DAVID MORRIS
In Yokohama, a man who has already lost his place in the world, becomes guardian to a child carrying a dangerous secret—and discovers that protecting him may demand the ultimate betrayal.
LOVE, OBLIGATION, BETRAYAL
Takeda is a man already drifting out of life when he pulls a ten-year-old boy named Koi from the streets of Yokohama.
The act binds him to a world he never asked to enter.
Behind it stands the Kuwata-kai, a yakuza syndicate experimenting with a clandestine form of elimination which blends science with folklore.
At the centre of this secret stands Annie, Koi’s mother.
Singer. Survivor. Prisoner.
To the syndicate she is the keeper of the Kitsune—a trickster spirit made flesh, a force capable of merging myth with a murder weapon.
To protect the boy, Takeda must become complicit in the very machinery that threatens them all.
What begins as salvation slowly becomes Giri—obligation that cannot be refused.
A fallen salaryman* circling the drain with nothing left to lose except the last fragment of his moral core. His instinct to protect Koi becomes a quiet rebellion against the forces that seek to own his soul. (*a colloquial phrase used in Japan to loosely refer to a ‘white-collar worker’)
An enigmatic jazz singer who wears her soul with a tapestry dragon tattoos. Haunted by abuse at the hands of the syndicate, she survives through seduction, silence, and deception. Her love for Koi is fierce, but their world is warped by the violence that surrounds them.
A child who understands more than he should. Neither victim nor innocent, Koi moves through the story like a quiet fault line—torn between loyalty to his mother and the trust he places in Takeda.
NOIR LANDSCAPES
Yokohama Neon streets and rain-slicked alleys. The margins of the city where dignity is lost and the forgotten drift.
Ueno Park Sunlight, cranes by the water, and a bundle of newspaper clippings that catalogue a sinister pattern of murders and unexplained atrocities.
The Killing Sites Apartment blocks, clinical labs, and Ramen bars. Death lurking inside the everyday.
JR Freight Terminal A desolate wasteland of shipping containers under sodium lights where no one will hear you scream.
Malaysia Heat with colour, light and shadow all with the mirage of escape. A paradise that dissolves the moment violence arrives.
A fusion of intimate character drama and hallucinatory noir, Kiss Koi Goodbye explores:
The story unfolds not as spectacle but as a moral descent—where love becomes both weapon and sacrifice.
The novel is grounded in decades of lived experience within a Japanese family and long professional engagement in education, bringing an insider’s emotional perspective to themes of trauma, loyalty, and found family.
Jake Adelstein described the work as possessing: “. . . a tenderness beneath the grit — a bruised compassion that kept me turning the pages.”
Full adaptation rights are available.
