by Kōji Suzuki
Saeko found herself drained of the strength to continue walking. She grasped Hashiba’s arm.
“What’s wrong?” Hashiba turned to ask.
Saeko’s face was ashen. “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“You mean you …”
He hadn’t seen it. The realization sank in as Saeko registered Hashiba’s nonplussed expression. Her arm still looped through Hashiba’s, Saeko pressed both hands to her chest and stood quaking. The night air seemed to have grown suddenly chillier.
Just seconds ago, she had seen it as clear as day—whether it had been a ghost or a living soul, she didn’t know. But a man with a face identical to Seiji Fujimura’s had wafted slowly down to the ground as if to retrace the path of the body that had fallen a moment earlier. Or had it been the opposite? Perhaps the apparition had emerged from the body and floated up into the sky?
Had it fallen down to the ground, or risen up into the air? The vision had been so strange that Saeko wasn’t sure. Clearly, the figure she had seen had lacked the ordinary mass of a physical body.
In any case, Saeko felt an urgent need to get away. First, however, they would have to exit the building.
“Let’s go.” Saeko’s voice trembled as she grasped Hashiba’s hand and pulled him along.
Once outside, she turned immediately to the right, staring straight ahead as she tried to get away from the building. Even so, she glimpsed the feet of the fallen man through a gap in the flock of rubberneckers. The legs of the man’s tracksuit left his ankles exposed, and his bare feet were strangely white. He seemed to be lying face down, and his pale legs convulsed repeatedly, causing his toes to flap against the tree’s roots.
Saeko tried to look away, but as she did, she caught sight of the man’s hands. His shoulders seemed dislocated; his arms were bent at the elbows, and both hands lay next to his legs, palms up, at what would have normally been an impossible angle. The man’s hands also trembled with each convulsion, as if they were signaling to Saeko. If she placed her hands on her hips and let them shake with her body, they’d probably execute a similar dance. Bye, they seemed to be saying in a half-mocking tone.
No. Perhaps it was the opposite. Perhaps rather than bidding her farewell, Seiji was beckoning to her: Come, come …
The sensation of Seiji Fujimura standing by her bedside at the hospital in Ina, prodding the lump in her breast with his finger, came back to her. At any moment, those trembling hands seemed as if they might reach out towards her neckline again. She quickened her pace, dragging Hashiba away from the scene.
Given that he was a director at a TV station, Hashiba probably would have liked to stay longer at the scene of the incident to investigate. At the very least, he probably wanted to determine whether the fall had been a result of foul play or rather a suicide or accident. It might not yield a major news story, but it was likely to show up on the next day’s talk shows.
But Saeko was in no state to worry about that right now. In a haze of panic, her footsteps rang out loudly as she hurried off as quickly as possible, her gaze averted, pulling Hashiba along by the hand.
2She needed something stronger than just beer or wine. Something to calm her nerves.
When she spotted a bar, Saeko shot Hashiba a pleading glance and pushed open the smoked-glass door.
It wasn’t until they were seated at the bar that she suddenly felt a twinge of embarrassment at having dragged him along so forcefully. Sighing deeply, she ordered a dark rum on the rocks to quell the emotional turmoil she was feeling.
“What’s come over you?” Hashiba leaned slightly backwards on his stool, taken aback by Saeko’s sudden transformation.
“Didn’t you see that?”
“See what?”
“The face of the person who fell.”
“Of course not! We were too far away for one thing, and for another he landed face down with his head half hidden in the tree roots.”
Hashiba was right. They had only seen the back of the falling man, and even when exiting the building, they had only glimpsed his form through a thick crowd of people at a distance of several meters. How could they possibly have seen who he was? And yet, Saeko knew. The image of Seiji Fujimura’s face was branded into her mind even if it hadn’t passed through her retinas. No matter how she tried to dismiss it, his visage refused to disappear.
In a single drag, Saeko downed half of her glass of rum.
“It was Seiji Fujimura. I’m absolutely sure of it,” she informed Hashiba.
Hashiba was reaching for his drink but froze with a choked exclamation of surprise. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he managed.
There were two solid reasons for his denial. For one thing, it would have been too bizarre a coincidence for someone Saeko and Hashiba both knew to happen to fall to his death right in front of them. For another, there was no way they could have seen the man’s face from where they had been. How could Saeko possibly know who it was?
But as he watched Saeko tremble with fright, Hashiba didn’t know what to think. Indeed, the man’s tracksuit had seemed familiar. And even from the back, the figure had borne something of a resemblance to Seiji Fujimura.
An ambulance’s siren pierced the silence, far away at first, but growing steadily closer.
“I’ll go have a look,” Hashiba said.
The bar where they were now seated was only a couple of hundred meters from the scene of the fall. If he ran, Hashiba would get there sooner than the ambulance. Perhaps he would be able to confirm the man’s identity.
Saeko wanted to know the truth, too. Moments ago, she had been too distressed to think of anything but getting away from the scene. But now that she’d had a moment to calm down, she wanted to get to the bottom of what she had seen.
Please, let it be just my imagination …
Saeko hoped she had been wrong somehow. She didn’t welcome the idea that the bizarre vision she’d had might actually reflect reality. Especially if that reality involved Seiji Fujimura.
She still remembered vividly how she’d felt in the hospital in Ina when she’d sensed someone crawling up to her bed in the middle of the night, and her terror when she’d realized that it was Seiji Fujimura. When she recalled how his fingers had probed her breast, she was overcome with the image of hundreds of earthworms slithering all over her body. When Seiji had handed her the key to the Fujimuras’ home, it had been warm from his body heat and damp from the sweat of his palm. She still had it in her handbag, wrapped in a tissue.
Saeko shuddered, trying to dispel the repugnant image.
I don’t want to be alone tonight, she realized.
She had no desire to spend another night in that state of terrified isolation she’d experienced in the hospital room. She wanted company—even her ex-husband would do. In her current state, if she tried to sleep alone, she knew she would be unable to distinguish reality from nightmare. She would be Seiji Fujimura’s helpless prey.
Please …
Just as Saeko pictured the face of the man she most wanted to remain by her side that night, it appeared in the doorway of the bar. Less than four minutes had elapsed since he’d shot out the door.
Hashiba wore an expression of deep consternation as he approached the counter and weakly set one hand on his stool.
“You were right,” he told her.
Instinctively, Saeko closed both eyes. Despite her fervent prayers, her bizarre vision had now been confirmed by another witness.
In confused tones, Hashiba recounted what he had just seen. But Saeko wasn’t listening. She didn’t have to. She remembered—the broken legs splayed at an unnatural angle, the two palms that seemed to beckon as they convulsed.
Her eyes still squeezed shut, Saeko’s hands searched the counter for her drink. Finding it, she downed the rest of her rum in a single drought. Only the ice cubes remained in her glass, clinking frigidly.
Hashiba continued. “At the moment, there’s no indication of foul play. He was probabl
y tired of running from his debtors and threw himself off the roof of a building in despair. They didn’t know yet if he’s going to make it, but there’s no question that he’s in serious condition.”
Saeko released her glass and let her hand wander over to Hashiba’s stool to squeeze his hand. Cold and damp from holding her glass, her hand was quickly enveloped in Hashiba’s warmth. He responded by stroking the grooves between her fingers delicately with his fingertips.
I don’t want to let go of this hand tonight.
Saeko interlaced her fingers tightly around Hashiba’s, gripping them with surprising strength for a woman.
3That evening, when Saeko took his hand tightly in hers, Hashiba had a hunch that he might wind up spending the night with her. But when she pulled him along, he didn’t realize they were headed for her apartment until she said, “Would you come home with me tonight?” Her speech was oddly rushed, as if to convince him that it was the drink talking.
After they left the bar and got into a taxi, Saeko directed the driver into a quiet residential neighborhood in Minato Ward. During the ride, and even as they emerged onto the sidewalk, Saeko made no move to release Hashiba’s hand. The strength of her grip seemed to convey a fear that he might run away if she didn’t hold on tightly enough.
But Hashiba didn’t have the slightest intention of running away. When he had invited Saeko to have dinner with him, he’d harbored a distant hope for this outcome.
When had Saeko begun to get under his skin? It seemed to Hashiba that she had first sparked his interest at the initial production meeting when she’d expressed herself in such a unique register. Ever since, his interest had escalated rapidly, into romantic desire. Saeko was completely different from any woman he’d ever met. Her manner of speaking—a mixture of worldliness and innocence—seemed fresh and original, and sometimes downright comical. And yet Saeko always seemed perplexed by his amusement, cocking her head to one side quizzically and following up with an even quainter string of expressions.
When Hashiba lay alone in his bed at night, he recalled Saeko’s words and expressions that day and basked in a cozy happiness. Thoughts of her seemed to melt away the stress of his job, and before he knew it he was drifting off into a peaceful slumber.
Hashiba had gotten the sense that Saeko might reciprocate his interest, but loath to give the impression of a director who hit on every woman in his path, he had made an effort to be very careful in how he approached her.
He hadn’t dared to dream that the object of his yearning would grant him such an unexpected boon.
Just a few meters from where the taxi had let them off, Saeko led Hashiba through an opening in the tall hedge that lined the sidewalk. When they turned the corner, a luxury apartment building opened its glass doors in welcome, looking for all the world like a five-star hotel. Enclosed on all sides only by thick plate glass windows, the lobby was completely visible from outside, and its chandeliers and the intricate glass sculptures shimmered like gemstones.
The courtyard between the building and hedge was densely landscaped, creating an oasis of greenery even in the heart of Tokyo. Constructed at the dawn of the bubble era, the building was more than two decades old, but there was no question that the magnificent twelve-story building was still the epitome of haute style.
Without the slightest hesitation, Saeko strode through the vestibule and opened the sealed doors with a card key. Hashiba followed along silently, his mind swirling with questions he was unable to voice.
In the courtyard, there was a fountain with a pool around it, cleverly designed so that the water extended into the interior of the lobby. Saeko and Hashiba were standing on a floor elevated just above the water’s surface. A water court, Hashiba believed it was called. The entire floor was built of strong glass that covered the shallow pool, so that it felt almost like walking across the surface of a frozen lake. Hashiba couldn’t imagine how much it cost just to maintain such an extravagant contrivance. From the paintings on the walls to the sculptures in the hallway, every aspect of the building gave off an air of dazzling sophistication.
As a director, Hashiba had visited the homes of numerous celebrities, but nothing he had seen before even approached the opulence this building exuded.
“Do you actually live here?” he asked, his face a mask of stupefaction.
Saeko simply nodded, stopping in the elevator hall.
Of the two elevators, the one on the left lacked floor-indicator lamps. Only after they entered it—Saeko inserted a card key to open its doors—did Hashiba realize that the elevator was exclusive to the penthouse apartment and connected it to an underground parking lot as well as the lobby.
Where is she taking me? Hashiba wondered, still completely dazed. His hand had gone limp in Saeko’s grasp.
He had a general idea of Saeko’s background. Her father had vanished when she was seventeen, and after college she had gone to work at a publishing company. She had quit upon marrying, only to divorce later without children. Now she supported herself as a freelance writer.
Those facts added up to an image of a tough divorcée struggling to make it on her own. Hashiba had imagined her living in a one-bedroom apartment at best, a cramped living space that doubled as an office with books and magazines stacked so densely you could hardly walk through it, a stark environment dominated by the smell of ink and paper. If not utter poverty, Hashiba had expected Saeko’s surroundings to reflect a hand-to-mouth existence.
Where is this going?
As he stepped out of the elevator, Hashiba’s feet sank into the deep pile of a lush crimson carpet that led straight down the hallway to a single door. Hashiba felt as if he were floating through water as he traversed this astonishing space to approach a heavy door.
Unable to disguise his amazement, he asked, “How long have you lived here?”
Once more, Saeko scanned her card key to open the sole apartment on the building’s top floor, ushering Hashiba in. “Since my first year of high school …”
Hashiba’s own apartment would probably have fit comfortably in the front entryway of Saeko’s home.
“How on earth …” he stammered.
“It’s hard to explain, so I don’t bring people here very often. Even my editor would be surprised to learn that I live in a place like this.”
“Well, who wouldn’t?”
“Does it, uh, bother you?” Saeko asked, her face completely serious.
“Of course not!”
“Well, good.”
Suddenly, Hashiba felt like he finally understood why Saeko always seemed so enigmatic. Her home was the last place you would imagine as a single thirtysomething woman’s.
“I just feel as if I’ve unraveled one of your mysteries,” Hashiba began, but before he could finish the thought, Saeko’s lips pressed against his mouth, silencing him. With an urgency that contrasted sharply with her usual grace, she wrapped both arms around his body and pulled him to her, pressing her groin against his thigh.
As their bodies cleaved together and their hands explored beneath each other’s jackets, the door automatically locked behind them.
4Locked in embrace, Hashiba and Saeko stumbled and fell repeatedly as they crossed the floor of the vast living room, so spacious that Hashiba couldn’t imagine how many tatami mats would fill it. Kissing and clinging to each other as they moved sideways through the space like mating crabs, they laughed out loud with each tumble.
Having flung off each other’s clothes item by item, by the time they reached the bedroom and tumbled onto the bed Saeko was in her panties, stockings, and bra, and Hashiba was wearing just his briefs and socks.
The bewildering events of the day had only intensified their arousal. After the shocking revelations that had come to light in Kitazawa’s office, they had watched Seiji Fujisawa, the sole heir to the Fujisawa estate, plummet to the ground from a tall building before their very eyes. The sense that something extraordinary was afoot pricked at their skin like a needle-sharp ar
row, pumping adrenaline into their bloodstreams. Still heady with that tension, their passion for each other seemed to flood the void of their apprehension.
It was a well-documented fact that the reproductive capacity of animals increased when their survival was at risk. Saeko and Hashiba’s lives hadn’t been directly threatened, but they could sense danger looming just ahead. The fact that they alone shared that information stoked their excitement, inflaming them with the passion of co-conspirators.
Hashiba lifted Saeko up and dropped her on the bed. Too frenzied to bother with the fasteners, he pushed her bra up and out of the way to expose her large nipples. They were already hard as he took them into his mouth and rolled them on his tongue. The tip of his nose brushed against her bra. As he inhaled the delicate scent of her skin, Hashiba reached around her back with one hand and unhooked her bra. Returning both hands to her breasts, he caressed them from underneath. One wouldn’t know it from her svelte appearance when she was clothed, but her breasts were unexpectedly round and plump.
Saeko slid her hand over Hashiba’s briefs, feeling his engorged member. With her hand positioned the way a runner in a relay race received a baton, it more than spanned the distance from her fingertips to her wrist, and its already-slippery tip had managed to poke its way out from under his waistband.
Saeko was careful not to stroke it too strongly. It throbbed in her hand as if it might explode at any moment, and Hashiba was already panting heavily. She wanted to make sure his erection lasted long enough to go where it was going. Although she still hadn’t seen it directly, her automatic reaction when she felt the shape of his penis in her hand was a rush of tenderness.
It happened just as Hashiba was stroking Saeko’s breasts from bottom to top. When his fingers reached the back of her left breast, the tips encountered a small lump, just around a centimeter in diameter. The sensation was a familiar one to him. Stunned, his fingers froze in their tracks.