Deep Red

by Hisashi Nozawa

  “I thought the same thing with his previous movie, but the edge is gone. I wonder what’s up with Lynch.”

  Kanako agreed. The red rose and white fence, and the blue sky, that beautifully envisioned world with clear color contrasts that drew a boundary line between heaven and hell—she missed the Blue Velvet-era visuals.

  She finished writing down the results of the last survey before going to see the movie theater manager and leaving. She struggled to pass a group of high school girls that were blocking Spain Slope. Their skin looked unhealthy and they all wore the thick-soled shoes that were the current fad. Kanako ignored the persistent invitations of a talent scout and passed the Sakuraya electronics store, heading towards a station on the Inokashira line.

  Getting off at Shimokitazawa, she scanned the street lined with restaurants and saw that there were few stores open past ten. She was hesitant to enter a pub to eat as a girl on her own, and in the end entered a Yoshinoya beef bowl store.

  The red pickled ginger looked blindingly bright. It wasn’t because of artificial coloring. Her tired eyes were at fault.

  Even with a side of miso soup, she received change back from her 500-yen coin. It was a very economical dinner, but she worried about the calorie count.

  While the path home took her ten minutes to walk in the morning, at night she made it in five. It was close to a race-walking pace. The residential street had few street lamps and she naturally sped up.

  Her apartment building one alley down from Chazawa Street didn’t have many lights on, as usual. Apparently almost everyone returned home after midnight.

  Upon opening the door, the warm air that had concentrated over the afternoon wafted out and surrounded her. She was at the very back of the second floor facing west, and it was easy for heat to accumulate. Even though it was already past mid-September, the sunny weather that continued to disperse summer heat continued to show no signs of stopping.

  She started the air conditioner. She was still paying the twenty-four-part loan, but thanks to this, she had been freed from sleepless nights.

  She tried to enter the bathroom from the kitchen directly by the entryway and hit her hip on the corner of the table. Her boyfriend sometimes came over for meals so she had bought a table that seated two, but in the end she had just made her place more cramped. She bumped some part of her body against it every time she passed.

  She washed her face in the sink in the tiny room that contained both her bathtub and toilet. As though it had been waiting for her to finish gargling, the phone rang.

  The display on the main unit identified the caller. It was her aunt from Hachioji. She’d most likely say, “Come and drop by sometime,” because Kanako hadn’t returned to Hachioji over summer break.

  “I thought you’d be back from your part-time soon, so tried calling.” The voice was neither politely reserved nor excessively intimate. Kanako always felt that it was precisely the tone of a woman who had acted as her foster mother and raised her for eight years.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it back. I’ve been a bit busy.”

  “Don’t worry about that, dear.”

  Her aunt was impatient to get straight to the point. It was very unlike her; she usually spent half an hour leisurely gossiping before going, “Oh my, why did I call?” having completely forgotten the reason.

  “The courthouse called this afternoon.”

  The word “courthouse” put Kanako on guard.

  “Apparently the Supreme Court handed down its ruling. It’s the death penalty. They’ve sentenced him to death.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “I’m so glad for you.”

  It seemed her aunt didn’t exactly know how to express her happiness. Was it even appropriate to feel joy? Was it permissible because they were the bereaved?

  “It’ll be in the papers as soon as tomorrow, and I’m sure they won’t be trying to leave you alone, but I won’t let anyone come your way.”

  Tomorrow, the Hachioji home would be flooded with calls from interviewers. Her aunt would act as a barrier and refuse to give up Kanako’s contact info. There was no doubt that her aunt dreaded the hassle, but she would do her best like it was her last remaining duty.

  “Your uncle said something. He thinks that if we can make it past this round, the media should go away for good.”

  His predictions were probably correct.

  “Thank you for telling me.”

  “The courthouse is the same as always. Only letting us know after the fact.”

  Recently, a “Victim Contact System” had been created based on directives from the National Police Agency. Its intention was to allow victims and their relatives to remain informed on the investigation process and court decisions if they so wished, but as of yet the reform had taken little actual effect.

  “Well then, I’ll let you know if anything else comes up.”

  After ending the call, Kanako turned on the TV. All the channels were playing sickly sweet romances or variety programs with dueling chefs and such. There were no breaking news alerts.

  Word of the death sentencing, complete with a photo of Norio Tsuzuki’s face, found its way to the eleven o’clock news.

  Only the bare minimum of information left the announcer’s mouth and the report was over in a minute.

  A clip of the house in Asagaya shot from a helicopter at the time of the incident had come on. It was a busy scene with police officers and forensics personnel moving to and fro around a home surrounded with blue tarp.

  She flipped through the other channels’ news programs as well. She steeled herself in case they showed an image of her at the funeral, but fortunately none of the stations chose to broadcast that.

  Once news hour was over, she turned off the television and subjected her body to silence, focusing all of her attention on spotting symptoms of a breakdown.

  She couldn’t hear anything. Nothing started.

  Whenever she began to have a breakdown, there was a sound she would hear. It always attacked her sense of hearing first.

  She remembered something that a veteran therapist had told her at the clinic she used to visit. “Those four hours are something that you may have to live with for the rest of your life, Kako. Other than that, you can live life the same way as anyone else.”

  Half a year after the incident, she was freed of nightmares and insomnia and vertigo, but the post-traumatic stress disorder of those “four hours” remained a part of Kanako even now.

  In the last eight years, she had experienced it two or three times a year. It wasn’t particularly regulated by anything like the changing of the seasons. The “four hours” approached stealthily, abruptly, with no warning, which was precisely why she could never let her guard down.

  A sound like the ringing of a bell signaling the start of class vibrated down the back side of her eardrums.

  It was not a pretty sound. It resonated deeply through her entire body, and its ominous echoes made all of her senses narrow down to a single dark point.

  Saliva welled in her mouth. Her heart beat an irregular rhythm. Oh, it’s starting, thirteen-year-old Kanako braced herself. It was the second time since the tragedy that she was experiencing this.

  She was approaching the park located between her middle school and her aunt’s house, Ryokuchi Park. The spotted clouds were dyed madder red.

  She wondered what she should do. She needed to find a place to sit.

  She made a split-second decision and chose the stall for the handicapped in the public bathroom. All of the regular women’s toilets were Japanese-style, which meant she couldn’t sit, and the only place nearby where she could was the designated stall.

  She closed the door. She locked it. She sat on the toilet seat. The piercing bell had been haranguing her, so she was grateful for this safe spot.

  She closed her eyes and accepted the image. It wasn’t just a visual; she could hear the sound of fast footsteps in slippers, the vibrations of those footsteps on the tatami ma
ts, the scent of the futon she had thrown over herself in a hurry. It filled all five of Kanako’s senses.

  She slipped across time. Where she plopped down was the communal room they had stayed in during her school trip. The sliding door opened and the light from the hallway poured in.

  “Akiba…Akiba, where are you?”

  She could hear Mr. Ihara calling. The scene began there like clockwork. Having settled in the public bathroom, Kanako gave up resisting and just let it happen.

  When she came back to the present exactly four hours later, it was already completely dark outside. Her clothes were damp. It was from a massive amount of sweat. Patches of it had seeped through her school uniform. When she glanced at her watch, she saw it was almost nine.

  She went home in a hurry. She cut through the park and, taking advantage of the fact that there were no cars, walked over a street crossing while the light was still red. No matter how much she ran, the gloom surrounding her remained dark, and Kanako wanted to cry. Yet not a single tear escaped. All of the fluids in her body had already been expelled.

  Two police officers faced her aunt in front of her house.

  “Where were you?!”

  Having just spotted Kanako popping out of nowhere, her aunt sounded hysterical. Barely pulling off a half-formed expression of relief after being at the peak of worry, she rushed towards Kanako. Apparently her aunt had been in the midst of discussing with the officers whether she should request a search.

  “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry.”

  Kanako told her aunt how she had spent “four hours” sitting on a toilet, and apologized to the officers repeatedly.

  And then she drank a massive amount of water.

  Kanako was running.

  The dark alley in Shimokitazawa was similar to the streets that night on her way back home from Ryokuchi Park.

  Looking back, she hadn’t had a breakdown even when she had been informed of the first and second rulings. They didn’t seem to dictate the rhythm. Having learned that her family’s killer had been condemned to death, she still felt tense about the “four hours.” Even though there were no signs of their onset, she didn’t want to be in her room alone.

  Kanako had burst from her apartment and headed to where Takumi worked part-time.

  She arrived at a pub along Chazawa Street. Right then, Takumi was stuffing leftover food into a waste bin, looking resentful in his mandatory cap and uniform.

  “What’s wrong?” He looked surprised at seeing Kanako standing there, panting and out of breath.

  “Come stay with me tonight,” she muttered bluntly, not bothering to play coy. The sweat dripping down her neck was becoming colder and colder.

  “Give me five minutes.”

  Kanako also needed those five minutes to calm her breathing.

  Takumi came out changed into regular clothing. His eyes always drooped sleepily, and she felt like she could sleep in peace with him nearby. That was the “repose” that his presence granted her.

  They held hands as they walked. She wanted him to grip harder than usual. Twangy traditional music blared out from the speakers of the ramen vendors they passed.

  “How about it?” invited Takumi.

  “Sure.”

  Kanako could still feel the beef bowl she had eaten an hour ago sitting in her gut, but she’d do him the favor.

  “Did something happen?”

  She had apparently been staring blankly while grasping her bamboo shoots with her chopsticks. No, nothing, she shook her head, but she wouldn’t have fled from her apartment in the middle of the night to meet him in that case.

  As far as Kanako knew, Takumi had no idea that she was, as the media would put it, “the tragic heroine of a case that occurred eight years ago.”

  A non-fiction writer named Koichi Shiina appeared on her way back from middle school.

  He was a large, bearded man. Now that it had been three years since the incident, he claimed that he wanted to sum it all up in a report. Kanako knew how to deal with his type.

  Getting ambushed by reporters on her way to and from school had been a daily occurrence back then. When the first death sentence ruling had been passed and she had been asked, “What do you think?” she had cocked her head and replied, “Nothing much.”

  The reporters had clearly been expecting her to say something along the lines of, “Now the souls of my family can rest in peace,” or “He shouldn’t bother appealing and should just accept the punishment.” But Kanako made sure to only ever give the reporters the most emotionally anemic responses. Swallowing down her reservations about the press and replying with the bare minimum of words was her way of protecting herself.

  “I just interviewed the anti-death sentence activist group supporting Norio Tsuzuki. If you would, I’m very eager to hear your thoughts on their opinions.”

  A reporter who was connected to that activist group. Hearing that, Kanako cast him an appraising look. She thought that perhaps someone had finally appeared who could help her.

  That was why when she was invited to a cafe in the Hachioji station building, she didn’t bluntly reject him as she had all the others.

  When they entered the cafe, the man squeezed his large frame uncomfortably into one of the chairs and stared down at her, but sat slightly hunched so as not to intimidate Kanako as he faced her.

  “It’s been three years since you were taken in by your aunt’s family, hasn’t it?”

  In the last three years, Kanako had attained a modest, fleeting peace, and she sometimes felt like she had been born into the family from the start.

  The therapist she had seen at the clinic from sixth grade to the spring of her second year in middle school had said, “We offer a variety of treatments here, but the most effective of all is time.”

  She was told that trying to stay in safe places was the best way to buy herself time. Her aunt’s house was precisely that.

  In her post-traumatic stress disorder, what she remembered wasn’t just the incident itself, but all of her sensations upon learning of it. Shock. Fear. How difficult it had been to breathe. The cramp she had gotten in her neck. The way her tongue had felt stuck to her palate. The troublesome disorder forced her to re-experience all of it.

  While the sudden attacks from the “four hours” inconvenienced not only Kanako but her aunt’s family, those three years had made Kanako strong. She had gained the courage to face the incident in its entirety.

  No, that’s not it, Kanako corrected herself. It wasn’t that she had taken a beating and gotten stronger, nor had she gained courage. It was guilt. The guilt she felt towards her deceased family had taken root.

  Whenever he came home drunk at night, her father always blissfully ate tea-steeped rice with pickled plums. There was nothing her mother looked forward to more than soaking in the hot spring for half an hour when they went on their annual New Year’s family vacation. Tomoki and Naoki were always fighting, but they sled down snowy slopes together and wouldn’t let Kanako on. That was apparently a world for just the two of them.

  According to the reports that she had glimpsed in weekly magazines, her father had made Norio Tsuzuki hate him to the point where murder had almost been inevitable. Her mother and brothers may have been dragged in due to their father and died as a result. Kanako nearly felt like blaming her father in that regard.

  Her brothers could no longer enjoy anything. They could never laugh again. All of their lives were gone.

  Despite that, here she was, laughing with her new family. When her uncle bought her a souvenir at Asakusa and the biscuits resembled goldfish, she couldn’t stop giggling.

  Whenever she felt guilt over being the only one left alive to have a good time, an urge to destroy herself gripped her.

  When she tried to think of something suitably painful to hurt herself, the only way seemed to make herself face the moment when the four of them had lost their lives.

  “Kanako…?”

  She had been ignoring Shiina, engrossed
in her own thoughts. She snapped back to herself when he called her name.

  “I’ll answer your questions.”

  Shiina had been prepared to spend some time trying to convince Kanako to cooperate and was probably a bit stunned that she had agreed so readily.

  She’d decided to bet on this man, Shiina. “But in exchange, I have a condition. I want to read the culprit’s personal statement. Can I ask you to obtain it?”

  The meticulously detailed statement that the perp had written. She felt an unbearable need to read the bare account of that night as written by the murderer himself, and through it understand what her family had felt and seen in their last moments. She wanted to understand what her father had done to earn Norio Tsuzuki’s hatred.

  Shiina had to search for a while to find the right words to respond to Kanako’s request. “The courts believe that Norio Tsuzuki submitted the statement to escape punishment. If so, the contents of that statement might have very little bearing on the truth. Do you still want to read it?”

  Kanako sat ramrod straight and faced Shiina.

  “It’s not like you just found out about the statement, right? Why now?”

  “If I had asked them, would they have shown it to me?”

  “Probably not.”

  To begin with, the system was such that the victim’s side couldn’t appear in court. Relatives weren’t even informed when the trial would be held. As such Kanako had never attended a single hearing.

  “See, criminal trials aren’t set up to be the aggrieved versus the offender. The country has a thing called a penal code, and those who violate it are caught by the nation as disruptors of public order, and the nation is in charge of punishing them. So the victim’s side can’t become a party to the proceedings. Sure, the victim himself might be called on to testify about the injuries he suffered, but a relative doesn’t have anything to do with the court case.”

  Shiina wasn’t trying to excuse the law; he was merely stating the indisputable reality of the matter.

  In their nation’s system, there was no opportunity for the victim’s family even to convey its sorrow over the loss. There was no chance to ask the defendant, “Why did you make my family go through such a thing?” They couldn’t even observe the public hearing, unlike the defendant, and didn’t receive a copy of the ruling. Even a middle schooler like Kanako knew that much.