Lonely Hearts Killer

by Tomoyuki Hoshino

“Shôji, would you give me a little training course? I’d pay you. You could use the money, right?”

  I wanted to ask Iroha’s mom if His Majesty’s death had affected her, but with Iroha, who was consumed with Miko’s condition, right there, I didn’t.

  Iroha’s folks split up when she was nine. Her dad fell in love with another woman, she got pregnant, and he decided to get remarried to her. The relationship with Iroha’s mom was already in shambles, so no one objected to the divorce. As part of the settlement, Iroha’s mom got some real estate, monthly alimony, and child support, and that enabled her to raise Iroha. She’d worked the register at a grocery store until Iroha finished trade school, but Iroha said her mom never suffered much to speak of and that she fundamentally knew very little about the world. But what “world” was she supposed to know? It’s safe to say that, like me, Iroha’s mom lives off of others. But the difference is that without questioning, she won’t figure that out.

  People like Iroha’s mom won’t be fazed as long as the next Majesty succeeds. For them, even if something a little out of the ordinary happens, with time, things will return to normal. They’ll feel that way without really thinking about it. The possibility of the world’s original nature having been laid bare probably doesn’t even occur to them. I’ll bet they truly believe that Majesties continue on, as does the changing of seasons, and while the nature of the circumstances enabling them to live may change, the essence of everything stays the same.

  As to whether or not that itself will change, I can’t yet venture a guess, but certain signs have appeared in the mass media. First of all, His Majesty died young and single, leaving behind a sister eleven years his junior as his successor. He had two other younger sisters, but each of them had married and was now registered with her partner’s family, so the thirty-five year old sister was next in line. This was, of course, reported soon after His Majesty died, but it wasn’t until about a month later when the shock of His Majesty’s death had subsided that they put together close-up stories on the unprecedented nature of this development. Even so, before the State Funeral, in a conservative discussion that swayed public opinion, people divided up into two main camps, those who welcomed the change as the advent of a new era and those saddened at the prospect of losing the last of something.

  I don’t invest much in society or how a Majesty and society are linked, so I didn’t relate to either camp. I didn’t see how it was going to change anything. What interested me was how the holed-up youth were going to take Her New Majesty. When the succession ceremony is held, will they return to lives independent of Her Majesty as before and vow never again to be affected by any Majesty, nipping the connection in the bud? Or will they paint their cheeks red in wild anticipation and wave the flag? Or will they still stay holed-up like they are now?

  I had a strong desire to meet Mikoto and talk to him. What was his take? How would he see all this? People like us aren’t supposed to believe in God and all creation. What if we stumbled after His Majesty’s death? What does it mean for us to suffer a breakdown like we’d been betrayed?

  But I didn’t even know Mikoto. I heard about him from Iroha all the time, so I felt as though I knew him, but I didn’t have a sense of the real person. I didn’t know what he looked like, and I’d never heard his voice. And on top of it all, I felt pretty low about seeing the video footage before meeting him in person for the first time.

  As much as I left Iroha’s house with a heavy feeling, strangely mixed into that was a sense of hopefulness. I made my way home with the conflicted heart of an old-time soldier having just received his marching orders.

  I watched the video as soon as I got home, while I thought I still had the life in me to do it. I kept telling myself that Iroha would be satisfied simply for me to watch it. The images didn’t exceed my expectations, but the damage I suffered sure did.

  All you could see inside the dreary apartment room was a TV and coffee table. Mikoto was filmed from behind, so I couldn’t see his face or tell whether he was in agony or enjoying himself. Iroha was undisplayed on this side of the image, or rather, behind the camera, and faint sounds of her breathing, bones creaking, clothes rustling, and sniffling, along with the noise of camera parts moving to zoom in or adjust the picture, made her mood seem tense. Mikoto was being observed by Iroha, without any exchange of words.

  He never turned around. He watched the picture across the coffee table from him. And once in a while, he’d write something down in a notebook on the coffee table. Iroha said they weren’t words, but scribbled drawings, but even when she tried to zoom in with a sustained close-up of the notebook, I couldn’t tell. Not identifiably singing or chanting, a droning voice reverberated through it all as if thirty Mikotos were all humming a strange tune. At times, he’d point at the screen and cup his lowered head in his hand, but he’d soon lift his head back up again like he’d reconsidered something.

  What knocked the wind out of me was the sensation I had as a viewer. The Mikoto on the screen, whom I was feverishly watching, was the Mikoto of a day ago, of the past; he no longer existed. And that Mikoto of a day ago was watching the Mikoto of even a day earlier. The Mikoto of two days ago was watching the Mikoto of three days ago, and the Mikoto of three days ago was watching the Mikoto of four days ago. In short, within the picture, there was a Mikoto for each of the roughly thirty days between His Majesty’s death and Mikoto’s recovery, and they were all confined there, left as layers taken out of that period of time and placed on public display.

  I was seized by the feeling something bad would happen and turned around to look behind me. Sitting there on a tripod and not in use was my camera, its lens pointed directly at me. If a future me was peering at me through the other side of that lens, then my fate was sealed. I felt as though I was being robbed of time.

  Those images went on for what must have been about fifteen minutes. Then, from behind the camera Iroha’s fatigued voice could be heard saying, “That’s it for today,” and her figure intruded into the picture. She turned off the film Mikoto was watching, inserted a different disc, and disappeared back behind the camera.

  “Here’s a new film Shôji Inoue shot. It goes from Shibuya to Shinjuku, but everything seems different from usual, huh? Check it out, hardly anyone is talking.” From that point, Iroha moved into a nonstop play-by-play analysis.

  Sure enough, that was the film I made and uploaded for my webcast. The Starbucks’ customers silently drinking coffee in counter seats facing the six-way pedestrian crossing, the crowds silently crossing the intersection, the quiet car on the Yamanote Line where hardly anyone fiddled with cell phones, and inside the Isetan that was transformed into utter silence.

  Mikoto leaned forward over the coffee table and started counting the people shown on the screen. His muttering voice affected me. Finally, the camera arrived in Shinjuku’s Chinese-Town and Mikoto turned around to face the camera for the first time and said, “I get it already. I get it, so turn it off!”

  “What are you saying you get?” Iroha asked while switching off the DVD power.

  “That the whole street and even this room are full of Majesties.”

  Iroha fixated on Mikoto, but was speechless. Mikoto waved his hand and laughed. “I get it. You want to say His Young Majesty is dead, don’t you? The only people in this room are you and me, right? I’m sane. But since His Majesty died, I’ve had way more than enough of him. Everyone’s a Majesty. Even though it may not seem like it.”

  Iroha laughed like she was sucking in air, and she turned off the camera. It went dark. Blue screen.

  I was trembling all over. The facial expression of the Mikoto I first saw was relaxed with the enlightened clarity of a happy Buddha. The voice of the Mikoto I first heard was a deep and resonant baritone. And above all was that last line he uttered.

  No matter how many times I returned to it, I had no idea what Mikoto was saying. And yet my heart was racing. This nutcase Mikoto was spouting nonsense.

  I was ag
itated and even angry. It was cryptic to show me only those scenes. What will I understand if I don’t first get to meet Mikoto and then see the film and ask Mikoto about it? All it’s going to do is drive me crazy and make me more anxious. Deal with it on your own, the two of you. Don’t drag me into it. You’ve kept me outside the mosquito curtain until now after all!

  That’s right. I am outside the mosquito curtain. Not just in relation to this problem. I felt I’d been deceived in many ways and like everything was unfair. But I also had a guilty conscience. In the midst of a breakdown, Mikoto was swimming in the thick of his own role. I wasn’t about to understand what that role was. Iroha feeds off of drama in her relationship with Mikoto. She’s the one playing a role in their relationship. And yet I’m the one outside the mosquito curtain. I’m not a player. I’m just an observer. As much as I was enraged over this unreasonable manipulation, the shame of me alone being an onlooker ate away at me. By whose fault and for what reason had I fallen into this subterranean mess?

  All that aside, I still had to comment on the film for Iroha. I wanted to do so in person, as opposed to over email or the phone. My initial plan was for us to get together tomorrow, the next day, or whenever worked for the three of us to meet at Dormir, the Sleeping Café in Higashi Aoyama. I pulled myself together and wrote an email. I visualized the scene while writing. In the Narcissus Cell, the private yellow room that was a usual base for Iroha and me to take afternoon naps, our films would be running on the plasma display on one of the four walls. We’d doze off, lounging in the reclining seats shaped like red lips. We’d casually wake up and sip herbal tea, and even though the content wouldn’t be significant, we’d create an atmosphere thick with tension as we took turns exchanging heated words. Under the indirect yellow lighting, I’d tell a savage little story, Iroha would crack up, and an archaic smile like the Buddha’s would spread across Mikoto’s face as he looked at Iroha with sleepy eyes.

  I had a piercing pain in my chest. I knew I had it wrong. My intuition told me that even though it may have seemed possible, that was only a vision, one that would never materialize. I wanted the three of us to meet innocently like that. But such a moment was lost. Maybe it was because I watched the DVD, maybe it was because His Majesty died, or maybe it was because Mikoto changed. Whatever it was, there was no going back. Our relationship had already started evolving into something new.

  I wanted to talk with Mikoto. I erased the email message without hitting “send” and went to bed.

  Spring appeared suddenly, as if it had chosen that day. A whispering deep chill had lingered to the point that one had wondered, up until then, whether spring was on its way or the earth was headed into an ice age. Even though the frost remained and, to make matters worse, the darkness hadn’t lifted from people’s hearts, accompanying the edge of night, an almost scalding hot wind began to blow in from the southwest, plaguing people with scary dreams in the wee hours and working them into a tizzy. But once the eastern sky showed signs of light, it vanished back to who knows where. Waking from a light sleep and dragging myself out of bed at the break of dawn, I was surprised that my thin long-sleeved shirt was almost too hot for the weather. When I went out to the veranda to take a look, there were cherry blossoms everywhere, like flesh-colored snow that had fallen and now lay accumulated under the golden morning sun. Fanned by the hot wind, the trees had born buds all over. But the air seemed loaded with yellow sand. Rooftops, street surfaces, and leaves were stained the color of shrimp chips, as if they had been dusted with royal ashes. Bombarded by the humidity, the stench of pollen, the startling pink cherry tree branches, and a lack of sleep, my head felt stuffed up with sand and ready to burst.

  This was the day of His Majesty’s State Funeral, and I had woken up early to go filming with Iroha. Four days after watching “Infinite Hell,” I finally crawled out from under the oppressive feeling and made up my mind to call her. But she didn’t give enough of a shit to ask how I’d felt and, instead, asked if I was free to hang out with her on the last day of March when they’d hold the State Funeral. I said I’d be up for going somewhere like Shinjuku Chinese-Town and then nonchalantly suggested that Mikoto join us. Iroha cheerfully replied with an “okay” and said she’d see if he’d come.

  When I’d finished getting ready, I started up my camera and walked out the front door. The morning light was saturated with moisture and shining sideways at a sharp angle. The blindingly golden line of light enhanced the pale peach hue of the cherry blossom petals. As if responding to the light, the flowers quivered, spreading out like false eyelashes, stretching out from the stamen to the petals. A white-eye flew down and slipped its head into the thick of the petals, breathing in the nectar. I got as close as I could and zoomed in to shoot that unlikely intimate encounter. The outstretched branches rocked at the slightest gust of hot wind. And a bee, its down dyed yellow by the light, buried itself in a flower to get at the pistil and was covered by petals. I broke into a sudden sweat, so I took off my shirt and tied it around my waist.

  The image in my head was the rendezvous at the aquarium scene from the movie The Lady From Shanghai. A married Rita Hayworth and not-yet overly fat young Orson Welles for some reason decide to have their secret tryst at an aquarium at night. And even though it’s very late, a class of elementary school students is there on a field trip, and the couple’s kiss is observed. Behind them, with an eyeball the size of Rita Hayworth’s head, an enormous red snapper, moray, or tropical fish swims around gracefully in lieu of mood music. Of course, no fish with an eyeball like that exists, but I was thoroughly enchanted by its lewdness.

  With that style in mind, I imagined a cherry blossom as big as someone’s head and set out on my mission, chasing down one flower after another with my camera. Perhaps because it was early on a holiday morning, no one was at the station. I passed through the turnstile, walked to the platform, and waited for the first train.

  The interior of the train was also sparsely populated. The light cast a diagonal line the color of yellow roses all the way to the far end of the car, and it looked like an evening in the countryside. A passenger aboard was irritated with me, but that didn’t deter me. I continued to look through my camera, usually in his direction. He stood up from his seat and moved out of range.

  Soon I noticed I was the only one in the car. While dozing off, I’d captured that last old man on film, fuming, “I’m going to get the conductor,” but even he didn’t return.

  A bright cherry blossom hue piercing through the train car was reflected in my eyes. Or should I say it was reflected in my camera-eye? The cherries emitted a florid stuffiness that was suffocating. I was so hot that I wanted to strip off even my t-shirt and underwear.

  I pressed my camera lens up against the eastward window, which was shot through with morning sun. The dazzlingly hot mustard-colored fields of greens spread out towards the horizon. A lemon yellow river flowed, trailing the wind. I was about to be sucked into the rhythm of the railway, with which I was in sync.

  Well, not really. I hallucinated all that. In a residential district in the heart of the city, the rooftops were covered with waves of yellow sand. That was all. Here and there, reddish cherry blossoms fountained out close to the earth, and a peachy haze of dust stirred skywards. Perhaps reflecting the earthbound cherry trees, the sky was swashed in a yellowish flesh-tone.

  The world was empty. The only living things were cherry blossoms. I got off the train alone at Shinjuku, and there wasn’t even anyone in the office district where I walked. It was as if all the people had been turned into flesh-colored flower petals on the trees, or the trees had been infected with a cherry blossom disease. Cherry blossoms were stuck on the branches of fat trees, baby trees, and lanky trees springing forth in the gaps between buildings. I documented the accident of it all on film and recorded it inside myself. Then I ducked into an alley to jerk off. The pink semen fell on the yellow sand that had blown in the night before and balled up into the shape of millet dumplings
and gave off a sweet smell.

  I killed some time by taking a nap under the sun in Central Park. I awoke to find somebody loitering around in a t-shirt. I looked up at the faintly yellow and blurry sky that stretched out. With each increase in people, the cherry blossoms grew fewer. The surroundings filled up with the smell of human beings. I stood up and hurried off to the meeting-spot in Chinese-Town.

  Iroha was already randomly filming the surroundings under the Suzaku Gate. She aimed her lens at me when she saw me. I picked up my pace and waved at her with a smile. Iroha smiled too and jibed, “Such shitty acting!”

  “Isn’t it wonderful? This is fabulous. And all on account of the cherry blossoms.”

  “It’s a little freaky. Like something bad’s gonna happen.”

  I looked around and asked, “Isn’t Mikoto coming?”

  “He’s coming,” Iroha turned her camera away from me and pointed it toward the town. “He’ll be here. He’s meeting up with us later.”

  “Did he go to the State Funeral?”

  Iroha simply cocked her head a bit. I returned the “Infinite Hell” DVD and said, with deep emotion, “That was actually the first time I’d seen Mikoto’s face.”

  “He had no expression, huh?”

  “Like a statue of the Buddha.”

  “He’s a character, but he does have a hard face to remember, doesn’t he?”

  “Does he get mistaken for lots of people?”

  “For a statue of the Buddha.”

  “How about to His Majesty?”

  “What?” Iroha sounded pissed and looked at me through her camera. “They don’t look anything alike. You saw him, so you know, and still you go linking them together like that!”

  “Maybe it’s His Majesty who looks like a lot of people.”

  “Knock it off. You’re gonna drive me nuts. Miko doesn’t even understand what he said himself.”

  “But I don’t think what he said was confused or incoherent. Why don’t you watch that film again?”