“That would be the most persuasive reason, but it just doesn’t feel right to me. Sorry. I didn’t want to upset you by saying this, but I can’t help but feel that Norio Tsuzuki fought his way to the Supreme Court because he had a real reason to. He doesn’t claim he’s innocent. Everything the prosecution said in their opening statement was true. But there was one thing he objected to, one thing he wanted the courts that kept sentencing him to death to understand. I think that’s why he continued to face trial these past eight years.”
“One thing he wanted them to understand…?”
“I don’t really get it myself. Our current penal code would never allow it even if he said so in court, but maybe he wanted to declare out loud that the death sentence might not be the appropriate punishment for him…”
Kanako had a vague idea. It had to do with how he felt towards her father. Norio Tsuzuki believed that the original fault had lain on the victims’ side and that Yukihiko Akiba had deserved to die. Despite his crime’s enormity, he probably didn’t regret the entirety of his actions.
“Let’s stop talking about this,” Takumi said. Kanako’s expression was tensing from trying to fathom the incarcerated man’s thinking. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. I’m sorry. He was scared of the death penalty, which was why he begged for his life for eight years. That’s probably it,” Takumi forcefully tried to convince both himself and Kanako.
Yes, she’d best put an end to it, if only as thanks to Takumi for quietly watching over her this past year. “I wanna go check out the sea,” Kanako said.
“Let’s go. It feels good to walk with your bare feet on the beach.”
The two of them left their room and walked down the path to the beach. As Takumi had said, walking along the beach at night with their bare feet felt nice and cool. The moon beamed above them. The waves that pressed in towards the shore were so warm that it seemed they had absorbed its light.
As they walked to the sound of the waves, there was no need for words.
It had been a nice little vacation, Kanako thought.
On this trip, she had discovered a rational part of herself that desired to get away from Miho Tsuzuki now—now, while it wasn’t too late.
The day after she returned to Tokyo, she received a call from Miho.
“Are you studying?”
Kanako’s first afternoon class, “The History of Western Literature,” had been cancelled, and she had been in the school cafeteria sipping milk tea in the cafe corner.
“It’s fine…How are you? Has it been okay since?”
“It was just as I thought it’d go. Akira came back after three days. And then there was some stuff, and…”
“Did he do it again?”
“Can you come to the bar, maybe tonight?”
It seemed like she didn’t want to discuss it over the phone.
“Tonight is a little…After my part-time, I have to go out to a restaurant with my editor.”
It wasn’t a lie. They wanted to hear her opinions before renewing the movie theater exit-survey corner. Kanako and three other part-timers had been invited to a dinner meeting.
“You’re at school now, right? I don’t mind coming to meet you.”
“Now won’t do.”
She couldn’t help sounding a little harsh. Her own daily life being infringed upon would tip Miho off that she was dealing not with Yukako Fuyuki, but Kanako Akiba.
Miho insisted on meeting sometime that day. It seemed so urgent she was pushy, and there was a coarseness in her raspy voice. She no doubt had another flesh wound on her face.
“If you don’t mind it being really late tonight, I can drop by.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Then I’ll try to make it by around the time you close.”
“I’m so sorry for making you.”
The call abruptly ended.
Something seemed off about Miho. Something about her voice reeked of blood, as if dripping blood could travel through phone signals and start to spill from Kanako’s cell.
That night, the sociable editor didn’t release Kanako and the others until past one.
Drawing on their knowledge to help remodel the exit-survey corner had just been an excuse to throw a mixer with the part-timer girls. The thirty-year-old editor brought friends from his college days and forgot about work-related talk, and they had fun gossiping about dirt-cheap legal drugs being sold on the streets in Roppongi. Kanako struggled to match their mood.
They went to karaoke for the after-party, and cringing inside, she sang “The Day Love Was Born” in a duet with the editor. She was also forced to sing one song each by Ringo Shiina and Ami Suzuki before she finally managed to get away.
She’d done her best to courteously decline a dangerous invitation to continue drinking at the editor’s apartment. “My boyfriend’s waiting” served as her parting line, and she got in a taxi.
She had to rethink entering this magazine company as a former part-timer. She would forgive the editor if he never made eyes at her again. She’d declared that she had a boyfriend, so hopefully he would rein himself in.
Kanako realized that the driver was talking, and said, “Sorry?” He had asked if she had a preferred route from Shinjuku to Gotanda. “I’ll leave it to you,” she replied.
When they arrived in front of the bar, Ice Storm’s blue neon lights were already turned off.
It was 1:40. Miho had once told her that on Mondays, the number of customers declined rapidly past midnight and that they closed before two.
She paid the taxi fee, which included a 30-percent surcharge because it was past midnight, and headed down the stairs to the bar.
At the door, she sensed that there were still other guests.
The bell sounded as Kanako entered, and Miho turned around behind the counter. It was as though the Liberty Bell tattoo on her shoulder were ringing.
“Sorry, gimme a sec.”
Miho was entertaining a man who didn’t seem to mind that his mousy gray business suit was wrinkling as he hunched over his draft beer. Narrow eyes hid deep behind his glasses.
Ratso. The man reminded Kanako of Dustin Hoffman’s character in the film Midnight Cowboy. At first glance he looked to be in his mid-forties, but his hair was so dark and thick it looked dyed, so perhaps he was younger.
“Mr. Koike, I’m happy you come every week, but it’s always after last orders on a Monday. It’s a bit of a bother.”
Miho didn’t hold back on her words, so he indeed seemed to be a regular.
“I can’t help it. I’m in charge of answering grievances on the phone and have to stay at the station until past midnight on Mondays.” His voice churned, his eyes stared.
“Then come on Tuesdays.”
“Can’t on Tuesdays. Promised my wife I’d come home early so we can have sex.”
“Then how about Wednesdays? Either way, we have to close around this time on Mondays. I’m sorry, but go home.”
“But you just let a customer in.”
“She’s a friend.”
Kanako was watching the exchange from a table in the back. The man called Koike grumbled, “Fine…” before wobbling to his feet. He pulled two thousand-yen bills from his wallet, slapped them onto the counter, and barked, “Don’t need change.”
“If you’re coming to drink, don’t come already drunk.”
“I drink first at another place where I can get wasted quick. The booze here is expensive.”
“That’s not true. It’s market price. Thanks for coming. Be careful on your way back. Don’t trip on the stairs.”
Kanako watched Miho see him out the door and migrated to the counter.
“He works at a TV station. He comes every Monday at this hour,” Miho said with a slightly bitter smile. “He knows that the blond-haired guy leaves early for band practice on Mondays.”
“So he’s here to hit on you, Miho.”
“He comes in completely hammered. It’s so rude…What do you want to drink?”
Kanako’s face was flushed, and it was obvious that she’d been at a drinking party. “Just water is fine.”
Miho brought out some ice-cold mineral water for her.
Miho sat two chairs away and lit a cigarette. Her first breath of smoke seemed fairly melancholic. Her cheeks seemed sunken in, and she looked like a convalescent.
“You’re tired.”
“Yeah, I guess…”
“You’re not hurt, are you?”
“Not on my face,” Miho said as though she were wounded somewhere out of sight. “I took a whole week off.”
“Did something happen?”
Miho turned away and stood up, the theatrics probably unintended. “The date’s already changed, but I wanted to spend today with you, Kako,” she said in a singsong voice and disappeared into the staff room where the lockers were. She brought back a small box, put it on the counter, and took out the contents.
Although it was small, it was a white decorated cake. Four bags containing five slender candles each also came out of the box. There were a total of twenty.
“Could it be your birthday?”
“It’s yesterday now, but I’m finally twenty.”
Kanako had been born half a year earlier. “Congrats.”
“I wanted to hear that from you…It was kind of forced on you, but you’ve been invited to my birthday party.”
“So that’s what it was. If you’d told me over the phone, I could have bought a present.”
“No need. I just wanted us to eat cake together.”
Miho took the candles out of the bags and stuck them in the cake. Kanako helped. They arranged the twenty of them in a circle.
“Well then, make us something to drink so we can toast?”
“What do you want, Kako?”
“I guess for occasions like this, something cute like a mimosa?”
“Got it.”
Miho sounded energized as she entered the counter and took a corked bottle of sparkling wine out of the fridge. She poured it into two glasses and added orange juice.
As she did that, Kanako lit the twenty candles.
When Miho returned to her seat, Kanako said, “Happy birthday!” in a voice an octave higher than usual. Miho let out a full-blown laugh despite her pale face and blew out the candles on the cake. Perhaps because she didn’t have enough breath, they didn’t go out the first try, and it wasn’t until her third try that the last candle flickered out.
“Cheers.”
They clinked their glasses together. Miho’s mimosa was sweeter than Kanako imagined.
“It’s been nine years since I’ve had a friend celebrate my birthday.”
“Nine years…?”
“My eleventh birthday was my last. We had a birthday party at my school, and then I hurried home in the afternoon. My mother had received permission from her hospital to stay with us overnight.”
Miho was trying to speak cheerfully, but it didn’t last long. Her voice sank, and her gaze fell to the bottom of her glass.
“But I saw our neighbors on the apartment stairs and was told to ‘Go to the hospital immediately.’ There was a big red stain on the landing, and I knew right away that it was my mother’s blood. She didn’t have enough platelets, so it was taking a while to dry. Right next to it was a pair of shopping bags from the supermarket. Apparently, my mother wanted to show off her cooking skills and make me something for my birthday. She’d shopped at the supermarket, and climbing our apartment’s stairs with the heavy bags hanging from her arms, she slipped, hit her head, and fell unconscious…”
“What kind of condition was it?” Aplastic anemia. It had been in Norio Tsuzuki’s statement.
“It was a malignant type of anemia. A condition where once you bleed, it doesn’t stop…So my birthday is also my mother’s death anniversary. Even after I was taken in by her family in Utsunomiya, there was always incense burning on my birthday. My grandma said she’d celebrate for me, but I could never get in the mood.”
Miho had been unable to celebrate her birthday thanks to her parent’s demise. Kanako felt she understood, comparing that situation to her own. While her family hadn’t died on her birthday, she was always a “guest” when her aunt’s family celebrated for her. Kanako smiled the smile of a guest as she accepted presents from everyone.
“Do you know what you’re actually supposed to do on birthdays?” Miho said.
Failing to grasp what the question meant, Kanako shook her head.
“It’s a day when you’re actually supposed to give thanks.”
“Give thanks…”
“Yup. The day we ought to feel grateful to our parents for having us.”
Oh, I see, Kanako thought. She felt like she’d been schooled, but it also sounded like pure cheese from the public broadcaster’s morning drama slot.
“My birthday was the day my mother died, and after that it always smelled of incense, and I always just wanted to erase the day. But you know, after my father got the death penalty from the Supreme Court and accepted without re-appealing, I had a sudden thought. Yet another of the people who’d brought me into the world was going to die. From now on, even if it stinks of incense and I don’t have anyone to celebrate with, I want my birthday to be, not the day I congratulate myself, but when I give thanks to my parents.”
The person Miho felt grateful towards had killed everyone in Kanako’s family. Miho was asking Kanako to participate. Faced with the birthday cake, Kanako was having to grind through some emotions of her own.
“Wow, I’d been staying away from booze, so my body really craves it.” Miho was gulping down her second glass of mimosa, this time almost all sparkling wine.
“You were?”
“I was hospitalized. Three days or so after you came to me, I was taken away in an ambulance.”
“What happened?”
Kanako had a hunch. When Miho had called at lunchtime, she’d said that after hitting her face in place of a sandbag and storming out, Akira Nakagaki had returned exactly three days later. They’d no doubt gotten into another quarrel upon his return.
“The baby, it was no good.” Miho rubbed her hand against her stomach poignantly.
Kanako got what she was trying to say. “You were pregnant?”
“I didn’t get my period for around two months, but I was always a bit irregular so I ignored it. I got a positive on the pregnancy test and was thinking how to tell him if and when he came back…”
“You were planning on having the baby.”
“I wanted to have that guy’s kid.”
Kanako sensed that Miho wasn’t using the past tense just because she’d lost her child. Large tears were glossing her eyes, but hatred had crossed her features when she’d called her husband “that guy.”
“As usual, he came back with a Tiffany’s brand ring in a bag dangling from his arm. I decided not to tell him that night. I was afraid of how he’d receive the news. He might tell me to get rid of it, so I decided to wait until the stable period of my pregnancy when I couldn’t get an abortion anymore. I thought he might change once the kid was born, and I was sure he’d become a loving father…”
The tears finally started to flow.
“But even though I didn’t tell him, he seemed to figure it out from how I acted. I stopped smoking. When he invited me to drink, I only drank oolong tea. When he said, ‘Let’s do it,’ I told him, ‘I’m not feeling too good today,’ and turned him down. He works with women, so he’s really attuned to stuff like that. When a girl he scouted came to the AV set though she was pregnant and ended up miscarrying, it became a police matter, he told me once. That’s why, according to him, he’s always got his radar on when it comes to women’s bodies…I think he figured it out from how pale I was. He knew that I was carrying his kid.”
“What happened then?”
It had been the following morning.
Akira Nakagaki said he wanted some miso soup. Miho’s morning sickness was worse than usual and she
didn’t think she could stand the aroma, so she tried to make do with an instant version. At that, the man snapped.
“No, actually,” Miho revised her own take, “the miso soup was his excuse to be violent with me. He was looking for a reason to beat me.”
Akira Nakagaki had sensed that there was a child growing in Miho’s belly, and feigning one of his rampages, he started kicking her stomach.
“He kicked me. Again and again. He kicked me as hard as he could, here.”
Miho struck her now empty belly. It was so horrifying to think about that Kanako also turned pale.
“Stop, there’s a baby in there, I screamed, and tried to protect my belly with both hands. But he pretended he couldn’t hear and kept on kicking me. He tried to kick the kid to death.”
A tremendous pain began to spread in her abdomen, and Miho curled in on herself, suffering. Akira Nakagaki left her like that and fled from the room. It was still morning, and they had been so loud that the neighbor peered in from the door, saw Miho’s state, and called an ambulance. The baby was already gone by the time she reached the hospital.
“What about the police?”
Miho shook her head.
“Why? If you went to them, he’d be charged for battery…”
“Nope, that won’t do. I want to punish him with my own hands.”
That word “punish” sounded hollow to Kanako’s ears.
Once her wounds were healed, this woman would go back to Akira Nakagaki’s arms. It was a cycle they lived as a couple. They frolicked about making each other bleed.
“He killed my child. He has to pay for it.”
“Pay for it how?” Kanako retorted coldly.
Miho fell silent. Her feelings had gotten ahead of her, and she couldn’t come up with an appropriate punishment.
“Are you gonna grab him and try to scar up his face?”
The words came out mocking, and Miho glared sharply.
Kanako held an arrow. She’d been sharpening it, she thought, precisely for a moment like this. She nocked it to her bow and pulled back on the string generously.
“A man like him, you should just kill.”
The arrow flew. She heard it slicing through wind. It ought to have pierced Miho’s very core.
Deep Red Page 24