Thirty-Five Million

I was fifteen minutes early for our appointment, parked in the lot.

To be on time is to be early; a simple rule from a lifetime of punching a clock.

I had the car engine off to save fuel.

To pass the time, I was working on a word search from the newspaper.

It's a simple, honest puzzle. Your eyes scan the letters, and the words are either there or they aren't. M-O-R-N-I-N-G. There it was. I drew a circle around it. M-I-N-I-S-T-E-R. Got it.

A sharp rap on the window beside my head made me jump.

It was Shinji.

He stood there, impeccable in one of those dark, expensive suits.

Not a hair out of place.

A watch on his wrist that probably cost more than this car.

I saw two young women on the sidewalk slow their pace to look at him. Of course they did. Success is a magnet.

"— Still driving the old Minica... Good condition for its age. You've taken care of the bodywork."

By the time I was out of the car, he had the door to the coffee shop open.

A professional courtesy, smooth and practiced.

We sat, and a waitress took our order for two coffees.

The silence between us felt louder than the low hum of conversation from the other tables.

"— You said business was hard..." I said, breaking the quiet.

He shook his head.

"— Hard for some. The bubble washed away a lot of fools." — He tapped his spoon against his cup, a quick, impatient rhythm.

"— When fools lose their fortunes, their property goes up for sale. We just have to be there to buy it. We're doing very well."

It was a simple statement of fact. A law of his world.

"— What about your sister?"

A hint of a smile touched his lips.

"— She's locked in her room studying, as always. She has the focus to be a doctor. She'll do well."

His eyes flicked to his wrist, a reflex. The appointment was running its course.

"— Shinji... I am glad we are doing this."

The directness seemed to surprise him.

"— Me too, Father." he replied, a little stiffly. 

We drank our coffee.

I watched the people on the street.

He watched his watch.

I started, choosing my words carefully,

"— I thought... It might be time for a trip. For the family."

"— Travel? My work requires constant travel."

He looked out the window, and his focus seemed to soften.

"— But a trip for… no reason. For rest. I haven't done that in a very long time."

It was the first honest thing he'd said all afternoon.

The first sign that the man I remembered was still in there somewhere.

"— You should take a companion on those business trips. A nice young woman."

He adjusted his collar, his eyes darting away for a moment.

A slight blush colored his ears.

"— That's not a priority right now, Father... You can't take your eye off the ball. Not in this economy."

And just like that, the son was gone, replaced again by the real estate man.

He set his cup down, opened a handsome leather briefcase, and placed a planner on the table—a thick book filled with the architecture of his days.

"— Even here, Shinji? You must work even during a coffee break?"

"— The pressure on this deal is… significant.There is a lot at stake. I cannot fail."

He said the words with confidence.

But the pen in his hand was not still. Its tip was tapping lightly against the paper, a tiny, rapid rhythm.

A code only a father could read.

I knew that sign.

As controlled as Shinji was, as flawless as his posture, that was the sign.

It was the same tic he had as a child, the night before a test he had not studied for.

My son was in trouble. Serious trouble.

I leaned forward slightly, closing the distance between us.

"— Shinji, is everything okay?"

The tapping of the pen stopped.

He placed it on the table, perfectly parallel to the edge of his planner. It was an act of deliberate control.

"— Yes. Everything is fine." 

"— And your health, Father? Are you… stable? Is the medication helping?"

He was using my illness as a shield. A way to say that my perceptions could not be trusted. That the father who saw his son's fear was just a sick old man seeing things.

The tactic was cruel, and it was clever.

"— I am stable, and I am not confused. I know what I saw, Shinji." — I softened my voice, trying to reach the son, not the businessman.

"— I'm your father. That tic with the pen… it's the same as when you were ten. I know it. If something is wrong, just tell me."

Shinji stared at me, his face unreadable. He was doing the math, I knew. Assessing the risk. Deciding if the old man in front of him was more or less dangerous than the trouble he was already in.

He closed his planner.

The soft sound was an admission of defeat.

"— Debts."

The word landed on the table between us like a stone.

"— What debts?"

"— College."

"— What?"

"— Mine. Now Manami's. It's been accumulating for years."

I shook my head, trying to make the facts align.

"— No. Your mother told me she was handling it. She had savings. She said she didn't need my help."

A bitter, humorless sigh escaped him.

"— She wanted you to believe that. Her pride was always her strongest asset."

He stared at his hands.

"— After the divorce, she needed to prove she could do it without you. She needed help, Father. She just refused to take it from you."

"— So she borrowed." — I said, piecing it together.

"— Not from a bank. A bank wouldn't lend to her. She went to other people. People who lend money fast and charge an interest you can never repay."

He didn't have to say the words. I knew them. Loan sharks.

The world outside the window vanished.

The hum of the coffee shop faded to nothing.

The logical foundation I had built my life on, the one I had just repaired this morning, crumbled into dust.

A woman's pride.

A son's ambition.

A daughter's future.

A father's ignorance.

And now, this. The pieces no longer fit together.

"— That makes no sense. She had her job. There were other ways. Why go to them?"

"— Pride doesn't follow logic, Father."

I focused on his face, the only solid thing in a world that was dissolving around me.

"— And you? Why didn't you tell me?"

For the first time, a deep weariness settled over him.

He rubbed his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, a gesture of an old man carrying a heavy load.

"— I only found out last year. I found a letter from them she'd tried to burn. She doesn't know that I know. I've been making payments behind her back, selling off investments, using my bonuses... whatever I can. That's why this deal cannot fail."

"— And Manami?" — The question was almost afraid to leave my lips.

"— Manami knows nothing, and she will continue to know nothing. Her only job is to study. My job is to make sure nothing gets in her way."

So that was it.

Not just a secret, but a secret wrapped in a lie, held together by one man's silent struggle.

My son wasn't just a businessman in trouble. He was a soldier, fighting a war on a secret front. And I, his father, hadn't even known the war existed.

The words loan sharks hung in the air between us.

"— How much?" I managed to ask.

"— What is the total?"

Shinji stared down into his coffee cup as if searching for a kinder answer at the bottom.

"— Thirty-five million yen."

Thirty-five million. 

A weight I couldn't lift, but one that was slowly crushing the life out of my son. It wasn't the original loan, I realized.

It was the interest.

Years of it, compounding on itself like a cancer.

"— And if you stop paying?" 

He shook his head slowly, refusing to look at me.

"— Father, my entire job is to assess risk. This… this is a risk I do not allow myself to calculate."

"— This suit, the watch. It's a costume. It's what clients need to see. But you can't pay this kind of debt with confidence. There's no money. Not like before. My firm is taking deals now we would have laughed at five years ago, just to keep the lights on. Everyone's just trying to stay afloat."

The image I had of him—the man in the parking lot, the pillar of success—dissolved completely.

He was a boy in a costume, drowning in a sea of debt that wasn't his, working for a company that was also sinking.

The foundation for my own peace of mind wasn't just cracked; it was gone.