konstantya (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
konstantya) wrote2021-10-12 04:55 pm
konstantya) wrote2021-10-12 04:55 pm
Entry tags:
[fic] The Love Pawn - "Clever Crab On This Eastern Seashore"
Title: Clever Crab On This Eastern Seashore
Fandom: The Love Pawn (Short Story)
Genre: Drama, angst, gen
Characters: Red (Jack Delafield), Koti
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,521
Summary: Even sea bream is not delicious when eaten alone. (Or, the tale of a Japanese immigrant and his dumbass, adopted, white-boy son. Fix-it fic for the original story’s sketchy racial politics.)
If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so on AO3!
Distantly, Jack watched Paula flee down the hall and into the guest room. In a way, he regretted being so abrupt with her, driving her off when they had—in fact—been having a surprisingly pleasant time together. But more than that, he regretted letting his guard down in the first place.
The truth was, he’d lost himself for a while there during dinner, too caught up in how good it felt to entertain again, even if he was just entertaining a single other person, even if he had kidnapped her at gunpoint only hours earlier. With a vengeance, he downed the final lukewarm sip of his coffee. Christ, was this really what his life had come to, kidnapping a girl simply so he could have something resembling a date?
He stood, blowing out the candles before gathering the cups and saucers and carrying them into the kitchen. Yugi-san would fuss and shoo him off if she saw him doing it, but he hadn’t been lying when he’d told Paula that the other woman would be asleep by now. And anyway, after everything that Yugi-san and Koti-san had done—that they continued to do—Jack felt that putting some dishes in the sink was the least he could do in return.
He sighed as he entered his own room, undoing his bow-tie and picking his collar open. Koti-san had been dozing on his futon on the floor, but brought himself to his feet with a yawn as Jack stripped off his dinner jacket and vest. Jack tried to wave the other man off—he was perfectly capable of hanging up his own clothes these days, and they both knew it—but Koti-san blatantly ignored him, leaning over to retrieve the items from where Jack had dropped them on the bed. Knowing better than to try to argue, Jack merely set about to removing his cuff links. They were the last gold pair he had left, and he’d worn them because he—rather absurdly, he now realized—had wanted to make a good impression.
Depositing them on his dresser, he sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled the suspenders from his shoulders. His shirt cuff fell back from his wrist with the movement, and thoughtfully, he regarded the scratch Paula had left there earlier. A little wild-cat, indeed. She hadn’t quite broken the skin, but she’d certainly come close—the injury would likely linger for a couple days. It was hard to blame her, though, considering how the situation must have looked—locked in an apartment with a man she had absolutely no cause to trust—and a part of him actually lamented the fact that the mark would fade; he found he rather liked the idea that she would somehow leave him with a permanent reminder of herself.
Koti-san noticed both the scratch and the way he was studying it, and—having since finished hanging up the vest and jacket—padded into the attached bathroom. A moment later, he returned with a small jar of liniment from the room’s medicine chest. “Help heal,” he said, and gestured at Jack’s wrist. Jack shook his head and declined the offer. Koti-san huffed, and deliberately set the jar on the nightstand just as Jack bent down to untie his dress shoes. When they were both off his feet, the older man picked them up, giving the toe boxes a token buff with his sleeve before he tucked them in the bottom of the wardrobe. Jack watched him as he did this, and for not the first time was struck by a pang of guilt.
“Koti-san…” he started, wearily, “…why do you and Yugi-san stay? You know what I’m doing. Jesus, I just kidnapped a girl this afternoon.” So she could help him rob a bank, no less. Jack rubbed a hand over his face, still a little shocked by the ruthlessness of his own actions that day. It had been one thing to get a job in her house for the sole purpose of spying on her; it was quite another to finally put all that accumulated information to use.
Koti-san made a dismissive ‘tch!’ sound, as if this somehow wasn’t a gross violation of decency. “She strong. Will get over it just fine.”
“I’m glad you have such confidence in her ability to recover,” Jack remarked drily, sliding his trousers from his legs, “but that doesn’t answer my question.”
Again, Koti-san picked up the discarded garment and proceeded to hang it up. “Tai mo hitori wa umakarazu,” was all he said. Even sea bream is not delicious when eaten alone.
In the middle of unclasping his sock garters, Jack paused, his expression softening—both at the familiarity of the saying and the sentiment contained within it. But then the guilt came back and his brow furrowed again. “I’m serious, though. I still know people in California, people who—who could afford to pay you what you’re worth. I could write you both letters of recommendation. Hell, I could do it tonight, if you wanted. All you’d have to do is ask.”
Koti-san didn’t speak for a long moment, instead simply tugging the trousers straight and brushing a piece of lint from the fabric. “There many injustices in world,” he said shortly. “Not necessarily wrong to try to fix one.” Something passed across his aged face, something sorrowful and haunted, that spoke to past experiences, but then it was gone. He and Yugi-san were already middle-aged when they’d immigrated, some twenty-odd years ago now, but despite that, they never spoke of their lives prior to their arrival in the United States. Jack had always been curious, sometimes terribly so, but he’d never been able to bring himself to actually ask—not even now, with circumstances being what they were, and their roles having long-since blurred to something beyond mere servants and master.
Koti-san gathered up the garters and continued: “I come to this country to get away from injustices in Japan. Find new ones here to take their place, this true. But also find good people. Your father hire me when I speak five words English.” He held up the fingers of one hand for emphasis. “He hire Yugi-san same day when she speak no English. He did us great favor then and he always treat us with respect, no matter we are foreigner.” He pointed meaningfully at Jack. “His son do same.”
Jack took a breath. “But—”
“No ‘but,’” Koti-san cut him off sternly. “If we not able to get by, we let you know. Until then, shizukani.” Until then, be quiet. And with that, he shut the wardrobe and went to the dresser, yanking one of the drawers open.
Jack obeyed, closing his mouth as he went about unbuttoning his dress shirt. Wordlessly, Koti-san took that, too, along with his undergarments, exchanging them for a set of silk pajamas. Jack pulled on the bottoms, then stuck his arms into the shirtsleeves, and the other man returned just in time to help him fasten the front.
Koti-san broke the silence, though he didn’t look up from the buttons: “What about that girl?”
Jack frowned. “What about her?”
“She very pretty,” he said, with a hint of approval. “Genki.” Spirited.
It was true, and maybe if things were different… But then Jack shook the idea off. “I can’t think about women right now. Besides,” he added, “when did you become a matchmaker?”
Koti-san let out another little ‘tch!’ and twitched the pajama top straight across Jack’s shoulders. “Your father not around to ask for grandchildren. I must do for him.” And he said this half jokingly and half not, almost as if it really had been a last request from the late John Delafield, and as such, he was bound to honor it.
Jack blinked, and a feeling that was equal parts gratitude and loss rose in him. “Koti-san…” There were a hundred things he wanted to say just then, but all that came out was a simple, straightforward, “Thank you.”
Koti-san reached up, affectionately patting Jack’s cheek, and some sort of familial comfort seemed to span the distance between their stations and native cultures. “Oyasumi, Ja-kun,” he gently said, momentarily reverting back to the childhood nickname. And with that, he returned to his futon and laid down.
Jack pulled back the covers of his own bed—an extravagant four-poster thing that had actually been his parents’, that he yet feared he’d have to sell one of these days—then climbed in and switched off the small bedside lamp. For a moment, he merely stared up at the dark ceiling.
“Oyasumi, Koti-san,” he quietly replied. Goodnight, goodnight. And then he passed his hand across his forehead and tried to relax.
Tomorrow, they’d fly to Santa Barbara.
-----
A/N: So…the racial politics of the original short story are not awesome, to say the least. I mean, they certainly aren’t as bad as they could be, especially when compared to other pulp fiction of the era, but they’re still pretty cringey when read from a 21st century perspective. So this was my attempt to fix that. The characters are actually called “Koti” and “Yugi San” in the original, which is basically nonsense (though, idk, fan-wank explanation: maybe the immigration bureau anglicized their names wrong, or else they’re easier-to-pronounce nicknames they’ve adopted?). Anyway, I found it pretty funny to think that Red/Jack was effectively using an honorific with one of his servants, but then figured, hey, why not run with that idea? So I decided they both started working for the family when Jack was very young, and as such he picked up on and started mimicking the way they’d refer to each other with the suffix “-san,” and now it’s basically a habit he can’t break. Due to that early exposure, I also headcanon that Jack is semi-fluent in the language—he’s far better at hearing it than speaking it, but he definitely knows the basic phrases. Most of the time, Koti and Yugi refer to him as “Jakku-san,” but it’s true they sometimes called him “Ja-kun” when he was a boy, as both a play on his name and the suffix “-kun.” I dearly hope the broken English isn’t offensiveand that the actual Japanese is correct—let me know if it isn’t?, but as I do see them immigrating when they were a bit older (like late-30s, maybe very early-40s), I feel they didn’t pick up the language as easily as younger people might have.
They’re said to be very loyal to Jack in the original story, but we’re never given any reason as to why. I like to think it’s because Jack’s dad wasn’t a racist dick, and gave them both jobs when they desperately needed them, and when they were having trouble finding employment elsewhere. I also think they had a son of their own, who died before they came to the States (maybe his death was actually what prompted them to leave Japan in the first place?—get back to me on that). So with all that in mind, are they a bit of a found family now, the parents who lost their son and the son who lost his parents? I like to think so.
Anyway, why do they stay, Jack? Because someone has to look after your idiotic, revenge-addled ass. Also, ten bucks says that when Koti and Yugi were getting dinner ready, they had a conversation something along these lines:
Koti: Omg, he finally brought a date home!
Yugi: Can you really call it a “date” if he kidnapped her?
Koti: Look, after five years, I’ll take what I can get.
Last but not least, Takuboku Ishikawa.
All other fics can be found here.
Fandom: The Love Pawn (Short Story)
Genre: Drama, angst, gen
Characters: Red (Jack Delafield), Koti
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,521
Summary: Even sea bream is not delicious when eaten alone. (Or, the tale of a Japanese immigrant and his dumbass, adopted, white-boy son. Fix-it fic for the original story’s sketchy racial politics.)
If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so on AO3!
- Clever Crab On This Eastern Seashore -
You, clever crab on this eastern seashore,
Hiding in a hole at high tide,
Emerging from it at low tide,
Always walking sideways—
Do you know or don’t you know
That a tired child saunters by,
Swept by a fatal tide,
Led by a shimmering light smaller than your eyes?
—Takuboku Ishikawa, “To a Crab”
You, clever crab on this eastern seashore,
Hiding in a hole at high tide,
Emerging from it at low tide,
Always walking sideways—
Do you know or don’t you know
That a tired child saunters by,
Swept by a fatal tide,
Led by a shimmering light smaller than your eyes?
—Takuboku Ishikawa, “To a Crab”
Distantly, Jack watched Paula flee down the hall and into the guest room. In a way, he regretted being so abrupt with her, driving her off when they had—in fact—been having a surprisingly pleasant time together. But more than that, he regretted letting his guard down in the first place.
The truth was, he’d lost himself for a while there during dinner, too caught up in how good it felt to entertain again, even if he was just entertaining a single other person, even if he had kidnapped her at gunpoint only hours earlier. With a vengeance, he downed the final lukewarm sip of his coffee. Christ, was this really what his life had come to, kidnapping a girl simply so he could have something resembling a date?
He stood, blowing out the candles before gathering the cups and saucers and carrying them into the kitchen. Yugi-san would fuss and shoo him off if she saw him doing it, but he hadn’t been lying when he’d told Paula that the other woman would be asleep by now. And anyway, after everything that Yugi-san and Koti-san had done—that they continued to do—Jack felt that putting some dishes in the sink was the least he could do in return.
He sighed as he entered his own room, undoing his bow-tie and picking his collar open. Koti-san had been dozing on his futon on the floor, but brought himself to his feet with a yawn as Jack stripped off his dinner jacket and vest. Jack tried to wave the other man off—he was perfectly capable of hanging up his own clothes these days, and they both knew it—but Koti-san blatantly ignored him, leaning over to retrieve the items from where Jack had dropped them on the bed. Knowing better than to try to argue, Jack merely set about to removing his cuff links. They were the last gold pair he had left, and he’d worn them because he—rather absurdly, he now realized—had wanted to make a good impression.
Depositing them on his dresser, he sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled the suspenders from his shoulders. His shirt cuff fell back from his wrist with the movement, and thoughtfully, he regarded the scratch Paula had left there earlier. A little wild-cat, indeed. She hadn’t quite broken the skin, but she’d certainly come close—the injury would likely linger for a couple days. It was hard to blame her, though, considering how the situation must have looked—locked in an apartment with a man she had absolutely no cause to trust—and a part of him actually lamented the fact that the mark would fade; he found he rather liked the idea that she would somehow leave him with a permanent reminder of herself.
Koti-san noticed both the scratch and the way he was studying it, and—having since finished hanging up the vest and jacket—padded into the attached bathroom. A moment later, he returned with a small jar of liniment from the room’s medicine chest. “Help heal,” he said, and gestured at Jack’s wrist. Jack shook his head and declined the offer. Koti-san huffed, and deliberately set the jar on the nightstand just as Jack bent down to untie his dress shoes. When they were both off his feet, the older man picked them up, giving the toe boxes a token buff with his sleeve before he tucked them in the bottom of the wardrobe. Jack watched him as he did this, and for not the first time was struck by a pang of guilt.
“Koti-san…” he started, wearily, “…why do you and Yugi-san stay? You know what I’m doing. Jesus, I just kidnapped a girl this afternoon.” So she could help him rob a bank, no less. Jack rubbed a hand over his face, still a little shocked by the ruthlessness of his own actions that day. It had been one thing to get a job in her house for the sole purpose of spying on her; it was quite another to finally put all that accumulated information to use.
Koti-san made a dismissive ‘tch!’ sound, as if this somehow wasn’t a gross violation of decency. “She strong. Will get over it just fine.”
“I’m glad you have such confidence in her ability to recover,” Jack remarked drily, sliding his trousers from his legs, “but that doesn’t answer my question.”
Again, Koti-san picked up the discarded garment and proceeded to hang it up. “Tai mo hitori wa umakarazu,” was all he said. Even sea bream is not delicious when eaten alone.
In the middle of unclasping his sock garters, Jack paused, his expression softening—both at the familiarity of the saying and the sentiment contained within it. But then the guilt came back and his brow furrowed again. “I’m serious, though. I still know people in California, people who—who could afford to pay you what you’re worth. I could write you both letters of recommendation. Hell, I could do it tonight, if you wanted. All you’d have to do is ask.”
Koti-san didn’t speak for a long moment, instead simply tugging the trousers straight and brushing a piece of lint from the fabric. “There many injustices in world,” he said shortly. “Not necessarily wrong to try to fix one.” Something passed across his aged face, something sorrowful and haunted, that spoke to past experiences, but then it was gone. He and Yugi-san were already middle-aged when they’d immigrated, some twenty-odd years ago now, but despite that, they never spoke of their lives prior to their arrival in the United States. Jack had always been curious, sometimes terribly so, but he’d never been able to bring himself to actually ask—not even now, with circumstances being what they were, and their roles having long-since blurred to something beyond mere servants and master.
Koti-san gathered up the garters and continued: “I come to this country to get away from injustices in Japan. Find new ones here to take their place, this true. But also find good people. Your father hire me when I speak five words English.” He held up the fingers of one hand for emphasis. “He hire Yugi-san same day when she speak no English. He did us great favor then and he always treat us with respect, no matter we are foreigner.” He pointed meaningfully at Jack. “His son do same.”
Jack took a breath. “But—”
“No ‘but,’” Koti-san cut him off sternly. “If we not able to get by, we let you know. Until then, shizukani.” Until then, be quiet. And with that, he shut the wardrobe and went to the dresser, yanking one of the drawers open.
Jack obeyed, closing his mouth as he went about unbuttoning his dress shirt. Wordlessly, Koti-san took that, too, along with his undergarments, exchanging them for a set of silk pajamas. Jack pulled on the bottoms, then stuck his arms into the shirtsleeves, and the other man returned just in time to help him fasten the front.
Koti-san broke the silence, though he didn’t look up from the buttons: “What about that girl?”
Jack frowned. “What about her?”
“She very pretty,” he said, with a hint of approval. “Genki.” Spirited.
It was true, and maybe if things were different… But then Jack shook the idea off. “I can’t think about women right now. Besides,” he added, “when did you become a matchmaker?”
Koti-san let out another little ‘tch!’ and twitched the pajama top straight across Jack’s shoulders. “Your father not around to ask for grandchildren. I must do for him.” And he said this half jokingly and half not, almost as if it really had been a last request from the late John Delafield, and as such, he was bound to honor it.
Jack blinked, and a feeling that was equal parts gratitude and loss rose in him. “Koti-san…” There were a hundred things he wanted to say just then, but all that came out was a simple, straightforward, “Thank you.”
Koti-san reached up, affectionately patting Jack’s cheek, and some sort of familial comfort seemed to span the distance between their stations and native cultures. “Oyasumi, Ja-kun,” he gently said, momentarily reverting back to the childhood nickname. And with that, he returned to his futon and laid down.
Jack pulled back the covers of his own bed—an extravagant four-poster thing that had actually been his parents’, that he yet feared he’d have to sell one of these days—then climbed in and switched off the small bedside lamp. For a moment, he merely stared up at the dark ceiling.
“Oyasumi, Koti-san,” he quietly replied. Goodnight, goodnight. And then he passed his hand across his forehead and tried to relax.
Tomorrow, they’d fly to Santa Barbara.
-----
A/N: So…the racial politics of the original short story are not awesome, to say the least. I mean, they certainly aren’t as bad as they could be, especially when compared to other pulp fiction of the era, but they’re still pretty cringey when read from a 21st century perspective. So this was my attempt to fix that. The characters are actually called “Koti” and “Yugi San” in the original, which is basically nonsense (though, idk, fan-wank explanation: maybe the immigration bureau anglicized their names wrong, or else they’re easier-to-pronounce nicknames they’ve adopted?). Anyway, I found it pretty funny to think that Red/Jack was effectively using an honorific with one of his servants, but then figured, hey, why not run with that idea? So I decided they both started working for the family when Jack was very young, and as such he picked up on and started mimicking the way they’d refer to each other with the suffix “-san,” and now it’s basically a habit he can’t break. Due to that early exposure, I also headcanon that Jack is semi-fluent in the language—he’s far better at hearing it than speaking it, but he definitely knows the basic phrases. Most of the time, Koti and Yugi refer to him as “Jakku-san,” but it’s true they sometimes called him “Ja-kun” when he was a boy, as both a play on his name and the suffix “-kun.” I dearly hope the broken English isn’t offensive
They’re said to be very loyal to Jack in the original story, but we’re never given any reason as to why. I like to think it’s because Jack’s dad wasn’t a racist dick, and gave them both jobs when they desperately needed them, and when they were having trouble finding employment elsewhere. I also think they had a son of their own, who died before they came to the States (maybe his death was actually what prompted them to leave Japan in the first place?—get back to me on that). So with all that in mind, are they a bit of a found family now, the parents who lost their son and the son who lost his parents? I like to think so.
Anyway, why do they stay, Jack? Because someone has to look after your idiotic, revenge-addled ass. Also, ten bucks says that when Koti and Yugi were getting dinner ready, they had a conversation something along these lines:
Koti: Omg, he finally brought a date home!
Yugi: Can you really call it a “date” if he kidnapped her?
Koti: Look, after five years, I’ll take what I can get.
Last but not least, Takuboku Ishikawa.
All other fics can be found here.