Mitsuyo Magome was staring out the window of the men’s clothing store Wakaba as the rain-swept cars went rushing by. The shop was on the outskirts of Saga City, next to Highway 34, a kind of bypass route around the city. There was usually a lot of traffic on the highway, but all the drivers saw was a monotonous repetition of the same scenery they’d seen a few minutes before.
Mitsuyo was in charge of the men’s suit corner on the second floor of Wakaba.
Until about a year before she’d run the casual-wear corner on the first floor, but her manager had decided to move her upstairs. “With casual wear it’s better to have the employees be around the same age as the customers,” he explained amiably. “That way they have the same sort of tastes.” And wasting no time, the next week he reassigned her to the suits corner.
If it had merely been a question of her age, Mitsuyo would have protested, but when it came to “tastes” there wasn’t much she could say. She was actually relieved to hear that her fashion sense didn’t match what was found in the casual-wear corner of the shop.
The shop sold what might be termed trendyish jeans and shirts, ish being the operative element. And there was a great difference between what was trendy and what was almost. For instance, she remembered coming across a shirt in a high-end store in Hakata that had the same design as one they sold at Wakaba, with prints of horses on it. Somehow the horses on the Wakaba knockoff shirt were ever so slightly larger, and that almost undetectable difference of a few millimeters was all it took to make the Wakaba shirts look kitschy.
But she also remembered a junior high school student who bought one of these horse-print shirts, and how happy he was as he carefully put on his yellow helmet and pedaled off on his low-seat bicycle, the precious shirt under one arm. She knew it contradicted the earlier feelings she had when her manager transferred her out of casual wear, but when she saw this junior high school boy pedaling away down along the highway she felt like shouting out to him: That’s right-who cares if the horses are a little bigger. Be proud of your shirt! At that moment, Mitsuyo realized she was almost fond of her hometown.
“Miss Magome! How ’bout taking a break?”
Mitsuyo turned and saw the plump face of Kazuko Mizutani, the floor manager, peeking up above the rack of suits. From where Mitsuyo stood by the window, the rows of suits looked like waves rushing in to the shore. On a weekday morning like this they couldn’t expect many customers. Occasionally someone would rush in to buy a dark suit for a funeral, but there didn’t seem to be any tragedies in the neighborhood today.
“Did you bring your lunch?” Kazuko asked as she weaved her way through the maze of suit racks.
“These days making my lunch is the only thing I enjoy doing,” Mitsuyo replied.
When the shop wasn’t busy, they took turns going for lunch during the morning. The shop was spacious, but there were only three employees. Quite often they outnumbered the customers.
“I hate this winter rain. I wonder when it’s going to let up.” Kazuko came up beside her and went over to the window. Her breath clouded a tiny portion as she breathed on the pane. The heat was on in the shop but with no customers the place felt empty and cold.
“Did you ride your bike to work again?”
As Kazuko asked this, Mitsuyo gazed down at the large parking lot below, wet in the rain. They shared the lot with a fast-food place next door, and there were a few cars, but they were all parked close to the other store. Just her one little bike sat next to a fence near Wakaba, as if it were standing up alone to the cold winter downpour.
“If it’s still raining when you get off, we’ll give you a ride,” Kazuko said, patting Mitsuyo’s shoulders and then heading off toward the checkout counter.
Kazuko was forty-two this year. Her husband, one year older, was manager of an electric appliance store in the city and always came by to pick her up after work. He was a quiet man, and Mitsuyo found it cute how even after twenty years of marriage, he still called her Kazu-chan. The two of them had one child, a twenty-year-old son who was a junior in college. Kazuko was worried about him, calling him a hikikomori, a self-imposed shut-in. From what she said, though, he didn’t seem to be a hard-core shut-in. She was just worried that he preferred staying in his room and fooling around with his computer to going out, and that he still didn’t have a girlfriend. Using the buzzword hikikomori was, Mitsuyo felt, Kazuko’s way of convincing herself and those around her that her worries were justified.
She wasn’t trying to explain away Kazuko’s son and his shut-in qualities, but really, there was so little to do in this town. Go out three days in a row and you were sure to run across someone you met the day before. It was like living in a continuous tape loop; it was much more fun to connect with the world through your computer than to live in the real world.
After she took an early lunch, and before her evening break, three different customers came in. One was an elderly couple. The husband had no interest in buying a new shirt, but his wife kept holding up one shirt after another in front of him, apparently less interested in the color or design than in the price.
Just before Mitsuyo’s evening break a man in his early thirties came in. The staff had been told to wait until the customers asked a question before approaching them, so Mitsuyo stood across the room, eyeing the man as he pawed through the racks of suits. Even from that distance, she spied the man’s wedding ring.
“There’re just no good eligible men our age in this town,” her twin sister, Tamayo, once said. “I mean there are some good men, but they’re all married.”
Mitsuyo’s friends who worked in town said the same thing. These friends, though, were all married, so their tone was different from that of her unmarried sister. “There’s a guy I’d love to introduce you to,” they’d tell her. “But unfortunately he’s already married. It’s a real shame…”
Not that she’d even asked them to introduce her to someone, but the truth remained that it took some courage, in a town like Saga, to be turning thirty next year and to still be single. Her three best friends from high school were all married, with children. One of them had a son who had already started elementary school this year.
“Excuse me,” the customer looking through the suits suddenly asked. He was holding up a mocha-colored suit.
“Would you like to try it on?” Mitsuyo smiled as she approached.
“So is this suit one of the ones that are thirty-eight thousand nine hundred yen for two?” he asked, pointing to the poster hanging from the ceiling.
“Yes. All of them are.” Mitsuyo smiled again and led him to the fitting room.
The man was tall, and must work out, she figured. After he put on the suit and opened the curtain Mitsuyo could see his muscular thighs bulging through the tight slacks.
“Don’t you think they’re a little tight?” the man asked as he looked at her in the mirror.
“Most slacks are styled that way these days.”
She crouched down in front of him to measure the length of the legs. The man smelled slightly milky, as if he might have a baby at home.
A man’s large legs were right in front of her. He was wearing socks, but still she could see the outlines of his toenails. Mitsuyo wondered how many men she’d knelt down in front of. When she first started doing this, measuring trouser legs, she’d hated it, feeling as if she were kneeling in submission.
All those men’s legs. Legs with dirty socks, with clean socks. Thick ankles, thin ankles, long calves, short calves. Sometimes men’s legs looked brutal to her, at other times strong and reliable.
Back when she was twenty-two or twenty-three and was called on to help measure trousers, she had the illusion that among all these men whose trouser legs she was taking up would be her future husband. She laughed at this memory now, but back then she held on to the hope that as she knelt before a man, pinning up a trouser leg, she’d look up and there would be the face of her future husband, gazing gently down at her. For a while she had this fantasy about each customer she served.
This was her first period of expectation about marriage, she realized now. But no matter how many trouser legs she shortened, she never saw the face of the man she was to marry.
The winter rain kept on falling, even after dark.
Mitsuyo closed out the register, turned off the lights in the spacious shop, and went to the locker room to change out of her uniform. Kazuko, already in her street clothes, said, “You can’t go home on a bike in this rain. We’ll give you a ride.”
Mitsuyo glanced at her tired face in the locker-room mirror. “That would be nice,” she said. But then she worried that the next morning she’d have to take the bus to work.
They left through the employee entrance, the rain continuing to pound down on the large parking lot. Behind the store, a fallow field beyond a fence smelled wet and earthy.
Cars hissed by on the wet highway, spraying water. The mammoth, brightly lit sign for the store with the name Wakaba was reflected on the rainy pavement and flickered in a dreamy way.
Mitsuyo heard a car horn and turned toward the sound. Kazuko was already in the passenger seat of her husband’s minicar, which was edging toward Mitsuyo.
Mitsuyo ran out from under the eaves, leaving her umbrella closed. “Thank you so much,” she said as she clambered into the backseat. It took only a few seconds, but her neck was wet and the rain was so cold it hurt.
“Another day, huh?” Kazuko’s husband, who wore thick glasses, said.
“Thank you for always helping me out,” Mitsuyo replied.
Mitsuyo’s apartment was in a corner of a rice field that had a watercourse running through it. It was fairly new, but had that tacky, instantly obsolete look of a place that was built only to be torn down in a few years. Drenched in the rain this evening, the building looked even more dreary than usual.
As they always did, Kazuko and her husband dropped her off right in front of her building. As Mitsuyo climbed out of the backseat, her sneakers sank with a squish into the mud.
Mitsuyo waved goodbye and splashed through the mud up the stairs. She was only on the second floor, but when she got upstairs the view made her feel as if she were at some scenic overlook. The scent of drenched soil, blown toward her by the wind, tickled her nose.
She opened the door to No. 201 and light filtered out from inside.
“Hey, I thought you were going to that party with the Chamber of Commerce,” Mitsuyo called out as she tugged off her wet, muddy skirt. The smell of the kerosene stove hit her, along with the voice of her sister: “It wasn’t mandatory, so I didn’t go.”
In the six-mat living room, her sister, Tamayo, was toweling off her wet hair. She must have just lit the stove, for the room was still cold and had the acrid stink of kerosene.
“I used to hate having to pour drinks for the men, but now the younger girls are pouring me drinks. Kind of makes me uncomfortable,” Tamayo said, standing in front of the stove.
“Did you buy anything?” Mitsuyo asked her, speaking to her back.
“No, nothing. It was raining and everything.”
Tamayo tossed her the damp towel.
“Anything in the fridge?” As she wiped her wet neck Mitsuyo opened the refrigerator.
“Did Mrs. Mizutani give you a ride again?”
“Yeah, I left my bike, so tomorrow I’ll have to take the bus.”
There was half a cabbage in the fridge, and a bit of pork, so she decided to sauté these and make some udon as well. She shut the fridge.
“Your skirt’s going to get wrinkled,” Mitsuyo cautioned Tamayo, who was sitting on the tatami in her damp clothes.
“So you think it’s really okay for a couple of twin sisters turning thirty next year to sit here enjoying udon?” Tamayo said, twirling some tororo konbu around her noodles.
Mitsuyo sprinkled some pepper flakes in her bowl. “These noodles are a bit overcooked,” she said.
“Twenty years ago the neighbors would have definitely looked at us like we’re weird.”
“Why?”
“Two women, twins, living alone in an apartment? Think they wouldn’t gossip about that?”
Tamayo, her long hair pulled back and fastened with a rubber band, noisily slurped down the noodles.
“Plus we have names that make us sound like a comedy team-Mitsuyo and Tamayo. The kids in the neighborhood would definitely have called us the Witch Twins.”
“The Witch Twins…” Half laughing, Mitsuyo felt a shudder of dread at the thought. This didn’t hurt her appetite, though, as she continued to down the noodles.
They lived in a 2DK apartment, two bedrooms plus a dining room-kitchen that rented for ¥42,000 a month. On paper it sounded like a nice place, but the two bedrooms actually consisted of two identical six-mat tatami rooms separated by a sliding door. The other residents of this cheap apartment building were all young couples with small children.
After graduating from a local high school, the twins had worked at a food-processing plant in Tosu City. They hadn’t planned to work in the same factory, but after they’d applied at several places only one had hired them. They both worked on the production line. They were assigned to various stations on the line over the three years they worked there, and over this time had watched tens of thousands of instant-noodle cups flow past.
Tamayo was the first to grow sick of it and she quit to work as a caddie at a nearby golf course. But she soon hurt her back and took an office job at the Chamber of Commerce. Around the time she quit the caddie job, Mitsuyo was let go by the food factory. The company was downsizing, and the first to be fired were the girls like Mitsuyo who’d only graduated from high school.
The employment office at the factory introduced her to the menswear shop. She wasn’t good at dealing with customers, but wasn’t in a position to wait for something that suited her better.
They rented this apartment around the time that Mitsuyo first started working at Wakaba. Tamayo claimed that if they kept living at home, they’d never get married, and so she half forced Mitsuyo into the idea of moving in with her.
The twins always got along well and continued to do so after living together. Their parents were glad to get the two nagging older sisters out of the house, for it gave them the chance to seriously start preparing for the girls’ younger brother, their eldest son, to get married. And sure enough, three years later he married a former high school classmate. The girl was twenty-two at the time, three years younger than the twins. In attendance at the wedding were several of their brother’s friends, themselves already married with babies-not an uncommon scene at this suburban wedding hall.
“Hey, what d’you think one of the girls at the Chamber of Commerce asked me?”
After they finished their udon, Mitsuyo was washing the dishes in the kitchen, Tamayo sprawled out in front of the TV.
“‘What’re you doing for Christmas?’ she asked. How am I supposed to answer a nineteen-year-old who asks me that?” Tamayo was watching a show on dieting and doing leg lifts as she watched.
“But weren’t you going to take some vacation time and go on a trip?”
“Yeah, but taking a bus trip around the Shimanami Kaido Expressway with a bunch of women seems kind of sad, don’t you think? Hey, do you want to go with me?”
“No way. We’re together every day. Just the thought of taking a trip with you on my vacation makes me tired.”
Mitsuyo added a little dishwashing liquid to her sponge. In the kitchen hung a calendar from the local supermarket. Other than notations of garbage days and her days off, the calendar was blank.
Christmas, Mitsuyo murmured as she squeezed the sponge. The last few years Mitsuyo had spent Christmas with her parents. Her brother’s little boy, born not too long after the wedding, had his birthday on Christmas Eve, so he’d always go home with an armful of presents.
She’d been squeezing the sponge too hard and the suds had dripped down on her rubber glove. She stood there, watching as the suds slid down the glove to her elbow and then, once enough suds accumulated, into the sink with all the dirty dishes. The soapy suds made her elbow itch. Her whole body felt itchy.
Yuichi rolled over several times in bed, as if to test how creaky the springs were.
It was 8:50 p.m. Too early to sleep, but these past few days he’d tried to fall asleep as soon as he could, so right after taking a bath and having dinner he went to bed, even though his eyes remained wide open.
He’d toss and turn, and start to notice the smell of his pillow, and the feel of his blanket and how it rubbed against his neck the wrong way.
And most nights, before he knew it, he had an erection. His hard penis under the blanket was nearly as hot as the infrared space heater next to his bed.
Nine days had passed since the murder. The TV talk shows had all reported how the Fukuoka college student sought as a material witness was still missing, but the last couple of days, the shows had been silent about the murder at Mitsuse Pass.
As the local patrolman had told Fusae, the only lead the police were pursuing was to find the missing college student. Since then, the police hadn’t contacted Yuichi’s home, or tried to question him. Nothing at all happened, as if he’d disappeared from their radar.
When he closed his eyes, he felt as if he were driving over the pass again, holding on to the steering wheel so tightly he nearly spun out on some of the curves. The headlights of his car lit up the forest as the white guardrails drew closer.
Yuichi rolled over again. Go to sleep! he commanded himself, burying his face in the pillow, smelling its mixture of sweat, body odor, and shampoo.
Right then his phone beeped, signaling an e-mail. Suddenly freed from being forced to go to sleep, he reached out for the cell phone, which lay inside the pocket of the pants he’d tossed on the floor.
It has to be Hifumi, he thought, but he didn’t recognize the number.
He got up and sat cross-legged. Though it was winter, he still slept just in his underwear, and his back facing the heater soon got hot.
Hello. Remember me? We exchanged a few messages a couple of months ago. I’m the elder of twin sisters who live in Saga, and you were going on and on about some lighthouse. Have you forgotten? Sorry for the sudden e-mail.
After he read the message Yuichi scratched his back, which was still facing the heater. In just a short time, it felt as if he’d been burned.
He got out of bed and sat on the tatami. As he slid forward his trousers and sweatshirt got twisted in his knees.
Yuichi remembered the girl. Two months ago he had registered his address on a dating site and gotten five or six replies. Hers was one of them, and they’d e-mailed for a while, but when he invited her to go for a drive she suddenly stopped replying.
Hey, it’s been a while. So what’s up all of a sudden?
His fingers worked smoothly over the keys. Usually when he spoke, something in his mind interfered before he could get the words out, but when he sent e-mails, the words flowed easily.
You remember me? I’m happy. No, nothing’s really going on. I just felt like e-mailing you.
He couldn’t remember her name, but even if he did, he was sure it was an alias.
How have you been? Yuichi replied. You were talking about buying a car, so did you get one?
No, I didn’t. I’m still commuting by bike. How about you? Anything nice happen lately?
Nice?
A new girlfriend, maybe?
Nope. How about you?
No such luck. Hey, have you gone to any new lighthouses since then?
No, I haven’t gone at all. On the weekends I just hang out at home.
No kidding? Hey, where was that lighthouse you recommended, the one you said was so pretty?
Where did I say it was? In Nagasaki? Or Saga?
Nagasaki. You said there’s a little island next to it you can walk to with a lookout platform. You said the sunset from there is so gorgeous it makes you almost cry.
Oh, that’s Kabashima Lighthouse. It’s near where I live.
How far is it?
Fifteen, twenty minutes by car.
Really? You live in such a nice place.
I wouldn’t say that.
But it’s near the sea, right?
Yeah, the sea’s right nearby.
Just then, as he e-mailed about the sea, Yuichi heard the sound of the waves against the breakwaters outside. The waves sounded louder at night. He could hear the waves the whole night long, washing over his body as he lay in his narrow bed.
At those times Yuichi felt as though he were a piece of driftwood bobbing in the waves. The waves were about to wash over him, but never quite reached him; he was about to be washed up on the beach but never quite reached it, either. A piece of driftwood tumbling about at the shoreline.
Is there one in Saga, too? A pretty lighthouse?
Yuichi replied right away: Yeah, there’s one in Saga.
But it must be around Karatsu, right? I live in Saga City.
Yuichi had never heard this girl speak, but with each word he felt he could hear her voice.
Yuichi had driven through Saga many times and tried to picture the scenery. Compared to Nagasaki, Saga was boringly flat, with the same monotonous roads wherever you went. No mountains anywhere. No steep slopes or little cobblestone alleys like in Nagasaki. Just newly paved, arrow-straight roads lined with big-box bookstores, pachinko parlors, and fast-food places. Each store’s massive parking lot was filled with cars, but somehow the only thing missing was people.
It came to him all of a sudden, as he was exchanging messages with the girl, that she was a part of this scene, walking down the very streets he was picturing. It made perfect sense, but Yuichi, who only knew these streets from the window of his car, had no idea how this plodding scenery appeared to someone who actually lived there and walked down those streets. You walk and walk and nothing around you ever changes. A slow-motion kind of scenery.
These days I haven’t talked to anybody.
He looked down and saw these words on the screen. They weren’t words someone had e-mailed him. Without realizing it, he’d typed the message.
He was about to erase the message, but added All I do is go back and forth between home and work-and after a moment’s hesitation, he sent it.
He’d never felt lonely before. He hadn’t even known what it meant. But ever since that night he’d felt terribly lonely. Loneliness, he thought, must mean being anxious for somebody to listen to you. He’d never had anything he really wanted to tell someone else, before this. But now he did. And he wanted someone to tell it to.
“Tamayo! I might be late tonight.”
Mitsuyo was still on her futon as she heard Tamayo behind the sliding door getting ready to go to work. She listened to these sounds, and tried to decide whether to voice this thought. Finally, when Tamayo was at the front door pulling on her shoes, she did.
“Inventory?” she heard Tamayo say from the front door.
“Uh… yeah. No, that’s not it. I’m taking the day off… I just have something I need to do, so I’ll be back late.”
Mitsuyo crawled out of bed, slid open the sliding door, and peeked out toward the front door. Tamayo had her shoes on and was standing there, hand on the doorknob.
“Something to do?” Tamayo asked. “What do you mean? And what time will you be back? You won’t need dinner?”
Her flurry of questions was more perfunctory, and didn’t mean she was actually interested. She’d already turned the knob and had one foot out the door.
“If you’re getting up, then I don’t have to lock the door, right? Jeez, why do I have to go to work on a Saturday?”
Without waiting for a reply, Tamayo shut the door.
“See you later,” Mitsuyo called out to the door.
Tamayo had left the electric rug on, so as Mitsuyo crawled out of her futon her palms and knees felt the warmth. She held the calendar and traced the green 22 with her fingertips.
The weekend was usually the busiest time at her store, and she hadn’t taken Saturday and Sunday off in a row like this since that time a year and a half ago.
It had been Golden Week, the string of holidays at the end of April and beginning of May, and she’d taken off a few vacation days she’d accumulated so she could stay over at a former high school friend’s place in Hakata. Her friend’s husband was back in his hometown for a Buddhist memorial service for a relative, and the two young women were looking forward to a night of chatting. Mitsuyo also wanted to hold her friend’s two-year-old son.
The bus for Tenjin left from in front of the Saga railway station. She’d bicycled to the station, arriving a little past twelve-thirty, ten minutes before the express bus to Hakata was scheduled to leave. She was in line to buy her ticket when her friend phoned. “My son has a fever,” she explained. It was kind of last minute, but if your child’s sick there’s nothing you can do about it. Without any fuss, Mitsuyo got out of the line and, sulking a bit, went home.
She was back in her apartment, trying to figure out how she would spend these vacation days she’d wasted. The TV was on but Mitsuyo wasn’t paying much attention to it when a news flash came on the screen. At first she expected it to be about a girl who’d been kidnapped years ago, and was in the news lately, that they’d found her. The story had always frightened her, and a shiver ran through her.
But the news flash was about a bus hijacking. For a second she was relieved, but then she couldn’t believe her eyes. On the screen flashed the name of the highway bus she’d been about to board.
“What the-?” Mitsuyo yelled in the empty apartment. She hurriedly switched to another channel and there was a live report on the hijacking. “My God. I can’t believe this…” She hadn’t planned to say this aloud, but the words just came out.
The scene on TV was taken from a helicopter shadowing the bus, which was tearing down the Chugoku Highway. Above the clamor of the helicopter a reporter was excitedly shouting out, “Ah, that was a close one! It just passed a truck.”
Mitsuyo’s cell phone, on her table, rang at that moment, the call from her friend in Hakata.
“Where are you?” the friend suddenly asked.
“I’m fine,” Mitsuyo replied. “I’m at home.”
Her friend had just heard about the hijacking. She was sure Mitsuyo must have given up and gone home, but just in case she decided to call and check. Phone in hand, Mitsuyo couldn’t take her eyes off the screen. The bus sped up and barely slipped by several unsuspecting cars.
“I… I was supposed to be on that bus. On that same bus,” Mitsuyo muttered as she stared at the screen.
Her friend was relieved, and after hanging up Mitsuyo continued to stare at the TV. The announcer gave the bus’s time of departure and route. There was no doubt about it-this was the bus she had almost boarded. The bus she saw outside as she was waiting in line to buy a ticket. The bus the old lady in front of her took, the one the giddy high school girls behind were riding.
She sat transfixed by the images. “We know nothing about the situation inside the bus,” the announcer kept repeating, and Mitsuyo felt like shouting, “But the old lady in front of me is in there! And the girls in line behind me!”
The TV kept showing the roof of the bus barreling down the highway. Mitsuyo started to feel as if she herself were in the bus. She could see the scenery rushing by the window. The old woman from the ticket line was seated across the aisle from her, her face ashen. A few seats in front were the two high school girls, pressed close to each other, sobbing.
The bus didn’t look as if it was going to slow down. It blasted past one car after another filled with families out enjoying the Golden Week holidays.
In her mind, Mitsuyo desperately wanted to move from her aisle seat to the window seat. She’d been ordered not to look toward the front, but her eyes drifted there. A young man holding a knife was standing next to the driver. Every once in a while he’d stab the foam rubber of a nearby seat, and shout out something unintelligible.
“The bus… the bus is pulling into a rest area!” The reporter’s yell brought Mitsuyo back to reality.
The bus had overshot its original destination, Tenjin, and had taken the Kyushu Expressway and now the Chugoku Highway. A patrol car had led the bus into the rest area, where it pulled to a stop. Mitsuyo was watching this scene on TV, but somehow she saw the scene from the interior of the bus, the police outside surrounding them.
“Someone… someone appears to be injured inside! Stabbed and seriously wounded!” The reporter’s voice said over the scene of the spacious parking lot.
If she looked to her side, Mitsuyo would see the old woman there, stabbed. Mitsuyo knew she was in her apartment watching all this on TV, but she was too frightened to look.
Ever since she was a child, she’d felt unlucky. The world was filled with lots of different people, but if you divided them into two groups-the lucky and the unlucky-she was definitely one of the latter. And she was surely in the unluckiest cohort of all. It was a conviction she’d had her entire life.
As if to shake off these memories of the hijacking Mitsuyo opened the window. The warm air inside the apartment rushed out, the cold winter wind flowing in and brushing against her body. Mitsuyo shivered once, stretched, and took a deep breath.
When things got divided up into good and bad, she always ended up with the bad. She’d always been certain she was that kind of person. But I didn’t take that bus back then, she thought. I was just about to, but I didn’t, so for the first time in my life I got lucky.
Mitsuyo looked up and saw the still rice fields in front of her. She glanced at her cell phone in the sunlight coming in the open window. When she checked for new e-mails, she found the dozens of messages she’d exchanged recently.
Three days before, she’d gathered her courage and e-mailed this man named Yuichi Shimizu, and his response had been encouraging. Three months before that, she’d been drinking with her colleagues, something she rarely did, and, a bit tipsy, playfully looked into an online dating site. She wasn’t sure how it worked, but when she received the updated list of men, she’d chosen Yuichi.
The reason she’d chosen someone from Nagasaki was simple. If it was someone from Saga she might know him; Fukuoka was too big a city for her; and Kagoshima and Oita were too far away.
But three months ago when Yuichi had said, Let’s meet, she stopped e-mailing him right away.
Three days ago, too, she didn’t feel like actually meeting him. Before going to bed she’d simply felt like talking to someone, even via e-mail. And that had led to a three-day exchange of messages. Now she wanted to see him, a desire that had grown more intense over the three days. She wasn’t sure what it was about him that made her feel this way, but when she exchanged messages with him she felt like the person she was back then, the one who didn’t get on that bus. Nothing was guaranteed, but if she screwed up her courage she felt as if she’d never have to get on that bus again.
Mitsuyo held her cell phone in the sunlight and read last night’s final e-mail.
Well, I’ll see you tomorrow at eleven in front of Saga station. Good night!
Simple words, but to her they seemed to glow.
Today I’m going for a drive with him, in his car, she thought. To see the lighthouse. The two of them, going to see this lovely lighthouse facing the sea.
When it gets dark you turn on the fluorescent lights. He’d done it every day without thinking, but now, to Yoshio Ishibashi, it seemed like an unusual, special act.
It gets dark and you turn on the light. Simple as that. But even in performing a simple act, a person runs through a series of feelings.
First your eyes sense it’s grown dark. Darkness is inconvenient. If you make things lighter, the inconvenience vanishes. To make it light, you have to switch on the fluorescent lights. And to do that you have to stand up from the tatami and pull the cord. Just pull the cord, and this place is no longer dark and inconvenient.
In the gloomy room Yoshio stared at the light cord above him. All he needed to do was stand up, but the cord was miles away.
The room was dark. But he didn’t need to do anything about it. He didn’t mind a dark room. And if he didn’t mind, he didn’t need to turn on the light. If he didn’t need to turn on the light, he didn’t need to stand up.
So Yoshio stayed lying on the tatami. The room was filled with the smell of incense. Just a few minutes before he’d asked Satoko, “Why don’t you open a window a little?”
“Okay,” she’d replied. She was seated in front of the Buddhist altar, but over ten minutes passed with no sign that she was going to get up.
Beyond the darkened room was the barbershop, also dark. Trucks roared past occasionally, just outside, rattling the thin front door. If he listened carefully, Yoshio could hear the faint sputter of the incense and candles burning at the altar.
The wake and funeral for his daughter, Yoshino, were over, but how many days had passed since that? It felt as if it was a while ago that he’d brought Satoko back from the funeral home, sobbing. But it also felt as if he’d said goodbye to Yoshino a half a year ago.
The funeral was at the memorial hall next to the Chikugo River. And lots of people came: relatives, neighbors, old friends of Yoshio and Satoko all jostling to help out. Some of Yoshino’s classmates and colleagues came as well. When the two colleagues who were with her on that last night came to offer flowers, they touched her cold face and sobbed uncontrollably, unconcerned about those around them: “We’re so sorry, so sorry. We’re sorry we let you go by yourself.” They were all gathered for Yoshino’s sake, but no one spoke about her. No one said a word about why this had happened.
A couple of TV crews were gathered outside the memorial hall. The police were there, too, and what the reporters learned about the investigation from them filtered back to the mourners. The college student who was supposedly meeting Yoshino the night of her death was still missing. Can’t tell for sure, one policeman declared, but if it turns out the boy is on the run, then that must mean he’s the one who did it.
“They can’t even find one college student? What the hell do the police think they’re doing!” Yoshio yelled in an angry, tearful voice. “What are you doing here offering incense? Go out and find the guy!” Totally at a loss, he spit out these angry words, his body shaking uncontrollably.
His great-aunt and others hurried from Okayama and arrived on the night of the wake, and they tried to persuade him to get some sleep. “I know it’s hard,” they said, “but you have to try to rest,” and they laid out a futon for him in a waiting room of the memorial hall. He knew he couldn’t sleep, but maybe if he did he’d wake up and find out this was all a dream, so he closed his eyes and tried his best.
Beyond the sliding door he could hear the hushed voices of his relatives mixed in with the occasional can of beer popping open, and crunching sounds as someone chewed crackers. From what he could make out of their conversation, his wife refused to leave the altar and Yoshino’s side, and whenever anyone spoke to her she broke down in tears.
Yoshio longed to fall asleep. Here he was, unable to do anything but wait for the young Buddhist priest to show up, the one whose hobby was collecting anime dolls, and he found it pitiful and frustrating. But no matter how hard he tried to close his eyes, he couldn’t filter out the muffled voices from the next room.
“It would be better for Yoshino if it does turn out that the college student did it. Think about it-what if it turns out she’s involved with one of those dating sites, like the police said? On TV they said if that’s true, then she took money to sleep with men.”
“Be quiet! Yoshio’s in the next room!”
Someone shushed the great-aunt and the others. But after a few moments someone hesitantly brought it up again.
“That college student has to be the one. Otherwise he wouldn’t run away, right?”
“That makes sense. Maybe he found out about her getting money from other men and they had a fight. And things escalated after that…”
A draft of cold wind blew in from the kitchen, which was next to the barbershop. Still lying down on the tatami, Yoshio stretched out his legs and pushed the sliding door shut. The darkened room now lost every last bit of light.
“Satoko…” he called out listlessly to his wife.
“Yes?” she replied, sounding as though she were replying to a question from five minutes ago.
“Shall we have something delivered for dinner?”
“Okay.”
“We could call Rairaiten.”
“All right.”
Satoko answered but made no move to get up. Still, Yoshio felt this was the first time he and his wife had actually had a conversation the whole day, which she’d spent frozen in place in front of the altar.
Yoshio had no choice but to get up himself. He pulled the cord for the fluorescent light and it blinked a few times and came on, revealing the worn tatami and the cushion he’d been sitting on. On the low table was a stack of extra gift boxes for mourners, and on top of that a bill from the funeral home.
“You’ll have people visiting you at home,” the funeral director had explained.
Yoshio looked away from the table, dialed the number for Rairaiten, and ordered two bowls of vegetable ramen. The owner of the store answered, very awkwardly, “Ah, Mr. Ishibashi. Of course. We’ll bring it over right away.”
After he hung up he could still hear Satoko sniffling. No matter how much she sobbed she couldn’t sob out all her pain.
“Satoko.” Yoshio crouched down again on the tatami and called out to his wife’s back as she sat there, leaning toward the shelf on the altar. “Did you know that Yoshino was seeing this college student?”
It felt like the first time since the murder that he’d used his daughter’s name. Satoko lay prostrate before the altar now and didn’t reply. She was no doubt sobbing again; the candle on the shelf was flickering as her body shook.
“Yoshino isn’t the kind of girl they say she is. She wouldn’t go with guys and…”
His voice started to shake and before he knew it, tears were running down his cheeks. His wife began sobbing aloud, crying with clenched teeth, just as Yoshino used to do as a child.
“I won’t let him get away with it! I don’t care what anyone else says, I won’t allow it!” But his voice wouldn’t work. The words stuck in his throat and he gulped them back.
Some time ago, he couldn’t remember exactly when, Yoshino had made her usual Sunday evening call to them and she and Satoko were on the phone for a long time. The call came in just before Yoshio was about to take a bath, and continued long after he finished, so they must have talked for over an hour.
After his bath Yoshio was enjoying some shochu mixed with oolong tea, watching TV and half listening to their conversation. From Satoko’s answers Yoshio could surmise that Yoshino had been asking questions like “When you and Dad first met, who was the first to say ‘I love you’?” and “Since Dad was in a band and girls were really into him, how did you get him to fall for you?” To each of these Satoko gave an honest answer.
Usually at this point Yoshio would yell at them for talking too long, but considering the topic he wasn’t sure what to say, and instead drank at a faster pace than normal.
When Satoko finally hung up he asked, feigning ignorance, what they’d talked about, and Satoko, a happy look on her face, said, “Yoshino has somebody she likes.”
For a second he was taken aback. Yoshino likes a man? But then he thought it was touching, cute even, that she’d phoned her parents asking about how they’d first met.
“She’s going out with somebody?” Yoshio asked brusquely.
“I don’t think they’re actually going out yet,” Satoko replied. “You know, she always tends to act sort of tough in front of boys. She’s kind of stubborn, not so open… But it sounds like she’s really fallen for this guy. She was crying a bit. She’s still a little girl in a way, isn’t she, calling her parents about this instead of talking with her friends.”
Yoshio didn’t say anything, but instead drained his cup of shochu, and Satoko added, “The boy is apparently the son of a family that owns an upscale inn in Yufuin or Beppu or someplace.”
About a half a year ago Yoshio had taken a trip with the barber’s union to an inn at Yufuin and he was remembering what the town was like. The inn they stayed at was a cheap place, but when he went for a stroll he’d run across a famous old inn with a huge entranceway. The owner’s beautiful young wife just happened to be standing at the entrance, and though she recognized from the yukata they were wearing that they were staying at a different inn, she casually called out to them. When Yoshio and his group commented on how great the air was in Yufuin, the lovely young woman smiled and said, “Please come back and visit us again!”
That night, as he stared at Satoko’s backside as she washed the dishes, he pictured Yoshino in a kimono standing in the threshold of that nice old inn and smiling at him. He grinned wryly at how his mind had leaped ahead a few steps, but actually it didn’t feel too bad to imagine a future like this for her.
Staring at Satoko now, collapsed in tears in front of the altar, Yoshio again muttered, “He won’t get away with it…” If he could go back in time, he’d go back to that night, grab the phone away from Satoko, and tell Yoshino, “I don’t want you to have anything to do with that guy!”
It felt awful not to be able to do that. All he’d done was casually imagine his daughter standing there in a kimono, and he’d ended up feeling sad and impotent.
Koki Tsuruta realized that Keigo Masuo had been on his mind for several days.
There had been no word from the police since they came the day after the murder, so he’d relied on reports in the papers and on TV to follow events.
A classmate he was friends with had murdered a woman and was on the run. Put it like this, and it sounded like he was involved in quite a drama, but actually his days were pretty ordinary, as he stayed holed up in his room overlooking Ohori Park, watching his favorite movies-Ascenseur pour l’échafaud and Citizen Kane. Before he went to sleep each night, he’d switch to porn and make sure to come.
A classmate murdering someone and running away-it sounded like some lousy script he’d written himself. If it actually did become a film, it would be kind of boring. Still, the facts remained: Masuo really had killed a woman and was running from the police. This was no crummy script, but reality.
Ever since the incident, and actually before the incident, Koki had stopped going to school. He was sure the school must be in an uproar over what Keigo had done. He could picture everyone running around, as if it were the night before the annual university festival.
Keigo had been a well-known figure on campus, and those who liked him and those who didn’t were watching, all of them irritated with their selfish desire just to see how this would end up.
Since the murder, Koki had called Keigo’s cell phone every day, but he never answered. Koki realized once again that Keigo was his one link with the outside world. He relied on Keigo for everything he heard about school, about other friends, about girls-information that made Koki feel that he was just like everybody else, living an ordinary college student’s life.
Where was Keigo?
Was he afraid? Was he going to keep on running?
If he’s going to get caught, Koki thought, I don’t want any of this turning-himself-in stuff. He should keep on running as much as he can, until the cops have him completely surrounded, a blazing spotlight on him, and he shouts out some memorable line (which Koki knew he could never come up with), and then he takes his own life.
Koki was watching porn as he thought this, and he looked up and saw a fellatio scene on the screen. Morning had come, the sunlight streaming in on the messy room. The chirping of birds from the nearby park mixed with the slurping sounds of the girl in the movie. Before the scene was over Koki came. He tossed the sticky tissue into the garbage can and yanked up his underwear.
But why did he kill her?
Koki couldn’t think of a good reason why Keigo would kill the girl. He could picture a girl killing Keigo, who could be pretty cold-hearted. That would be a kind of fitting end to his life.
The girl on the screen was still performing fellatio, and Koki switched off the tape and went around the apartment, squinting in the sunlight, closing the curtains. He’d needled his parents into buying these special blackout curtains that even during the day turned the place as dark as night. Thinking of his parents’ money always upset him, but by taming those feelings, he’d been able to persuade them to buy these expensive curtains.
As he sprawled on his bed he pictured the faces of his parents, always calculating how much money they had. How they’d sit there, tapping out figures on their calculators as if the more they stared at their bankbooks, the more money they’d have in their accounts. Koki knew the necessity of money, but he also knew there had to be something more in life. And unless he found it, he couldn’t escape this listlessness.
After a while he began to doze, and was jerked awake when his cell phone on the glass table rang.
“Hello?” The man’s voice sounded familiar.
“Uh, hello!” He instinctively sat up in bed.
“Sorry, were you asleep?” It was without a doubt Keigo’s voice.
“Keigo? Is that you?” Koki said loudly, and the phlegm in his throat made him cough. “Don’t-don’t hang up!” he managed to say, then coughed loudly and spit up the phlegm. It shot out and splattered on the DVD package of the porn film.
“Keigo? Are you-okay?” Koki asked. There were a million things he wanted to ask, but that was all that came out.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” Keigo said, sounding tired.
It was only six a.m. and he figured Koki must be asleep, but Koki picked up.
Keigo hadn’t called with the intention of missing Koki-but the moment he heard Koki’s voice, he realized he’d been hoping there would be no answer.
He was at a sauna in Nagoya. At the end of the red-carpeted hallway was a darkened room where guests could nap. The public phone was in one corner of the hallway. Next to it was a vending machine selling nutritional supplement drinks, three of the five buttons lit up indicating they were sold out.
“You’re really okay?” he heard Koki ask. He sounded as if he’d just woken up, but his voice was tense and strained, and told Keigo in no uncertain terms the situation he was in.
“So where are you?” Koki’s voice suddenly grew gentle. Keigo instinctively gripped the receiver more tightly.
He figured they must be tapping the phones in his apartment and his parents’ home, but they couldn’t be tracing calls from Koki’s cell phone. Still, Koki sounded too gentle and nice, as if he was putting on an act in front of somebody.
His hand was resting on the phone’s cradle and he pushed down hard on it. The call over, a few ten-yen coins plunked down into the coin return, clattering in the silent hallway. Keigo turned. Nobody else was around, just his own reflection in the mirror on a pillar, decked out in the light blue robe of a sauna patron. Keigo replaced the receiver on its cradle. He’d never noticed before how heavy a public phone receiver could be.
He hadn’t called Koki because he wanted to tell him something, or to find out what was happening with the investigation. The last few days he hadn’t spoken to a soul. At the front desk of the sauna and the hotel, he’d merely nodded or shaken his head in response to their questions. A moment ago when he told Koki he was okay, it felt like the first time in a long time that he’d heard his own voice.
Keigo walked back down the red-carpeted hallway to the nap room. Beyond the curtains he could hear a man snoring, the sound of which had bothered him all night long. The snoring man was sprawled out next to the chaise longue where Keigo had planted himself earlier and it made Keigo want to kick him. But he knew that he couldn’t-if he caused a problem here, that would be the end for him. About fifty chaise longues were lined up in the spacious room. These chairs-with their synthetic leather split open and foam rubber sticking out-were the only place where Keigo could now be free.
It might have been his imagination, but as he entered the nap room of the sauna he smelled a feral, animal-like odor. Even after sweating in the sauna and scrubbing themselves clean in the bath, if you put this many men together in one room maybe this smell is unavoidable.
Guided only by the exit light, Keigo made his way back to his chaise longue. The others contained sleeping men in a variety of poses. One man kept his glasses on as he slept. Another had skillfully arranged the tiny blanket provided them to cover himself completely. And then there was his next-door neighbor, gaping mouth emitting thunderous snores.
Keigo cleared his throat loudly and lay down, wrapping the still warm blanket up around him. His throat-clearing only made the man beside him roll over, but did nothing to stop his awful snoring.
When Keigo closed his eyes he could picture Koki’s face on the other end of the phone line.
Why did he make the call? And why to Koki? Did he think that Koki would be able to rescue him from this predicament? The more he thought about it, the stupider it felt. In school and out, he had plenty of friends and acquaintances, but he couldn’t think of anyone else he could call at a time like this. People tended to flock to him, and Keigo was aware of this. But not one of them was worth a damn. He might hang out with them, but deep down he despised them.
Keigo squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force himself to sleep despite the snores. But closing his eyes tightly only produced more memories, like juice oozing from a piece of fruit, and though he didn’t want to think about it, the memories of that night, and running across Yoshino Ishibashi by chance, at Higashi Park, all rushed back at him.
Why do I have to run away, he thought, just because of a girl like that? And lie here listening to the snores of a stranger? The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.
Why did he run across her again in a place like that? If only he’d waited until he got back to his apartment to go to the bathroom, none of this would have happened.
He’d been in a crappy mood all that night. He’d gone out drinking in a bar in Tenjin, and then got in his car, which he’d parked on the road, planning to drive back to his apartment. It was just a five-minute drive back to his place, but somehow he was terribly on edge and decided to go for a longer drive instead.
He was drunk. When he looked back on it now, he had no idea where he drove, or how he ended up at Higashi Park. At any rate he was in a bad mood. But he couldn’t pinpoint what was irritating him, which bothered him all the more.
He knew any number of girls he could call who’d sleep with him, but the desire he felt tonight was for something more violent, something fierce, like himself and a girl biting each other’s skin, drawing blood. What he’d really wanted wasn’t to sleep with a girl, but to punch out a guy. But it was too late; he couldn’t go back to that night and undo what had happened.
After he’d been driving around the streets of Hakata for two hours, the liquor he’d drunk got to him and he had to urinate. At the end of the street was Higashi Park, and he figured there had to be a public restroom, so he parked his car there. There was a sprinkling of cars in the parking lot alongside the park. After the long drive he was no longer drunk.
He got out of his car and saw, at the end of the road, a young man standing there urinating. His dyed blond hair was visible in the streetlights. Keigo stepped over the low fence and went into the darkened park. He soon found the public restroom. He ran inside, and as he was peeing into the dirty urinal, his urine smelling of alcohol, he heard a strange snorting sound coming from one of the stalls. It gave him the creeps but he couldn’t very well stop in the middle of peeing.
The door to the stall opened right then and he flinched, getting urine on his fingers. The guy coming out of the stall was the same age as he. The man cast him an ugly look. In a flash it came to him what kind of guy this was, and Keigo, the liquor helping, him along, called out to the man as he was leaving, “How ’bout sucking me off?” He laughed, and the man came to a halt and laughed, too. “How ’bout you suck me?”
This enraged Keigo for an instant, but the piss was still coming out hard and he couldn’t make a move to hit the guy. He finally finished peeing and ran out in pursuit. The scattered streetlights made the park seem even gloomier. Keigo gazed around, checking the bushes and the walking path, but couldn’t spot him.
Being made fun of by someone he’d made fun of-the frustration shot through him. His body should have shrunk back in the wintry wind, but it was filled with a blazing hot irritation. If he could only find the guy and pound him, this bitterness that had filled him all night would be blown away. If he could get hit back as hard as he hit the other guy, maybe even get a bloody nose, he could finally get rid of this pointless frustration.
But he never did locate the guy, so instead he clicked his tongue in anger and stepped over the fence around the park again. The asphalt road was lit up by the orange streetlight. And that’s when he spied a woman walking toward him. The woman must have been meeting up with somebody, for she checked each car as she walked by.
Keigo straddled the fence and leaped out from the shrubbery. And at that instant one of the cars parked between him and the woman blew its horn. The horn pierced the air and echoed on the road along the park. Startled by the sound, the woman came to an abrupt halt. She recognized Keigo before he recognized her and he saw a smile spread on her partly shadowed face.
The woman quickly ran over to the car, the clatter of her boots on the road absorbed into the darkened interior of the park. Halfway to the car she shot a quick glance inside, but didn’t slow down. Just as Keigo walked past the car he realized that this was that girl he’d met at a bar in Tenjin, the one who wouldn’t leave him alone with all her e-mails.
“Keigo!” she called out.
Keigo lifted a desultory hand in greeting. He was concerned about the parked car, and when he glanced over he caught a vague glimpse of a young man’s face in the dome light. He didn’t get a good look at him, but from the hair color it looked like the guy who’d been peeing outside a few minutes ago.
Yoshino didn’t call out to the guy in the car, who was obviously waiting for her, but trotted over to Keigo.
“What are you doing in a place like this?” she asked.
Even in the darkened street Keigo could see how beaming and happy Yoshino looked.
“I had to take a leak.”
Yoshino looked about ready to hug him and he took a step back.
“What a coincidence. Our apartment building is just behind here,” Yoshino volunteered, pointing to the dark park. “Did you come by car?” she asked, looking around.
“Uh, yeah,” Keigo answered, concerned about the blond man in the parked car staring at them.
“Is it okay?” Keigo asked, motioning with his chin toward the car. As if suddenly remembering, Yoshino turned around and shook her head. She frowned and said, unenthusiastically, “Yeah. Don’t worry about it.”
“But weren’t you meeting him?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry about it.”
“What do you mean, don’t worry about it?” Keigo asked.
Yoshino, sounding resigned, said, “Just, ah-just wait a second,” and scurried off toward the car.
Keigo certainly hadn’t come here to see Yoshino, but he was taken aback by her cheery welcome and realized he couldn’t very well just leave.
When Yoshino ran over to the car, the man’s face in the overhead light visibly relaxed a bit. But she merely opened the passenger-side door, said a few words to him, then shut the door and came back over to Keigo.
She’d slammed the door so hard the sound reverberated through the street for a time.
“Sorry,” Yoshino apologized. “He’s a friend of a friend, someone I lent some money to.” She looked annoyed.
“Don’t you want him to give it back?”
“No, it’s okay. I just asked him to transfer it to my account,” Yoshino said lightly. Keigo glanced over at the car and saw the man still staring in their direction.
“Going back to the apartment?” Keigo asked.
She’d neglected the man she was supposed to meet up with, and come back to him, but this didn’t seem to bother her. She stood there watching Keigo steadily, waiting for him to continue.
“Uh, yeah…” Yoshino answered.
Truthfully, Keigo found this type of girl hard to deal with. The kind who was waiting for something, but pretended not to be. Who made of show of not expecting anything but actually was expecting a lot.
If the car the man she had met up with had pulled away right then, Keigo would probably never have given her a ride. He wouldn’t have found it hard to just say, “Well, I gotta go. Catch you later,” and leave her there. But that other car just stayed put, the man’s face-at once angry and sad-still faintly visible in the interior light. It didn’t look like the man was going to get out of the car, and Yoshino showed no indication that she was going back to him.
“So your building’s nearby?” Keigo said, breaking the silence, and for a second Yoshino was at a loss for an answer. Her smile could have been interpreted either way.
“Want a ride?”
Yoshino nodded happily. He pressed the key to unlock his car. When he opened the passenger door Yoshino crawled inside.
While they’d been outside talking in the cold wind, he hadn’t noticed Yoshino’s breath, but when she said, shivering, “It’s nice and warm inside the car!” he realized she stank of garlic.
His feelings changed as soon as he got in the driver’s seat. This girl would be a good outlet for all the irritation he’d been feeling all night.
“You have some time?” Keigo asked as he started the engine.
“Why d’you ask?” Yoshino said.
“You feel like going for a drive?”
“A drive? Where to?” She wasn’t going to turn him down, but still she tilted her head as if she had her doubts.
“No place in particular… How ’bout we test our courage and go to Mitsuse Pass?” Keigo teased, and stepped on the gas. In the rearview mirror he caught a glimpse of the blond man’s white Skyline.
It’s no big deal, she told herself, and her legs, which had been pedaling furiously, came to an abrupt halt. The Saga station, where she was supposed to meet Yuichi, was just across the street.
It’s no big deal, Mitsuyo murmured to herself again. Seeing a guy she met online-no big deal. Everybody does it, and meeting him isn’t going to change anything.
This morning she’d told Tamayo as she left for work, “I’ll be a little late tonight.” She realized now that ever since then she’d been telling herself, over and over, that this was nothing to get all worked up over.
She’d e-mailed Yuichi, promising to meet him. He’d asked her where would be a good place, and she’d answered back. He’d asked her what time would work for her, and she’d replied. Simple enough, but as soon as she put down her cell phone, she started to feel uneasy, wondering whether she was really going through with it. Making a date had been easy, but she’d never given any thought to how she really felt about it.
No way am I going through with this, Mitsuyo murmured. I’m not that brave.
Perhaps she wasn’t, but she did think about what she should wear. And she did imagine the two of them meeting up at the station.
As morning dawned she couldn’t see herself actually going on the date. Couldn’t see herself going, yet she told Tamayo she’d be late. Couldn’t see herself going, yet she changed her clothes and left the house. Wasn’t brave enough to actually meet him, but now here she was standing right across from the station.
She must have been standing there for a while, for people rushing to the station passed her. Mitsuyo stepped to one side and sat back on a railing. A middle-aged woman behind her, thinking perhaps that she wasn’t feeling well, shot her a sympathetic look. The sun was strong, so she didn’t feel the cold. Just the railing digging painfully into her rear end.
It was already past eleven, the time they’d agreed to meet. From her perch on the railing, she could see the traffic circle in front of the station. People were going in and out of the station entrance but none were likely candidates. Just then a white car roared into the traffic circle. The car’s tires squealed so loudly as it took the corner that Mitsuyo, some distance away, instinctively stood up. There was no doubt about it-this was the car whose photo Yuichi had shown her in an e-mail the night before. “I can’t go through with this,” Mitsuyo said softly. But despite her words, her right leg took a small step forward.
What do I do if he isn’t happy with what he sees? If he’s disappointed by me-what then? These thoughts in mind, she started walking.
“It’s no big deal. Seeing a guy I met online is no big deal,” she repeated, forcing her feet to move forward. She found it incredibly strange that she’d be approaching the car of some man she didn’t know. She was surprised that she had this much courage.
The door of the white car opened just as Mitsuyo was about to enter the traffic circle. She stopped, and watched as a tall blond man came out. In the winter sunlight his hair looked several shades lighter than the pictures he’d sent her.
The man glanced in her direction, but soon looked back toward the entrance to the station. He shut the car door and leaped over the railing. Mitsuyo steadily watched this from behind one of the trees that lined the road. The man was younger than she’d thought. Thinner, too, and kinder looking. She was sure she would take it no further. She didn’t think she’d find the courage no matter how hard she looked within herself.
The man disappeared inside the station for a moment, then emerged again, cell phone in hand. For an instant her eyes met his. She turned away and sat back down on the railing.
I’ll count to thirty and if he hasn’t come here by then I’ll go home, she thought. He must have seen her face. She wanted him to make the next move. She was afraid that he’d be disappointed once he met her. But she also would hate to run away after coming this far and later regret it.
In the end, she counted to five but then the numbers wouldn’t come. She didn’t know how long she sat there, but as she stared at her feet a shadow fell over her legs.
“Hey…” a timid voice said from above her. She looked up and saw the man standing there in the sunlight filtering down through the leaves of the trees.
“My name is Shimizu…”
Maybe it was the way he stood there, all shy. Maybe it was the way the winter sun shone on his skin. Or maybe it was the fearful look in his eyes. But in that instant something changed for her. She felt as if her life up to that point was now over. Something new was about to begin-she had no idea what-but Mitsuyo was sure of one thing. She was glad she had come.
Mitsuyo tensely smiled at him, and that tension seemed to infect Yuichi as he nervously looked around.
“You’re going to get towed if you park there,” she said, her first words to Yuichi, and Mitsuyo surprised herself at how calm she sounded.
“You’re right.” Rattled, Yuichi started to head back to the car but remembered Mitsuyo was there and came to an abrupt halt. His long limbs made his movements look exaggerated and Mitsuyo couldn’t help but smile.
After he left the railing, Yuichi constantly glanced behind him, like someone worried that his child might not follow.
“Your hair looks blonder than in the photos,” Mitsuyo called out to him.
Yuichi slowed down so he was walking beside her, and scratched his head. “’Bout a year ago I was looking at myself in the mirror one night, and I suddenly wanted to change something,” he mumbled. “Not to look fashionable or anything…”
“So you went with blond hair?”
“Couldn’t think of anything else,” he replied, looking serious.
They came up to the car and Yuichi opened the passenger door.
“I think I know how you feel,” Mitsuyo said, and with no hesitation at all got in.
Yuichi walked around to the driver’s side. He must use some kind of air freshener in the car, Mitsuyo thought, because there was a scent of roses. From the moment she climbed inside she could tell he took very good care of his car.
Yuichi settled into the driver’s seat, quickly started the engine, and pulled away. She thought he was going to smash into the taxi in front of them, but he accelerated as if he was sure, down to a fraction of an inch, how much clearance he had. His car barely missed the cab. His fingers gripping the steering wheel looked as if he’d just finished fighting somebody. Not that Mitsuyo had ever seen somebody’s hands right after a fight, but the long, knobby, gnarled fingers looked terribly beat up.
As the car moved halfway through the traffic circle, Mitsuyo saw the usual scene of the front of the station. Here she was, riding around in a car with a man she’d just met, yet she didn’t feel at all uneasy. It was rather the scenery of the front of the station that looked cold and distant to her. After just a few minutes she trusted Yuichi’s driving more than she trusted what she saw outside the window.
“I never imagined I’d be driving around with someone like you,” Mitsuyo said as the car drove on, the words escaping her.
Yuichi shot her a glance. “Someone like me?” he asked, inclining his head.
“You know… a blond.”
Yuichi scratched his head again.
The words had come out inadvertently, but nothing else could express the way she felt.
Cars with local license plates crawled down the road ahead of them, and Yuichi passed them one after another. He changed lanes smoothly, and every time he accelerated Mitsuyo was sucked back into the soft seat. Whenever she was in a taxi and the driver sped up, Mitsuyo tensed up, but strangely enough with Yuichi’s driving she didn’t feel nervous. His timing cut everything close when he changed lanes, but she was certain that, like opposite poles of magnets never touching, they’d never hit anything.
“You’re really a good driver,” she said as Yuichi swung around another car. “I have a license but I never really drive much.”
“It’s ’cause I drive all the time,” Yuichi replied.
They were soon approaching the intersection with Highway 34. If they turned left they’d go past the menswear shop where Mitsuyo worked, go straight and they’d connect up with the Saga Yamato interchange on the interstate.
“So what are we doing?” Mitsuyo asked, not looking at Yuichi, as they stopped for a time at a red light. “Should we go straight to the Yobuko lighthouse? Or have lunch first around here?” It was strange how smoothly the words came out. She had no idea what kind of man this was sitting beside her, and was amazed at her own boldness.
Yuichi clutched the steering wheel hard. Mitsuyo looked at his fists and felt as if it were her body he was squeezing.
“How about we go to a hotel?” Yuichi said as he stared at his fists. For a second it didn’t hit her what he was asking and she stared vacantly at him. “We can eat and go for a drive… after that,” Yuichi muttered, his eyes down. He looked just like a child who knew he was going to get scolded but went ahead and begged for a toy anyway.
“What are you talking about?” Mitsuyo gave a quick laugh. Dumbfounded, she turned toward Yuichi and punched him on the shoulder.
Yuichi grabbed her hand. The light had changed and the car behind them blew its horn. He let go of her hand and slowly stepped on the gas.
That’s not why I came here! I just wanted to see the lighthouse, she thought. She could think of a number of things to say, but in front of the silent, awkward Yuichi they all felt phony.
“Are you serious?” she replied, so tense her chest hurt, feeling as if the man beside her was already tugging her clothes off. She’d met this guy less than ten minutes ago and yet she was acting this bold. She felt as if she were watching herself from a distance.
Yuichi, eyes fixed forward, nodded. She waited for him to say something, some clever, enticing words, but nothing came.
It had been a long time since she’d seen such open sexual desire. The last time she met a man who’d wanted her this much was back when she worked in the factory and one of the men on the same line who’d been there longer suddenly grabbed her in the parking lot. Mitsuyo had been friendly with him, but still she had struggled and run away. It had all been too sudden; but at the same time, she’d been hoping that something like that would happen, and was afraid he’d find out. She didn’t want to admit that that’s who she was, a girl waiting for a man to make his sudden, aggressive move.
Almost ten years had passed since then, and she’d mentally replayed that incident over and over. That moment may have decided the kind of life she had now. She felt as if it had changed her into the type of woman who sought out fierce sexual desire from men.
“Going to a hotel is fine with me,” Mitsuyo said calmly. Up ahead was a sign for the Saga Yamato interchange.
For some reason she pictured the apartment she shared with Tamayo-their comfortable, snug little place. But today the last thing she wanted was to go back there.
After their car passed the interchange, they headed over a highway overpass that tied all the rice fields below in a large bow and headed in the direction of Fukuoka. They must have been traveling fast, for the billboards and signs they passed sped by in shreds.
“There’s a hotel just up ahead.” As Yuichi murmured this, it hit Mitsuyo again: Soon I’m going to have sex.
Just then she spotted the sign for a love hotel, beyond the fallow fields. Mitsuyo turned to look at Yuichi. His hair wasn’t all that thick, and there was a small mole on his chin.
“Do you always take girls to a hotel right away?” she asked, not really caring about the answer. Yuichi had invited her to a hotel as soon as he met her and she’d accepted. That was all that was certain at this moment. Between the two of them right now, that was all that mattered.
“I don’t mind… if you always take girls to a hotel like this.”
A narrow road, almost hidden behind the sign, led to the hotel. Their car slowed down. Potted plants lined the road, not a single one with any flowers. The road led directly to the half-underground parking lot. They hadn’t passed any other cars on the way over from the interchange, but still the lot was nearly full.
They parked in the last space they could find. When Yuichi turned off the engine it was so silent they could hear each other swallow.
“It’s pretty crowded, isn’t it?” Mitsuyo said to break the silence. “Guess ’cause it’s Saturday.” As she said this she remembered last Saturday, and how a customer had complained because they’d made a mistake with the delivery date on some clothes that were being altered.
Yuichi had sped here without hesitating, but now that the car was stopped he didn’t make a move. He just sat there, staring at the key in his hand.
“I hope they have a room open,” Mitsuyo said, as casually as she could manage.
Yuichi, still looking down, muttered, “Yeah.”
“It’s kind of a strange feeling, since we just met and now look where we are.”
Mitsuyo’s voice sounded muffled in the closed car. The more she tried to convince herself that this was no big deal, the weaker her voice sounded.
“I’m sorry,” Yuichi suddenly said in a low voice.
“Why are you apologizing?” Mitsuyo was taken aback. “There’s no need to apologize,” she said. “It’s just that it was kind of sudden, so I was surprised. Women get those feelings, too, sometimes. And when they do, they want to hook up with somebody.”
The words came out all of a sudden. She couldn’t believe it was she saying this. Women want to have sex, too, she was saying, and when they want sex they go out looking for a guy. And she was telling this to a man she’d just met.
Yuichi stared right at her, his eyes seeming to want to say more. Mitsuyo felt herself blushing. It felt as if all her co-workers were eavesdropping. Not her present co-workers, but all her colleagues back at the factory, even her classmates from high school-all of them listening in and laughing at her.
“Anyway,” she said, “let’s go in and check it out. Who knows, it may be full.”
Mitsuyo quickly opened the door and left the car, as if she were fleeing from the confines of the two of them inside together. As soon as she opened the door, the chilly air from the parking lot flowed in.
Once out of the car her body, warmed by the heater in the car, quickly grew cold. Yuichi got out right away and headed toward the entrance of the hotel.
Sex I can take or leave. I just want somebody to hold me. For years that’s what I’ve been looking for. Somebody to hold me. Mitsuyo said this to herself as she stared at Yuichi’s back. This is how I really feel, she wanted to tell him. I don’t want just anybody to hold me. It’s got to be someone who wants me and I want him to hold me tight.
A panel at the self-service check-in counter showed that two rooms were vacant. Yuichi chose the one named Firenze. He hesitated for a moment, then selected “Short Time” above the panel. Immediately the panel indicated the price, ¥4,800.
Mitsuyo was sick of the kind of life where all she did was look for ways to drown her loneliness.
They rode the elevator to the second floor, to the room right in front of them with the nameplate Firenze.
The lock was stuck and it took Yuichi several tries before he could get it open. As soon as the door opened, the bright colors of the room leaped out at them. Yellow walls, an orange bedspread, a domed ceiling with a pseudo fresco painted on it. Despite the bright colors, nothing about it looked fresh.
As Mitsuyo entered, she reached back and shut the door. The heater was on high and the air was stuffy and she felt as if she was going to start sweating.
Yuichi strode over to the bed and tossed the key on top of it. The key didn’t bounce at all, but sank into the down comforter.
All they could hear was the heater. The room was less a silent place than one from which all other sounds had been sucked away.
“Kind of a gaudy room,” Mitsuyo said to Yuichi, who was still facing away from her. Yuichi turned around and suddenly came over to her.
It all happened in a flash. Mitsuyo had been standing there, arms dangling at her sides, when Yuichi grabbed her and held her tight. His hot breath grazed the back of her neck, his stiff penis pushing against her stomach. Through their clothes, they could feel the other’s heart beating. Mitsuyo wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled him closer. The tighter she held him the more she could feel his hard penis against her soft belly.
A room called Firenze, ¥4,800 for a short-time stay. A room in a love hotel that tried to have its own personality, but from which all sense of the personal had vanished.
“Promise you won’t laugh,” Mitsuyo murmured against Yuichi’s chest. He started to draw away, but she clung to him so he wouldn’t see her face.
“I’m going to tell you the truth, but you have to promise you won’t laugh,” Mitsuyo said. “I’m… I’m serious when I send out e-mails. Other people might just send them out to kill time… but I really wanted to meet somebody. This is sort of lame, huh? And kind of sad?… Go ahead and make fun of me. But don’t laugh at me, okay? If you do, I don’t know what I’ll…”
Yuichi was still holding on to her. She knew it was kind of a rash thing to say, but she felt she had to say it now or she’d never ever say it to anyone.
“Me, too,” Yuichi said. “I… was serious, too, about the e-mails.”
Mitsuyo, cheek pressed against him, heard his voice through his chest.
Water dripped in the bathroom, splashing against the tiles. It must have collected in the faucet and then gushed out. That was the only other sound she heard, besides the beating of his heart as she pressed her face up against him.
Yuichi suddenly moved and crushed his mouth on hers. A rough, hard kiss, his dry lips scraping her. He sucked at her lips, stuck his tongue inside her mouth. Clinging to his shirt, she held his tongue in her mouth. That burning hot tongue felt as if it were wrapped around her whole body.
She felt weak in the knees. Yuichi moved his tongue from her mouth to her ear, his hot breath reaching deep inside and exciting her.
He roughly pulled off her shirt, then her bra, and standing there she let him kiss her breasts. In front of her was the cheap love hotel bed, and she pictured herself sinking down, half naked, onto the down comforter.
He was rough, except for the gentle fingers that stroked her behind. Her body wanted it even rougher. Was she the violent one, or Yuichi? She couldn’t tell. It was as if she was simply manipulating Yuichi, using him to roughly, violently caress herself.
She was naked now, in front of this man. Under the too-bright fluorescent lights, she felt him stroke her thighs, grab her butt, and Mitsuyo felt that any minute now she would cry out.
Yuichi lightly lifted her up and carried her over to the bed. He almost tossed her on top of the comforter, then tore off his shirt and T-shirt. Yuichi’s hard chest crushed her breasts. Every time he moved, Mitsuyo’s nipples slipped across his skin.
Before she knew it she was lying facedown on the bed, sunk deep in the comforter, as if she were floating on air. Yuichi’s hot tongue traced a line down her spine. He stuck his knees between her legs and no matter how much she resisted, her legs opened wide.
She buried her face in the pillow, which smelled of detergent. All the strength drained away from her. Yuichi caressed her roughly, almost as if he were trying to break her. At the same time, he held on to her tightly, as if to repair the damage.
He destroyed her, repaired her, and repeated the process. Mitsuyo no longer knew if she’d gotten destroyed, or if she’d been destroyed from the very beginning. If it was Yuichi doing the breaking, she wanted him to break her even more violently. If her body was broken from the beginning, she wanted his gentle hands to restore her.
“I don’t need to see him ever again. Just this one time. This is just for today,” she murmured as he caressed her. She didn’t really feel this way, but she had to tell herself this, or else she couldn’t accept this shameless self, the one she’d never really seen before, the one writhing in ecstasy on the bed.
She heard the metallic sound as Yuichi undid his belt. She had no idea how long she’d been like this on the bed, but it seemed as if Yuichi had been caressing her for a long time. Fifteen minutes? Thirty minutes? No, it felt more like he’d been stroking her with his fingers, his hot body crushing her, for a whole night-or was it two?
She felt her body grow lighter. The bed creaked and the vibration made her head fall off the pillow. She opened her eyes and saw Yuichi standing there, naked.
She hadn’t been crying, but she saw Yuichi’s penis through a kind of haze. All the strength drained out of her; even moving her fingers seemed like too much trouble. He was gazing down at her totally nude body from above, but she felt no embarrassment at all. One of Yuichi’s knees came up beside her face. The mattress sank down and her face rolled over toward him. He cupped his large palm behind her head to support it, and Mitsuyo closed her eyes and opened her mouth.
Yuichi’s hand supporting her head was gentle, but the penis jabbing deep inside her mouth was brutal and relentless. Again she didn’t know if she was being treated gently, or roughly. Was she suffering? Or happy? As she clutched at the sheets over and over, she had no idea. She knew she must look like a total slut. And she detested Yuichi-and loved him-for forcing her to lick him like this.
She reached around and grabbed his butt. Her nails dug into his sweaty behind. Trying his best to stand the pain, Yuichi cried out. And Mitsuyo wanted to hear that voice more.
I really do want Mitsuyo to be happy.
I never call her onesan-older sister. But still inside me I feel like I might be calling her that.
We have a younger brother, and he calls her onesan. It’s weird to say he does it in my stead, but that’s what it feels like. Me he just calls Tamayo.
People often say twins know what the other one is thinking. But Mitsuyo and I were never like that. Don’t get me wrong, we got along okay, and stood out in school, being twins and all. So when we were in elementary school we were always together, and tried to protect each other from our classmates’ curious eyes. Yeah-I think we did sort of stand out in elementary school. But once we entered junior high, another set of twins from a nearby elementary school came to the same school and they were ten times cuter than us. Kids can be really cruel, and it wasn’t long before we were being called the ugly twins. That didn’t bother me too much-if a boy said that, I’d chase him and hit him with a broom or something. About this time our personalities, you might say, the overall impression you got from us-hairstyle, clothes, interests-slowly started to be different from each other…
We weren’t planning to go to the same high school. I wanted to go to a regular co-ed school, while Mitsuyo applied to a private girls’ high school, but she failed the entrance exam.
Anyway, soon after we started high school, we found boyfriends. Mine was typical-the star of the soccer team-but Mitsuyo went out with this guy named Ozawa who was not exactly a negative kind of guy, but he never seemed to be able to do anything well, neither school nor sports. He gave up on the volleyball team after only a month.
If Ozawa paid a bit more attention to his hairstyle and clothes he might have looked okay, but he had zero interest in that kind of thing. Not that he had any particular interest in anything else… Anyhow, when Mitsuyo said something about how she liked Ozawa I went like, Whoa! What’s with that? It was then, I guess, that I realized that Mitsuyo and I are two different people.
Since my boyfriend was the star of the soccer team, I had a lot of rivals for his attention, and sometimes things didn’t go so well. Mitsuyo and Ozawa, who didn’t have any competitors to deal with, got along better than me and my guy. They always walked home together, pushing their bikes side by side. Most every evening she’d stop by Ozawa’s house, but she’d be sure to be home by six-thirty, in time for dinner.
Even twins who get along well have things they can’t ask each other. School ended around four o’clock every day, and it took twenty minutes to walk to Ozawa’s house, so even if she rode her bike back home afterward, it means that they were alone, just the two of them, for about two hours and fifteen minutes every day. Rumors started about them at school and people starting asking me, not her, whether she and Ozawa had done it. As her younger sister I felt, intuitively, that she and Ozawa had, you know. I wanted to know for sure, but I couldn’t ask her straight out.
I remember it was just after the end of summer vacation. Mitsuyo was at Ozawa’s as usual, and my cheerleading squad’s practice was canceled that day so I went home early. We were sharing the same room and I’d never done a thing like that before, but something possessed me, I guess, and I opened Mitsuyo’s desk drawer and looked at the notebook Mitsuyo and Ozawa used to exchange notes. I was sure it would be totally boring. I was a little worried what I’d do if there was bad stuff written in there about me, but that’s about it.
I flipped through it and was surprised to find every page filled with tiny writing.
I read through it, nervous that Mitsuyo might come home. As I read, I felt a shiver up my spine… Basically she said something like this:
“I’ve always liked you, Ozawa-kun. But recently I’ve started to like certain parts of you-your right arm, for instance, your ears, or your fingers, your knees, your front teeth, your breath. Not the whole of you, but parts that make up you. I don’t want anybody to take them away from me. At school and other places, I don’t want anybody else to see you..”
I had always thought that Mitsuyo wasn’t the type to get attached to things. When we were little, she always gave me and our brother all of her candy or cakes. I guess that comes from being the oldest daughter. But in this diary that she and Ozawa exchanged, this was a Mitsuyo I’d never seen before.
Here are some other quotes: “Today Onotera from No. 2 class was talking to you about something, right? I found it funny how annoyed you looked.” “I can’t wait to graduate and live with you! We can live together, right? You know, that apartment we saw from the outside the other day looked really nice. You could park a car right outside when you buy one, and once we have kids they can play in the garden.” It sounded different from the usual Mitsuyo, more aggressive.
As I read more, I was thinking how Ozawa must find it kind of annoying. I got frightened and quickly stashed the notebook back in the drawer.
I’d always thought of Mitsuyo as an unselfish, disinterested person. But here I discovered a side I’d never seen before, her karma or something. Her hidden greed, I guess, and it made me feel sad, or sorry for her.
Anyhow, Mitsuyo and Ozawa broke up before they graduated from high school. Rumor had it that he started to like another girl who attended the after-school college prep course he was in. Mitsuyo never said a thing to me about it. And I never dared ask… I don’t remember her getting all upset or crying when they broke up. Maybe she did cry, but off by herself… Anyway, it was all a long time ago.
After we graduated from high school, there were really only two guys she went out with. Neither relationship lasted very long. Mitsuyo isn’t the type, like me, to play around with guys much. Sometimes I’ve wished she were a bit more outgoing. We’re living together now, but deep down I think sometimes I’m doing this all for her sake, not mine. Like if I got married, she’d be alone the rest of her life.
I really like my sister. She’s sort of introverted, but I do want her to be happy.
I don’t remember when it was, exactly, but I was on a bus and just happened to glance out and see Mitsuyo pedaling her bike with this very happy expression on her face. Now that I think about it, this was just about the time she started exchanging e-mails with Yuichi Shimizu.
Body temperature has a smell to it, Mitsuyo found. Just like smells can mix together, so can body temperatures.
When the phone rang signaling that their time was up, Yuichi was still on top of Mitsuyo. The thermostat was set too high in the love hotel and their bodies were glowing with a sheen of sweat. Yuichi had beautiful skin. His beautiful skin was covered with sweat as it penetrated Mitsuyo’s body.
Worried about the phone, Yuichi stopped moving for a moment and Mitsuyo called out, “Don’t stop!”
So he ignored the phone. A few minutes later there was a knock on the door, but until then he continued to penetrate her.
“Okay, okay! We’re leaving!” Yuichi growled. As soon as he yelled out, he penetrated even deeper inside Mitsuyo and she bit her lip.
Fifteen minutes had passed since Yuichi said they’d be out soon. Holding his sweaty body under the blanket, Mitsuyo laughed, “Aren’t you hungry?”
His response, as he lay there panting, was to kick off the blanket.
“There’s a really good grilled-eel place nearby,” Mitsuyo said.
The blanket fell to the floor and the two of them, naked and clinging to each other, were reflected in the mirror next to them. Yuichi was the first to get up, the vertebrae of his back clearly reflected in the mirror.
“It’s an authentic eel place, they have grilled eel without sauce and everything.”
As Yuichi started to get out of bed, Mitsuyo grabbed his hand and pulled at it. “You want to go there?” she asked. Yuichi twisted around and looked at her for a while, and finally gave a small nod.
Mitsuyo got out of bed and headed for the bathroom. “We don’t have time for that,” she heard Yuichi caution her.
“We’re already over the time limit and will have to pay extra,” she said.
It was a cute little bathroom with yellow tiles. I wish they had a window, Mitsuyo mused. She could picture a window and outside that a small garden, and Yuichi washing his car.
“After we have eel you better take me to the lighthouse!” Mitsuyo called out. There was no reply, but she went ahead and enjoyed a hot shower. It wasn’t even two o’clock yet. When she thought of the long weekend ahead, the hot water splashing on her seemed like it was singing and dancing for joy.
“If we don’t have time, why don’t we take a shower together?” Mitsuyo shouted out to Yuichi over the sound of the water.
“Is Yuichi Shimizu your real name?”
Staring straight ahead, Yuichi nodded.
They’d left the love hotel and were in the car heading toward the eel restaurant. Mitsuyo was still warm from the shower.
“Well, then I have to apologize. My name is Mitsuyo Magome. I was using Shiori because-”
“It’s okay,” Yuichi interrupted her. “Everyone uses fake names at first.”
“Everyone? You mean you’ve met that many girls like this?”
The road was empty of other cars and they didn’t get stopped by traffic lights. Every time they approached a traffic light it turned green.
“Well, that’s okay.”
Since Yuichi didn’t respond, Mitsuyo withdrew her question.
“This is the same road I used to use to go to high school,” Mitsuyo said as she gazed at the passing scenery.
“See that sign for the discount shoe place over there? If you turn there and go straight, there’s our high school, in the middle of a bunch of fields. And if you go back on this road toward the station there’s my old elementary and junior high schools… And a bit further down this road toward Tosu is where I used to work… I guess I’ve never really left this road, have I… All I’ve done is go back and forth along this one road all my life… That place I used to work at was a factory for food products. All the other girls my age said it was monotonous work and they hated it, but I didn’t mind that kind of production-line work.”
Their car was stopped at a rare red light and Yuichi, stroking the steering wheel, turned toward Mitsuyo.
“It’s the same with me,” he murmured. Mitsuyo inclined her head, at first not knowing what he was talking about, and he went on. “I’ve always stayed close to home. All the schools I went to-elementary, junior, and senior high-are all just down the road from my house.”
“But you live near the sea, right? I envy you. I mean, look where I live.”
The light changed and Yuichi slowly accelerated. Mitsuyo’s hometown, a dreary succession of stores along the road, flowed by.
“Oh, there it is! You see the eel-shaped sign? It really is good, and pretty cheap, too.”
She was starving. She hadn’t felt this hungry in ages.
During the morning Keigo Masuo slipped out of the sauna, trying not to be noticed.
He’d wanted to sleep in the nap room until past noon, but as the number of visitors declined, he was afraid the staff might start to notice him. He couldn’t believe that a “Wanted” flyer with his photo on it had made its way all the way to this sauna in Nagoya, but still, when he’d gotten the locker key from the guy at the front desk a while ago, he could swear the man gave him a strange look.
Numb from lack of sleep, Keigo came out onto the street, and the combination of the bright winter sky and the fact that he’d been in a darkened room hit him, and he stood there for a moment, dizzy in the light.
He headed off in the direction of Nagoya Station, checking how much he had in his wallet. He’d withdrawn five hundred thousand yen when he left Fukuoka, so he should still be all right, but he couldn’t very well use his ATM card where he’d run to, so the cash he had on hand was his last resort.
It was sunny, but the wind was cold. The cold wind lashing the rows of skyscrapers around the station chilled him. The collar of his down jacket was clammy with sweat and grime. He’d bought new underwear and socks at a convenience store, but didn’t want to spend all his money on a new jacket.
As he came to the traffic circle in front of the station, Keigo took shelter from the wind behind a direction billboard. In front of him, crowds of people were streaming up from the underground shopping mall into the station.
Yesterday he’d read through a few of the newspapers at the sauna but didn’t find any reports of the murder. The talk shows had spent so much time covering it, but now they’d moved on to covering another murder that had taken place a few days ago: a housewife who’d grown exhausted taking care of her sick father-in-law had killed him. Not a single word about the murder at Mitsuse Pass.
Behind the direction billboard Keigo lit a cigarette. He took a puff and suddenly realized how hungry he was. He stamped out the cigarette and went down to the underground mall. Keigo walked down one step at a time, weaving his way through the hordes of people ascending the stairs toward the station. With each step, two thoughts came to him: At this rate I’ll never be able to escape. But I just don’t get it.
He’d never felt like he wanted to kill that girl. He’d never even wanted to have anything to do with her. But there was no doubt about it-he was the one who’d driven her to that freezing pass, and he was the one who had left her there.
As soon as Yoshino Ishibashi had climbed into his car on the street along Higashi Park, Keigo had started driving. He’d said they could go to test their courage at Mitsuse Pass, but soon after he started out he regretted it. Especially when Yoshino began talking about the friends she’d had dinner with.
“Those girls I was with when we met in that bar in Tenjin? You remember them, right?”
It appeared that Yoshino was silently agreeing to go for a drive with him, because she snapped on her seat belt.
“I don’t know.” Keigo shrugged, hoping to cut short the conversation, but she went on blabbing away.
“You remember. There were three of us? One was Sari? She’s tall and has a sort of stern-looking face…”
Keigo just drove around, speeding through intersections to beat the light. Before long they’d left Higashi Park far behind and the overpass for the city highway loomed above.
“Are you taking off from school tomorrow?” Yoshino asked.
Yoshino had, without asking, adjusted the car heater, and now was trying to open his CD case at her feet.
“Why are you asking?” He didn’t want to keep the conversation going and didn’t want her rummaging around in his CDs without permission.
“I was just thinking if we go for a drive now, it’ll be pretty late when we get back…” Yoshino placed the CD case on her lap, but didn’t open it.
“How ’bout you?” Keigo said, motioning with his chin.
Things had just happened, and here she was riding with him, but Keigo was irritated at himself for driving around aimlessly.
“Me? I have to go to work. But if I call in and tell them I’m going directly to see a client, then it doesn’t matter if I’m late.”
“What kind of job do you do?” Keigo asked without thinking, and Yoshino gave him a playful rap on the shoulder.
“I don’t believe it,” she said coquettishly. “I told you already-I work at an insurance company.”
Something must have made Yoshino happy, for she giggled. Keigo waited patiently for the laughter to subside and then said, coldly, “Something smells like garlic. Do you smell it?”
Yoshino’s expression froze and she clammed up.
Without a word, Keigo opened the passenger-side window. The cold wind blew Yoshino’s hair around. The garlic smell flowed out of the car, quickly replaced by chilly air swirling up around their legs.
The car had left the main shopping district behind without being stopped at a single red light, a rare feat.
Keigo thought Yoshino might not speak after being ridiculed like that, but she took a stick of peppermint gum out of her handbag and explained, “I had teppan gyoza for dinner.”
With the Christmas season in full swing, the trees along Tenjin were lit up, the sidewalks filled with couples strolling along arm in arm. Keigo stepped on the gas and blew past them.
“Sari and Mako seem to think that you and I are going out. I told them we aren’t, but they wouldn’t buy it.” Yoshino babbled on and on, chewing the gum with her back teeth. No matter how roughly Keigo swerved to change lanes or how much he slammed on the brakes, she wouldn’t stop talking.
“We’re not going out…” Keigo said coldly. Who the hell would ever go out with you? he said to himself.
“Keigo, what kind of girl do you like?”
“None in particular.”
“Isn’t there a type you like?”
To avoid answering, he sharply swerved and wound up on Route 263, the one that leads to Mitsuse Pass.
“You know, when I was taking a leak back there at the park, a gay guy tried to put the moves on me,” Keigo said, changing the subject.
“Are you serious? What’d you do?”
“I shouted, I’m gonna kill you! and he ran away. I wish they’d keep them out of places like that,” Keigo vented, but Yoshino didn’t seem particularly interested.
“Yeah,” she said, “but regular places are closed to them, right? So that’s the only place they can go. Don’t you feel a little sorry for them? I mean, there’re all kinds of people in the world.” She popped another stick of gum in her mouth.
Keigo had just been trying to change the subject and hadn’t expected her to argue with him. He didn’t know how to respond.
They’d left the showy shopping district behind and the road grew more deserted, but still the streetlights were strung with banners announcing Christmas sales. A pathetic scene, drained of all color and life.
Yoshino was silent until she spit out the gum and wrapped it in a tissue. She didn’t tell him she wanted to go back. He kept missing opportunities to pull off, and so they continued south along Route 263 toward the pass.
Up until they started to climb to the pass, they saw hardly any other cars coming in the opposite direction. In the rearview mirror Keigo occasionally caught a glimpse of the light of a car far behind them, but no cars ahead. Their headlights palely lit up the cold asphalt of the road over the mountain pass. Every time they rounded a curve their lights shone on the woods and the complex patterns of the bark on the trunks.
Yoshino continued to chatter, but Keigo ignored her and focused on his driving. Yoshino had pulled a CD out of the case without asking-“Oh, I love this song!” she’d said-and played a sugary ballad over and over.
As she was hitting the repeat button for the umpteenth time Keigo suddenly was struck by a thought: This is the kind of girl who’s going to get murdered by a guy someday. What kind of girl he meant he couldn’t say, exactly. But he was convinced that she was the sort of girl who could enrage a man so much he’d strike her down.
As Keigo maneuvered around the increasingly sharp curves, he thought about this girl beside him, happily humming along to the insipid ballad, and what the future held for her.
She’d work as an insurance saleswoman, save up a tidy sum of money, enjoy her days off, gazing at herself in the mirror of some brand-name stores. Who I really am… Who I really am… would become her pet phrase, but after working for three years, she’d finally realize that the image she’d created of herself wasn’t who she really was at all. She’d give up on carving out a life on her own, and somehow find a man and pour all her problems out on him. Which would only put the man in a bind. What are you going to do with my life, now that you’ve ruined it? This would become her new pet phrase, and her hopes for her children would swell in inverse proportion to her frustration with her husband. She’d compete with the other mothers at the park, eventually forming a neat little clique that would gossip and bad-mouth others. She wouldn’t realize it, but as her little clique grew tighter, she’d bad-mouth those outside her group exactly the way she did back in junior high, high school, and junior college.
“So how far are we gonna drive?”
“Hm?” Keigo said curtly to this sudden question. The ballad had finally ended, replaced by a strangely cheerful tune.
“Are you really going over the pass? There’s nothing beyond here. During the day there’s a good curry shop, and a bakery, but not this time of night… Oh, you know that noodle place we passed? It’s closed now, but have you ever been there? It’s supposed to be really good. One of my friends said so… What’s the matter? How come you’re so quiet?”
The words spilled out of her, as if in time to the cheerful music. She really does think we’re on a date, Keigo thought.
“Your family runs a really nice inn in Yufuin, right? And a big hotel in Beppu? So your mother must be the mistress of the places, huh? I bet that’s a lot of responsibility.”
“Yeah, my mother is the mistress of the place, but that’s nothing for you to worry about,” Keigo said. He surprised himself at how cold his voice was. Yoshino looked puzzled.
“The two of you are different types.”
“Huh?” Yoshino asked, still confused.
“My mother and you are different types of people. You’re more the maid type, don’t you think? If you were working in our inn, I mean.”
Keigo suddenly slammed on the brakes. Yoshino pitched forward.
When he’d spied the entrance to the tunnel, Keigo had instinctively turned off onto the older mountain road. Now they were almost at the summit of the pass.
“I want you to get out. I can’t stand having you in my car anymore.”
Keigo stared right into her eyes, but Yoshino was still stunned and his words didn’t register.
The upbeat song played on. Your love makes me strong, the lousy singer belted out, in a voice as appealing as fingernails scraping across glass.
“I want you to get out,” Keigo repeated, his voice flat, face expressionless.
“What are you talking about?”
In the dark car Yoshino’s eyes went wide. She tried to smile, hoping against hope that this was Keigo’s idea of testing her courage.
“You’re kind of a slut, you know that?”
“What?”
“How can you just jump into a guy’s car like this, without even thinking? Somebody you don’t even know? Most girls would refuse. The kind of girl who leaps at an invitation to go for a drive in the middle of the night isn’t my type. So just get out. Or do I have to kick you out?”
Keigo pushed her. She finally seemed to understand that this was no joke.
“But… if I get out here…”
“If you stand over there, somebody will stop and give you a ride. You’ll ride with anyone, right?”
Unsure what she should do, Yoshino clutched her handbag in her lap.
Ignoring her, Keigo reached over her and opened the passenger-side door. He gave it too hard a shove, and it swung open and banged against the guardrail. He could smell the cold soil outside, and the freezing mountains beyond.
“Get out!” Keigo commanded, giving Yoshino’s thin shoulder a shove.
Yoshino twisted aside, and his hand slipped off her shoulder and dug into her neck.
“Stop it!”
“I mean it! Get out!”
Keigo kept on pushing her resisting body, almost as if strangling her. He felt the warmth of her skin, which only made him more irritated. His thumb dug deep into her neck.
“All right! I get it,” Yoshino said, and unfastened her seat belt. Perhaps out of fear, her voice sounded strangely defiant. Keigo lifted one leg from under the steering wheel and, muttering, kicked Yoshino hard in the back.
“Ow!” Yoshino fell out and hit her head on the guardrail. The clang rang out, echoing down the guardrail and out into the pass.
To me, the name Mia fits her more than Yoshino Ishibashi. So is it okay if I call her that? Mia-chan?
I teach elementary school kids at an after-hours juku, so I’m used to hearing names like that that don’t sound exactly Japanese, the kind of names that are trendy now. In the class I teach, there’s a boy named Raymond, and girls named Sheru and Tiara. It’s enough to make a teacher pull out his hair.
As I’ve told you a couple of times already, I don’t have any interest in little kids. I just happen to be a juku teacher…
But anyhow, kids’ names these days sound kind of, you know, like the fake names girls use on dating Web sites. It’s like there’s an imbalance between the person and his name, and I remember when I first took roll call I felt sorry for them. They talk about gender-identity disorder, right? Pretty soon I think we’re going to see people with name-identity disorder.
So what I was saying was, other than Mia-chan I must have met about ten other girls on online dating sites. Mia-chan would have been the second, or maybe the third one I met. Her face and body weren’t exactly my type, but when I think about it, now I can see she was a kind, gentle sort of girl. When she showed up for our date and immediately asked me to reimburse her for the taxi it did upset me a little, I’ll admit it, but still there was something, I don’t know, sort of kind about her.
I mean, take a look at me. I’m fat and hairy, and look like a bulldog. No way I’m going to be popular with the ladies, and I’m not. But even a guy like me, if a girl says one nice thing it makes me feel like I’m not completely hopeless. Mia-chan was good at making a guy feel like that. But I could be wrong.
We were in the hotel, just after we’d done it, and I was about to pay her. All of a sudden she goes, “I wonder if we hadn’t met in the dating site if we would have hooked up.”
“You never would have given me the time of day,” I said, laughing, but Mia-chan, with this sort of sad look on her face, said, “I wonder. There is the age-difference thing, but when I was in junior high, I really liked my biology teacher and he was kind of chubby, too.”
Yeah, I know it was just an empty compliment. I was handing over the money to her, and threw in an extra two thousand yen. But Miachan seemed like she really meant it. She had this look on her face like, Yeah, maybe if we had just run across each other on the street, we might have gotten together.
Men are idiots and we never forget words like that. Oh, well, guys who are popular would forget it right away, but for someone like me who has worried about how to talk to girls ever since college, even a transparent, empty compliment stays with you. It gives you more confidence. This was a long time ago, but back when I was in college one of the older girls in the tennis club I was in said, “Hayashi-kun, you understand people right away. When I’m with you, I feel like you see right through me.” It’s weird, but after that I came to rely on what she said. Whenever I wondered what kind of man I was, I always remembered what that girl told me… She told me later she had no memory of ever having said that, but to me these were truly important words. It might be a bit of an exaggeration, but over the past twenty years those words have helped keep me going as a man.
You must think this is pretty stupid, right? That I’m a real loser. But a guy like me needs a woman like that. It doesn’t matter if it’s just transparent flattery. Without that, I’d be left with nothing.
Mia-chan was the kind of girl who said those things. Maybe not consciously, but she’s the sort of girl who might say something that a guy like me would cling to for twenty years.
When I heard that she’d been murdered, it made me sad. She’s just a girl I met online and saw only once, but I’ll never forget her. “The guys I respect the most,” she told me when I took her to an Italian restaurant, “are the ones who know good food.”
After he’d finished breakfast on Saturday, Yuichi went out without telling anyone where he was going. Fusae thought he was going out for a drive as usual and would be back for dinner, so she made meatballs, one of his favorites. But Yuichi never came back, so she went ahead and ate the slightly too sweet meatballs herself.
On Sunday morning he still hadn’t come home. Yuichi often went out, aimlessly, on weekends and spent the night away, but for Fusae, being alone in the house only brought back unpleasant memories. Memories of Dr. Tsutsumishita-the man who held those health seminars at the community center-and being surrounded by rough young men who’d forced her to buy that expensive herbal medicine. It was such a frightening experience that she remained upset and shaky.
In the afternoon she called Yuichi’s cell phone. He picked up right away.
“What d’you want?” he said, like he couldn’t be bothered.
“Where are you?” Fusae asked.
“Saga.”
“What are you doing in Saga?”
Fusae had expected that he would be driving and would hang up right away, but when he didn’t she asked him this.
Yuichi didn’t respond. “What d’you want?” he repeated.
Fusae asked him when he would be back. Again Yuichi evaded her question, merely saying, “I won’t be needing dinner,” and hung up.
After this, Fusae went to the hospital in Nagasaki to see Katsuji. She listened to his usual complaints about the nurses for a good half hour, then she thanked the nurses and left.
In the bus on the way back the voices of those men forcing her to buy the herbal medicine came back to her in a rush.
“What d’you mean you’re not going to buy the medicine!”
“Just who the hell do you think you’re dealing with, old woman?”
“I don’t care if you don’t sign, we’re still gonna come to your place every single day!”
The men’s voices pulled her back to that place and time, and seated on the special Silver Seat reserved for the elderly in the bus, she began to shake uncontrollably.
Yuichi finally came back home after eleven that night. As she heard the front door open, Fusae, in bed, felt relieved and called out, “I’m glad you’re back! You want to take a bath?” she went on. She hesitated to get up out of bed, which was just getting warm.
“Nah, I already took one,” she heard Yuichi say from beyond the sliding paper door.
Fusae eventually left her bedroom and followed after Yuichi into the kitchen. Her bare feet on the hallway floor were ice cold. Yuichi had taken some sausages out of the refrigerator.
“You must be hungry,” Fusae said.
“Not really,” Yuichi said, but he ripped open the plastic package with his teeth and crammed a sausage into his mouth.
“You want me to make something?”
“No. I already had dinner.”
Fusae called out to Yuichi as he was exiting the kitchen.
“What?” Yuichi said, annoyed, as he continued to gnaw on the sausage.
Fusae felt oppressed by the look on his face and she sank limply to a chair. She hadn’t planned to tell him, but the words just spurted out.
“The other day on the way back from the hospital… You remember the man who held the seminar at the community center?… The one about herbal medicine?”
This was her own house, and this was Yuichi with her, so she was safe, but still she was on edge, as if she would start shaking again at any moment. Just putting that experience into words frightened her. She had to force herself to breathe.
But just as she was going to continue, the cell phone in Yuichi’s pocket rang. Without a word to her, Yuichi answered.
“Hello?… Ah, yeah. Yeah, I just got back… Tomorrow?… I have to get up at five, but it’s okay… Yeah, me, too.”
As he turned the doorknob, Yuichi looked happy.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll call you tomorrow… Huh?… Yeah, I know. Okay, then… What? I told you it’s okay…”
Fusae sat there eavesdropping. Just when the conversation seemed about over, it started up again. Yuichi took his hand off the doorknob, ran his fingers along the pillar, and turned over a page on the calendar that was pasted to the wall.
It had to be a girl on the other end, probably the person he spent the weekend with. Fusae had never seen Yuichi look so happy. Well, maybe he was happy at other times, but secretly, somewhere Fusae was unaware of. In the twenty years since she’d taken Yuichi in, she’d never seen him with such a look of utter bliss.