To paste into TVR later
It doesn't take too long, going up the main boulevard, before Rikiya runs into a slightly familiar face, half-hidden by a very familiar honey-blonde beard. The Tall Dwarf notices Rikiya straight away. "[Greetings again!]" he says in English, before searching his brain for something Japanese to ask. "I am looking for some English," he asks, as politely as he seemingly knows how; Rikiya only barely manages to parse what he wants, and elects to give him the benefit of the doubt.
"Uh..." Rikiya dives back into his primordial memories to find the simplest way to answer him, and finally remembers the little bit of English he learned in high school. "[I can help you, please wait here.]" He silently prays that he doesn't need to say anything more, as he's sure that his accent will have eaten most of the phrase. The Dwarf, thankfully, seems satisfied enough to give him a jolly nod, before seating himself on a nearby guard rail. Rikiya looks around his familiar town, realizing that the one thing he's never had to ask for before was somebody who could speak English. A strange feeling, he thinks, to need to think like a tourist, in my own home town.
He figures that the most likely English-speakers in Okinawa would be policemen or taxi drivers, but neither of those kinds of people can be found, after painstaking seconds of searching. But out the corner of Rikiya's eye, there is a splash of flaming red coming out of the Gelateria. The redness belongs to the hair of a foreign-looking woman, wielding a waffle cone of mint chocolate chip; her hair is drawn back in a quick-and-dirty ponytail but still looks rather unkempt and loose, likely from the climate, and roughly curtains a face that seems to not wish to be bothered. Regardless, she is headed his way, and it is unclear whether she enjoys her ice cream or not. Rikiya holds up a hand to flag her down. "Um, [hello, good day!]" he calls out, trying to look pleasant and friendly.
The woman, standing a head and a half shorter than Rikiya, shoots an electrifying glance right into his eyes. "Good morning, can I help you?" she asks, roughly the way someone from Kansai would say it.
Rikiya suppresses a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank goodness, you speak Japanese. I, uh... My name is Rikiya, and I could use some help with somebody," he asks, not entirely certain why he's so nervous to talk to her. It's a feeling that he generally used to feel in the presence of important yakuza.
"Well, I go by Ruby. What kind of help do you think I can give you, though?" The look on her face does not appear to be softening, though her words seem friendly enough... for as friendly as an American speaking Kansai can sound, anyway.
"I've got this guy waiting over here that... I guess he's looking for directions? But I don't speak much English, and I don't think he knows Japanese very well either, and... you seem like you'd know both?" His hands subconsciously fold together into a begging gesture.
She takes a lick of her cone and sighs. "I guess I don't have anything important to do yet. Let's see this guy."
Rikiya leads her back to the guard rail, where the Tall Dwarf waits like a loyal dog. He looks just as excited as one, as soon as he sees the two of them approaching. "[Oh, you're back! Did you find someone?]" He realizes that he said it in English without thinking, but before he can search for the relevant Japanese phrase, the woman mutters some Kansai-ben that only Rikiya can hear.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, it's him again." Ruby furrows her brow, somehow making her face look even grumpier than it already does. She fires a glare directly at the Dwarf and speaks up with the intensity of a drill instructor. "[Anton, what in the hell are you doing in Okinawa?!]"
The Dwarf, whose name must be Anton, gives a broad, genuinely jolly smile. "[Oh, hello, Ms. Ruby! I'm on vacation, and I was asking this nice man for directions!]"
Rikiya looks at the two as if he has made some mistake, as if he has just introduced a pair of stray cats, only to watch them start hissing at each other. He focuses on the red-haired woman. "Oh no. You know each other?"
She does not answer directly. "Do not trust this man," she warns under her breath, not looking at Rikiya.
"How bad can he be? Is he some kind of scammer, or...?"
"He's the tourist from Hell!" she spits. "He doesn't look it, but this man is dangerous. He's not here to do regular tourist shit. He'll want to go to places that no tourist has any business going." She isn't breaking her gaze on the Dwarf; she looks as if she could light him on fire with her eyes. "If you show him anywhere, be prepared to fight something."
Rikiya thinks about his heart, and Nurse Hasegawa's dire warning. "I..."
"If you don't think you're up to a fight, I can handle myself. But I don't know this town very well, so I can't very well show him around on my own."
"Well, if you're willing to interpret between us, I can show him some places where he can go, but I only barely know what he's asking for."
Ruby takes a bite of her ice cream to stop it from dripping down the side, then finally says something to Anton again. "[Alright, he says he knows some places around here. What was it you wanted?]"
"[Oh, wonderful!]" Anton gives a triumphant pump of his fist - it must be some gesture that he defaults to when he says something - and answers the question with a lot of English. "[I've always wanted to play a real game of cho-han, but I don't know where to find something like that around here. Can you ask this nice man if he can point me towards a gambling parlor?]"
"[No,]" Ruby immediately answers, marching up to him and grabbing him by the collar of his T-shirt. "[You're going to get your shit kicked in,]" she growls at him. "[Those places are not safe for tourists and they don't take kindly to--]"
"What's he wanting?" Rikiya interrupts.
"Ugh... he wants to play some cho-han."
"Well, that's not so bad... I know a spot on the other end of the shopping arcade, they're fairly welcoming."
Ruby points her ice cream at Rikiya with great purpose. "You don't understand, Rikiya. If it is in any way possible for a fight to start around him, he will FIND that way. I don't know what it is about him, but cops hassle him, gangs shake him down, and yakuza members have tried to kill him before."
"But he seems so nice...Look at him, this is the happiest person in the world."
"Yeah, well, trust me, he finds a way, some way or another." Ruby notices that the ice cream has reached her hand, and grumpily sets about licking it off.
"If it makes you feel any better, I can stick around and make sure he's not about to get in trouble..." Rikiya cannot even begin to imagine who would want to fight this man, this six-foot-six reject from a strong-man championship. The strongest yakuza from back in the day would have difficulty even lifting him.
"Then I'm sticking around, too. I have the benefit of knowing how he operates." Ruby signals Anton the Dwarf to follow, and the three start walking through the shopping arcade.
Rikiya is unable to contain his curiosity. "You've known this guy before, it sounds like. What is he to you? Ex-boyfriend?"
Ruby gags slightly on her current bite of waffle cone. "Fuck no," she chokes. "I'm married, and thank God it's not to this guy." She watches Anton get distracted by the little shop selling bottles of amazake. "My life's dangerous enough as it is."
"What do you do?" Rikiya asks.
"Food critic," she says, before taking another bite.
"How's that dangerous?"
"You'd be surprised," is all she can say through the waffle cone before she swallows again. "What about you?"
Rikiya wonders which version to give her, because things have changed so much since the last time he was conscious that he still has no idea of his place in the world. "Former yakuza, actually," he says at last, figuring all the stuff about having been shot isn't really important. "Guess you could say I'm in between jobs." Rikiya's eyes now also wander to what Anton is doing, as the tall dwarf furtively peeks into the fish market, then decides to stay out of the crowd.
Fifteen minutes worth of cho-han later, the three emerge from the thankfully-still-operating gambling parlor. Rikiya and Ruby are both thankful that it didn't take long, while Anton is still doing little happy-dances with his freshly won prize: a small pewter dragon, set with a glass jewel in its considerable maw.
"I can't believe he actually won something," Rikiya compliments. "I'm kind of surprised he was able to play cho-han at all, considering he barely knows the language."
"Well, I guess if you already know the name of the game, it's just a matter of remembering which one means 'odd' and which one means 'even.'"
Anton pipes up now, at last. "[Well, that was fun, and I got this amazing thing for it, too!]"
Rikiya looks at the prize, and figures it to just be a little trinket of no particular value. "Is he going to want to sell this?"
Ruby quickly interprets the question to Anton, then Anton speaks again. "[Ho-ho, nope, this thing's staying with me, it's too powerful to just get rid of. This is a Seal of the Dragon!]" Rikiya doesn't even have to wait for Ruby to translate it back, for his ears to perk up at the English word "dragon." But Anton hasn't finished speaking yet. "[But I think I should get this back to my hotel room for safe keeping. Thank you both for the wonderful time, I think my train station is this way--]" Anton bumps into a man wearing a sky-blue polo shirt, black mesh tactical vest, navy blue shorts, and a black army corps hat. Rikiya hears the clatter of sunglasses hitting the pavement, and feels his fists tightening up out of reflex. "[Oh! Terribly sorry, sir, I'll just get those for you--]"
"Back away, right now!" screams an oddly familiar voice, as the man in blue waves his arms aggressively to shoo him away. Anton does back off, in exactly the wrong direction, as his sock-and-sandal-clad foot steps precisely where it shouldn't. Rikiya hears the crunching of plastic lenses; he and Ruby both grimace on reflex. "Son of a bitch," growls the man in blue. "Second pair this week, you fucker." He notices that he is being watched, and reaches for the stun-gun on his belt. "Back away," he orders as he turns to face Rikiya, "or I will use..." His facial expression turns even more sour as he realizes who he's looking at. "God damn it, it's you again."
Rikiya almost doesn't recognize the man without the cheap shades on his face, but it's definitely the man from the empty Ryudo office. He looks at the name badge stitched into his tactical vest. "So, Sugiyama's your name?"
"Mr. Shades" Sugiyama, now shades-less, tries to cover up the badge with one of his hands, but realizes he is now too late. "Yeah, and you wanna make something of it?"
"What's with the get-up? This your day job or something? Family can't keep you paid enough?"
"Fuck you." Sugiyama, who looks a lot less threatening in a security uniform, closes the snap on his stun-gun holster, and turns to leave. "Ain't even worth talkin' to you if you ain't doing anything illegal." As he bends over to pick up the crushed frames of his sunglasses, Rikiya spots a logo on the back of his vest for Argus Security Solutions.
"A.S.S.?" Rikiya has not heard the name before, and figures they must be new in town.
Ruby, meanwhile, lets a burst of air out her nose, and makes what must be the first smile she's made all day. "Heh. [It says 'ass.']" Rikiya, who definitely learned the funniest English swear words back in school, barely lets out a snicker, himself.
Sugiyama slips the ex-sunglasses into one of his vest pockets and glares at all three of them. "Gonna let you all off with a warning this time, but you better not touch an officer of city security that way again." With this, he walks up the alleyway they came from.
"Well," Ruby begins, "I dunno what that was all about with him, but I think I better see Anton off to the station personally. You don't need to stick around if you don't want."
Rikiya commits the Argus Security logo, and the name Sugiyama, to memory. "I appreciate the help today. I don't have money, or anything, but..."
"No, the one that should be paying is him," Ruby says, gesturing at Anton. "[Hey, c'mon, this guy was a big help, wanna kick something his way for the trouble?]"
Something pings within Anton's head, and he immediately reaches into a pocket of his cargo shorts and withdraws a wallet. He doesn't even take anything out of it, and hands it over to Rikiya.
Rikiya opens it and looks at all the stuff still inside of it. It contains a reasonably sized wad of 2,000 yen bills, and a lot of random plastic cards, most of which appear to be membership cards for grocery stores and libraries. "Why'd you hand me the whole thing?"
Anton replies, via Ruby, "[Of course, that's not my *actual* wallet - that's my decoy gambling wallet. You may, naturally, keep all the cash inside of it, as I figured I would lose it all today and budgeted accordingly.]"
The money alone is far more than Rikiya already has on him, and could even be enough to secure a place for him to stay for a while. "Well, uh... [Thank you,]" says Rikiya with a deeper bow than necessary.
"[You are *most* welcome! And now, I must be off, for there are many more things to do on this wonderful island...]"
"[I thought you were gonna go stash that little dragon thing first,]" reminded Ruby. "[C'mon. I'll follow you to the station, so you don't slam into another security guard today.]"
"[Oh, is that who that was? I didn't even realize.]"
"[You absolute moron,]" Ruby laughs, and drags him along the road towards the monorail platform staircase.
Rikiya re-counts the money in the wallet, finding almost 200,000 yen in it. That's got to be enough, he thinks, to figure out how to make the Ryudo office livable again. Then I don't have to take up poor Haruka's dining room again.
