I flick through Regulations and Morals to find out what kind of punishment I might expect if I break any rules, something that has been weighing down on me since I was first locked up.

Every command so far has come with a warning, like the popper at the end of a leather whip.

“Speak any Japanese?” the guard asked in a gruff, condescending tone as he removed the handcuffs from my wrists.

I nodded.

“Sit,” he said, pointing to a seat. It was bolted to the floor and faced a steel desk cluttered with papers.

The guard sat across from me, and taking a sheet of paper, started going through a list of questions.

“Tattoos?”

“Huh?”

“Tattoos? Got any tattoos?” he asked testily, keeping his acne-scarred face down, eyes hidden behind the visor of his hat.

“Tattoos? No. No, I haven’t got any tattoos.” There were undertakers more effervescent than that guard.

“Bubbles” made a notation on the form. He was left-handed, and wrote in the tortured way that southpaws write, the pen strangled in a tense white claw.

Raising his head slightly, eyes still concealed, Bubbles warned that I would be severely punished if any tattoos were found on me later.

He rattled off the next question, so quickly I couldn’t catch it.

“Pardon me?”

“Have you been naughty?”

“Naughty? I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”

“Have you been naughty with your genitalia?”

“Huh?” Did Bubbles want to know if I jerked off? Like any man, I did, but, Christ, it certainly wasn’t anyone’s business but mine whether I throttled the snake every now and then.

“Your genitalia,” he said, raising his acne scarred face enough for our eyes to finally meet. “You got any pearls or beads . . .”

Jesus. Now I knew what he was getting at.

Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.