Jackson Alone

by Jose Ando

Genres: General Fiction; LGBT & Pride; LGBT Gay; Thrillers; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Four Black Japanese gay men team up against a culture where discrimination is deep-seated and revenge is just a click away. A searing, darkly funny debut from the Akutagawa Prize–winning author.

Nobody at the corporate offices of Athletius Japan knows much about the massage therapist Jackson—but rumors abound. He used to work as a model. He likes to party. He’s mixed race—half-Japanese, half-somewhere-in-Africa-n. He might be gay. Fueling the gossip is the sudden appearance of a violent pornographic video featuring a man who looks a lot like Jackson.

When Jackson serendipitously meets three other queer mixed-race guys, he learns he’s not the only one being targeted. Together they concoct a plan: find out who’s responsible and, in the meantime, switch identities and play tricks on people—a boyfriend, a boss—who’ve wronged them, exploiting the fact that nobody can seem to tell them apart.

A short, blistering gut punch of a novel, Jackson Alone is at turns satirical and deadpan, angry and tender—a frank exploration of identity, race, queerness, and discrimination in contemporary Japan that announces Jose Ando as a singular new talent in the global literary scene.

Release date: January 6, 2026

Publisher: Soho Crime

Print pages: 160

Sample

Chapter 1.

The cocoa skin, the devilish eyes, too big and too bright, the limbs like a panther’s. Jackson knew the moment he saw the video that the man tied to the bed was him. He didn’t remember it, and he knew there were tons of people in this world who looked like him. But this was Japan, and here in Japan it was Jackson alone who looked like that and was treated this way.
That morning the temperature had suddenly dropped, and since it felt like fall, Jackson pulled on a long-sleeve T-shirt before biking to work. The shirt was from a brand he didn’t recognize, but he was almost certain his company dress code said he could wear whatever he wanted so long as it wasn’t from a rival sportswear line.

*

On a spacious plot of reclaimed land sat two corporate-looking buildings: an office tower that loomed over the entire area and another, smaller building that looked like the first building’s child. That smaller building—the staff fitness center of Athletius Japan’s headquarters—was where Jackson worked. He spent all day in there, giving massages.

His schedule was packed that morning. The company basketball team’s offseason had just ended in August and the players were now back in full swing. His first appointment was with the team’s forward, a man called Zen. For sixty minutes, Jackson tore into Zen’s muscle fibers, shocked by just how quickly they recovered from his touch. All Jackson had to do was run his fingers down Zen’s back two or three times and his muscles would go from being shrunk stiff with disuse to sucking up blood and swelling with each beat of Zen’s heart.

At a certain point during the session, Zen asked Jackson, “What did you wanna be when you were a teenager?”

“I really just wanted to party,” Jackson said.

“Did you ever think of becoming an athlete?”

“No, never.”

“Why not?”

“Because I found out about partying.”

“Too bad. I bet you’d’ve been good . . .”

No, you’re way more built for this than I am. Jackson thought this but didn’t say it aloud, just continued to knead his fingers into Zen’s muscles.

And the conversation ends yet again, Zen thought. It always stops when we get to Jackson’s turn, doesn’t it? He’s unreadable. That was the impression Jackson left on Zen. What did Zen know about Jackson? He was half Japanese and half some kind of African. He used to run track. He’d modeled. He might be gay. All this Zen had heard not from Jackson himself but secondhand—from the rumors his teammates passed around.

Maybe Jackson could’ve been a professional athlete, Zen thought. Or a professional model. Or at least worked at a more gay-friendly business. It was strange that he was here of all places, at the Athletius fitness center, massaging people. The fitness center staff were not technically employees of Athletius, and Zen and the other athletes used the facilities only for a small part of the year, so presumably Jackson mostly worked on the full-time office staff. They probably complained to Jackson about routine aches and pains, ones that were impossible to tell apart from the normal processes of aging, then just returned to their desk jobs. His days must’ve consisted of that and just that, over and over again.

There were people who talked, who said Jackson had become a massage therapist only because he was gay and just wanted an excuse to touch men, but Zen knew that wasn’t right. He could feel the restraint in Jackson’s hands as they made their way down his back. Zen occasionally slept with men, too, but he planned to marry a girl and raise children one day. To Zen, sex with men was the same as S&M or threesomes. It was just another category of porn. He never had a problem finding someone to sleep with and wasn’t really looking for a special someone at the moment.

They never did get into anything personal, but since neither of them was “pure” Japanese, they still found plenty to talk about. After the session, they added each other on LINE and parted ways. For the rest of the morning, Jackson gave massages and Zen joined team meetings. At noon, they saw each other again at the food court.

It was packed. Jackson ordered chicken breast and grain tacos with 25 g of protein and soup, then hurried to grab an open seat by the window. The fitness center staff all wore Athletius gear, so everyone looked like some sort of athlete, but the real athletes could be easily identified by their sense of superiority. They held court in the center of the cafeteria, their table so messy it looked like they’d been there for hours. That was where Jackson spotted Zen again. Their glances were out of sync, though, so whenever Zen looked at Jackson, Jackson was turned away. This only reaffirmed Zen’s impression of Jackson: He really was unreadable.

By lunchtime the clouds had cleared, and yesterday’s full-blown summer heat had returned. Jackson took off his long-sleeve shirt and changed into his Athletius attire before he began crunching on his tacos. The food dried out his mouth. He downed each bite with soup, and, after clearing his plate in less than ten minutes, he changed the song playing on his AirPods. Suddenly he remembered the feeling of Zen’s back. Though hours had passed, the sensation came alive in his fingers again and felt so real.

Zen didn’t see Jackson get up from the table because he was too distracted by his teammates’ chattering. They were having a field day, one-upping each other with crude gross-out stories. This girl once barfed up an expensive risotto dinner on someone’s bed on their first date and it looked exactly the same as when it was on her plate . . . A former classmate’s mom DM’ed someone a nude . . . And so on, until the topic turned to Zen’s profile pic on a dating app. It was a photo of him on a mountain with—the team captain sneered—an incredibly unimpressive view behind him.

“Do you understand what this photo is saying about you?” The captain spoke gleefully, bringing his face close to Zen’s phone and prodding at it. “Girls will judge your taste, man! Look at this place. Would any girl want you to take her there?”

He spoke like a talk show host would to his studio audience, explaining something everyone should already know. His lackeys chortled. Zen grew embarrassed but joined his team in laughter, all the while imagining what everyone else in the cafeteria must’ve thought of them. Probably that they were boring as hell.

The other team members got in on the action, adding their own commentary: Yeah, it’s a lame photo, Zen. And what’s with your eyes? They’re half closed . . . Why are you giving a thumbs-up? Oof, yeah, this is no good. Let’s take a new one for you. According to research from some American university, you get more matches if you’re holding a drink. They say if you have friends in the picture, the number of girls who think you’re trustworthy increases by twenty percent. Don’t worry, I’ll get in the picture with you. Don’t show my face, though; it should just be yours.

The captain lifted his phone and readied the camera.

“All right, don’t say cheese.”

When the shot was in focus, the camera picked up something behind Zen.

[QR code]

Thrown over the back of an empty chair was a lone shirt. In the seemingly random black-and-white pattern on its back, one could just make out a faint square. Blink and the square would dissolve back into the pattern.

What is that? The phone’s reading something in the pattern on that shirt. It just looks like some streetwear design. Who was sitting there? Oh, it was Jackson. Huh . . . Look at the shirt. Fancy. Is it? That depends on what the link’s to, no? It’s probably just the brand’s Insta or something. Check it out.

Still posing for the photo with a cup of coffee in his hand, Zen waited for this whole thing to end. The captain stared at his phone screen, not saying a word. The teammates on either side of him leaned their heads in close.

Is this a promo video? It’s a little excessive for that. Yeah . . . excessive. It’s kinda gay.

They laughed it off awkwardly, waiting for the next scene to play, but the video didn’t cut away from the man tied to a bed.

Who’s making money off this super gay branding? If this kind of thing actually sold product, our company would be all over it. I bet whoever thought this up must be real proud of themself. Wait a minute. This guy in the video . . . Is that Jackson?

At Jackson’s name, Zen stood up from his chair automatically. Then he spoke, maintaining perfect calm: “Apparently he was a model before he worked here. I bet it’s for some brand he used to work for.”

Those who’d seen the video stared hard at Zen like some sort of alien life-form had taken his place.

“This?” The captain set the smartphone down in the middle of the table, and the team members resumed their deliberations.

Oh, he was that kind of model? Modeling? This isn’t modeling. We’ve got another name for this kind of work. Work? More like fun. Fun? You gotta be real sick to find this fun. What kind of joke is this? Why would he wear something like that to work? Maybe it’s also part of some sex game? Should we report this? Is it sexual harassment? HR would faint if they saw this.

An emotional consensus ran through the team like an electric charge.

The fitness center staff around them had grown somewhat numb to the team’s ruckus. A lone dispatch worker focused on his meal, despite the distinctive squeak of the athletes’ shoes against the cafeteria floor giving him goose bumps. A pair of retail employees from the Athletius shop continued scrolling on their phones, paying them no mind. The head of sales, who’d brought some underlings with him to lunch, raised the volume of his voice so he didn’t get drowned out. The underlings nodded along exaggeratedly to show him that it was okay, that they were still listening, but everyone, from the fragments that they’d picked up, thought the same thing: Obnoxious as these guys are, maybe they’re on to something interesting this time.

The team noticed that they’d started to draw the attention of everyone around them, and that just got them more worked up.

What’s with the Immortan Joe mask? Yeah, look, there’s a tube coming out of it. And it’s connected to his ass. I know what this is, it’s a kind of BDSM thing, it’s called “man-howling.” That’s not a tube, it’s a cord. The thing in his mouth is a mic and there’s a speaker in his ass. If he makes any noise, it’ll play inside him and his whole body’ll work like a speaker, then he’ll make even more noise because of the pain. That repeats and it turns into hardcore feedback. It’s super dangerous. What the fuck. Apparently it’s super popular now. Popular where? Overseas. That sounds dangerous. Yeah, it’s probably dangerous. I mean, it looks like it hurts pretty bad. Fuck. Look at how twisted up his abs are. It’s like he’s got an alien growing in there. Damn it, this is too good. When I think about how someone somewhere seriously thought up this kind of thing, it’s just too funny. I gotta respect it. I could never come up with this . . . let alone try it? Either his head’s not on straight or he’s got the body of a beast. This pisses me off. I mean, let’s say he’s doing this for fun. That means this guy’s hiding who he really is and touching our bodies every day. With that smug fucking face. I can put up with a normal homo, but this is freak territory.

Zen’s eyes shot to the exit. He could sense that he wouldn’t alter his demeanor even if Jackson returned. And then it hit him. That feeling he had about Jackson, his unreadability, it might’ve been a sort of warning.

Will you AirDrop me the vid? Scan it yourself. No way. I might get hacked. Fine, I’m sending it to you, and you, and you. Oh, shit. I sent it to the wrong person. Oh well. Careful what you click on.

Several phones vibrated, and soon almost everyone in the food court had watched the video.