Zero Sum Game (29 page)

"It's a lie," Ami repeated, loud enough for everyone to hear. She looked at her grandparents. "I can't do it anymore. I hate lying to my best friend."

"Ami, don't," her grandmother said.

"Are you going to come over and stop me?"

Hina had never heard her friend talk back in that tone before—not to her grandparents or anyone else.

"Ami, you—" Ozaki began.

She cut him off. "It was the yakuza."

Atsushi chuckled. "My granddaughter watches too many cop dramas."

Ami looked at Hina. "That's why I have to keep canceling our trips together."

"What does shopping have to do with getting beat up?"

"I have to give the money to the yakuza," Ami said.

The room fell silent. Junko closed her eyes in embarrassment while Atsushi's face mixed that embarrassment with anger. Ozaki nodded once in understanding. Ami avoided Hina's gaze.

She didn't understand their reactions. "I don't get it," Hina said.

"Extortion," Ozaki said to Ami. He moved away from her grandparents and stood in the middle of the room.

Ami nodded. "Every month, men come. They come to every shop in the neighborhood and we have to pay them for their 'protection.'" She spit out the last word. "That's why I can't go clothes shopping with you, Hina, or go out to the movies. Every time we save up some money, we have to pay it to them."

"Protection from what?" Hina asked.

"From the yakuza," Ozaki said.

"You pay them money to protect yourselves from them?" The idea of paying money scratched at Hina's memory.

Ami's grandfather spoke up. He sounded weakened. "If we don't, incidents like this happen. They'll never kill us. But they certainly make us hurt."

Junko took up the explanation. "And if we miss a payment, it's more the next month."

Hina looked at Ozaki. It was the first time she had ever heard of something like this. He nodded in sad understanding of the situation.

Junko sat up, her gaze bouncing back and forth between Hina and Ozaki. "And you can't tell the police. Please don't."

"Why not? The police can help," Hina said. She grasped her friend's hand, hopeful. "If you tell them, they can catch the bad guys. I mean…"

Hina trailed off as her friend shook her head. "We can't," Ami said.

"Why not?"

"Because this happens," Atsushi said. When Hina said nothing, he pointed at his face and raised his bandaged arm.

Ami held her friend's gaze. "If we tell, we get in trouble."

The connection between paying money and the memory in Hina's head slammed together like magnets. Ami's grandfather had been telling the large man with rings that he would pay them money, and the man had said something about it being the same every month. Then Hina had caught up with him; pushing him down, humiliating him, telling him to leave that couple alone.

"So what happened this time?" Ozaki took off his glasses, rubbed them with a cloth from his back pocket, and put them back on.

Ami said, "I was getting ready for school this morning when I heard noise and yelling. Then a big guy came into my room and hit me for no reason. Then he dragged me into the living room. That's where grandma and grandpa were."

The blood ran from Hina's body and pooled into her feet.

Ami continued. "He said that was for one of the guys. We have no idea what he was talking about. We don't." All three of the Isobe's nodded, and Ami's eyes told her she wanted Hina to believe her, that Ami hadn't done anything wrong. "I guess they think one of their men was beat up and they thought it was us."

Because he'd been beaten up by a girl
, Hina thought. Her stomach tightened. She had caused this. She had beaten up a yakuza, and he told everyone it was a junior high school girl that had done it. One near the taiyaki shop. There was only one girl in the area.

They thought it had been Ami.

She had been hurt because of Hina.

She heard nothing else after that. She walked to the doorway, unaware of what was going on. Images of her foot on the man's chest and Ami's bruises filled her mind. She tried to open the door, but it wouldn't budge. She realized she was trying to pull it open, so she slid it to one side. She walked out of the room, and by the time she was halfway down the hall, she was jogging.

After passing through the main entrance doors, she broke into a run.

— — —

The next afternoon, there was a knock on Hina's apartment door. She slid off her bed, opened the door, and found Ozaki on the other side.

"You didn't go back to school yesterday," he said. "You didn't come in today, either."

Hina didn't reply. She had called the school that morning and told them she wouldn't be in. She didn't give a reason to Ms. Ota, only said she wasn't coming and hung up.

Hina stared at her teacher. He wasn't mad. He stood on the landing, back stiff and arms at his side.

"May I come in?"

She stepped back. Ozaki entered and closed the door. She didn't know what to say or what to feel. His presence didn't evoke anything in her. She didn't know what she was going to do next.

It surprised them both when she leaned forward and hugged him, burying her face in his suit jacket, clasping her arms around him. He let out an "oof" and stood there while she held him. He kept his arms at his sides. After a moment he gasped, "You're still strong without the suit."

His voice broke her numbness and she stepped back. He tugged on the bottom of his jacket to straighten it and caught his breath. The corners of Hina's lips tried smiling, but her eyes remained sad and lost.

"Come in," she offered. Ozaki took off his shoes and she led him into the living room.

Hina made a cup of coffee with milk and sugar and gave it to him while he sat in silence. After several sips, he set it on the table. He sat cross legged on the floor while Hina slouched in her father's chair.

Ozaki broke the silence. "You're fashionable today."

She wasn't in her uniform; she wore an oversized bright red sleeveless shirt with a purple top underneath it. Tights with one bright green leg and one yellow leg showcased her large quads and calves. A large pink bow tied up her ponytail. She shrugged at Ozaki's comment. This was the first time he had seen her without her uniform. She tried not to think of that…thing…heaped in her closet.

"Ami told me about the magazine you really like. What is it?"

"
Nicola
," she said. She wished he would stop with the small talk and get to his point. She kept her gaze on her orange sock-covered feet.

"You left me with some explaining to do yesterday. Which would have gone over much better if I'd had an actual explanation." He waited. "Can you give me one?"

"I'm stupid," she said.

"Do you want to explain that, because I don't speak teen angst-ese."

His sharp tone hurt her. She had to come clean about what had happened over the last few days. He was the only one who knew her secret; if she couldn't tell him, who could she tell? She had alternated between being snappish and sullen with her father last night when he had asked about her day. Now she felt a little guilty about it. Ozaki would understand, and she realized that was why she had hugged him. He would know and could help. But she was still reluctant. As an only child, she was good at taking responsibility; after all, there had been no one else to blame when she had done something wrong. She knew she had caused these problems but was afraid that Ozaki would say she was right, that she was responsible. For some reason, she didn't want him blaming her too.

She began by telling him of her desire to be more courageous. She left out the part about how anime characters seemed so courageous, he would think she was being childish. She told him she wanted to be brave. She talked about her nightly patrols, thinking they would help because she would be facing more dangerous situations in the future. She told him about stopping criminals and how she was becoming braver and helping people. She told about that early morning patrol: meeting and accosting the yakuza thug. She ended by explaining how they must have thought it had been Ami since she was the only junior high school girl who lived in the area. She didn't cry as she blamed herself, but her throat tightened.

When she finished, Ozaki said nothing for several moments. "What does Voice think?"

She turned her head away, as if she had smelled a foul stench. "I don't know, I don't want to speak to him. It's partly his fault anyway. He gave me those stupid powers." She flicked her fingernails.

"I see," Ozaki said. He gazed into his half full coffee cup and swirled the liquid. He took a small sip, then threw the coffee into Hina's face.

She screamed in surprise. She expected to feel burning pain any moment, but the coffee had grown cold during her story. Now she was messy and wet. Coffee dripped onto her shirt, tan mixing with red, creating dark spots on her chest. A few of her bangs were plastered to her forehead. She was shocked at her teacher.

"Did you expect that?"

"No," she replied. "Of course not. What are you doing?"

"You didn't see that coming." Hina wondered what kind of explanation that was. He leaned forward, and before she could react, slapped her across the face; not hard, but quick. The combination of skin and liquid made a squishy, splashing noise. She yelled out in surprise. "How about that one, did you see that coming?"

"No," she said. She scooted away from her crazy teacher. He slapped her one more time. He raised his arm again. This time she blocked it and knocked it away. He smiled at her.

"You knew I was going to do that, right? Why didn't you block the coffee, or my other hits?"

"Because I didn't know," she said, scared, ready to bolt. She had been sure her teacher would understand how she felt, and what she had done. But he seemed to have gone crazy.

He settled back to his original position. "Exactly. You didn't know." He moved his cup away from him. Hina wiped her face with her hands as he talked, his voice smooth and soothing. "You didn't know why that man was there. You didn't know he would tell his yakuza boss what happened. You didn't know your friend and their fellow shopkeepers were being extorted. You didn't know, Hina, and that's the point. How could you have known? It was something you didn't see coming, you couldn't have any knowledge of. Even Voice didn't know. You can't control what you don't know. If you try, you'll end up with a complex."

Her throat constricted. She had to shove the words past her vocal cords, and they came out louder than she intended. "But I have a responsibility. I have to save the human race. I can't fail. Don't you see that?"

Ozaki didn't match her volume, he continued in his matter-of-fact but soothing tone. "I do. It's a big responsibility. Especially for a young girl. But you have to look at the big picture. You can't save the world one person at a time. There are more than seven billion people on the planet. Are you going to meet each and every one of them?"

She looked him in the eyes. "This isn't an English test. I can't fail this. People will die."

"People die all the time, Hina." Her eyes widened and she clamped her lips together to stop herself from crying. "And you're not failing," Ozaki continued. "No matter how strong you are or how invulnerable that uniform makes you, if you try to take on the responsibility of seven billion people, you'll be crushed. And we won't have a chance of stopping Shimizu without you."

Tears ran twin streaks down her face. They converged on her chin and fell to her lap. "What am I supposed to do?" Her small voice wavered.

"You look at the big picture."

"That's what Voice says." Speaking the battle suit's name brought up a flicker of anger. She half blamed him for everything going on in her life. She wished she had never walked by that shrine.

"He's right," Ozaki continued. "But you look at the big picture by focusing on one thing. Shimizu's plan. That's all. Stop him and everything is all right. Don't worry about crime in Hiroshima. You're a brave girl already. Focus on Shimizu, and everything else turns out okay." Her teacher sat back and watched her.

Focus. That seemed to be the keyword from both Voice and Ozaki. Had she been focused on the wrong thing? The three of them wanted to save the world, but was she going about it all wrong?

Yes. She was.

She hated to admit it, but she had to stop thinking of her friends and the people in Hiroshima. She needed to stop concentrating on details and focus on the goal. She was the only person who could stop Shimizu, and every moment she used to stop a bike theft or a deranged knife-wielder was a moment the alien stepped closer to his goal of world annihilation.

Hina stood and walked back into her room. Ozaki said nothing as she left. She had tried to make herself braver, but had succumbed to another, unexpected, kind of fear: a fear of failing.

She slid her closet door open a few centimeters, as if she expected a black cat to jump out at her, giving her a scare before the real monster leapt out. Nothing attacked, but her heart continued beating fast as she stared at the messy pile that was her uniform. She took off her bow and clothes and reached into the closet. She put on her uniform and shook her hair out from under the collar.

For a moment she stood there in silence. "It's been a while," Voice said.

"I know." Putting on the battle suit, she had expected to feel changed; more fearful and apprehensive. But she didn't. It felt comfortable. She walked to the mirror. She wasn't wearing a colorful super sentai costume. She wasn't wielding a Kamen Rider sword capable of cleaving buildings in half. It showed a normal looking junior high school girl wearing a normal looking school uniform. "Voice, I can only do the best I can. I should have looked before I leapt. I know you're focusing on saving the world, but Ami and Ozaki-sensei, and everybody, they're in my world. I'll help you stop the Noigel, but know that I can't turn my back on people in need. We don't have spaceships and all that stuff. This planet is all we have."

When he replied, Voice's tone sounded all too human. "I've been…reevaluating my mission parameters. My primary goal is still helping you save your planet. But I have been treating you like a Noigel soldier. My initial plan of action was…unwise."