Coin Locker Babies Read Online Free PDF

Hashi, “Hey! Kuwayama, that old hag’s your mother.” The old rage had come back in an instant and Hashi had taken off after him. “Sorry, Grannie! I mistook you for Kuwayama’s mother!” the boy yelled again, exultant fora moment at least before Kiku joined in the fight and began to hit him. The encounter was Kiku’s introduction to violence, in a way, since neither the Kuwayamas nor the nuns had ever laid a hand on either of them. For the first time in his life he clenched his fist and planted it on someone’s chin, flattening the little boy with a single punch and knocking out two teeth. The whole thing was over in a second, and Kiku, as though a little disappointed, stood kicking him in the side until he lost consciousness. Then, for good measure, he went on to beat up the other kids who had laughed at the boy’s taunts. When he was done, the whole class was afraid of him. Perhaps because he was usually so mild-mannered, he seemed all the more frightening, but, whatever the reason, no one was willing to cross the two boys after that. Hashi’s sadness at the sight of the old woman, however, remained. Once he watched her from a distance as she was picking rags out of a dustbin—purple ones seemed to be her favorites—and draping them around her shoulders and hips. When the wind blew, she was like a figure in a dream, all fluttering lavender.
    Breaking their promise to Kazuyo, they often went to explore the ruins. By the time they were in fourth grade, it was almost a daily routine; they would drop off their satchels at the house and head straight for the abandoned town. They had drawn a rough map dividing the area into quadrants—the miners’ quarters, the mines themselves, the school, and the deserted streets—and each was given a comic-book name: Zoule, Megad, Puton, and Gazelle. Zoule was the leader of a fierce band of space pirates, Megad a spaceship base on Venus, Puton was a robot serving in the defense of the Third Star in the constellation Cygnus, and Gazelle a noble emissary, son of Superman and a Chinese woman. The miners’ buildings, in Zoule zone, were surrounded on three sides by hills covered with vines under which vipers lived, so the boys had allbut given up on the idea of exploring that section. All they knew for sure was that the wind could sometimes be heard whistling through tall buildings beyond the hill.
    One day, however, while carefully hacking at the vines on the hillside, Kiku had discovered a concrete staircase which, if it went to the top, promised a view of the unexplored buildings and the sea beyond, and thus the possibility of completing their map. The stairs were steep and overgrown, so the boys worked cautiously, checking under the vines for snakes before cutting them. Finally, however, they reached a place where they could see the whole ruined complex: twelve eight-story apartment blocks overlooking the ocean.
    The buildings, labeled with the letters A through L, were reached by a wide track that ran along the crest of the hill before sloping down to the apartments. In places the vines covered second-story balconies, but the glass in many of the windows seemed to be intact. Unlike buildings they had explored before, the entrances here were open. A plant cascading from a balcony on the seventh floor of building B looked, from a distance, like a pale green mattress set out to air; but from directly below, the gray vines and fuzzy green leaves were more like a monster that had devoured the inhabitants of the apartment. The boys knew from experience there could be all sorts of good stuff inside: broken dishes, graffiti, salvageable tatami mats. What a find—a dozen buildings, apparently untouched.
    Kiku and Hashi had already made quite a collection from the other abandoned buildings: a dagger, old records, photographs, a fishing rod, scuba tanks, a gas mask, a miner’s headlamp, a helmet with leather straps, goggles, eighteen cans of ammonium sulfate, a globe, an anatomical