Goro called just as Miho was out buying cigarettes. Yoko jotted down his message.
Miho and Yoko waited at the bar for a while, but Akira Nakagaki never came and they decided to call it quits for the night.
This was where their problems started. Koike had visited.
He had come to the bar shortly past two, so he should have encountered Miho and Yoko. The person he encountered, however, was a woman who claimed to be Miho’s friend, and Koike remained and spoke with her for a while.
If the police found out about Koike, they would discover a flaw in Miho’s explanations. It was the only uncertain element in their plan.
“If that happens, there’s nothing we can do.”
On the phone, Miho had sounded as though she were leaving it up to fate.
Akira Nakagaki regained consciousness the following day.
Despite having sustained a serious injury that had caved in part of his skull, his doctor signed off that he should suffer no major side effects other than lingering numbness in his hands and feet and that he’d be ready to leave the hospital in two weeks.
If the wound had been an inch closer to the center, he could have died instantly, the doctor told Miho. Miho told Kanako that she thought, “Oh, so I didn’t get the method wrong, I just missed by a little.”
While he’d regained consciousness, Akira Nakagaki barely remembered anything from the night of the incident.
He had faint recollections of being on the way to his scooter to go to Ice Storm to meet an aspiring model that Miho wanted to introduce to him. Then the incident had happened.
The police seemed to think that the attempted murder of Akira Nakagaki owed to some sex industry-related trouble. He said it was true that he’d been lambasted for his poor supervision of a model. He’d introduced her to an adult video production company, but she’d been successfully headhunted by another firm. There had been considerable animosity between the parties.
Three days after he’d been hospitalized, Miho visited Akira Nakagaki’s sickroom with divorce papers.
He was meekly munching on fruit jellies that his friends had brought him. Miho apparently felt pity at the sight of her husband lacking his usual shine, and surprise that all it took was a blow to the head with a hammer for a human to wither.
But her resolve didn’t waver. Miho had brought his seal. She wanted him to sign and stamp his seal then and there. She had Goro and another person from the bar sign as their witnesses.
“I registered our marriage without your permission. I tricked you, Akira, and married you. But I felt that for our breakup, I shouldn’t trick you, which is why I came. Sign this yourself.”
Akira Nakagaki acted as usual, sobbing and repeating, “I’m no good without you!” He said, “I knew you registered our marriage without my knowledge. But I didn’t get mad at that because I love you. So please stay by my side. I won’t hit you anymore.”
Miho had been taken in by his words countless times and gone back to square one, but his selfsame excuses left her cold this time.
“Akira, you killed my baby. I can’t forget that and continue to live with you.”
She knew without a doubt that she hadn’t lost the baby by accident. Akira Nakagaki had known that she’d been carrying another life in her. It had been an act of murder.
When he realized that he wasn’t getting anywhere no matter how much he begged, he finally showed his true self. Snarling, “Just sign it yourself and take it,” he started acting out on his bed.
However, the pain in the back of his head seemed to revive whenever he felt agitated, and he was unable to inflict any violence on Miho.
Turning at the door to his room, Miho had said, “Goodbye,” and gone straight to the ward office to deliver the divorce papers.
She’d sent her own belongings from the apartment to Utsunomiya, and just yesterday she’d mailed the key to the hospital room.
“How has it been with him after that?”
This time, Kanako was the one being questioned.
That night, having created the alibi and returned home, she spotted her boyfriend waiting for her outside her apartment building. Kanako recounted this and other details quite fondly.
“I’ve been seeing him every day.”
That night, when Kanako had taken two hours to walk from Gotanda, Takumi could have waited in her room because he had her key. Instead he had stood in the street in front of the apartment building, worrying over her absence.
When she realized that the dark shadow was Takumi, Kanako restrained herself from giving in to the urge to cling to him, and simply greeted him.
He asked, “Where were you?”
“I was drinking alone.”
After that one lie, there was no more need for words. After experiencing the “four hours” for the first time in a while, Kanako had run around the heart of the city, then walked endlessly, and her entire body was exhausted. Despite that, she let Takumi embrace her, and they made love until it was bright out.
Leading Miho, and led by her, Kanako had thrown herself into the world of crime. Soon, the person known as Kanako Akiba would be revealed to the world, and a scalpel would enter her to dissect her. She wanted Takumi to erase that fear.
“We’ve been meeting and loving each other every day,” Kanako couldn’t help but boast to Miho.
This past week, Kanako and Takumi had been embracing as though they hadn’t a single moment to spare. There was no sign of police around Kanako, and while her premonitions of ruin faded by the day, she still couldn’t pass the night without Takumi’s embrace exorcising her fear.
And yet the black core remained in her.
But looking back on how the “four hours” had changed, she thought it might not be long before it melted too.
Miho was returning to Utsunomiya, where she’d find work at some neighborhood supermarket and live with her grandparents. She said she had no plans of returning to Tokyo anytime soon.
“If they carry out my father’s sentence in Tokyo…I might come back to gather his bones,” Miho said lightheartedly, squinting her eyes against the light and staring out at Yaesu’s buildings from where she stood on the bullet train platform. “Here, my address in Utsunomiya,” she handed Kanako a memo. “It’s close, you should come over to play with your boyfriend.”
“I’ll get in touch with you if we do.”
Kanako had decided to never see Miho again.
Maybe it was just to keep her true identity hidden from Miho. Maybe it was cowardly to part without telling Miho a thing.
Kanako had once wanted to announce herself to Miho to cause her pain and see her reaction. Miho would surely apologize for what her father had done.
“Your father killed my family.”
Kanako swore to forever seal away those words. She’d gradually recede, as Yukako Fuyuki, from Miho Tsuzuki’s life. The remaining family of the victims had met with the remaining family of the killer, but Miho wasn’t to bear that fact as a burden.
She could face her father in the visitation room and laugh with him for the limited span of his remaining years. She could pester him for shoulder rides even if they were in a visitation room.
For Miho, this was nothing but a temporary farewell. For Kanako, it was eternal.
The bullet train entered the platform.
“I really owe you a lot, Kako. I wanted to hang out more, but maybe next time.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m so glad that I met you, Kako.”
Miho said it with feeling, and guilt pierced Kanako’s heart.
She had tried to entrap Miho. She had sought wounds deeper than her own and desired to widen those that she did find.
“Even if the detectives come to Utsunomiya, I’ll face them. I won’t ever give them your name, so you can relax,” Miho whispered as though she were an escaped convict. Her expression was bizarre enough to laugh at out loud, but suddenly Kanako’s eyes became damp, and she told herself that she mustn’t cry.
&nb
sp; The bullet train came to a stop. The doors opened. Passengers without seat reservations filed in one after another.
“You should get on quick. You won’t be able to sit.”
If Miho hurried and got on, the bullet train window between them might help conceal how moist Kanako’s eyes were.
“Kako.” Making no move to pick up her Boston bag, Miho stared at Kanako with a serious expression.
“What?”
“Please don’t think I’m weird.”
“I won’t.”
“There’s something I want to do with you.”
“…Something you want to do?”
“Don’t laugh. I’ll get mad if you laugh.”
“What is it?”
“May I kiss you?”
Huh? Kanako almost laughed. Miho still looked serious. A parting kiss. Maybe she’d caught on that this was their final farewell.
“Sure.”
Miho’s face drew closer. Kanako met her. Miho closed her eyes right before their lips met. Kanako chose to shut her eyes, too. Skin on skin, she felt the warmth of the blood flowing in Miho.
Kanako was seized by an impulse to hug Miho close. If they held each other so tightly that their bodies almost snapped, they might convince each other that they could live.
Miho broke away from her. But Kanako chased Miho’s lips and dropped a light kiss on them again with a soft sound.
Miho burst out laughing. Her eyes were getting wet too, but her smiling face seemed infinitely bright.
“Hey, Miho, you have a beautiful heart.”
She should have said that the words were Koike’s, but Kanako just made them her own.
“You too, Kako.”
That wasn’t true.
Hers was a heart that had tried to honor her deceased family by taking revenge on the murderer’s daughter.
Miho finally picked up her Boston bag.
“Bye-bye.”
“Stay well.”
“You too, Kako.”
Miho passed through the doors of the bullet train. She finally found an empty seat in one of the cars. It was an aisle seat, and someone sat in the way between her and Kanako.
The departure bell rang, and the doors closed.
Miho leaned out of her seat and put her hand to her ear, gesturing, I’ll call you. Kanako nodded as though to say, I’ll be waiting. The train began to move. Kanako chased after the car at a brisk pace. Miho kept waving her hand innocently.
Kanako was crying. Tethering a smile to cheeks that were too wet now to cover up, she jogged after the train.
The Shinkansen carrying Miho left the platform and sped away under an autumn sky saturated with clear sunlight.
Wiping her tears, Kanako watched the train until it disappeared before taking out her cell phone.
She turned off the power.
It was to dispose of the number post-haste.
That night, after she finished her usual exit survey part-time job, Kanako’s feet carried her towards Gotanda nonetheless.
Fall was deepening, but the Meguro River smelled as raw as ever.
She stopped in the middle of the bridge and gazed at the river’s dark surface. The weapon that had struck Akira Nakagaki was buried in the mud at the bottom and wouldn’t budge easily.
Would it finally be carried downstream only after the heavy rains came and the current picked up?
Just as the hatred that had controlled Kanako lingered?
She thought this as she put both hands on the rail of the bridge and stared down at the lazy flow of the river in the dark.
Even though she’d just sworn that her parting with Miho was not temporary, but final…
She cursed her frail resolve.
Kanako hadn’t been able to stop her hideaway, overflowing with the blood that had dripped from her family and with hatred towards Norio Tsuzuki and Miho, from spilling one drop, then two, then eventually a whole torrent of darkness.
Even if the vessel was empty, as long as it existed, might it not fill up again one day?
Regardless of swearing never to meet Miho again, and notwithstanding Norio Tsuzuki’s final atonement through execution, wouldn’t Kanako’s dark desire to hurt them as much as she had been hurt slowly sprout again?
She remembered how it had felt when she and Miho had kissed.
Just as your desire to hate my family in place of your father will no doubt continue to smolder at the bottom of your heart, I, too, may want to turn the fear my family felt into a weapon once more and swing it at you again.
She lifted her hands from the rail and crossed the river.
Goro was probably incredibly busy with one less bartender around. As promised, Miho had asked her graphic designer friend to make a flier for him. It hadn’t been free, but Miho had covered the design fee. Kanako wondered if the member’s birthdates and blood types that she’d jotted down that night appeared on it.
Koike was no doubt sad that Miho had quit. Kanako wanted to apologize to him in place of Miho for the wasted Phil Collins concert tickets. Koike had yet to turn up in the police investigation, apparently.
The neon lights of the bar came into view.
“Wow,” surprise escaped from Kanako’s lips as she came to a halt on the road.
There was a rainbow at the entrance of the icy cavern. Seven neon lights formed a gentle curve, inviting customers in.
Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Indigo. And purple. The seven colors were arranged in the correct order. But they needed to change the name of the establishment. “Ice Storm” clashed with the brilliance at its entrance.
Should she go in for just one drink, maybe?
Nope, she shouldn’t.
Whether or not she entered, she wanted at least to pass under the seven neon lights, but she decided to turn her heel.
A rainbow was what formed after a sudden rainfall when people had their backs to the sun and the rays created a spectrum in an arc. A midnight rainbow ought not to exist in this world.
Remembering how they’d lined up in the courtyard during elementary school, Kanako tried chanting, “About face!”
Then, as though the order still held sway over her body, her right leg stepped back and acted as a pivot for her to swing around her body.
The wind blew and felt pleasant against her cheeks.
She would never turn back to the rainbow of neon lights that shone in the night again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hisashi Nozawa (1960-2004), named straight out of college as the runner-up for the Kido Award, went on to become the leading TV playwright of his generation in Japan. Also a lauded scenarist for the silver screen, his oeuvre includes the storied original script for Violent Cop, Takeshi Kitano’s directorial debut. In 1997, Mr. Nozawa won the Rampo Edogawa, the premier prize for aspiring mystery novelists, and continued to excel in the field. A year after his much-lamented passing, Deep Red was released as a theatrical feature film based on his own screen adaptation. It is his first novel to appear in English.
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