Sometimes when you go out with somebody new you get more than you bargained for....

Wild Date

I wasn’t lying when I told Mother I was going to Masako’s house. I just didn’t plan to stay there! Masako’s parents were gone a lot in the evenings. So whenever she and Sumire and I wanted to get together we’d meet there. We never did anything we weren’t really supposed to do, mind you. Usually we’d just go downtown and hang out somewhere, see our other friends, try to meet some guys if we could, that sort of thing.
This particular evening Masako and Sumire had a real coup lined up. They told me at school that they had talked three guys into meeting at Masako’s house and going out with us. And they were all second-year students, too! We were going to have a real date! With no teachers or parents or chaperones or anything around. I was thrilled. I felt like I was doing something daring…like I was getting away with something…like I was trying something just a little bit dangerous.

Little did I know just how dangerous that evening would turn out to be!

When I got to Masako’s house she and Sumire were there, but no guys. “They’ll be here any minute,” Sumire assured me. “Glad to see you wore pants and some comfortable shoes, like we told you to.”
“Why did you make a point of saying that, anyway?” I asked. “You know I don’t ever wear skirts if I don’t have….”
A roaring sound from the street interrupted me. As I watched, startled, three riders on motorcycles raced around the corner and down the street. They hit their brakes and came to an abrupt stop right in front of Masako’s house—almost within arm’s reach of us. I just stared at them.
“All right!” Sumire said. “The guys are here!”
I watched as the three riders slowly climbed off of their bikes. They all wore brightly-colored riding jackets, and baggy pants, and helmets with dark visors. “You…you didn’t tell me they were bosozoku!”
“Oh don’t be so dramatic, Hitomi!” Masako said. “Just because a guy rides a bike doesn’t mean he’s in a biker gang! They’re just guys who like motorcycles. Kind of like motorcycle-otaku.”
The guys raised their visors and approached us. We exchanged greetings and introductions. The guys’ names were Nagaro Toru, Nakazaki Taro, and Mori Takao. Toru looked like he was sort of the leader.
“You girls ready to see some of the town?” he asked.
“Ready!” Masako and Sumire chirped. I didn’t feel so certain, myself.
The next thing I knew we had paired off. Masako was going to ride with Takao, Sumire would go with Taro, and I somehow found myself partnered with Toru. He reached to the side of his red-and-white motorcycle and unclipped a second helmet that hung from that side.
“Here, catch!” He tossed me the helmet. I put it on, hoping it wouldn’t mess up my hair too badly. I’d worked hard on it before leaving home!
Toru had to help me fasten the chin strap. I looked into his eyes. They looked calm and businesslike. I hoped my own eyes didn’t look frightened. I still kind of felt that way.
“You ever ridden on a motorcycle before?”
“No,” I said in a small voice. “I’ve been on the back of a friend’s scooter before.”
“It’s pretty much the same thing, only faster. Just sit up straight and hold on. Don’t worry about trying to lean when we turn. I’ll do the driving!”
I climbed onto the back seat and put my arms around Toru. He started the engine. It wasn’t the loudest motorcycle engine I’d ever heard. But at that moment it sounded like it.
“Here we go!” Toru called. And we were off!
Soon we were whizzing along the streets at what seemed like eighty kilometers an hour. We weaved in and out of traffic and swooped around turns. I hung on for dear life.
“Hey, you don’t have to have a death grip!” Toru shouted over the noise of the engine.
“Aren’t…aren’t we going kind of fast, Toru-san?”
“It feels faster because you’re not used to it. We’re not even over the speed limit. Not much, anyway! Come on, relax a little and enjoy the ride.”
And the funny thing is…I did start enjoying it! Riding on behind Toru really was fun, once I began to get used to it. He obviously knew what he was doing. I started to relax and trust him to keep us from danger. Feeling the wind and the lean of the machine was good—when I stopped being scared!

After we had been riding around a while we stopped at a convenience store and got some juice and snacks. Then we rode to a spot down near the bay by the piers of a big bridge. There was nobody else around. We sat around on some blocks of concrete and started snacking and talking and looking out at the bay.
The guys liked to talk about their bikes. Toru’s was a Kawasaki KLE 350, which didn’t mean a lot to me. He was proud of it, though. An older cousin had sold it to him when he got a new bike. The cousin was a certified motorcycle mechanic. Toru wanted to become one too.
As we visited we saw the sky starting to turn grey and dreary. “I just remembered!” Sumire said. “The radio said today that there was a typhoon coming in tonight!”
“Yeah, but it’s supposed to take hours before it gets here!” Taro said. “We’ll have plenty of time to get you girls home safe and sound before it hits.”
“If I was you, girl, I wouldn’t worry too much about typhoons!”
The voice came from a tall bank above where we sat. We all looked up. There, looking down at us, stood a guy in a biker jacket. His hair was pomaded to look sort of like an afro. And his eyes…I’ll never forget those eyes! They were blue! They looked cold and hard like chips of blue ice.
“You’ve got other things to worry about. Like us!”

Then we saw that he wasn’t alone. There were at least three other guys with him, all looking down at us, and all very, very unfriendly.

Wild Date: Part II

The guys on the bank started climbing down to where we were. I could see that they had likenesses of birds on the back of their jackets. What had we gotten ourselves into?
“You know you and your friends aren’t supposed to be on Homicide Pigeon turf, Nagaro!” their blue-eyed leader said as he approached.
“Didn’t know you considered this your turf, Otomo,” Toru said quietly. “If you object to us being here we can leave. Doesn’t look like the place is really worth fighting over to me.”
“We’ve caught you and your buddies on our turf before,” the one called Otomo said. “It’s time you guys learned to stay out of our neighborhood.”
“You can have it if you want it so bad, Otomo.”
“Sorry, Nagaro, it’s too late for that. You guys really need to learn your lesson bad. Maybe a good beat-down will do the trick.” From a pocket on his jacket he took a strange-looking object and slipped it on over his right hand. Was that…brass knuckles, like in movies?
Otomo had four other guys with him. Five against four…it wasn’t going to be a fair fight….
“Look, Otomo….”
“Shut your pie-hole!” Otomo swung his brass-reinforced fist at Toru. Somebody screamed. I think it was me.
The next thing I knew Toru had dodged Otomo’s swing, caught him by the arm, and flipped him over on his back. He landed with a grunt. The others in Otomo’s gang stood staring in shock.
“Everybody mount up!” Toru yelled. “We’ve got to get going!”
Otomo scrambled to his feet and went for Toru again. He flipped him again—this time right into two of his fellow gang members. All three went down.
The others in our group were already dashing over to the bikes and climbing on. “Get on the bike, Hitomi!” Toru cried. I ran over to Toru’s red-and-white Kawasaki and pulled my helmet on. Behind me I heard more blows and grunts. My fingers shook as I tried to fasten the chin strap.
Then suddenly Toru was with me. He climbed onto the bike and started the engine. I forgot about the chin strap and climbed on behind him. I turned and looked back. Otomo and his thugs were running away. But they were heading toward some motorcycles parked nearby!
And we were off again. When I looked back again I saw motorcycles coming behind us. They weren’t Toru’s friends—Taro and Takao had already taken off!
“Toru-san! They’re after us!”
Toru glanced back. “Okay, get ready for some real riding!”
The next thing I knew we were racing along faster then we’d ever gone before. Toru weaved around several cars and took some hairpin turns so fast I thought heard his exhaust pipes scrape the ground. I wanted to close my eyes. But somehow I couldn’t. I couldn’t breathe or scream either, or do anything but just hang on!
“Are they still on our tail?”
I looked back. “I think we lost…no! There’s a motorcycle still following us. It’s back a ways.”
Toru gave the bike some more gas. We went around another hairpin turn. Then I felt myself trying to pitch forward as Toru hit the brakes hard. I heard a clicking sound as he shifted several gears. Then the engine roared, and bike shook as it slowed down farther. And then we whipped to the left, down a narrow alley.
We’d lost most of our speed by then, but it still felt like we were going altogether too fast for such a sharp turn into such a narrow alley. We nearly ran into a man coming out of an oden bar. Toru brought us to a stop a few doors farther down.
He turned and looked behind again. There was no sign of any pursuers—just that angry man standing in front of the oden place. Toru took off again before he could head our way. This time he was going at a much more reasonable speed.
Soon we were back out on the street. “Looks like we lost them,” I said, feeling relieved.
The feeling of relief didn’t last long. I felt something splat on my hand. Then another splat on my arm. Then a big splat on the visor of my helmet. They were big heavy raindrops. It was starting to rain!

Wild Date: Conclusion

Toru pulled into another narrow alley. A few moments later he found an overhang in the back of a building to pull under. Within a few moments it was starting to come down hard. But we were safe for the moment.
Toru killed the engine and parked the bike. “Great,” he said. “When I heard the forecast earlier today they said the storm wouldn’t get here for hours yet. It must have picked up speed!”
“Now what are we going to do?” I wondered. “We can’t stay here all night.”
“Right now let’s not worry about that. Let’s just be glad we got away from Otomo and his creeps. I don’t think I’ve ever ridden that wild before. Definitely not with a passenger on back!”
“You…you did a great job.”
Toru knelt beside the bike and examined his exhaust pipes in the dim alley light. “I thought I scraped my pipes back there! That’s going to take some work. “
He straightened up and looked at me. “I’ve got to say, I admire you for not screaming and stuff with all that maneuvering. You’ve got guts!”
I looked away. “To be honest, I wasn’t screaming because I was too scared to scream!”
Toru laughed. “That makes two of us!”
We stood and listened to the rain for a few moments. “Toru-san?”
“Yeah?”
“Who were those guys back there?”
“They’re this bosozoku gang who call themselves the Homicide Pigeons. Their leader is this loser named Otomo Akira. He’s half-British. That’s why he has the freaky blue eyes. They’re all bad news. We try to stay away from them. Guess we didn’t try hard enough.”
“Could I ask you another question? A kind of a personal one?”
“Sure.”
“Where did you learn to fight like that?”
Toru sighed. “My old man’s a judo instructor. He makes me work out hard. Wants me to take over his dojo. I’m not really into judo and stuff. I want to work on bikes!”
“Well…your skill came in handy back there.”
“Yeah, I guess it did.”
We stood and listened to the rain some more. We were in a sheltered place even though the overhang was not that deep, and the rain didn’t get on us too badly. But water was starting to swirl around our feet and ankles.
“I think the rain’s slowing down a bit,” Toru said after a little while. I saw his face brighten. “And I think I know a way to get you back home before the worst part of the storm hits, too!”
He opened up the saddle bags on the back end of his motorcycle. I hadn’t paid them much attention up to now. From the bags he pulled out what looked like two little duffle bags. He handed one to me.”
“What’s this?”
“Rain gear. I just bought a new set last week. I’ve been trying to remember to take the old set out. Glad now I didn’t. You put on the new pair. I’ll wear the old one. It’s still good.”
I pulled the waterproof pants on over my shoes and legs, tightened the drawstring, and pulled on the jacket. Toru helped me. When we were all zipped up we got onto the bike and started off once again.

I don’t know how Toru kept us going and found our way in all that rain and dim light. I could hardly see a thing through my visor. He didn’t go too fast. Even so the big drops of rain sometimes felt like marbles hitting the backs of my hands. I could feel myself getting wet around the collar and the cuffs of the rain jacket and pants.
It seemed like we rode for an hour or more through the wet and wind, but it really wasn’t that long. Finally we pulled up in front of a house. It was Masako’s house!
Toru walked me up to the entrance. Masako opened the door as we approached. I saw Sumire standing right behind her.
“Hitomi! Toru! Oh, I’m so glad you made it okay! We were afraid…all kinds of things might have happened to you.”
We slipped off our shoes and stepped inside. It felt good to be in out of the storm.
“Did any of those jokers try to chase you?” Toru asked.
“No, they all went off after you and Hitomi. Taro and Takao took us back here. Then they saw it was getting ready to rain and headed home. “
“They told us you’d be okay,” Sumire added. “They said Toru would give Otomo and the others the slip.”
“Oh, he did!” I gushed. “You won’t believe what a story we’ve got to tell!”
“You’ll have to tell it by yourself,” Toru said. “I’ve got to get home before the storm gets any worse. I think I can still just make it.” He turned to leave.
“Wait!” I said. “What about your helmet and rain gear?”
“No time for me to stow it now. You can bring it to me at school later. Goodbye!”
Toru stepped out into the blustery wind and rain and started his soggy motorcycle. I watched his taillights disappear into the gloom. It was like watching a knight ride off on a metal horse. I knew I had to see him again soon.