Deep Red

by Hisashi Nozawa

  “Did you meet with him?”

  “Yeah, yesterday.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “He said if it went well, it’s not impossible for me to get a gravure in An-An magazine.”

  “He says that to everyone. But I think you really could, Kako, if it weren’t Akira who scouted you.”

  Kanako withheld how he’d babbled about living with the daughter of someone on death row. Telling her could cement her will to kill Akira, but as Miho was now, it wasn’t necessary.

  Miho worked out the plan to be executed three days later. Overwhelmed by her momentum, Kanako examined every point on the timetable and weighed in as to whether it was “too dangerous” or “actually doable.”

  They were in Miho’s apartment. She insisted that they were safe there because Akira Nakagaki, busy scouting in Shibuya at that hour, couldn’t possibly return.

  They spread a road map and reviewed the plan.

  “Three nights from now, Kako, you’ll wait in your apartment until you’re up.”

  At 1:30 a.m., Ice Storm would be empty of customers. The blond waiter, Goro, would leave early for band practice. At around the time the bar lights went off, Kanako would arrive to act as “the last customer.”

  Her role was that of an aspiring model who’d dropped by for drinks several times before. She had hit it off with Miho, and the bartender had promised to introduce her to Akira Nakagaki.

  Kanako would stay there by herself while Miho headed off to the murder site, the apartment building in Daikanyama where he had his company office. At past midnight, it would only take around ten minutes by taxi.

  That day, Miho would have made a promise to meet him there: “There’s a girl who comes by the bar often, and she says she doesn’t mind showing a bit of skin if she can become a model. She’s pretty gutsy, and I’d like if you could meet with her once. She said she won’t be free until around 1:30 a.m. tonight, so I’ll bring her to the office for you.”

  Miho said she doubted he would have any other scouts in the office with him. He never let his colleagues glimpse girls he liked, and he’d conduct the interview alone. At 1:30 a.m., he should be the only one in the office.

  Behind the apartment building was a dark parking lot where Akira Nakagaki parked his scooter. Miho would look up at the apartment lights from down there and place a phone call to him. At that point, she would be ten minutes late to their arranged meeting time, and he would be waiting, irritated.

  “Sorry for being late. She suddenly started feeling unsure. She’s still at the bar, so I was hoping you could come over here.”

  If it was just Gotanda, he could take his scooter. He would eventually come down to the parking lot. Gripping her hammer in the dark, Miho would slowly raise the weapon against the vital spot where a man could be felled with one blow.

  After confirming Akira Nakagaki’s death, she would hail a cab somewhere relatively far from the building and return to her apartment in Gotanda.

  At around the same time, Kanako would be taking a phone call from Goro at the bar.

  Since a few days ago, Miho had been telling him: “I have a friend who’s a graphic designer, and I can ask her to design a flier when you have your first live. I think she’ll do it for free.” Goro had gladly taken her up.

  That night, just as he got ready to leave for band practice, Miho would say as though she’d just remembered, “She told me to ask you something, actually. She said she wanted to add the profiles of all the band members to the flier. Do you think you could tell me everyone’s birthdates and blood types?”

  Goro most likely wouldn’t know off the top of his head. Even if he did, all Miho needed to do was ask for more obscure data.

  Goro, off to meet his band members, would promise to call back right away. At around two, he would arrive at the warehouse where they practiced. He would then call Miho, who was still supposed to be at the bar.

  Kanako would take the call.

  “The bartender’s out right now buying cigarettes. I’m just a customer, but when I said I wanted cigarettes she said the vending machine was hard to find and that she’d go buy some for me…If you’d like, I can take a message for her?”

  Goro would have her jot down the birthdates and blood types of all the band members.

  “Then, I’ll pass her this note,” Kanako would say and end the call.

  Goro wouldn’t have spoken to Miho directly, but knowing there had been a customer, he would most likely testify that Miho had been at the bar at around 2 a.m.

  Kanako had already pointed out the problematic areas upon first hearing Miho’s plan.

  “Once the police start seriously looking into your alibi, if they find out I was the last customer, I don’t think they’ll believe my testimony.”

  “You’re still worried about that?” Miho was the more resolute of the two by then. “It’s true that it’ll all be over if the police start looking into you, Kako. I planned this so that wouldn’t happen.”

  It would be bad for Kanako, too, if the police started looking into her. They would learn that she was Kanako Akiba, not Yukako Fuyuki, and then Miho would find out too.

  “That night, I’ll get in a disagreement with you, the aspiring model, and she’ll never drop by the bar again. I won’t have her contact info, either.”

  “If that’s how it’s gonna go, I don’t think we have enough proof that the girl exists.”

  “But Goro would have actually spoken with a girl who matches the description.”

  “If the police start suspecting that you asked someone to provide an alibi for you that night—”

  “Let them suspect. Let them look for the girl. There’s no way they’ll find her. She’s an imaginary girl who doesn’t exist.”

  An aspiring model who had asked Miho to introduce her to someone who worked for a modeling agency. It was true that she was a fictional, imaginary girl in the sense that no such girl existed in this world.

  “I’ve met Goro several times at the bar. If he tells the police that he thinks that girl may have helped you…”

  “I’ve never told Goro your name, and I also haven’t said that you’re a student at Eiwa Gakuin. In fact, there are dozens of customers who come by often whom I don’t know how to contact. There’s no reason for Goro to suspect you, Kako.”

  “Hey, Miho, don’t you think we’re making this a little too convenient for ourselves? Will the police really buy an alibi of this level and believe you?”

  “Even if the police start suspecting me, I won’t tell them a word about you, Kako. If nothing else, I’ll promise you that.”

  Kanako still didn’t fully buy it, but she couldn’t say much more against such firm conviction.

  She left the apartment as the sun was setting. She lowered the bill of her cap and climbed down the outer stairs so as not to be seen by the other residents.

  When she looked up, Miho had opened the kitchen window halfway and was waving.

  Kanako nodded back. Having decided not to meet again until three days later, they went their separate ways.

  She had gotten on the JR line and was being jostled by the after-hours rush when she heard the announcement for Ebisu. Seized by an impulse, she got off onto the platform. She passed ticketing and emerged outside the station. Mingling with the businessmen on their way home, she walked along the street in the sunset and came out onto Komazawa Street.

  She knew the address from looking at the map. The apartment building that housed Akira Nakagaki’s office was a few minutes’ walk from Ebisu station. If she remembered correctly, there had been a church mark close by on the map.

  It was a five-story apartment building with an auto-lock feature. Kanako was careful to avoid being seen by the residents as she looked for the parking lot. Beyond the trash-deposit area’s cement-block wall were several bicycles. She couldn’t see Akira Nakagaki’s scooter. It was no doubt time for him to be out scouting on the streets.

  She’d desperately wanted to see w
ith her own eyes the spot where Miho would kill him.

  Adjacent to the apartment building premises was a church. A cross pointed up towards the sky. If Miho were a devout Christian, she’d no doubt feel terrified.

  Kanako stayed on high alert for any people. It would be bad if someone reported that they had seen a strange woman at the site of the crime three days prior.

  She looked up to the fifth floor where the office was located. The lights would go off, and Akira Nakagaki would exit the room, pass through the auto-lock entrance, and come down this path to the parking lot. His figure appeared on the screen of Kanako’s imagination.

  Miho probably meant to hide in the shadows by the trash. Kanako tested it out by standing there. When she pressed her back to the cement-block wall, it chilled her. Akira Nakagaki would pass by in front. Miho would silently creep closer from behind and try to catch him at a disadvantage as he struggled to pull his scooter from among the mass of bicycles…

  What kind of sound would the hammer make as it abruptly sunk into flesh?

  To what extent would the fallen man writhe and suffer? She worried about the spray of blood. Just in case, should she advise Miho to bring a change of clothes?

  Would Miho, motivated by a hatred that had accumulated in her, become a murderer just like her father?

  Norio Tsuzuki had crumpled by the four corpses and been arrested on the spot by Officer Hashimoto as he had sat there. Would Miho be able to avoid making the same mistake? Would she put her hand to Akira Nakagaki’s carotid artery to confirm that his pulse had stopped, bring her ear to his mouth to confirm that his breathing had ceased, and then calmly depart from the scene?

  Kanako’s doubts bounced back at herself.

  Why was she becoming an accomplice to murder?

  She was inflicting on the daughter the same punishment that the man who’d killed her family suffered. In this instance, the punishment would not come from the law. Kanako didn’t wish for Miho to end up in prison. If that happened, the investigation would turn to Kanako as a co-conspirator.

  Her goal was to make Miho bear the burden of being a murderer, to have her spend the rest of her life with that sin weighing down on her conscience.

  Was that true? Was that what she really wanted? Was this the revenge Kanako sought against Norio Tsuzuki and his daughter? She solemnly looked back to the moment several years ago when she had whispered, “I’m sorry I’m alive,” into the dark.

  Her aunt’s house. It had been midnight. After confirming that her cousins were sound asleep, she had left through the window into the garden on her bare feet. She had stood still on the dimly lit street and imagined the land of the dead there in the darkness of the residential district.

  There, Kanako had done what she hadn’t been able to do in the presence of her psychiatrist: she had cried. She had turned towards the brightest star in the night sky and apologized for being alive.

  Returning to the room and covering herself with her blanket, she’d cursed her undestroyed self and felt for the first time since the incident a burning hatred for the culprit.

  I’m sorry I’m alive by myself. Even now, those whispered words lingered at the bottom of her breast. Her peaceful college life. Her friendship with Eri. Those nights when Takumi made love to her. Living, in and of itself, felt almost sinful.

  Her family had already been destroyed. By assisting Miho’s murder, Kanako would destroy herself. That was her punishment for committing the crime of “being alive.”

  Was she all right with that justification? Did that justify the fact that she was even checking out the site of the murder?

  She didn’t know. Kanako left the parking lot feeling uncertain. Perhaps because she hadn’t led a remotely Christian life, the cross that stood tall in the twilight didn’t offer her any salvation.

  She, Kanako thought, was probably like Miho, or perhaps Norio Tsuzuki, in that she was going mad. That was the most convincing analysis.

  She decided to walk to Shibuya, the first station on the Inokashira line. The city on Friday was filled with people exhilarated by the arrival of the weekend who swaggered bravely, greedily, down the sidewalks.

  On Saturday, Kanako locked herself into her apartment.

  Eri invited her to go see a movie, but she used a cold as an excuse and declined.

  She watched five videos she had rented Friday night. All of them were buoyant blockbusters that she had seen before. She didn’t want to fray her nerves.

  Takumi had called at night from the Nasu Highlands, but she forgot what they had talked about as soon as the call ended.

  She didn’t take a step out of her room on Sunday, either. She got a call from Miho at noon.

  It’s finally tomorrow.

  Yeah.

  Let’s do our best.

  Yeah, let’s.

  It sounded too healthy an exchange for a pair trying to get themselves pumped for a murder. It was as though they were good citizens taking on a half-marathon.

  It wasn’t a surprise, but she had no appetite. She boiled some rice vermicelli noodles left over from the summer and forced them down her throat.

  Night fell, and Miho called again.

  She said he had just called and told her to wait and make miso soup, so she had made eggplant miso soup and was waiting. The last miso soup I’m making for him, Miho said, laughing darkly from the other end of the phone.

  She’d probably sleep with that man tonight. She probably wouldn’t reject him. She wouldn’t do anything to put him on guard about tomorrow. She would act as usual and let the man strip her, caress her, impale her, abuse her.

  No matter how repulsive the night, Miho would no doubt be able to bear it.

  Kanako called Eri and said, “My cold’s still awful, I’m taking tomorrow off, too. Take notes for me,” pretending to have a sore throat.

  As she drifted through a shallow slumber, Kanako thought she heard Miho scream. Miho’s body hurting because of Akira Nakagaki’s rough lovemaking. Knowing she was just imagining it, Kanako sought the repose of sleep.

  She finally drifted to Monday.

  2

  Miho was to enter the bar after nine.

  Kanako would go there after 1:30 a.m. If the neon-pipe lights were turned off, it was the signal that Goro had already left and only Miho remained.

  Kanako still had seven hours until she was to assist in a murder. The wait was long and painful.

  When darkness had fully fallen outside the window of her apartment, Kanako thought it was her only chance to make the phone call.

  She had to contact Takumi in the highlands of Nasu and tell him how she felt. It would be too late tomorrow. From the bereaved family of the victims of a crime, to a perpetrator. Whether she liked it or not, tonight she would change. This was something that the Kanako before the change had to complete.

  “Sorry for bothering you when you’re busy…Do you have time now?”

  The photography club was staying over at the university seminar house. They’d just finished dinner and were preparing to start “the school festival committee session”—a drinking party. Takumi left the communal room where the other club members were gathered and relocated to the hallway with his phone.

  “What’s up?”

  “I thought I should tell you before we meet tomorrow.”

  “What’s with the formality?”

  “It’s something I’ve been thinking about ever since you left for your trip.”

  “Okay, now I’m worried.”

  Even as he laughed, Kanako could tell that he was scared of what she would say.

  “It’s hard for me to explain. But I want you to understand.”

  “I don’t think I will.”

  It seemed he had already guessed what she was going to say.

  “I want to break up with you, Takumi.”

  “No,” Takumi replied immediately.

  “One day, I’ll be too much for you, Takumi.”

  “Wait just a minute here,” he said, his w
ords bristling with anger.

  “You’ll gradually get tired of empathizing with my past. You’ll always have to be careful with my feelings. Every time we fight over something petty, you’ll wonder whether you dug up some old trauma or hurt me again. These things will be exhausting.”

  “I said hold up.”

  “And also…I wasn’t able to say it before, but I never feel anything when we do it.” She’d even prepared herself to say this, despite knowing how hurt Takumi would feel. “It’s not because of you, it’s a problem that lies with me. I think what happened eight years ago is why. Takumi, you’ll probably come to hate this part of me, too. I want to break up before that happens.”

  None of them was the real reason. Kanako’s true feelings lay elsewhere. She wanted him to quickly dispose of this Kanako Akiba who was on the verge of destroying herself by becoming an accomplice to murder.

  “I knew. During those times, I thought maybe you weren’t feeling anything, and I…”

  It was the voice of a man who recognized how pathetic he was. She really had hurt him. She shouldn’t have said it, Kanako thought regretfully.

  “But I thought the problem was something internal. I thought that if we loved each other enough, held each other enough, we could have a better relationship. Because I’m super optimistic.”

  That was why she liked Takumi.

  “It’s my fault. Because I have this body, and this heart.”

  “I’ve never felt that you were too much, Kako. I won’t in the future, either. Of course I’ll sympathize with your past. I think you’ve suffered more than I could ever imagine. Hey, Kako, should I have maybe come out and told you much sooner that I knew everything and forced you to let me listen to your story? Did you want me to be more sympathetic?”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Right? It’s not as though I was going out with you because I felt sorry that you had no relatives. I’m not generous enough to do volunteer work out of pity. I just thought that you were cute, Kako, and I wanted to see you smile more, and that’s why I stayed with you. More than I wanted to protect you, I think I may have wanted you to protect me. After graduating I’m going to end up going back home anyway, all I need to do is inherit my family business and continue life that way. I’d given up, knowing that in the end photography would be nothing but a hobby, but I needed you, Kako, because you gave me the courage to work harder. I could try to take better photos even if it was just a hobby. I was a bit overcome when you showed me your whole body and said you wanted me to take even more beautiful photos of you. Why would you expose so much of yourself to me, why were you so serious about having my camera take photos of you?”