Minori's Apartment

This isn't actually part of the notebook, but it's important anyway.

It took a while for Minori to heal. So she spent most of her time cooped up in her apartment, researching the man she had seen. She was obsessed with it for a while. Every time The Mad Ventriloquist visited, there was newspaper articles, books on folklore, copies of wood etchings and other various stuff spread around her apartment.

And The Mad Ventriloquist did visit. He still had a job to do, after all. He would finish it. And he was starting to like Minori. Something about her devotion, her need to do things right. Even a bit of her unbending morality was comforting in an odd way.

One day she looked to The Mad Ventriloquist and pulled him to the center of the room. "Let's make a promise." she said, "No secrets here. Here it's completely safe. We can be who we are, instead of who we're supposed to be."

It was a silly thing to say, yet The Mad Ventriloquist took it to heart for some reason. "A police officer didn't kill my brother." he said.

"Who did?" Minori asked?

"An assasin named David Banks."

She raised her eyebrows. "Are you going to tell me the tooth fairy's real now too?" she asked.

The Mad Ventriloquist didn't blame her. David Banks had gotten a reputation in New York. He worked everywhere, but NYC seemed to be his base of operations. Everyone in crime and law enforcement knew his name. Much fewer had seen his face. Most people thought he was a myth.

The Mad Ventriloquist feels like he shouldn't have to mention that he isn't.

"I promise, David's real. Actually he's probably raiding my fridge right now." The Mad Ventriloquist answered. He found out later that this was true. Minori didn't look convinced though.

"So why didn't you kill him?" she asked. That was a very very good question. The Mad Ventriloquist still isn't sure. He had him. He could have. But David started talking and he didn't.

"He's brilliant Minori." He began, "I have never met anyone that smart in my life. And he told me it was just buisness, and really it probably was. I've killed people before on business. I really don't want some asshole with a baseball bat to try and kill me over that. And I don't know. There was something about him. He was like me."

"An arrogant homicidal dickwad?"

The Mad Ventriloquist got sort of upset at that. "A warrior. A survivor. You wouldn't understand."

Minori got upset back at him "Of course I understand. Do you see half Japanese girls running around every day? Let alone in the slums. Every single thing that could happen out there in the streets of New York has happened to me. And I survived. I got through it. Until one day I realized that surviving didn't matter to me as much as how."

The Mad Ventriloquist was silent for a while. "There's no other way."

She shook her head. "There is."

The Mad Ventriloquist left very angry that day.

That day also changed his life.

For once, he allowed himself one question.

Could he be the good guy?