Forest of Lies

1 Meting Lana

Dreams died too young in Beaumont and I left town before the last piece of me gave up. The adventure I was craving began the moment I set eyes on Lana, in a market cafe for loners, cursing her dwindling followers. 

Nishiki’s narrow streets had cafe’s on every block. Each one had an underweight white girl in the window, hammering away on a laptop or angling for the perfect selfie. ‘Kyoto’s Kitchen’ was where friends at home in Dublin told me to go, to give being a digital nomad a lash. Less of a neon-fueled dance-fest than Tokyo. More cultured than a stag do in Prague. And apparently, a goldmine for content—if I could master chopsticks and fix my self-conscious, on camera, ‘weird face’. 

I’d gone to the market to make a reaction video—the food, the culture, the pink blooms of sakura trees. I couldn’t make it more than ten feet without stopping to peer into smoky woks frying up thumbnail material. Doing the whole walking and talking thing to camera still didn’t come natural, even months after my first travel vlog in The Dam. I was sure I’d never get past my self-consciousness, and I needed a way to start making money. Soon.

Kyoto was a bit more reserved than other cities I’d wandered through in Europe and Asia. I’d already decided I wouldn’t hang around and planned to break away from the yoga retreats and kombucha fetishes—and hopefully find myself a bit of lowkey danger. A different angle on the whole content creator thing. Something that might push me out of my discomfort zone and get my channel monetized.

I had parked myself on a bench beneath a sakura raining petals like confetti—to check my balance. This had become an almost religious nervous tic after getting robbed in Stuttgart when my credit card was swiped by one of those fake scanners. Thankfully I’d planned ahead and spread my money across several banks and only lost a few hundred, which my bank was tracking down. Travel income came from shares as part of a package working for an American pharmaceutical company in Dublin, which I sold—in exchange for my soul—before getting sacked. 

A week after my boss told me I might want to try something that required less self-motivation than sales, I decided to go travelling. I started my travel channel by videoing myself giving a guided tour of Bray Head, to nobody, which got 27 views and no likes. The channel had so far only made me poorer, but I was cautiously optimistic of a change in Japan. As I mentally stretched €8,700 across the next year, a diatribe of American swear words drifted over the sound of the spluttering motorbikes and rickshaws. I shook my head as everyone else respected Kyoto’s calm but not this bullhorn American.

“Mothafuking clown-ass NPCs. What a bunch of gremlins. Another 50 fucking unsubbed.”

The girl she was ranting at muttered back—in an Americanised Japanese accent, “Yeah, that sucks.”

I slid along the bench to get a better look, expecting to see some undisciplined weapon of mass destruction who nuked everyone else for her shortcomings. From a cafe window, her blue eyes looked up from a laptop and peered at me from beneath a straight brown fringe. Jesus Christ, she’s gorgeous. And she knew it—as fleeting as my stare was. 

Kyoto was full of isolated loners hanging around cafes. They stared at you like you might be the one who’d fly in and make their lives better, as if life is a Marvel comic. Not quite hikikomori, yet, but terrified they were on the way to barring their bedroom doors with a mattress and wasting their days jerking off to hentai—Japanese cartoon porn that was way too close to paedophilia for anyone’s liking. This girl, with her insane confidence and swaying hips, moved amongst them like their American queen, and she had me in her gamer crosshairs. 

I glanced up a few times as she spoke to the loners, making them feel special with little touches and smiles. Then she eyeballed me again. I looked at the restaurant behind me. It had Wagashi. I’d heard Koyto’s version of the traditional Japanese sweets were unreal. When I picked up my small haversack, she ran to the door across the road and waved me over. 

“Bro, bro, come.” Her half smile formed a cute little crease by the corner of her mouth.

I stared at my phone and glanced up a couple of times. Her long legs stepped down—her bare feet plunged into a puddle on the road. Scooters sped past. The young Japanese riders slowed and honked their puny horns at her short denim skirt and slightly over-proportional breasts. Only one honk each, in fairness—Japanese guys are respectable perverts. They laughed in that high-pitched girly Japanese way, like unruly school kids, as she weaved through them and stepped onto the path in front of me.

I gazed at her feet—old henna tattoos and gold rings on her toes; tribal ink and a dreamcatcher tat on her ankles. She stood over me then, waiting. Expectant. I gave a half glance up, smiled and looked back at my phone.

“Dude, I saw you earlier in the market,” she said, with a rising inflection like she couldn’t fathom my coolness; couldn’t compute that I kinda already disliked her—overconfidence and an entitled attitude were signifiers to me for malignant narcissism. 

“Irish yeah?”

With the grace of a million Irish mammy influencers, I gave a little chin nod—even though she seemed, as many an Irish mammy would privately have called her, a cocky little so-and-so. My chin nod was supposed to shoo her off, supposed to say, look you’re hot and all, but I’m not interested in lonely solo females who miss their boyfriends after dumping them to become strong, independent female travellers, who aren’t actually coping alone. Clearly she was looking for something.

We stared back, figuring each other out, a silent ping-pong match of assumptions and counter assumptions. I had to admit, she looked like someone who’d lived alone in Japan a long time and was immersed in the life, comfortable, and maybe even happier on her own. 

What did she want from me?

I dunno why I put on this broken Welsh-Pakistani-Japanese accent for some reason. “No spek Engleesh, saw—wee.” 

She grabbed my hand and turned my phone to see what I was looking at. “And we have an English translation app.”

“No speek Engleesh toooday,” I muttered. “Only Japaneeese.”

“Go on then.”

“Ehm, konnichiwa… watashi… no namae wa Cillian desu.”

“Cillian huh.” She put her hand on her hip and cocked her head. “Dono kurai Nihongo o hanashite imasu ka?” Perfect pronunciation.

I hadn’t the first clue what she said and grinned. “Alright, fair enough.”

“From Dublin, right?” Her eyes were all business, her smile like a fairytale—even with the two slight fang incisors.

“Yeah, Cillian.”

“Lana.” As we shook hands, she broke eye contact. “You’re cute, Cillian.”

I wasn’t—I mean I had a look if you were into skinny, slightly bookish, pale skin and shite hair. She hit me with an expression she was confident about. When I played it cool, she smirked.  

“The miso soup in that place is best in town.”

She seemed like someone who knew herself and could adapt to whoever she was talking to—she became more pensive as if to show me she had depth and a brain and wasn’t all mouth. I shoved my hands in my pockets and casually looked back at the black marble arched windows behind me. “Miso soup, yeah? Cool, I’ll give it a try.” 

“I’ll order for you if you want.”

I shrugged. “Why?”

She tutted. “Jeez man.” And went inside. 

She casually looked through the glass at me. I wondered how much effort I’d need to keep in the conversation. Not much with her, she seemed to love the sound of her own voice. Despite my reservations, I followed her arse in. Why? Honestly, she was the kind of digital nomad I needed to be, honestly—ballsy, open and free.

In the first ten minutes of talking to her, I learned she was twenty nine, a graphic designer, a painter, a tattooist, a website builder, a digital marketer, a public speaker and a former junior public relations executive. 

“Like seriously, dude, it was soul sucking. And my bosses were on me all the time like their landlords were banging down the door, threatening to evict them from their Central Park penthouses.” 

Before I could tell her I had a similar experience with corporate America in Ireland and how Dublin was now the unofficial 51st State, she told me she was also a survivalist in her spare time. Then a tiny woman with a nosey attitude came over with a notepad. 

She looked at Lana for a while without speaking and then asked me, “Wha you wan?”

“Miso soup and two Amachas,” said Lana.

“You wan tofu?” she asked me, insistently, like a mother ashamed of her son’s sheepishness.

“Carnivore, right?” Lana said and shook her head at the woman. 

“Yep.”

“You wan chicken, yeah?” said the waitress, insistently to me.

“Yeah, go on,” I said. 

“You wan wata or cock?”

I bit my lips together to stop a burst of laughter. “Big cock or small cock?” I finally got out, trying to impress Lana.

“Only one size.”

“One cock so.”

Lana raised her eyebrows and grinned. 

“You wan sake?” asked the waitress and gave me these simmering glances as she wrote.

“No thanks, he’ll just have the coke and the soup,” said Lana.

She tutted. “Okay, be bak one mina.”

She returned a few moments later, flung down a tea pot and glass mugs and came back with a steaming bowl of miso soup. “Enjoy.”

I spooned the salty broth into me and watched Lana sip tea. “So, live off the land kind of survivalist or what?” I said. “Miso’s next level by the way.”

“I know, right.” She held the cup to her lips. “My dad taught me. He’s ex-Air Force. We’re a military family.” She was proud then shifted in her chair. “He says one day the government will turn rogue and we’ll need to know how to kill!” 

I gave a nervous laugh and wasn’t sure if she was joking. “So, you came to Kyoto for… ?”

“Work. I was in Tokyo and Osaka. But it’s too much there. I was partying every night.  And. I can’t do hangovers anymore, apparently.” She swirled her cup and gazed at tea leaves then back at me, repeatedly, like she was pretending to read my fortune and not covering something up. 

“I know what you mean. I overstayed my welcome in Bangkok. Stopped off in Tokyo on the way here. Not long. Too many silly giggling girls.”

Right?” She nodded and the little crease formed—’Just for me?’

“I was hoping to do some vlogging here,” I said.

She nodded, assured, but there was a little taint of worry in her eyes. “I am, actually.”

“Losing followers?”

“Bro!” She glanced away and then eyeballed me. “You overheard, I take it.”

“I’m stuck on a few hundred myself.” Lies! Lies. Lies. Less than a hundred.

“You’ll get there.” She gave a supportive half-smile.

“I dunno. I was thinking of heading into the jungle. See if I can get in trouble. Everybody vlogs about food and temples. A bit of adventure.”

“Cool.” She looked impressed, lifted her head and stared into my eyes—the same way she had when she first saw me; weighing something up. “Actually, you could be what I’m looking for. Fancy travelling for free?”

I was immediately interested and sat forward. “Free?”

“I’ve a van. It’s got a kitchen, wifi and a double bed.” Her expression said she’d be cool about sharing, if I was. 

I spooned the soup into my gob and dribbled it down my chin. “Eh, so you’re not planning on staying in Kyoto long?”

“I’m shakajin here. Japanese are”—she furrowed her brow and glanced sideways, eyes narrower—“Selfless. They see people like me as unwanted foreigners, not helping society.”

“Not traveller friendly here so, no?”

“They can be quite unfriendly to travellers and clicky. I’m looking for a new videographer and someone to share the cost of fuel, if you’re interested.”

As she had just said in the previous breath that the ride would be free, I thought she might be a tad dishonest, or at least lack integrity. “Eh… not sure.” I put down the spoon and looked at the stressed faces of other western shakajins. “You said if I fancy travelling for free.”

“Mmmhmm.” She held her hand out flat on the table and looked at something over my shoulder. “If you can help out with fuel for now, that’d be great. Once we get my following back up, it’ll be free.”

I realised I’d been staring hard at her lips for way too long. “I’ve got no solid plan… so.”

“So you’re into it?” She bit her lip. “Cool.”

“Yeah, why not.”

“Bro, it’s gonna be lit.”

I should have taken more time to weigh up a few pros and cons—maybe think about why she had picked me out of a crowd of other loners. But things just flowed. Back home, it wasn’t easy to talk to strangers, particularly females, and never one so attractive. I felt like I could be myself with her. Say whatever I wanted. And she had this sexuality in her body when she moved—the way she looked at me over the steaming tea, her eyes sizing me up. I didn’t stand a chance when an hour later we were in her van, fucking.

I told myself it was because she saw an easy going Irish guy and not some asshole honking his horn at her. Afterwards, she lay on the bed gazing at me like she’d uncovered some forlorn, undiscovered writer who needed saving from an0ther corporate job. I bought it all; maybe I was.  Maybe when she cupped my balls and kissed me, she wasn’t some nympho and the fact was, with me being away from pokey old Ireland, I was becoming irresistible to women. 

I tried to process how an hour ago I was muttering curses about this loud American attention seeker, and there I was, inspecting her van in nothing but a T-shirt with my balls swinging around like something out of a Bernardo Bertolucci movie. What happened to integrity, bro? 

I distracted myself by inspecting the van—it was a mess of USB cables and clothes. As she lit a joint, she told me she had modded it herself after cleaning out her bank account to buy it in Osaka. Fairly decent craftsmanship, I thought, admiring a little worktop with a sink, a two-ring cooker and blue LED USB ports everywhere. 

The raised bed was draped in a white crocheted throw that spanned the width of the van—that I’d half kicked onto the floor earlier trying to turn her gasps into cries of pleasure. Next time bro. She was still laying on the bed, naked, arm draped behind her head and leg bent up in a sexy, ‘I’m ready for more when you are’ pose. Beneath the bed, varnished drawers were arranged like steps. I was a bit intimidated because the whole design was very well thought out. Deceivingly clever. Far better than I could ever achieve. 

“Where’s the bathroom?”

She nodded at a long tinted window above the sink. “If you’re coming with, you’re gonna need to become one with nature.”

“Ah.” As I considered my next move, rain pelted the roof. The low drum on the van was relaxing; comforting. I ran my hand over the natural curves of a piece of varnished wood behind the driver’s seat and noticed how cramped the space was. 

“It must get claustrophobic.” 

She gave a sigh and pulled the throw over her lower body. “No it’s bliss dude. You learn to love the road—it’s so free.” 

I could tell she’d been living in the thing a while. I leaned on a tall cabinet that contained a small fridge and shelves filled with jars of rice, pasta and condiments. “Don’t you get scared alone?”

“I wasn’t alone until recently.” Her words trailed off.

“Ah, your last videographer!” 

She nodded.

“Boyfriend?”

She shrugged and pouted.

“So… do you sleep with all your videographers?” I pulled on my boxers and flipped out a chair fixed to the sliding door.

“You were into it. You can go fuck yourself if you like.”

“I’m cool.” Just trying to gauge whether you’re a raging nympho or not. 

I think my grin said everything. Here was a beautiful, independent female—who could probably change a flat tire, in the rain, hungover—offering me a way to see Japan, make great content, and there was no-strings sex included. “When you get an offer like that, you start wondering what the catch is.”

She sat up with a big smile and smashed her palms into the bed. “The catch is I’m crazy, bro.” Her laugh was a little too cackle-y for my liking. “Chill. This is gonna be the best decision of your life.”

I laughed it off and, again, she was the kind of person I needed to be. She had stupid levels of confidence, and if even a tenth rubbed off on me, I’d do a lot better on camera. “I think I’m down. No, I’m down.”

“Well then, Cillian, you couldn’t have run into me at a more perfect time. I’m about to hit the road. What are you waiting for? Go get your shit.”

I dropped my head. “Ah, I’ve paid for a week at my hotel.”

She sighed. “Oh well. I suppose I can find myself another videogra—”

I had already started to pull on my shorts and slid open the side door. A moment after I left, I came back and popped my head in. “I’ll be back in half an hour.” I ran off and sprinted back. “Twenty minutes. Don’t go without me.”