Villain

by Yoshida Shuichi

  “You ask them… I don’t know what they’re talking about…”

  Satoko’s eyes were out of focus, her face drained of blood.

  Yoshio grabbed the phone from her and shouted an angry hello.

  It was a woman’s voice on the phone-slightly unprofessional, small and hard to hear. The cordless phone was always full of static and Yoshio couldn’t get used to it. “That’s normal. It’s just the signal,” Yoshino had explained, and Yoshio had been putting up with it for nearly a year. Today the static was a loud buzzing in his ears.

  Yoshino had been involved in an accident, the woman explained, so they would need to please come to the station as soon as possible for identification. “Eh? What’d you say?” Yoshio said, feeling as if he were talking more to the static than to a person.

  When he hung up, Satoko was sitting beside him. She looked less astonished than resigned.

  “Come on, let’s go!” Yoshio said, tugging at her hand. “No way a company director’s going to remember the face of every employee!”

  Satoko seemed paralyzed and Yoshio yanked her to her feet. After she’d given birth to Yoshino, Satoko had put on weight, and her rear end slid heavily across the worn-out tatami.

  “But Yoshino’s coming back today! She’s coming home!”

  The call from Terauchi to the Tenjin branch came in after three p.m. Sari, Mako, and other employees were gathered around the TV in the reception area, quickly switching from one channel to the next to find coverage of the incident. Sari answered the phone.

  Mako had a premonition: “It’s true. Yoshino’s been murdered…”

  Sari was listening intently. Suddenly she screamed out, “What?” Several others turned to look at Mako.

  “See? I knew it…” Mako said weakly.

  As soon as Sari put down the phone, she began to talk as if she’d been jolted by electricity. There was too much she needed to say and the words tumbled out all at once.

  “It was Yoshino, she was strangled, Mr. Terauchi wants us to wait here until he gets back.” Sari’s body began trembling uncontrollably.

  “Are you okay?” someone next to Mako asked, holding her, but Mako couldn’t bring herself to look up to see who it was. The office, usually nearly empty at this time of day, seemed claustrophobic. She tried to breathe, but it seemed as if someone had sucked away all the air, and no matter how she tried to take in a breath, the air wouldn’t go inside. Sari was standing there, still blabbing away, but Mako couldn’t hear her. People’s mouths were moving but it was as if they were all drowning, their mouths just moving. Please, someone cry, she prayed. If somebody cried she knew she could, too. And then she could breathe again.

  “Someone’s coming here from the police! They want to find out exactly when and where we left her last night!” Sari shouted.

  Finally, Mako could react. She nodded, and stood up from her chair without really knowing what she was doing. Her body was still shaking and the floor looked miles away.

  From the outset Mako had always sensed a rivalry between Yoshino and Sari. They’d never quarreled openly or anything, but they had used Mako as a sounding board to bad-mouth each other. Yoshino bragged to Mako about dating men she’d met at online dating sites, but always cautioned her to keep it a secret from Sari. Mako didn’t see why meeting guys and having dinner with them was something she had to hide, but Yoshino seemed to find it embarrassing as well as fun, and Mako didn’t want Sari to use this against Yoshino.

  When she first moved into the Fairyland Hakata apartments, Sari had said to Yoshino, half joking, “You’re from Kurume, right? And your last name is Ishibashi? Hey, maybe you’re related to the president of Bridgestone?” By then Mako already knew that Yoshino’s family ran a barbershop, so she was sure Yoshino would deny this, but instead she nonchalantly replied, “Hm? Me? We’re sort of distant relatives.”

  Sari of course nearly shrieked when she heard this. Surprised at her reaction, Yoshino hurriedly added, “But, we’re just… very, very distant relatives.”

  When Sari had left, Yoshino told Mako, “Don’t tell anybody my family runs a barbershop.” Mako had been thinking of calling her on this lie, but Yoshino looked so fierce and Mako was afraid of losing a new friend, so she nodded weakly.

  Mako couldn’t figure out why Yoshino would lie like that, especially when the three of them had just become friends.

  Mako wasn’t sure of the exact number, but Yoshino always seemed to be corresponding with four or five guys she’d met online. Sometimes, when Sari wasn’t with them, she’d let Mako see the messages from the men.

  “Isn’t this sick?” she’d say, showing Mako a message that said, Thanks for the photo! You’re so cute! I spent a whole hour just looking at your picture! Most of the messages were, indeed, fairly repulsive.

  Of the men Yoshino met online she’d actually met three-no, four-of them.

  Whenever Yoshino met one of these men, she always told Mako all about it. Not what they did for a living or what they looked like, but things like how one man took her to a famous teppanyaki place and bought her a fifteen-thousand-yen tenderloin steak. Or comments on the guy’s possessions, how one drove a BMW.

  Mako listened without comment whenever Yoshino reported back on these dates. She never once felt envious. She knew that having dinner with a man she’d just met would make her too nervous, and she much preferred spending an evening alone in her room reading. But she never had a problem listening to Yoshino talk about her exploits. There was a vicarious pleasure in hearing about Yoshino and the kind of life Mako would never know.

  “Sari said the person Yoshino went to see last night wasn’t Keigo Masuo, but I think it had to have been.” Mako was in the lobby of the Fairyland Hakata, answering questions from a police officer. “I heard from Suzuka Nakamachi that for the last couple of days no one knew where Keigo was. But if they wanted to get in touch with each other, they could have. So if she really wanted to see him last night they could have hooked up…”

  Mako felt regretful. The young detective had urged her to tell him anything she might know about Yoshino, so she’d told him how Yoshino and Sari didn’t get along, and how Yoshino had met men online. Mako felt she’d given the detective a bad impression of Yoshino.

  Mako and the young detective weren’t alone in the apartment-building lobby. Every so often a uniformed policeman would come over and report to the detective. Still, it was just the two of them facing each other across the lace-covered table, and talking with a police detective was, of course, a first for her. The young detective had a small scar from stitches next to his right eyebrow. His muscular upper arms strained the fabric of his suit.

  “I’d like you to tell me more about these online friends of Ms. Ishibashi’s.”

  At the beginning of last month, a Sunday, a cold rain had fallen since morning. It was just a light drizzle, but to Mako, looking out from the third-floor veranda of her apartment, it seemed as if the rain had erased all the sounds of the city.

  Yoshino had stopped by to see her and stood looking out at the same scene. She turned to Mako and asked her to come with her to the convenience store. Whenever she did this, Mako always thought, The convenience store? Can’t you manage that on your own? But she never said anything, figuring it would cause a rift between them, and she never lied about having something else to do. After all, it wasn’t that big a deal.

  They were walking, holding umbrellas, to the convenience store in front of Yoshizuka station, avoiding the rain puddles, when Yoshino said, “Take a look at this,” and held out her cell phone.

  On the screen was a picture of a young man. “We started e-mailing each other recently,” Yoshino explained.

  Mako looked at the phone, which had a few raindrops on the LCD. The photo wasn’t that good, but she could see the sort of rough look of the man, his dark skin, his nicely shaped nose, the lonely look in his eyes as he gazed at the camera. He was good-looking enough that she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

 
; “So what d’you think?” Yoshino asked.

  “He’s sexy,” Mako replied honestly. If this is the kind of guy Yoshino hooks up with, Mako thought, maybe online dating isn’t so bad after all.

  Apparently satisfied, Yoshino said, “But I don’t feel like seeing him anymore. I mean, I’ve got Keigo now and everything.” She intentionally banged her cell phone shut.

  “What do you mean you don’t feel like meeting him anymore?… You mean you’ve already met him?”

  “Yeah, last Sunday.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Remember the guy I was talking about who tried to pick me up at the park in front of Solaria?”

  “What?” Mako said loudly.

  “Don’t tell Sari, okay? That wasn’t just some pickup. We had a date.”

  “No way…”

  If you’re so embarrassed about meeting guys online, thought Mako, then why don’t you quit? She couldn’t figure Yoshino out sometimes. She acted embarrassed about online dating, yet here she was showing off the photo of one of the guys she met.

  “He’s good-looking, all right, but a complete bore. It’s no fun being with him. Plus he’s a construction worker, which doesn’t turn me on.”

  Yoshino continued talking about the guy as she folded up her umbrella and went into the convenience store.

  Mako hadn’t gone to the store thinking to buy anything, but as soon as she went in she found she wanted something sweet.

  “The only thing is, he’s good in bed,” Yoshino suddenly whispered in Mako’s ear, just as she was reaching for a strawberry pudding cup.

  “Huh?”

  Mako reflexively glanced around them. Luckily there were no other customers by the dessert counter, and the two clerks were back at the register, helping a woman mail a package.

  “The sex is great,” Yoshino whispered again, a knowing smile on her lips, and reached for an éclair.

  “Are you telling me… you did it with him already? The first time you met him?” Mako asked, eyes wide.

  Examining the éclairs one by one, Yoshino laughed strangely. “Well, isn’t that the whole point?

  “He’s like, so good at it,” she went on. “It’s like I completely lose it, and can’t help screaming. The way he moves his fingers is so smooth. I was on my back, but before I knew what was going on I was on my stomach, and his fingers were all over my back and butt. It was like all the strength had left me. I tried to move, but all he has to do is touch my knees and I’m a complete wreck. Usually I’m too shy to make much noise, but when I’m with him, I don’t care anymore. I shout as loud as I can. And the more I cry out, the more I lose control, and it’s like I know we’re in a small hotel room but it feels like we’re in some vast open place. I’ve never sucked a guy’s fingers as crazily as I did with him.”

  Yoshino didn’t mind talking about such shameless things even in public like this, but Mako did, and glanced around anxiously. A part of her rejected lewd talk like this, but as she listened she pictured herself on the white sheets with the man, writhing under his touch. She could see the man in the photo, his fingers moving over her body, his voice telling her to just let go.

  Outside the rain was gloomy and heavy. Yoshino changed gears and began instead to recount how squeamish she felt when she recently watched the movie Battle Royale with all its cruel, violent scenes.

  “So you’re not going to see that guy anymore?” Mako asked.

  A mean look flashed across Yoshino’s eyes. “If I dump him, you want me to introduce you?”

  Mako was flustered. “No, no way,” she demurred. It felt as if Yoshino had seen into her mind and all her silly fantasies.

  Mako could sense how Yoshino looked down on her as a woman. Maybe that was inevitable, for Mako was twenty and had never gone out with a man, which, unlike Sari, she didn’t hide. And of the three of them, Yoshino was by far the most experienced.

  Strangely enough, though, Mako never felt inferior to Yoshino, no matter how much she bragged about her sex life. All her stories about hooking up with men from dating sites, and Keigo Masuo, were like something far away, like a TV drama, and Mako never felt contempt for her, or envy. But this time was different. For the first time, one of Yoshino’s stories took hold of her. She knew she should just let it go, but her rainy-day convenience-store fantasies about the man and his caresses made her overwhelmed by a mixture of jealousy for Yoshino, who really had been touched by this man, and contempt for her for leaping into bed with a guy she’d just met online, despite already having a boyfriend, Keigo. The more contempt Mako felt, though, the more uneasy she became, concerned that deep down she wanted to be just as shameless as Yoshino.

  Mako knew she wasn’t the type to try to date men she met online. But she also knew she wasn’t like Sari, who was distressed that she couldn’t act like Yoshino, secretly trashing her because Yoshino could. If possible, Mako wanted to marry someone also from Kumamoto, settle down there, and raise a happy family. That’s all she really wanted-but the instant she pictured herself in the arms of Yoshino’s man, her dream evaporated.

  · · ·

  “Um…”

  The detective with the scar beside his right eyebrow looked at Mako.

  Bright sunshine lit up the apartment-building lobby. The automatic front door must have had a slight gap in it, for the wind was blowing in, making a strange whistling sound. In addition to Mako and the detective interviewing her, five or six other policemen had entered and were making their way between the lobby and Yoshino’s apartment, on the second floor.

  Every time they brought down another box of Yoshino’s possessions, Mako thought, Ah, Yoshino really was murdered. Sari, who’d been questioned before her, had broken down, wailing loudly, but Mako couldn’t do that. Not that she wasn’t sad. But the tears just wouldn’t flow.

  “So those were the only three men you heard about from Miss Ishibashi?”

  Mako tried to focus. “Uh, yes, that’s-that’s right.” She nodded.

  “Two last summer and then one more this autumn. The two men from last summer were both from Fukuoka? And they took her out to dinner, bought her clothes and so on, and though you don’t know their ages, they seemed much older?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And the man she met this autumn is a college student, and they went for drives together sometimes?”

  “Yes, that’s what I heard.”

  “There weren’t any others?”

  “No, these are the only three I remember. She might have mentioned others… Of course there were a lot more she e-mailed with.” Mako got this out in a rush, telling herself that she was helping the investigation, not putting down her friend.

  “Is there anybody else besides yourself that Miss Ishibashi might have told these things to?”

  The young detective’s long fingers had very healthy-looking nails. Perhaps it was his bad habit, but the backs of his fingers were marked where he had pressed his nails into them.

  “I think I’m the only one she told,” Mako replied.

  “All right. Let’s go over it one more time. You believe that last night Miss Ishibashi went to meet Keigo Masuo, correct?” The detective sighed deeply.

  “Sari has her doubts,” Mako replied, “but I think that’s what happened.”

  “I see…”

  “Maybe somebody took her away after that…”

  “We’re checking into that possibility,” the detective said, cutting her off, and Mako looked down meekly, knowing she’d been too pushy.

  The detective looked down at his notebook and his scrawled notes.

  “I understand. I’m really sorry I had to ask you all these questions.”

  Mako was taken aback. “You-you mean we’re finished?”

  Brusquely, the detective yelled out to a policeman standing at the entrance.

  “Excuse me…” Mako said.

  “Yes?”

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes, we’re finished here. I’m sorry t
o have taken up so much of your time. Especially now, with what happened to your friend.”

  Mako went out in the hallway and saw Suzuka standing there, eyes puffy from crying. She was next to be questioned, it seemed. Mako silently slipped past her.

  As soon as she was in the elevator, Mako wondered why she hadn’t told the detective one more thing. About one more man Yoshino met online. But she just couldn’t bring herself to tell the young detective about him. If she did, he’d think she was the same sort of girl as Yoshino, a girl who hunted for men online. She would hate for him to think that.

  Mako didn’t realize it at the time, but this decision of hers threw off the subsequent investigation.

  CHAPTER 2. WHO DID HE WANT TO SEE?

  Early Monday morning, December 10, 2001, Norio Yajima-who ran a wrecking business on the outskirts of Nagasaki City -was driving his old van to work. He’d had the van, which now had more than two hundred thousand kilometers on it, for so long it felt like a part of him, and he drove it lovingly, gingerly.

  His throat had been bothering him since the previous night, and he kept clearing it. It felt full of phlegm, but no matter how hard he coughed he couldn’t bring any up. When he forced himself to cough, this only brought up the sour taste of bile in his mouth. Last night in bed he’d vomited, and his wife, Michiyo, told him he should gargle. He’d done that long before and he muttered, to no one in particular, “Damn it! I hate this!”

  Norio turned left at the usual intersection, and as he did, the traffic protector amulet Michiyo had hung on his rearview mirror swung back and forth.

  The way the intersection came together looked grotesque, as if a wide road constructed by a giant and a narrow little path made by dwarves had been forced to merge. Going down the broad highway, the intersection appeared to be an L-shaped road that curved right at a 90-degree angle. But farther down, the curve became a narrow alley and then opened into a small bridge that spanned the waterway paralleling the highway. In 1971 they’d finished filling in the shore between the mainland and an island, and the road now connected the two.