Parade

by Shuichi Yoshida

  ‘So – what? You’re telling me you paid ¥20,000 and got Naoki’s horoscope?’ I asked, trying to keep from laughing again.

  ‘Exactly! That’s why I couldn’t say no. What did you expect me to say? Hey! Bring on the girl!?’

  Koto was so pale I figured she must be regretting the ¥20,000 she’d paid out of her pocket for a fortune-telling. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I consoled her. ‘You can’t get it back now.’ It wasn’t the money, though, but something else that had her so indignant.

  ‘Since that dirty old man uses the place, does that mean that Japanese politics is being decided right next door to us?’

  ‘I – guess so . . . That would make the guy next door Rasputin.’

  Ryosuke was clearly regretting having wasted the money from Koto’s meagre funds, and leapt at the chance of switching topics. I found the whole thing ridiculous and left. Back in the living room Ryosuke was launching into a discourse on the fall of the Russian Empire.

  3.17

  On the way back from work I stopped by a copy shop to pick up prints of my illustrations I’d had them do. Like always, I ended up complaining about how they used paper and colours other than the kind I’d told them to use. Why is it, I wondered, that the part-timers at the print shop always – and I mean always – do precisely what I tell them not to?

  When I got back home, I was in a lousy mood, and Misaki was there for the first time in a while. It looked like she’d stopped by on her way home from work – she still had a suit on – and she was hanging out in the living room with Koto and Satoru.

  The three of them were huddled together, still thinking up names for the shopping centre contest. The deadline was the next day.

  ‘You’re back early,’ Misaki said to me. ‘I was sure you’d be out drinking.’

  I plopped down on the sofa. Satoru was seated next to me. He waved two pieces of paper in front of me, one with the words K Road written on it, the other with Fernando Boulevard. I flicked the one with K Road on it and said, ‘Why Fernando?’

  ‘It’s the name of a Portuguese poet that Misaki likes,’ Satoru explained.

  ‘But why name a shopping district in Karasuyama after a poet you happen to like?’ I asked, irritated.

  ‘Satoru said we can choose any name,’ Misaki pouted.

  This had to be the first time she and Satoru had ever met each other, but the way they were huddled together like that, they looked like a pair of siblings.

  ‘Does Naoki know you’re here?’ I asked, picking up the list of unlikely names they’d come up with.

  ‘I called him earlier at work. I expect he’ll be back soon.’

  ‘Are you staying over?’

  ‘I was planning to, but now I find that Satoru’s taken over the sofa.’ She didn’t sound upset by it.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Satoru hurriedly said. ‘I’ve got places I can stay for a night.’

  ‘Why not sleep in Ryosuke’s room?’ Koto put in.

  ‘No way, not that room,’ Satoru said emphatically.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Ryosuke keeps tossing and turning, and Naoki talks in his sleep. It’s noisy.’

  ‘I’d call it more creepy than noisy,’ Misaki said, laughing.

  Koto was looking in the direction of the front door, and it puzzled me. I saw she was reading the back of the piece of paper I was holding and I turned it over. It was a printed official warning about the serial attacks on young women in the neighbourhood. Be Careful When You Walk Alone at Night! it said.

  The paper had a map of the area around the station, with Xs marking the places where the women had been attacked. The other day when the police had stopped by there’d been two attacks, but this paper had three Xs on it.

  ‘They were handing these out at the station,’ Misaki said and snatched the paper from me. ‘It’s dangerous, so you and Koto should be careful.’

  ‘It’s scary that they don’t know anything about the attacker. I guess if he comes up behind them out of nowhere, there’s no time to see his face.’

  I grabbed the paper back from Misaki.

  ‘Ah, that’s right,’ I said, ‘I heard that the third woman who got attacked works part-time at that karaoke place – you know the one – in front of the Seiyu?’

  As I said this, I remembered how Koto and I had gone to that karaoke place. ‘Remember?’ I went on. ‘When the two of us went there, the girl at the register was supposed to give us back ¥2,000 in change but she almost handed us ¥20,000?’

  Koto didn’t seem too interested. ‘Really? I don’t remember,’ she said.

  ‘How do you know this?’ Satoru asked me.

  ‘The guy that works at the bento shop told me,’ I replied.

  According to the guy at the bento shop, the girl in this latest attack was hurt the worst of all. When she was found, unconscious, the girl’s face was so deformed it was like her eyes, nose, and mouth had been moved around to different spots on her face. A bloody rock was found nearby.

  In the middle of my explanation Satoru suddenly announced that he had to take a shower before going to work and disappeared into the bathroom.

  After she watched him go, Misaki said, ‘So he works?’

  ‘Yeah, he does,’ I answered.

  ‘What kind of work could he be doing, this late at night?’

  ‘I think he works in a bar or something,’ Koto said.

  ‘A bar? At his age?’ Misaki’s eyes widened exaggeratedly.

  ‘You can work there when you’re eighteen, right?’ Koto replied.

  ‘What? He’s eighteen already?’

  ‘How old did you think he was?’ I asked.

  Misaki glanced over at the bathroom. ‘I was sure he was still about fifteen.’

  ‘If you really thought he was fifteen,’ I said, ‘you should have wondered why he’s living here before wondering about him working in a bar.’

  ‘You’ve got a point.’ Misaki gave a carefree laugh.

  3.18

  In the middle of the night I woke up with an awful feeling. I pulled the blanket up tight and closed my eyes again, but somehow I just couldn’t get back to sleep. From below my bed I could hear Koto’s regular, even breathing.

  I got out of bed and quietly opened the door to the living room. From the gap in the curtains the street light outside shone in, and lit up Misaki’s pale face as she slept on the sofa. ‘I won’t be back tonight,’ Satoru had told her, ‘so feel free to use the sofa.’ He was nowhere to be seen.

  After Satoru had left we waited for Naoki to come back from work, then all went out to a yakiniku restaurant. We ate and drank our fill and when we got back Ryosuke had returned from his part-time job. We ate the strawberries we’d bought on the way back from the restaurant, and drank wine until about one, then took turns showering, eventually heading to bed.

  In the darkened living room I sat down next to Misaki, who was sound asleep, and picked up the piece of paper with the names for the shopping street that Koto and Satoru had come up with. I turned it over and held it up to the light. The thought that had suddenly struck me in bed wasn’t a mistake after all. The first attack, along the train tracks of the Keio Line, where a twenty-two-year-old woman had been suddenly assaulted from behind by a man, her face smashed in, had taken place two months ago.

  Holding the paper tight in my hand I went out of the living room, quietly so as not to waken Misaki, and opened the door to the guys’ room. Ryosuke, as usual tossing and turning all night, hadn’t just fallen out of his futon this time but had rolled over all the way to the door and lay right at my feet. I stepped over him and went in. Naoki, nestled in his loft-style bed, was breathing loudly, on the verge of snoring. I looked into his face, poked him softly on the cheek.

  ‘Huh?’ he said in a sleepy voice, then looked at me in surprise. ‘Wh-what do you want?’

  ‘Take a look at this,’ I said, pulling the cord for the fluorescent light. A little light like this wasn’t about to wake Ryosuke. Naoki blinked
and took the paper from me.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Look at the date. Don’t you notice something?’ Naoki’s expression stiffened when I said this.

  ‘The date?’

  ‘Look, it’s nearly two months since the first attack.’

  ‘Two months?’

  ‘Right. Exactly the time that Satoru started living with us.’

  ‘Satoru? Hold on. Didn’t he come here more recently?’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I am. Man, what is with you?’ Naoki said. ‘And in the middle of the night, no less,’ and he pulled the covers back up and shut his eyes.

  Come to think of it, at the time of the third attack, five days ago, I was with Satoru the whole time. Our shop was closed for its regular day off and after going to an exhibition of Tibetan Buddhist art in Shibuya, I took him out drinking, against his will, not just to three a.m., when the attack occurred, but till four. I’m sure that was five days ago.

  A little embarrassed, I quietly turned off the fluorescent light and exited the guys’ room. I was cutting through the living room when Misaki, who I was sure was asleep, laughed. ‘Been reading a lot of Misa Yamamura, have we?’ she asked, naming a popular crime novelist.

  Taken aback, I halted. ‘I’ve never read her,’ I said.

  ‘Real life isn’t like Tuesday Suspense,’ she went on, ‘where people are always getting entangled in crimes. Or are you thinking of accusing Satoru of being the criminal and chasing him out of here?’

  After this, Misaki rolled over on the sofa and went back to sleep.

  3.19

  During the morning Misaki, who seemed on edge, announced that she wanted to go on a picnic, so she roused Ryosuke and Naoki from bed and we decided to go to Kinuta Park. It was the first time in a while that we’d all been together, so I was hoping Koto would join us, but she decided to stay home and wait for Satoru to return. ‘I don’t want to get sunburned,’ she said, as an excuse. We told her to tell Satoru to come to the park if he came back before noon, then we all got into Ryosuke’s Momoko. It had been ages since I’d taken a Sunday off from work.

  Under the blue sky at the park, families sat on blankets on the almost dazzling green lawn, and little children scampered about. Ryosuke and Naoki immediately devoured over half of the sandwiches Koto had made for us, even though it wasn’t yet lunchtime.

  The four of us sprawled out on a mat for a while, then Misaki and Ryosuke starting playing catch with a pair of little twin boys whose ball had rolled our way. The twins, dressed in identical outfits, frolicked back and forth between Misaki and Ryosuke, screaming in delight. Naoki, sprawled out next to me on the mat, was watching them.

  ‘You haven’t told anybody what we talked about last night, have you?’ I asked.

  ‘Last night?’

  ‘You know, about Satoru being the criminal . . .’

  Naoki shot me a glance. ‘Why would I?’ he snorted derisively.

  ‘I don’t know, something just bugs me about it. I know he’s not the criminal, but there’s something that just doesn’t smell right.’

  ‘What do you mean – something?’

  Naoki half sat up and poured some over-brewed jasmine tea from the thermos into a cup.

  ‘I can’t say, but something still bugs me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I told you – I can’t explain it!’

  ‘When you get right down to it, though, aren’t you the one who brought Satoru home?’

  ‘Well, you’re right about that . . .’

  Imagine somebody asking what kind of guy Satoru is. For her part Koto would probably say something like this:

  ‘He’s not very self-assertive. He’s kind of laid-back, which makes me wonder if he’s from a wealthy family. No matter what I invite him to do – pachinko, karaoke, bowling, whatever – he never says no. But he never seems to enjoy any of them. He just waits there, looking bored, until I suggest we go home. If I ask him if he is bored, he says, “Not really,” and if I then ask if he’s having fun I get the same reply – Not really. From what I hear, his parents are very much in love and he was raised very lovingly, so maybe he never felt greedy about anything growing up. Maybe people whose needs have always been met are like Satoru, very laid-back about life.’

  Next is Ryosuke, who I imagine responding like this:

  ‘He’s so young, but he has no ambition. Look at me – I go to school, have a part-time job, go out with friends, put the moves on my friend’s girlfriend, wash Momoko – there’s never enough hours in the day. But Satoru wastes twenty hours every day. I think he has no ambition, though, because the guys he hangs out with have been such a bad influence. Most of them don’t have steady jobs and they just sort of loiter around, so he turned out like them. Some people say that as long as you do your best you can do well in any circumstances, but I don’t buy it. You can try your best, but if you’re standing in mud you’re going to fall. What Satoru needs is somebody to help drag him out of the mud.’

  Both Koto and Ryosuke have already decided exactly who they think Satoru is – the kind of person they’d like to be with. And I think that Satoru, who is more streetwise than either of them, picks up on this and, in a sort of underhanded way, even, tries to pass himself off as the person they want him to be. Naturally, Koto and Ryosuke are also acting a part in their lives here. The same’s true for me, and for Naoki. It’s just that – how should I put it? – Satoru’s a super-actor in a group of regular actors, a super-spectator among ordinary spectators. Somebody you just can’t pin down, someone you try to touch but can’t, like a reflection in a puddle. I can’t help but see him that way.

  On the lawn that stretches out before me Misaki and Ryosuke continued playing catch with the twin boys.

  ‘Naoki – what do you think about Satoru?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Naoki rolled over on the mat and there were blades of dried grass on his cheek.

  ‘I mean, what kind of guy is he?’

  ‘Just a typical young guy.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘What’re you getting at?’

  ‘Well . . . I feel like Satoru isn’t the kind of person Ryosuke thinks he is, or the kind Koto thinks he is. Not the kind you imagine him to be, and not even the kind of person I think he is.’

  Before I’d finished Naoki turned away, disgusted, and squinted at the sun peeking through the clouds.

  ‘That’s pretty obvious,’ he said.

  ‘How come?’

  I gave Naoki a little kick in the bum and he slowly sat up, rubbing his behind. ‘The only Satoru you know is the one you know,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I mean is, you only know the Satoru you know. In the same way, I only know the Satoru I know. Ryosuke and Koto, too, only know the Satoru they know.’

  ‘I don’t get it at all.’

  ‘Nobody knows the Satoru that all of us knows. That guy doesn’t exist.’

  Naoki pulled out a BLT from the lunchbox and happily chomped down on it, getting ketchup on his lips.

  ‘Hold on – you going to leave it at that? That’s gibberish.’

  I gave Naoki another kick in the behind.

  ‘Do you know what a multiverse is?’

  ‘Never heard of it. What is it?’

  ‘You’ve heard of a universe, right?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Multiverse means multiple universes.’

  ‘Okay . . .’

  So what? I was about to shoot back, but held back, because I sort of understood what he was getting at. Sometimes I hear this pseudo-humanitarian line that goes In this world everyone’s a star. If that’s true, then everyone’s the star in all the worlds that make up this world, and if everyone’s a star, in effect that’s the same as if no one is a star. That would make it an equal world, close to the kind of life the five of us are living now. But strictly speaking, in order to get to a world where no one is the star, you need for the world to be such that everyone
can be a star . . . Hmmm . . . I guess I don’t get it.

  3.20

  ‘My wisdom teeth are really pushing through my gums these days,’ Naoki said, lying on the mat with his mouth wide open.

  His tongue was red, like it was dyed by the sun. ‘Let me see!’ Misaki, Ryosuke, and I said, peering in turn into his mouth. You could see a white, protruding object bulging out through the gums.

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  Misaki stuck her finger into his mouth and went right ahead and pushed his cheek out. A thought suddenly came to me: the two of them used to be lovers.

  Come to think of it, when Ryosuke went undercover next door at apartment 402 and had Naoki’s fortune read instead of his, the fortune teller told him, ‘You have a great desire for a change . . . In seeking change you’re struggling against the world.’ Looking at this guy sprawled out on the grass at Kinuta Park, with mouth wide open like an idiot, his Adam’s apple sticking out, I don’t know what kind of world he’s struggling against, though he’s definitely at war with one thing – his wisdom teeth.

  At the end of his fortune-telling the Rasputin next door apparently said this: ‘If you break out of this world you’ll find this world again, only one size larger. In your struggle with the world, the world has the advantage.’

  As the fortune teller was seeing Ryosuke out he added, ‘If you’re interested, next time I’ll tell your fortune.’ The fortune itself was too abstract to make much sense, but seeing as how he saw right through Ryosuke, perhaps we wasn’t a phony fortune teller after all.