by Kōji Suzuki
The moment Hashiba’s fingers discovered the lump, Saeko knew. It was the exact spot that had been troubling her for the past several days.
As if the tiny lump in Saeko’s breast were a switch, touching it was like shutting down a machine.
Silently, the relentless flow of energy that had been mounting in Hashiba abruptly waned, and his hand hovered in the air as if to embody his unconscious withdrawal. It was as if the sensation in his fingertips traveled straight to his lower body without even checking in with his brain. As he struggled to catch his breath, Hashiba battled the sudden ebb of energy, but it was too late to reverse the flow as all of the vitality quickly drained out of his lower half.
As Hashiba lay flat on his stomach, Saeko tenderly stroked his head. It occurred to her that watching all of the vigor drain so suddenly from his swollen penis was rather like watching the tide go out at the beach. When the ocean receded, it exposed the sand underneath that was previously hidden by seawater, revealing patterns. The image on the wet sand was … Seiji Fujimura’s face, contorted by the paroxysms of death. The moment Hashiba’s fingers found the lump in her breast, the horrific image flashed into Saeko’s mind. She was assaulted by the memory of a man resembling Seiji fingering her breast in the hospital in Ina. She remembered what he had said as he’d fingered the lump.
“Keep this up, and you’ll be one of us soon enough.”
Yes. Something along those lines.
Hashiba’s mind was elsewhere. The sensation his fingertips had encountered was a familiar one, and the memory caused his enthusiasm to suddenly wane. His erection withered, just as Saeko’s juices also ceased to flow.
Since Hashiba’s transformation was more visible, he had more difficulty accepting what had happened. For a while he refused to give up, but it soon became clear that his efforts were in vain.
“It’s all right.” Saeko took his hand in hers and whispered softly into Hashiba’s ear, encouraging him to relax. Saeko thought she knew why his ferocious erection had wilted so suddenly. When he’d encountered the lump, the thought of breast cancer had dampened his libido. His concern for her health suggested that he cared about her. Viewed in that light, it was a welcome reaction.
Saeko was only half-right, and a long ways away from the depths of Hashiba’s thoughts.
She took Hashiba’s hand in hers and guided it back to the lump. “It’s probably mastitis, I think. I’ve been meaning to have it checked, but I’ve been so busy …” As she spoke, she stroked Hashiba’s head with her other hand.
“You should really at least have it checked.” Hashiba flipped over, facing upwards, and held Saeko’s hand as he stared vacantly at the ceiling. The dimmed lights illuminated the bedroom softly. Hashiba’s flaccid penis remained trapped in the elastic band of his briefs, and Saeko’s nipples were now soft as they peeked out from underneath her shifted bra. Suddenly conscious of their awkward state of undress, neither of them moved for several moments.
Once he’d regained his composure, the question that had baffled Hashiba earlier resurfaced in his mind: Why does she live in a place like this?
He asked, “So what did your father do, anyway?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m interested.”
Saeko twisted her body sideways, peered at Hashiba’s face, and whispered, “Will you stay with me tonight?” Her question seemed to suggest that she wouldn’t mind telling Hashiba about her father but that she didn’t want him to leave when she was done.
Hashiba didn’t answer immediately. He paused, glancing at the clock on the bedside table. “Sure,” he agreed after a moment.
Why had he hesitated? Saeko wondered what the brief pause signified. If he were single, wouldn’t he have answered immediately? If he were married, on the other hand, he was more likely to take a longer time answering while he thought up an excuse to give his wife or a reason to decline the invitation. The implication of a slight pause was harder to glean and Saeko wasn’t sure what to think.
“Are you married?” she ventured, cutting straight to the chase. For all of her apprehension and worry, when the time came, she found it easy enough to ask the question.
She did try to sound as offhanded as possible, but her body language told a different story. She gripped the sheet tightly in both fists, and she gazed fixedly at Hashiba, as if pleading for salvation.
Hashiba met her gaze, but he pulled back ever so slightly. “No. I’m single.”
His tone was resolute, with no hint of falsehood. Saeko had no intention of interrogating him further. The reality of his pronouncement sank in slowly, filling her with a mixture of relief and happiness. Suddenly, she became aware that tears were welling up in the corners of her eyes, and she blotted them furtively against the sheet so that Hashiba wouldn’t notice.
Thank you. She sent a message of gratitude not to Hashiba, but to whatever being had granted her prayers.
Saeko retrieved two pairs of pajamas by the wardrobe next to the bed and handed one to Hashiba. Her relief had left her pleasantly sleepy. After a few more words of conversation, they both drifted off into sleep, their breathing deep and even.
After a while—Saeko had no idea how long—she felt herself briefly awaken. Instinctively she reached out to make sure Hashiba was there. Relieved, she was about to fall back asleep when she heard voices coming from the other room.
They were coming from the television set, that much was clear. There was nobody else on the same floor, after all. She must have left it on in the living room. She had a habit of switching the TV on the moment she got home and entered the living room, so it wasn’t completely out of the ordinary. On the other hand, she had no memory of turning it on that night. Perhaps she had hit the remote control as she had stumbled into the room, locked in Hashiba’s passionate embrace?
The room was quiet now except for Hashiba’s deep, even breathing. The heavy sash windows completely insulated them from the sounds of the city outside, as if they were floating in a gigantic underwater capsule. The faraway sound of the television chatter seemed like bubbles floating up to the surface from the bottom of the ocean.
Each time a bubble burst, Saeko could hear the words. The snatches of conversation were disjointed and hard to comprehend, but as she pieced together more of the fragments she came to understand that the broadcast was about an emergency situation of some sort.
But before an alarm bell could sound in Saeko’s mind she had drifted back to sleep.
5There was just one locked door at the penthouse where Saeko lived.
Saeko and Hashiba woke up at the same time, just after seven the next morning. When Hashiba asked Saeko about her father once more, she took a key from the bedside table and led him to the door of the locked room.
She had sealed it off when she had married and her husband had moved in. After their divorce, it hadn’t occurred to her to unlock it. The spacious 500-square-meter flat included the living and dining rooms and six bedrooms. Keeping one of the rooms locked made it easier to keep up with the cleaning.
The quickest way to explain who Saeko’s father had been to Hashiba would be to show him this room. The sleeves of her baggy pajamas were so long that they extended past her fingertips as she held up the keychain with a single key attached and waved it slowly in Hashiba’s view.
“This was my father’s study.”
“You keep it locked?”
“My ex-husband wanted it that way.”
“Why?”
“It bothered him, I guess—having my father’s presence intrude on our lives. So he wanted me to keep it locked. That’s what he said, anyway.” Saeko twirled the key around her finger like a gunman spinning a revolver.
Perhaps her marriage would have lasted longer if they’d moved to a new place. Her husband had proposed it a number of times. He’d often complained that the apartment possessed a creepy atmosphere that was hard to describe. But Saeko couldn’t leave behind the home where she had lived with her father. It would ha
ve required her to admit that he wasn’t coming back.
“That’s weird. There’s something abnormal about you two.” You two, he’d said, pointing at Saeko. He was referring to Saeko and her father, of course. As far as Saeko was concerned, her ex-husband had been the strange one. But looking back on it now, perhaps she and her father really had been abnormal.
More than anything, she didn’t want Hashiba to feel that way about her.
“I guess I can understand that,” Hashiba mumbled, half lost in thought.
Saeko was in the midst of unlocking the door when he spoke. She froze and turned to look at him, mistaking his comments as an expression of sympathy for her ex-husband. “Why is that?” she demanded.
“Well, sometimes our sense of a person is even more striking in their absence. It sort of relates to the disappearances we’ve been investigating,” he answered.
And with that, he began to recount an experience he’d had in elementary school. Saeko leaned against the door as she listened to his story.
“I was born in Mishima, Shizuoka, but we moved to Mitaka, Tokyo when I was just a baby. We moved back to Mishima when I was in fourth grade. I started school there in September, right as it was starting back up after summer vacation. On my first day, they had me stand at the front of the classroom and introduce myself. At recess time, a boy with delicate features and pale skin came up and put his arm around me like we were old friends. He seemed fascinated by the idea that I was from Tokyo, and he kept asking me about life in the big city. I gave him the best answers I could come up with, and before I knew it he was inviting me to come over to his house to hang out. He seemed a bit strange to me, but I was new and I didn’t have any friends, so that day after school I took him up on his invitation.
“His house was in a quiet residential neighborhood behind the Mishima Taisha shrine. The main house was a newish western-style two-story building. But in front of the house, on the same lot, there stood an old-fashioned, one-story shack. It was surrounded by trees, and the area around it was dark and shadowy. It looked like an old woodcutter’s shack from a storybook, and it caught my eye, the way it contrasted so sharply with the fancy modern western house on the same property.
“That day, all we did was play chess and watch TV, but we got along well and from that day on, we hung out pretty frequently. Whenever I went over to his house, I wondered about the shack, and eventually I asked him what it was for.
“Right away, his face clouded over. He lowered his voice. ‘Don’t ever, ever go in there!’ he warned me.
“Naturally, I wanted to know why.
“He acted like that was the dumbest question in the world. ‘Why?’ he repeated, sounding exasperated. ‘You mean I never told you? My crazy old grandfather lives alone in there. He’s a total psycho. Don’t ever go near there unless you want him to break your neck.’
“He told me various stories to illustrate his point. The old man used chopsticks to pick the dead flies off of flypaper and collect them in a glass pot. He hated animals, and whenever a stray wandered too close, he put on wooden sandals and kicked it as hard as he could. The old man had killed two stray cats and a dog that way, my friend said. The old man also kept an air rifle by his porch and used it to shoot down crows when the mood struck him. The only thing he ate was rice with canned enoki mushrooms. He muttered to himself constantly. My friend’s mother left his meals for him on a tray in his front entryway, and the old man devoured them in minutes. It didn’t take him long, since all he ate was white rice and canned mushrooms, and he always returned his dirty dishes on the tray right where he had found them. For months, nobody in my friend’s family had seen the old man’s face. Even my friend’s mother had only heard his muffled mumblings when she left him his meals …
“As I listened to my friend’s story, a vivid image of the old man began to form in my mind. How he lived in that dark, dirty shack, rarely bathing, the hems of his garments grimy with dirt. A foul-smelling, unpredictable eccentric who should be avoided at all costs. A dangerous maniac.
“Whenever I went over to my friend’s house, I had to pass by the old man’s shack. I avoided it as best I could, but whenever I thought I heard a noise from inside, I bolted at top speed.
“My friend was good at his studies, slightly mischievous, and enjoyed teasing people. He was brilliant at coming up with ideas for new games. He was a lot of fun to hang out with, and he taught me lots of new things, so I spent a lot of time at his house, even though I was afraid of the old man in the shack.
“For two-and-a-half years, up until the time when my friend was accepted to a private junior high school in Tokyo, I spent a lot of time at his house. As far as I knew, his grandfather continued to live in the shack, though I never actually saw him. But when the wind riffled through the leaves of the trees, I could almost hear the old man gnashing his teeth. My heart pounded with terror when I imagined the old man bursting out of his house, shouting at the top of his lungs, his hair wild and messy, his tattered garments fluttering.
“Just once, I saw the old man for myself before my friend left for his private school in Tokyo.
“That day, the sky was just beginning to grow dusky as we played catch out on the lawn in the yard. My friend threw the ball and I missed it, allowing it to roll right into the half-open doorway of the shack. I remember freezing in my tracks, terrified. I looked at my friend and gulped with apprehension.
“My friend seemed amused by my fear of his grandfather. He made no move to retrieve the ball and instead shot me a challenging look as if to say, ‘You missed the ball—you go get it.’ He had a faint smirk on his face, and he stood watching me patronizingly with his arms crossed as though he were a grown-up and I was just a kid.
“You know how boys are. We’d do anything to avoid being called a coward or a sissy. I was supposed to go over to the shack like it was no big deal, slip inside, and get the ball. So I summoned all my courage and set out towards the shack, but I was so terrified I could barely walk. Still, I was determined not to let on to my friend how scared I was. Resolving to just get it over with as quickly as possible, I crept through the door into the front entryway and looked for the ball. Inside, the smell of earth was stronger than in the yard. The air was dank and chilly. My heart was pounding.
“The ball had stopped just at the threshold where the flooring began. It was right next to a pair of carefully placed wooden sandals, their toes stubby with wear. Those are the sandals the old man must have worn when he killed the strays, I thought. Just then, right as I was reaching for the ball, a grimy pair of feet stepped into the sandals. Their toes and their tops were pasty white, and the toenail of the little toe on each side was a gnarled lump. Two ankles peeked out from underneath a disheveled kimono, revealing a gigantic mole right on the bony protuberance of one ankle bone. I looked up, too terrified even to speak.
“There he stood, exactly as I had imagined him. In the dim light of the entryway, he wore a dingy kimono and his face was bleary and lifeless. With a vacant stare, his jaw pumped up and down, as if he were trying to speak, and food dribbled out of it. For the first and last time in my life, my legs completely gave out. I crumpled to the floor, landing on my rear and supporting myself with my hands behind me. My throat seized up and I couldn’t find my voice to call out to my friend.
“The old man raised one foot and kicked the ball towards me. It rolled straight towards my hand. Somehow, I managed to pick it up and crawl back out of the house. Then I ran, stumbling, out into the yard where my friend was waiting. At this point, I was way past the point of worrying about looking cool. I didn’t care who called me a wimp. I dropped to all fours in the grass, panting like an animal.
“My friend knelt down next to me. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. His smirk was gone, as was the arrogant stance. In fact, he seemed vaguely frightened as he placed a hand on my shoulder.
“ ‘I … I saw your grandfather,’ I finally managed to say.
“My friend looked up towards
the old hut and was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘You couldn’t have.’
“ ‘He rolled the ball back to me with the toe of his sandal!’ I insisted, tossing the ball over as proof.
“My friend twisted sideways, dodging the throw.
“ ‘He couldn’t have!’ he said again, this time more forcefully.
“I didn’t get it. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
“ ‘He doesn’t exist. It was just a story.’
“ ‘What are you talking about?’
“ ‘My grandfather died long before I was born. We just use that shed for storage. Nobody lives in there,’ he told me.
“My friend apologized for lying to me and explained the circumstances. In kindergarten, he’d often had friends over to play. They always thought the shed was a great playhouse, and they were always messing things up inside. But there were valuable ceramic pots and such stored in the shed, and my friend’s father had told him, ‘You’re welcome to have your friends over to play, but I don’t want you kids messing around in that shed. If any of those ceramic pieces ever gets broken, you’re going to have to pay for them.’
“Desperate, my friend came up with the idea of pretending that his grandfather lived there. He figured it was the best way to keep his friends from going near it. At first it was just a simple lie, but over time he started to flesh it out, adding details about his grandfather’s idiosyncrasies. Those quirks became more and more exaggerated, and the old man developed into a creepy character. Before long, he had fabricated the perfect scarecrow to ward off mischievous playmates from exploring the shed.
“When he had finished explaining, my friend and I slowly approached the hut. We had to make sure that there really was no old man in there, of course. At this point, I think my friend was actually more frightened than I was. I guess I was already starting to understand what I’d experienced.
“There was nobody inside. My friend and I peeked in through the front door and listened, but we didn’t hear anything. And there were no wooden sandals there, either. It was slightly comical, seeing my friend so afraid of the phantom he’d invented …”