During my Masters degree in creative writing, I wrote a YA novel set in contemporary Japan. The story followed teenager, Shoki Nakamura, a girl who could see the spirits of the recently deceased and quickly became entangled with the yakuza and ghosts hellbent on revenge.

The novel is currently in limbo, between agents and without a home. I feel it would make for a compelling tabletop RPG and I’d like to adapt it down the line, but for now I’ve decided to share it with those visiting the site.

I will update the page with a new chapter each month.

Enjoy reading.

Unable to complete this heavy task for our country
Arrows and bullets all spent, so sad we fall.
But unless I smite the enemy,
My body cannot rot in the field.
Yea, I shall be born again seven times
And grasp the sword in my hand.
When ugly weeds cover this island,
My sole thought shall be the Imperial Land.

General Tadamichi Kuribayashi
Battle of Iwo Jima
March 17th, 1945

1

Ninja

Police Sergeant, Masaru Tanaka was unclogging the lawnmower, wondering why he should spend his free time maintaining an artificial roof lawn, when his wife approached to hand him his pager. After rummaging through their freshly laundered clothes she had found it still clipped to the hem of his trousers. Now it displayed an unusual dispatch code reserved for matters of national security, and though Masaru assumed it had malfunctioned in the wash, he could not take that chance.

As was typical, he arrived first on the scene, parking behind a row of immaculate topiary bushes resembling horses in mid jump. Masaru believed his promotion through the ranks had as much to do with punctuality as with anything else. He found modern methods of law enforcement insufferable and was forever ripping textbooks from the hands of rookies in favour of a night patrol. Out there, driving beneath city lights whilst the swarm of human suffering and inhuman crimes crackled through the scanner, he could tell precisely who was cut out for the job.

He switched off the engine and opened the glove compartment to remove a pistol. Having only ever fired the weapon in practice it acted more as a deterrent, but he still kept it clean, oiled and stocked just in case.

Masaru had contacted dispatch on route, but they had given him very little to go on. And according to the code streaming across his pager, backup was still fifteen minutes shy of the country estate. For now he was on his own.

Taking a few deep breaths, he stepped from the car and moved immediately up the driveway to find cover behind a large stone urn. Disturbed by his presence, ants emptied from a gaping crack in the base. Some attempted to scale the thick rubber soles of his boots while others disappeared beneath the tread as if fishing trawlers passing through the Ebihara Marina tunnel.

Masaru leaned out a fraction to view the forecourt. Nothing moved. He expected to see birds occupying the central lawn or drinking from the twin fountains at either end, and there were none roosting in the trees which remained as still as torii gates at the entrance to a shrine. The silence too was unearthly. Having tolerated ear-splitting sirens for years, Masaru’s hearing was admittedly poor, but this was different; he felt like he was trapped in a Polaroid.

As if to justify his unease, a few feet shy of the house there lay a body. Masaru recognised the individual. Shigeo Kasai had been in every paper that week. He was the sole financer for the recently elected city Governor, the same city Governor now facing allegations of corruption. Maybe this was a matter of national security? Mr Kasai’s left leg was resting at an unnatural angle and dry blood had formed a broad halo around his scalp.

Keeping low, Masaru moved across the forecourt, his pistol bobbing left and right to track his eye movements. Reaching Mr Kasai, he crouched to check the man’s pulse. There was a rapid but shallow beat, like the sensation of lifting a hamster from its cage. Without medical attention he had around half an hour to live, maybe less. Masaru hoped his backup would arrive with paramedics in tow.

It looked like a clear-cut suicide attempt: open elevated window, no signs of tampering, injuries consistent with a fall from that height. And yet Masaru had that ache in his gut he had learned to trust over the years, that ball of undigested instincts that now directed him to the house.

In place of a traditional Japanese entranceway constructed of sliding panels, the Kasai family home was American in design with a single hardwood door. As Masaru approached, he felt his anxiety increase with each step. He was not afraid for his life; he had always been a little too willing to risk that. Instead it had to do with his impending retirement and a feeling of inevitability. That this was the end of things.

The door had not been forced. He turned the handle and used the barrel of his pistol to ease it open. The same stillness he had felt outside was present here; a kind of mantle draped over the realities of time and space.

A lavish chandelier hanging above the entrance hall illuminated many canvases of modern art lining the walls. With their clashing colours and chaotic brushwork, Masaru could not discern them from the artless daubs of a toddler, yet he had little doubt selling a single piece would double his retirement package. Beneath the canvases were sealed display cabinets containing antique ceramics of Chinese origin. Anybody could tell their considerable value and he was almost saddened to see a toppled cabinet and fragments of the ancient porcelain scattered across the floorboards. Saddened, that is, until he noticed the bodies.

As part of his captaincy training, Masaru had undergone regular psychological appraisals. One of these sessions was used to evaluate a candidates’ reaction to violence. He had been shown war photos taken during the Nanjing Massacre followed by slide after slide of disturbing images: starving prisoners, mutilated bodies, mass graves. At the time he had responded calmly and assuredly, never believing a police officerwould witness such brutality.

He was wrong. This was another massacre. The Shiranami Massacre.

The door came to rest against a chauffeur in a grey suit. The man’s peaked hat lay crumpled under his matted hair and the right lens to his sunglasses had split, revealing a deep, bloody cavity. Further in lay a young man whose tennis whites were now utterly red. Another body was slumped at the base of a door like a draft excluder and two more were sprawled on the staircase, their contorted expressions sharpened beneath the glare of the chandelier.

There were more victims, but Masaru had stopped looking. He was doubled over with his hands on his knees. To stop himself from vomiting, he allowed a string of saliva to fall slowly from his lips.

What was he dealing with here? Masaru had a keen interest in history and as he gathered himself to survey the bloodbath once more, he was reminded of mercenary ninja from the Sengoku period, adept killers who required but a single opportunity to dispose of a target. And as the floorboards creaked beneath his boots, he half expected a throwing star to spin out from the shadows towards his throat.

The scene before him was preposterous. And if it were not for the homeowner lying outside, he would have considered himself the victim of a practical joke. But this was no retirement stunt. His colleagues were not waiting to surprise him. The bodies would not miraculously get to their feet to remove wigs, makeup and prosthetics.

The whine of distant sirens made him breathe a little easier.

Then she appeared at the top of the staircase.

He nearly dropped his pistol. Her eyes! Full. Feverish. Feral. Masaru had seen eyes like those before, but never on a person. They belonged to trainee attack dogs confined to kennels during the starvation phase. Blood glistened through her hair and streaked her knitted cardigan. It was thickest along her right arm, unbroken crimson to the very tip of a kitchen knife she held.

She approached, making no effort to negotiate the bodies on the stairs, her eyes fixed on the open door.

Masaru heard the skid of tyres on gravel.

In any other circumstances, he would have assumed the girl a lucky survivor. Knife to be used only if the Sengoku ninja discovered her hiding place. Except, Masaru realised, she was the ninja.

“Drop the knife,” he demanded.

She kept coming, eyes never straying from the door.

He aimed his pistol at her shoulder. “I said, drop the knife!”

Surely escape wasn’t on her mind? Maybe she wanted death? Maybe a bullet was preferable to the alternative?

Masaru turned to acknowledge his colleagues, the briefest of movements, but enough for a ninja. She was on him before he could even cock his pistol. The knife flashed and he felt the punch, the spike of pain, and then nothing.

As he collapsed, his colleagues opened fire. The girl flailed her arms as she was sprayed with bullets, her fingers refusing to surrender the weapon even as she hit the deck.

From the floor, Masaru tilted his head towards her. He watched the hunger leave her eyes with the last of her breath. Then something else left her. Like steam from a rice basket. It formed in the air above her, at first hazy and indistinct, then crystal clear. A figure. A woman. Torn stockings covered shapely legs, slender hands ended at crudely broken nails, and a white shirt hung loose exposing a filigree bra and a necklace of bruised finger-marks.

Masaru was rolled onto his back and an oxygen mask placed over his nose and mouth. He tried desperately to turn his head, to look upon the woman’s face, but the paramedic was stronger. Masaru felt a needle in his shoulder followed by the sting of drugs entering his bloodstream. Then he was lost. Covered by the mantle. Lost in time and space.