Real World

by Natsuo Kirino

We could hear the front door open, and it sounded like Dad had come home. He didn’t say, “I’m home,” or anything, but cleared his throat, so we knew it was him. He puttered around noisily, switching on the AC in the living room, taking a bath, opening the fridge door. Dad works at a metropolitan bank and leaves early in the morning and comes home late every night. Nobody was paying him any attention.

  “Good timing,” I said. “Dad’s back.”

  “What the hell for? Too bad he wasn’t run over. Maybe if we’re lucky he’ll be hit by a taxi,” Yukinari muttered. I imagined this was how he spent every night, surfing the Web, muttering expletives.

  “I wonder if the cops are checking out this Web site.”

  “Of course they are,” Yukinari answered coldly, and was printing out the photo of Worm. “You can have this, sis. Put it up in your room.”

  “Why?”

  “A nice memento. Or you can give it to Toshi.”

  This startled me. Yukinari had no idea that the four of us were in contact with Worm. The photo most definitely would be a souvenir of our involvement in this whole affair. And a memento revealing the essence of who we really were. If Worm got caught, the photos posted online would be of the four of us, with some caption like, “The four high school girls who aided and abetted.” Kirarin would no doubt be the most popular. I took the photo of Worm out of the printer and went back to my room. Right then my cell phone rang.

  “It’s me. So how’re you doing with it?”

  It was Worm. No “Hi, can you talk now?” or anything. The guy wouldn’t know good manners if they bit him on the leg. I switched over to my control-the-temper mode. His last call was last night. Which means they haven’t caught him yet, I thought, as I gazed at the photo of him, at his scrawny neck.

  “What’d ya mean, ‘it’?”

  “My criminal manifesto.” Worm must have been outside, because every once in a while I heard cars driving by.

  “Didn’t you say you wanted it to be a novel?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. A poem’s fine. Some cool lines, like from a play. I’m counting on you.”

  Since he’s having somebody else write it, you know that in the end if he doesn’t like it he’s going to change parts, or maybe toss the whole thing anyway.

  “Why not just take something from a manga?” I asked coldly.

  “It’s gotta be original. I’m a high school student, for God’s sake! Can’t wind up losing out to some fourteen-year-old kid.”

  “Then I think you’d better give up the whole idea. You’ve already totally lost out.”

  “You’re a real slut, you know that?” Worm sounded more relaxed than the night before. “You’re getting to be just like my old lady.”

  I decided then and there I was never going to have any kids. The last thing I want is to give birth to some idiot like him.

  I pretended to be hurt. “Don’t say things like that.”

  “Sorry…”

  “Okay then. I’ll start writing the thing,” I said, lying through my teeth, but trying to sound meek and obedient.

  “Then get going. Have to get it done before I can go kill my father.”

  I didn’t go there; instead I asked him where he was.

  “Karuizawa,” Worm answered, not wary at all. “It’s nice and cool here. We broke into a vacant summer cottage. Taking a break. Tomorrow we move out to the front lines.”

  “Is Kirarin with you?”

  “Hello? Terauchi? It’s me, Kirarin.”

  Instead of Worm answering, Kirarin came on the line all of a sudden but soon stopped talking. “Go away,” I heard her say, and then Worm complained, “I’m not listening.”

  “Dude. Sounds like you and the murderer are getting along just fine,” I told her.

  “Stop it. Nothing’s happening. I’m with him ’cause he threatened me.”

  For somebody being threatened, she sounded pretty cheerful.

  “I hear you’re in Karuizawa.”

  “That’s right. We just got back from eating ramen. Mount Asama looks totally weird at night,” she said tranquilly. “I’m going back to Tokyo tomorrow, so don’t worry about me. But there’s something I wanted to ask you, Terauchi. I don’t see anything about Worm in the papers or on TV. Do you have any idea of how the murder’s being reported?”

  “There doesn’t seem to be anything in the media about it. His picture’s online, though. On the Internet people seem to really be into it.”

  With my toe I played with the photo of Worm. So Kirarin was doing it with a guy who looked like Shinsaku Takasugi, I thought, strangely moved.

  “You’re kidding,” she said. “What should we do? They know what he looks like.”

  Kirarin let out this exaggerated sigh. She was taking Worm’s side now, I noticed. Worm came back on the line.

  “Is my photo really online? Gotta be those jerks at school. What a crappy thing to do. Course, if I was in their shoes I’d probably do the same. I knew it was going to happen sometime, but didn’t figure it’d be this soon. But I’ve got a girl with me, so they won’t recognize me.”

  When he said this, it struck me that Kirarin wasn’t coming home as easily as she thought. Worm found it convenient to have Kirarin with him, and he was too sly to let her go. Kirarin was a cute girl whom everybody liked, so maybe I shouldn’t have let on about his photo being on the Internet. But being with Worm was something Kirarin had decided on her own. A Kirarin who was totally different from me.

  “So you’re serious about wanting a manifesto?” I asked.

  “Yep. Any good ideas?”

  “How about this? ‘Why didn’t you kill your father while you were at it? Heh, heh, heh.’” What my brother had written online.

  Worm reacted immediately. “That’s just not me. Writing someone else’s impressions is not going to get us anywhere. ‘Death is lighter than a feather, and I’m resigned to it.’ Now that’s pretty cool.”

  “The Imperial Rescript for Soldiers and Sailors. Fits you to a T.”

  “Guess so,” Worm replied, giving my indifferent response a bit of thought. Then, as if he’d roused himself, he said, “Okay, now that I have a slogan, maybe I should go and kill the old man?”

  What’re you talking about, slogans? This isn’t China, pal. And I had my doubts about whether such crummy words would do. Worm didn’t understand the concept of something that can’t be undone, after all. At this point, Worm meant nothing to me. Less than a foreign body or a speck of poison.

  “Don’t ask me. How should I know? Hey, where exactly are you in Karuizawa?”

  “We just left a ramen place along Highway Eighteen. We’re gonna stop by a convenience store and then go back.”

  “Yeah? Well, take care then.”

  I said this without meaning it and hung up. I immediately dialed Toshi to give her an update. I’d already told her about last night and was sure she wanted to catch up on everything.

  “So Kirarin’s planning to stay with him?” Toshi said. “This is the worst possible scenario.”

  “I suppose so, but you have to remember that’s what she chose to do.”

  “Terauchi, you really are cold, you know that?” Toshi said in her usual tone.

  “Can’t help it. Kirarin’s seventeen and an adult.”

  “I know, but what’re we going to do?”

  “When they arrest him, they’ll check his cell phone records and then we’ll be in deep trouble. Man—how could this happen?”

  “I know,” Toshi agreed. “I never imagined I’d get involved. An accomplice to murder—and aiding and abetting a fugitive. Or maybe just the aiding and abetting part? This is all because Yuzan helped him out.”

  “But didn’t it start out by you lying?”

  Toshi clammed up. Finally she let out a painful breath.

  “I guess so,” she said. “I felt sorry for the guy. I didn’t want to help him, but I also didn’t want him to get caught. So I just let things run their course, which means, yeah, I’m pr
etty responsible here.”

  “I think that he wanted us to get involved,” I said, voicing a doubt I’d been having for a long time. “I mean, it was strange from the beginning that he’d phone all of us like that using your cell phone.”

  “But why would he want to do that?”

  “You got me.” But I felt I could understand what Worm was feeling. Loneliness. Sometimes that awful feeling causes you to do something stupid.

  “You know,” Toshi said, “I still can’t fathom what Yuzan did. Why she had to leap into it like that. And speaking of Yuzan, I haven’t heard from her. Has she called you?”

  I could pretty much guess why there’d been no word from her. She realized that Worm didn’t like a mannish girl like her, so she didn’t feel like helping him run away anymore.

  Right after I talked to Toshi I could faintly hear a car pull up into our apartment’s parking lot. I’d closed the window because of the AC but now I opened it and looked down to the street level, seven floors below. Over in the corner of the lot was a four-wheel-drive vehicle backing into a spot. Not Mom’s car. She wouldn’t be back this early. I lay back down on the bed and gazed at the photo of Worm. It was too stressful, so I tossed it underneath the bed, where it stirred up the dust. I was in a self-induced depression. Welcome to my Real World.

  * * *

  I’ve taken the train to school ever since elementary school. My parents wanted me to go to a private elementary school in the city. It takes thirty-five minutes from P Station in Fuchu City, the Tokyo suburb where we live, to S Station in Shibuya Ward. Since the train goes all the way into the center of Tokyo, it’s always packed.

  I think it’s cruel to make a little elementary school girl ride the train like that every day to school. P Station is in the suburbs, so the train isn’t crowded when I get on. It’s not like I can always get a seat, but there are usually very few people standing and you can relax. Mom told me when she saw how uncrowded the train was she felt confident I could commute by myself. At first Dad said it’s okay, he’d go with me, but after a while he was transferred to some other city where he had to live by himself. So I was left alone. Dad came back to live with us when I was in fourth grade, but he didn’t work in a downtown office anymore.

  I’d squeeze myself into a space next to the door and stand there. With each station the number of passengers increased and I’d start to get squashed. One time I was pushed from behind, fell forward, and cut my cheek on the metal clasp of a woman’s handbag. Another time my backpack hit an office worker who was sitting at the end of the row of seats and she shoved me away. After that I stopped standing next to the door.

  Countless times I tried to get off at S station, where my school was, only to find myself stuck between people, unable to shake my backpack loose, so I’d have to get off at the next station. One time I felt faint, leaned against some old guys, and wound up going all the way to Shinjuku. But never once did any adult try to help me.

  “Why is an elementary school kid riding such a packed train anyway?” this middle-aged office worker once complained to the guy sitting next to him when my backpack was poking him in the side and he had to twist away. I looked up then, trying to gauge the reaction of the other passengers. The middle-aged guy he’d spoken to just smiled sympathetically at what the other guy had said.

  “Poor kid. Elementary school children should go to their local school.”

  “Little girl, you have it tough every day, don’t you? Aren’t you worn out?” the first middle-aged guy said, giving me a hard time. “Were you the one who said you wanted to go to a private school? I really doubt it.”

  “Have you told your mother how tough it is for you riding the trains? How you’re causing trouble for other passengers?” said the guy next to him.

  They were blaming my parents, not me, but I was the real object of their criticism, the weakest link, a tiny girl lugging a heavy backpack on a packed train. This was like heaven’s punishment on my parents for choosing this cruel commute for me. A punishment which consisted of the unfair maliciousness, the truly awful way I was treated. This was my reality.

  One morning I’d caught a cold and wasn’t feeling well. It was pouring outside so the windows were shut tight, clouding up with all the CO2 the passengers were breathing out. I started to feel really bad, suddenly couldn’t stand it anymore, and threw up my breakfast on the lap of a person seated in front of me. It was a nicely dressed young woman, an office worker by the look of her, and when she saw this mess—the half-digested toast and stinky yogurt—all over her blue skirt, she was close to tears.

  “Damn! Why’d you do that? I’m going to work now and what am I supposed to do?”

  There wasn’t much she could do. With tears in her eyes, she did her best to wipe herself off with a tissue. The other passengers didn’t say a word, putting up with the stink of my vomit, trying their best to edge away whenever I frowned and they thought I might hurl again. No one tried to console me or comfort me. After that, I avoided standing in front of the seats, too.

  When I got into the upper grades in elementary school, I got physically stronger and no longer threw up or had trouble getting off at the right station. But worse things began to happen. Perverts would surround me on the train. It was always the same men. I knew what these guys looked like, so I tried all sorts of things to avoid them—taking a different car, changing the time I left for school or home. But even if I could avoid this group of perverts there were always new ones, no matter which train I rode.

  A few men would surround me and when I couldn’t escape, they would feel me up. One liked to stroke my bare thighs. Another stroked my butt. And another would press my breasts, which were just beginning to show. If I yelled, they’d quickly turn away, transformed in an instant into ordinary office workers and students. But then after a while they’d be back at it. I was easy prey for perverts. I was young, weaker than them, and an obvious target. I couldn’t stand it. Even though I was only in grade school, it taught me a painful lesson—that adult men are dirty and my enemies. I complained to my parents, telling them I didn’t want to go to school anymore, didn’t want to ride the train. But I never told them the real reason. I worried about them finding out that they’d put me in a situation where I had to suffer like this. As I continued to commute, before I knew it I was acting more adult than my own parents.

  One day when I felt the perverts start to approach, I laughed out loud, this foolish laugh. And guess what? The pervs looked startled and scared. When I laughed at each one, he’d give me this revolted look and edge away. I’d finally discovered a method to drive them away: by changing something inside me, exchanging it for something else, and acting like an idiot. This is what I mean by something irreparable.

  Actually there’re other irreparable things, too. One of them started when my mother was having an affair. I guess it’s more accurate to say she fell in love, rather than just had an affair. If I brought it up with Kirarin, she’d probably say something like “Nothing unusual about that. Happens all the time” and give examples of other people who were having affairs. Toshi would sympathize with my mom and say, “Even mothers fall in love at least once.” Only fastidious Yuzan would look down at her feet, not trying to find the right words to say.

  If Worm found out that his mother was having an affair, maybe he’d still hate her, but I wonder if he might not have killed her. Even though this is the road to something that can’t be undone.

  I could live with the fact that Mom was having an affair. Not for Kirarin’s reasons—that it’s a commonplace event, nothing to worry about. Or for Toshi’s—that everyone should be free to fall in love. I didn’t accept it because of any reasonable arguments like these; rather, I could forgive the unforgivable because I loved my mom more than anybody else, so I accepted what she was doing. I submitted to her, in other words—kind of like the way I accepted riding the train to school every day. When you don’t have the strength to fight against fate, you just have to accept what c
omes. That’s something that can’t be undone.

  When my kid brother started elementary school, my mother, who’d left her job for years to raise her children, decided to go back to work. I was in sixth grade at the time. My mother worked as a freelance producer. At the time I didn’t know what this sort of work involved, that’s just what it said on her business card. It isn’t like a movie or TV producer, Mom explained to me—what she did was create business plans, helping to bring people together. I’d always had this one image of my mother and I remember what a shock it was when I saw this totally different side of her. For thirty-eight, she was still young and beautiful. She was a forceful person, overflowing with energy; since she never hesitated to argue with Dad, it’s no exaggeration to say that in our family she was the one in charge. At the same time, I wasn’t yet the “complicated” person I later became.

  Mom stayed away from work for so long because Dad didn’t want her to go back until my kid brother started elementary school. When my kid brother began attending the local public school, I remember the argument Mom and Dad had on the first day of classes. Mom wanted to put my brother into an after-school program, but Dad felt sorry for him and said he was too young. I was listening in the next room, thinking, Hey, if you feel sorry for him, think about me, riding the packed train to school every day! But Dad was confident he was doing the right thing, sending me to this expensive private school because I could get a better education there. Even if I told him what it was really like for me, I doubt his confidence would have wavered.