and fine features, looking about five years under their true age, Taro could easily arouse the fantasies of the millions of young twenty-something office girls who read this genre of fat comic book - bishonen anime manga- on the daily trains and on their office breaks. But Taro doesn’t feel like any school girl’s okama wet dream. On the soccer pitch he is a boy’s boy, tumbling about in the mud with the rest of them. In his fantasies if he ever tumbles in a bed, he thinks of the muscle and sweat of it. The hardness of it. Not some sappy churlish doe-eyed romance trip. Who comes up with that OL boylover shit?
Taro tries to turn to see his chikan -molester- but no use. If he could press back to turn a bit maybe... but it’s all he can do to hold himself one centimeter away from the sliding door’s glass. The crush is a steady pressure with him like the he’s last domino to fall, but stuck instead, leaning on the wall. With the tilt of the train to his side he is pinned to the door like a bug gone roadkill.
Upon the train’s sway back to the other side, Taro stumbles back, the chikan hand is slightly retracted. He turns a bit to get a glimpse. There’s a shoulder on one side and a chin on the other. A paper half folded just to his right. He’s too short really.
Maybe try some refracted light. But the weak window reflection is just a blur of black suits and black hair. And a dull grimy sun is streaming through the flickering row houses like a strobe light in his face. This is an express train, the next stop is....
An automated voice pierces through the intercom in distorted Japanese: “We will be arriving at Shinjuku terminus station in ten minutes. Please be prepared to depart in an orderly fashion. Be mindful of the gap as you step onto the platform. Please do not push the people ahead of you. Thank you for riding the Keio Super Express. Have a good day”.
Someone moves somewhere, the domino worker bees sway and Taro is again pinned like a splatted fly against the windshield. The breath barely making it into his thin chest. There must be about six guys pressed in within the half meter space behind him. The perving hand, it’s back now, could be any one of four or five guys’.
The chikan groper hand is under his butt cheek between the thighs he’s pushed together. But not tight enough. Soon there’s a tickling at the back of his scrotum, through his black school pants. It’s now a probing which stretches his undies. Holy shit. Feels like the same thin long-nailed clammy warm fingers as the month before ! Or are all these perv hands the uniform same - like all the hordes of tired worker bee faces.
The first time, four months ago, Taro froze, jumped out at the next stop, and then he cried after on the next train, late for classes. The second time, last month, he screamed and swore at all around him like a crazy boy. The masses just looked away. Probably thinking to themselves, “Another rowdy college kid high on meth freaking out on the commute, what have things come to.” Someone shushed him to be quiet. Probably some old lady seated on the plush seat.
When he next yelled “kuso yaritte chikan - fuck off pervert”- those former probing fingers pulled back for good. When what looked like a couple of rough teens saw that Taro’s waiter uniform was a blue jacket, and not a schoolgirl sailor’s skirt, Taro heard them chuckle. Derisively. As if to say, another okama faggot claiming he’s touched up. Too many bishoken wannabe fantasies.
This time the fingers still probed. Oh fuck it - just let him go at it. Maybe the door will now fly open and I will sucked out into this hell city. But probably not. How fucking embarrassing if my son stands up now. Not too likely as this touch, sensing resignation, is desperate and rough. I hope this perv is not ugly at least. Taro tries to slow his breathing and tune it all out. He summons up a harmony from one of his newly composed tunes. A local station blurs by. Now the fingers press on his butt and scrotum more insistently. The nails are actually painful. Taro squeezes his eyes shut.
