The Kingdom

by Fuminori Nakamura

  “My will?”

  “To further reinforce the story we wrote for you. We planned to rewrite your past in that will. There are countless people in history whose lives have been rewritten. No one should ever believe history happened as we pass it down. People’s lives are rewritten all the time by those in power and because of the circumstances of history itself. They are made villains and heroes. There’s no way to prove that Christ and Socrates’s lives were really as we’ve heard them. You would move through the story we wrote you, and then, after we rewrote your life in your will, you would take responsibility for several crimes you didn’t commit, and die cruelly. In the underworld, you’d live on as something of a legend. Yours would be the story of the beautiful prostitute who helped bring about a tremendous change.”

  “Why me?”

  “Hm?”

  “Why?”

  I looked up at Kizaki. He was dark, big.

  “Why you? Do you really think there’s a reason for everything that happens in this world? Why did that child die instead of this one? Why did I set my eyes on you instead of that woman? It’s because the world has always been that way. The only choices we have to make in this world are unforgiving, offhand ones. Why me? People have been asking that since long ago. The one who enjoys this world the most is God. That is, if God exists. God writhes, feasting on the chains of good and evil that each human life creates unendingly. There’s no way that the god of this world, where good people and children die left and right, is as sweet as people think.”

  He stopped there and took a breath.

  “Simply put, this is a game. And I’m bored.”

  He smiled silently. My body began to go limp. I realized there was a presence before me that I’d never understand. I never thought I’d understood my life, but now, at the end, I was seeing this man. The air went dry.

  “But our plans went awry. You didn’t go along with our invitation. Even though Hasegawa kept inviting you so persistently.”

  Kizaki laughed quietly.

  “It seems that there was some error. That error made for my entertainment. There was a man with a two percent chance of surviving a certain encounter. He made it, and it was such an impressive feat, I just let it pass. I never thought that he would wind up connected to you like this. But this has turned out to be pretty fun. Just when I was thinking generally of another way to draw you in, my interests and Yata’s came into conflict. That man at the hotel in Ikebukuro. We needed to kill him. That moment was incredibly enjoyable. Because of that moment, you would have to approach me, despite my initial error. I expected Yata would send you to that room with the murdered man. And then, after that, Yata would send you after me.”

  Kizaki stood up.

  “The plans changed, but in the end, I get to see you die a cruel, meaningless death. I’ll consider myself fulfilled. Don’t worry. We will write your will. As we want it. We’ll write it for the sake of our plans, and to have you take on a few of our crimes. You look pale.”

  He closed in on me, and brought his face up to mine.

  “If there were people watching you now, do you know what they’d think?”

  My eyes teared up.

  “They’d think, it’s her own fault. You didn’t live as a proper citizen. You got involved in the underworld, so it’s only natural. The world is cruel. People only judge others angrily.”

  Kizaki kissed me on the lips. He put his tongue in my mouth, and while persistently licking the back of my tongue, he grabbed my chest. Though I was going to be killed, the heat deep inside my body began to flicker, as if resisting something.

  “Now you’re at your most beautiful. You might even have turned me on. Kill her.”

  Kizaki rose from the bed. I could sense the man behind me moving slightly.

  “Wait . . .”

  Kizaki turned just a bit, and looked down at me.

  “Give me a fake.”

  “Fake what?”

  “Give me fake information. I’ll give that to Yata.”

  My body kept losing its strength, but I focused and spoke. Why do I cling to my life, even in these circumstances?

  “Yata’s your enemy. He’s not as weak as you think. If I give him fake information, you can trick him. And then I can steal the information you need from him. All Yata has to control me is money. Instead of killing me, you can still use me.”

  Kizaki laughed.

  “The scream of life. You’re screaming out that you can still be useful to this world.”

  The man behind me backed up, and Kizaki threw a USB drive at me. As if he’d had it prepared the whole time.

  “Give that to him. We’ll be in touch to tell you what we’ll need you to do next.”

  10.

  The man pointing the gun at me led me out of the room. He followed as I walked down the hall. We cut through the lobby, lit by countless garish chandeliers, and outside there was a car waiting. Were they going out of their way to drop me off?

  I sat in the back. Hasegawa was in the driver’s seat. He eased his foot onto the gas. I couldn’t think properly, so I just looked out the window. The city continued to emanate obscene light. It had no regard for me. The moon was hidden behind the clouds, and I couldn’t see it. If it appeared, what would it look like to me?

  “I’m sorry,” said Hasegawa, his hands gripping the steering wheel. “I’m not sure what to say.”

  “You’re not Hasegawa, are you?”

  “What do you mean? Well, I guess I’m not the same person I used to be.”

  Was he Hasegawa? The question alone depressed me.

  “I didn’t think it would turn out this way. With you getting dragged in like this . . .”

  “Stop lying.”

  “All right. I guess it doesn’t matter what I say.”

  The lights of the red-light district shined happily. I saw a sign for touchy touchy kintaro, and smiled in spite of myself. No matter what situation a person’s in, they can smile. I saw a sign for mission dick possible, and smiled again.

  “Nothing ever goes well,” Hasegawa said. “No matter what I do.”

  What was he trying to say all of a sudden? There’s really nothing as boring as a man’s personal talk.

  “I had no place to live, so I started staying at saunas. I thought if I stayed at an Internet café, it would be filled with people like me and I’d get depressed, but the saunas were no different. I worked day jobs, and used that money for a place to stay and the day’s food. I spent the rest on my cell phone bill, and saved a little bit to rent another apartment. It was pretty depressing to spend just a couple hundred yen every day. One day, when I was sitting in the lobby of a sauna, a man came up to me. I saw his new leather shoes stomp across the dirty floor. He was tall and had on an expensive-looking suit. He was Kizaki’s subordinate.”

  I stared out the window. There was even a bar called power rangers married women force.

  “That man, out of nowhere, he just threw all this money at me. One million yen. And then he said, ‘You’ve got an interesting look in your eyes,’ and he asked, ‘Do you want to rise to the top? Will you do some dirty work?’ I shook a little. It was like my boring life was suddenly going to change.”

  We left the red-light district, passed through a shopping area, and entered a residential area where there was nothing but streetlights.

  “I did a lot of work. I mostly worked as Kizaki’s driver, but I also delivered bags with who knows what inside, and snuck into diplomats’ homes. It was like I was being revitalized from the inside out. That man, he makes fiction out of our boring world.”

  “How childish to be so happy about something like that.”

  Hasegawa started to say something, but he shut up. I hadn’t gotten tangled up with Kizaki because of Hasegawa’s invitations, so what happened from here was not his fault. But I wanted to be mean to him. It
didn’t really have anything to do with logic. It was just to make myself feel better.

  “Your life was boring, so you’re happy now that you get to play underworld fixer. Getting involved with you would be such a pain in the ass.”

  “That’s not what I planned to do. They said to volunteer at the orphanage. That was where I grew up, and I like kids anyway, so I did it. They said they wanted to ask you to do some simple work, so . . .”

  “And you trusted them? You idiot.”

  “I also thought I’d be able to see you again,” Hasegawa said as he stopped the car at a red light. “It was because I thought I could see you again, Yurika.”

  He was so stupid. He was just a normal man who happened to have been a big part of my childhood. My cigarette had gone out because I forgot to smoke it, so I lit it again. There was no moon to see anymore.

  I got off in an alley far from the hotel, waited for him to drive away, and began walking. They must have known where the hotel was, so that was all pointless. A man who looked like some sort of businessman walked toward me, staring. He was probably on his way home. In his hand was a convenience store bag with a comic book and a can of beer. When I met his gaze with an unfriendly expression, he casually took his eyes off of me. His appearance made me feel a little better. The next man who walked by me and the man after that both looked at me. I glared back at them, unhappy.

  When I returned to my hotel room, the door was open. I had expected this. The room was a mess. They had opened all the drawers, as if to let me know I was being monitored.

  I exhaled, sat on the sofa, and lit another cigarette. The pain in my feet upset me. I took off my high heels. They say that the angle of a woman’s ankles when she wears high heels is the same as the angle her ankles make when she orgasms. Somehow, I doubt that. They also say high heels originated with ancient Greek prostitutes. That I actually wonder about. But now none of that mattered. For some reason the table was wet. I took off my stockings. I felt like I had come a long way. And when I realized all my life had amounted to was this trashed room, it seemed a little funny. I gripped the knife in my bag and thought about the man who took it from me. I felt like I’d never meet him again. Like Kizaki had said, meeting him was some sort of error, some sort of mistake. This knife might not be enough to get me out of trouble anymore. I took a beer from the refrigerator, but it was too cold so I didn’t drink it. Even taking off my makeup was too much work.

  I don’t remember when I started carrying this knife. It feels like I’ve had it for as long as I can remember. I used to hide it from everyone around me. I don’t think this is what actually happened, but wouldn’t it be interesting if my parents who abandoned me, whose faces I’ve never even seen, gave it to me? They left me. They forsook me. But they gave me a knife. If my parents did that, I’d like to see their faces. But I probably just picked it up. I have a faint memory of reaching through the gaps in a fence by some park and grabbing it with my fingers.

  When I was in elementary school, my classmates bullied me. Their bullying just kept escalating. If they had just taken my things and hidden them, that would have been fine, but the girls would get together and beat me up. They wouldn’t have been brave enough if they hadn’t been in a group. I rolled this knife up in my gym clothes and carried it with me. Then, one day, I found myself surrounded by the laughter of girls whose faces I can’t recall. They pushed me over. They surrounded me, forming a circle. The circle began shrinking. When they closed in on me and toppled me to the ground, I reached into the bag with my gym clothes, grabbed this knife, and stood up. I faced them and waved it around.

  I remember clearly the line I drew with this knife. I didn’t hit any of the girls, but this knife cut cleanly through the air in front of their startled faces. They never expected to see a naked weapon there like that. It was too strange for such a place. That knife drew a straight, black line. It was a world apart from the dull unsightliness of those girls, and the sand on the exercise field, and my pitifulness, and my old backpack. Its overwhelming presence stuck out sharply. That blackness was too beautiful, too straight. The girls went silent. I fell for the beauty of that powerful line. I imagined it continuing on, slicing through the obstacles in my life one after another. I looked at that line jealously. I wanted to see it again. When I fixed my grip on the knife with my small hand, the girls around me backed away.

  And then they stopped bullying me. No one ever became my friend, but I didn’t mind. I knew that line would distance me from the good people as well, but I didn’t mind.

  I woke up lying on the sofa. My makeup had caked up with my sweat and felt disgusting, so I took my makeup remover to the bathroom. The rings around my eyes were particularly dark. I was tired. I couldn’t hear any of the city’s night sounds in this hotel room. I was tired and alone. I remembered a black cat I had seen long ago between two buildings. It was pregnant, lying on its side. That cat had carried its big belly there, and alone in the vast darkness of the night endured the mysterious fear of having unknown life wiggling inside it, trying to get out. I lit a cigarette and lay down on the bed. I was confused. I had to get some real sleep.

  My phone rang. I couldn’t breathe. I stared at the phone as if it were trying to corner me. Though it was my own possession, it seemed like it should belong to some terribly disgusting person I didn’t know. The number was blocked, but I answered. It was a man. His voice was low. He said he worked for Kizaki.

  “We want a list of all the men you’ve tricked. And all of the photos and videos you’ve taken.”

  “I’ve given all of that to Yata. I don’t have it. I can’t give it to you.”

  “We also want copies of all of Yata’s negotiations.”

  “I can’t get that. It must all be on Yata’s personal computer or his hard drives. I don’t even know where it is. And I don’t know his passwords.”

  He hung up. I listened closely as my heart began to race, the phone still in my hand.

  At some point, I saw the moon. It was covered by thin clouds, but behind them it was overflowing with light. Just like the night Eri died.

  11.

  I took the west exit of Ikebukuro station and walked through a crowd of people. There were Christians shouting through a microphone about how the end was coming, and a drugstore employee repeating the names of makeup products that were on sale. A man carrying a guitar was setting up an amplifier, and hosts called out to gaudily dressed girls. There were noisy, drunk men and women, touts, and women in exposing clothes. This is the bustle of the night, filled with desire. The natural, raw chaos, set free from the afternoon. As I moved through the crowd, I pulled out my phone. Drunk retirees were crouching on the sidewalk.

  “I’m going to walk toward you. Follow me.”

  “All right.”

  I passed one stoplight, and took the road across from the Marui department store. Kimura, the tout, was there. He stuck both of his hands in his pockets and leaned in toward me.

  “I need a fake passport,” I said.

  Kimura’s long brown hair gently reflected the neon lights.

  “All right. I’ll pass that on.”

  “When will it be finished?”

  “For a good one, it will take at least six days.”

  He walked along next to me.

  “Do it in five, please. Am I being followed?”

  “No, I don’t think so. There are two weird-looking guys, but it’s probably nothing.”

  “Two?”

  “You usually use three people to tail someone.”

  We walked to the corner in front of a business hotel. Touts are in charge of a limited area, so he couldn’t go any further than that. I put an envelope with my picture in the pocket of his trench coat. I felt his body heat slightly with my fingers.

  “Use these pictures. Text me how much it’ll cost.”

  Kimura looked at my chest and neck.


  “You don’t have to pay my part of the fee in money.”

  “You idiot,” I said, and turned at the corner. He laughed and turned around. Men who aren’t desperate for women shouldn’t be so insistent. I turned down a dimly lit road. It was wet for some reason. There were neon signs for hostess bars and topless joints. There was a tout whose face I couldn’t quite make out standing, looking cold. When I turned around, I didn’t see anyone following me. Was it just my nerves? I walked down the even darker street, where the foreign Asian women stood, and there, at the end of it, was Yata’s car. I repeated in my head the things I would do to him. I had secretly saved the pictures of the men I tricked, so I could give those to Kizaki. The problem was getting my hands on all of the documents Yata had, what Kizaki’s man called his “negotiations.” I had no time to think about why he had those things, or what he was. I approached his car. My heart was pounding so hard it hurt.

  Suddenly, my phone rang. I stared at Yata’s car as I answered the phone slowly. It was from Yata, in the car.

  “Did you take the bullets from the gun?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Leave them in the bag. Hand them to the man in the suit. He’s coming now.”

  A man trotted toward me. He took the paper bag from me, and without making a real effort to hide what he was doing, confirmed the contents casually. He walked away. The back door was open, but I went for the passenger door. Yata scrunched his eyebrows a bit, but he opened the door for me.

  “What?”

  “It seems like I’ve been spotted by someone. I’m nervous. Let’s go somewhere else.”

  Yata stepped on the gas quietly. The car sewed through alleyways, taking us even deeper into the darkness.

  “You wouldn’t just give me a gun for self-defense,” I said, watching the road. “You were hoping that if things went well, I’d kill that man when I got cornered. Weren’t you? If I did, I’d have nowhere to run, and I would die too . . . You would erase our secret relationship without hiring anyone else. That would have cleaned up this situation very economically, and even more important, secretly. Am I wrong?”