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hungry?”
    â€œStarving!” he said.
    He started to grin as we went over to one of the busy wooden stalls in the market. I counted out a few copper coins from my pocket, and, as we shared a bowl of cold noodles, he told me about some of the other kids he’d come across since the war had ended. There were quite a few of us Asakusa lot, it seemed, all in the same boat.
    â€œNobu’s here,” he said, and I nodded. This was a nine-year-old boy I knew from the Senso school. His dad had once owned the fishmonger, on the corner of Umamichi Street, where my own father had bought the eels for our shop there, before the shortages.
    â€œLittle Aiko, too.” This was Nobu’s younger sister, I remembered, a funny little thing who’d gone to the elementary school next to ours.
    Koji glanced around and lowered his voice.
    â€œThat boy Shin’s here, too,” he whispered. “You know, the one from Fuji High School?”
    I groaned. “Trust him to be here!”
    I knew Shin alright. A local bully with a big square jaw, he’d been part of the tenement gang up near Sengen Shrine. His father had been a fireman, covered in tattoos, who’d lived on a barge on the Okawa. He’d sold Shin’s sister Midori, one of the neighbourhood beauties, to the Willow Tree teahouse to become a trainee geisha when she was just eleven years old. Shin had taken after his father though, always fighting dirty in the battles we held in the back streets, throwing chunks of glass on the sly and striding about in a pair of rolled up khaki trousers that he swore he’d taken off the body of a crash-landed American pilot.
    By the Ueno Plaza steps, the children were shrieking like monkeys as a pair of GIs revved the engine of their jeep, tossing packets of caramels into their grabbing hands. I spotted Shin straight away. He was nearly as tall as me now, wearing a torn pair of shorts. As the jeep spun off along the avenue, he sprinted after it in bare feet. He leaped up onto the bumper and rode along for a second before toppling off and tumbling into the dirt. He picked himself up with an idiotic grin and hobbled back toward us, his elbows streaked with blood. When he saw me, the grin vanished.
    â€œDon’t tell me you’re here!” he said, squinting at my face. I recognized his thick lips and hooded eyes. “You’re even uglier than before.”
    â€œLook who’s talking.”
    There were scabs on his knees and his front teeth were broken. I remembered how, after our schools had been evacuated to the countryside, us Asakusa lot had been given the heavy jobs, digging octopus holes and cutting fodder for the local garrison’s horses. Shin, meanwhile, had made alliances with the straw-sandalled village boys, pilfering our barley rations to trade for their silver rice.
    â€œI suppose you want to join my gang now, don’t you?” Shin sneered. “Not so high and mighty now, are you? Well, it just so happens that you can’t. Not unless I say so.”
    â€œAnd how long have you been in charge?”
    He frowned as he counted on his fingers. “Ever since —”
    Everyone went quiet. Ever since March, he meant. The night when Tokyo had burned.
    â€œYou must be making pots of money, I suppose?”
    He waved blithely at the departing jeep.
    â€œWe can always scrounge from the yankiis!”
    The other children giggled. They were filthy. Their shirts were torn and their hair was matted. They wouldn’t last another month with Shin in charge, I thought. I stepped closer.
    â€œDo you really think they’ll always be this generous?” I said. “What about when winter comes? It’s October already. Chewing gum won’t be much use to you then!”
    Shin shrugged and gave another idiotic grin. The other children looked up at me nervously.
    â€œLook,” I said. “Here’s what we can do.”
    Later that night, Shin and Nobu