I begin to weep, quivering my lips, while clenching my teeth.
“The next one is funny. This guy committed a fraud on one of our consumer financing firms. It was unthinkable. So we had to take him to a deep forest. Somewhere around the Chubu mountain region you know. This is how he looks like before he meets us and this is how he looks like lying down in a pit after he has met us.”
“We buried that guy alive you know,” says the large man, laughing to himself hysterically.
I begin to sob, shaking my whole body.
The large man hands me three leaves of facial tissues. You can see his knife-scarred lips twitch as he smiles. Perhaps he is trying to console me in my fear and trembling, though unsuccessfully.
Takeshi’s uncle is leafing through the pages of the photograph album.
“Do you know what makes your parents be different from us?”
“No, sir.”
“They want job security and we want venture business. They want peace and we want pleasure. For us Tokyo is always the capital of war. But for benign citizens she appears to be undisturbed. For them Tokyo is a boy named Tokio. For us Tokyo is a girl named Tokiko. She is so attractive we want to rape her badly. Everyday. From dusk till dawn. All year long. Do you follow me?”
I am at a loss for words, wiping tears from my cheeks.
“Just think about this: If there were no us Yakuza, there would be no xxx-rated site on the Net, nor Neon Forest in Tokyo at night. So you girls have no place to look for extra money, right? If there were no crime, there would be no fun given to the media to begin with. We build excitement for everybody, you know.”
“I totally completely absolutely agree with you, sir.”
“Oh, yes, this one should be much much more exciting as well as instructive.”
Takeshi’s uncle points his forefinger at a bloody picture and then he grins at me like the Smiley Face with fangs.
I rush to the bathroom, covering my mouth with the scented face towel.
*
You can see a miserable tear-stained face in a spotless mirror. The face is mine. Wiping the tears off my cheeks, I look around the bathroom.
This is a fairyland. Its tiled walls and a floor and a bathtub are all salmon pink. A sliding glass door has a lot of colorful pompon-shaped jell stickers adhered to it. There are polka-dot bath towels and bathrobes and bottles of shampoo and other cosmetics. Everything here appears to make everyone cheerful and I am the only exception.
I am bitter about my helplessness and vexed at Takeshi’s foul play. As I wash my face, I begin to feel cold drops coming out on the skin of the nape. There is definitely someone else’s unearthly presence in this bathroom. I can feel it. And it seems to be approaching me from the right.
The moment I turn my head, the light is dimmed down. You can see Yukio, no, to be exact, the upper half of his body, slowly slither in the bottom of an empty bathtub. His intestines are groping around the cold surface of the white bathtub like tentacles of a large octopus. They all come out of the opening of his abdominal cavity and his small intestine starts to feel for my leg. Before long Yukio slithers up my back and I can feel his intestines coiling themselves around my waist. His viscera feel slippery and warm.
Oh no. Look at you, Luna.
I’m desperately busy now.
It’s so depressing to face you in the mirror. You look pathetique.
Say sayonara. I have nothing to talk with you.
It means that you’re now burning with a desire to push someone off the platform, doesn’t it?
I don’t want to listen to you. This is not the time for pleasantries.
Well then…let us imagine that there exists an alien creature which devours human internal organs and that it has stealthily crept into the living room already and that you’re going to see two hollow corpses of Yakuzas left there when you come out of here. Now, could you tell me how much pleasure you might possibly obtain from visualizing such a gory scene?
You tell me, Yukio. You know the answer. Always.
I give you an A-plus. Yes, that’s the answer. By the way, you did your job unexpectedly well the other day.
You mean…my having manipulated Reiko?
Oh, you admit that you manipulated her.
I laid the plan, you know.
You even made use of your own confession in order to appeal to her sympathy by selling the most precious memory of yours.
Yes, I did it. I did it because everyone seemed to have a motive for murder including Reiko.
Maybe your little sister Naomi is sobbing in the cemetery.
What else could I do?
Oh don’t cry, Luna. Think slow. Do you still remember what I said?
No, I don’t. You throw too many things at once.
Okay, listen to this: You’re unable to see what you don’t want to see. You deliberately miss the thing you’re afraid to see. Your eyes are romantics who are susceptible to deception in such a way that you’re never able to see a truth. All is because you yourself become the accomplice of deception by the very truth.
Ah, you mean, that one.
You’re getting closer to the answer. Now, let us sort out. All three of them, Reiko and Maya and Takeshi, opened up each innermost heart to me. But, afterward, they all regretted having done it and came to be scared of their own confession. Therefore one of them had to kill me. This is the reasoning you came up with, right?
Is there any other hypothesis that explains the reason why you have become the way you look right now? Whether you like it or not, the fact is that you have only the upper half of your body left with you.
Well, I can travel light.
Look what Takeshi has done to me. He’s desperate. He asked his Yakuza uncle to clear his worry away.
But he warned you beforehand that you would have to take the consequences if you had leaked his secrets.
I haven’t done it yet. I still keep his secrets intact.
But it’s evident that he didn’t think so.
That’s why his solution turned out to be that Yakuza waiting outside the door. What Takeshi has done doesn’t look like what an ordinary high school student is supposed to do. He might already be a member of some Yakuza Family.
Takeshi seems faint-hearted. That’s all.
Faint-hearted? No, he is a disappointment. I’ll never be able to press Takeshi for the answer because of his uncle the Yakuza. Why are you laughing at me like that, Yukio?
I’m sorry. I’m only suffering from the paroxysm of laughter.
Can’t you see that I’m completely at a loss what to do?
You must recall what your mother always tells you: Stop grumbling. Do your best.
How could you know my family secret?
Remember that I am dead.
Okay. I give up.
Excuse me?
I quit.
No, you can’t, Luna, because you’ve become a part of me already.
A part of you? What does it mean?
What do you think? You’re staring at my head poking up above your right shoulder.
Yes, we’re looking at each other in the mirror. So what?
Well…you know.
Are you saying I’m you? If so, you’re also a part of me then.
Are you not? No, it can’t be. You’re a boy and I’m a girl.
Yes, we’re yin and yang. It’s simple as that. Everyone carries these two aspects of life inside. Do you know what you can do tonight to get you out of this desperate situation?
I’ve been waiting for you to give me the solution.
You should tell all about Takeshi’s secret to his uncle, to that Mr. Yakuza.
Are you out of your mind?
You never know, Luna. Give yourself a try, will you?
What are you saying, Yukio? No way.
Listen carefully. You’ve been pacing a stage for quite a while, but now you’re extremely close to the spotlight you have to avoid stepping in under any circumstances. So you must do what you have to do
. This is the moment of truth so to speak.
What are you? Do you think you have the right to give orders that I should do what you told me to do?
Tell me who has gone through a hardship of being a physically handicapped person like this. I accumulated experience since the day I was killed by the Reaper. I will do anything if you can ensure me a success of your finding the murderer. Vengeance is mine, not yours.
Buddha
Three days ago we had an incident, which some students called it an exciting event, in our gakko.
It occurred in the third period. We were interrupted by our principal who was accompanied with two police inspectors in plain suits while Mr. Buddha the ethics teacher was teaching. The principal asked Mr. Buddha to step out to a corridor with them after having had asked us to spend the rest of the time studying by ourselves.
Maya happened to encounter with them in the corridor on her way back from the school infirmary. According to her, Mr.Buddha was asked by a police inspector to take off his favorite dark brown leather shoes. Maya reported to us that the police inspector then began searching his shoes for something. She said, ‘It looked as if police inspectors were both playing a trick on Mr. Buddha.’ We were all puzzled about the connection between police inspectors and Mr. Buddha’s dark brown leather shoes.
It began to drizzle shortly after the fourth period was over.
As I came back to our classroom on the third floor from the cafeteria, most students were standing side by side by the windows and looking below. Just like everyone else, I quietly joined in the gallery as if in hypnosis and watched Mr. Buddha getting into a police car parked right outside the main gate.
Both Reiko and Takeshi missed seeing it: Reiko was absent from school because of allegedly being in bed with the flu. Takeshi was in Kyoto with his thirty-six-year-old Kendo master to play an away match for National Kendo Competition.
Later that day, when I was watching Evening News with my parents, the television screen was filled with a Mr. Buddha’s identification photograph. I was simply frozen up and my chopsticks slipped from my fingers.
A female newscaster who wore particularly heavy make-up explained that Mr. Buddha was using a microminiaturized digital video camera attached to his calf with its micro lens peeping out through a tiny hole punched in the tip of his favorite dark brown leather shoe in order to record everything under short pleated skirt of his female students. According to the newscaster, he often uploaded the collection of those video files to some sites where certain group of people who like to peep under schoolgirls’ skirts were chatting and exchanging their ‘treasures’ with other anonymous aficionados. Mr. Buddha the voyeur also had his own blog via a foreign server to promote the sale of his homemade DVD that contained not only video images he stealthily recorded in our gakko but also many photographs of girls’ crotch taken right under their skirts. But an anonymous aficionado who became one of his customers was actually an Undercover Net Police.
‘Mother, look, he is a teacher in our school.’
‘Well, it’s no wonder that one fifth of male Japanese are filthy natural-born perverts.’
My father asked without a moment’s hesitation, ‘Who said that? Where did you get those numbers?’
‘I don’t remember, but I think it’s true, darling.’
‘Mother, he teaches ethics,’ I exclaimed.
‘It’s often said,’ my father paused and then spoke to us in an authoritative tone, ‘a gynecologist is the one who watches striptease with most eager eyes.’
‘My goodness,” uttered my mother.
‘You know they have to examine their female patients objectively as possible. It might become a torture for some. Action and reaction. Suppression and explosion, you know. That’s a rule.’
‘I got goose bumps,’ said my mother with a shiver.
And the next day, which was yesterday, it felt as if a carnival had been held at school. There were at least thirty television crews who were roaming all over our school, asking students about the incident, about that infamous dark-brown-leather-shoe affair.
It was an exhilarating event, yet Reiko was again absent, only this time, probably shocked by the news. She answered my call, however. ‘I’m sick and tired of that pervert. This is not the first time I go through this sort of things,’ she said in a weary tone. Takeshi was still in Kyoto. It was expected that he would go into the finals, and he did exactly what everyone hoped. He won the third place in National Kendo Competition and instantly became the center of attention.
Last night, when I was having an original Cup-Noodle with a classic glass bottle of Coca-Cola, the ghost of Yukio whispered into my ear.
Now you must admit that Takeshi has become the icon of a teenage samurai who is clad in full armor plated with gold. Do you know what? It tells us that he has stepped into the spotlight already. It also tells us that he has become someone who is worth bringing down.
Surgeon
For about half an hour Takeshi and I have been waiting for the last few members of the basketball club to leave from this domed gymnasium. Some of the club members have come out of the shower room with their hair still dripping with water. One of them looks back at us with a questioning look, probably because Takeshi is not in Kendo gear but in plain school uniform.
“What?” Takeshi glares back at the student.
“Are you guys here in this gym just to have a chat?”
“Is there anything wrong with that?” Takeshi asks them back.
“Eh…nothing’s wrong, I guess.”
“See no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. That’s the policy here, right?”
The gymnasium echoes back their conversation. It is already dark outside and the gymnasium smells rubber, sweaty canvas, and the high-gloss polish for the hardwood floor. After Takeshi has made sure that there is no one to be left in the gym except us, he asks me to the men’s shower room again.
“We have an hour and a half until a janitor comes around,” he adds.
I give him a shrug saying nothing.
In this brightly lit shower room, there is a row of shower arms that droop each head as if to give us a courteous bow at an angle of forty-five degrees. I glance at embossed glass partitions that divide the shower place into small booths.
“Look at this shower face. It’s still dripping. I think members of the basketball club must have come from the Stone Age. They learned no manners.”
Takeshi tightens up one of shower faucets. After he has wiped a long bench dry with a bath towel, both of us sit down on it. There is a large frosted mosaic window behind us.
“You told everything to my uncle, didn’t you?”
“Not everything,” I sneer.
“How could you do that to me?”
“It’s supposed to be my line. You’re the one who employed a dirty trick on me. That’s why.”
“I’ve only adopted drastic measures. That’s all.”
“You sound like the Director General of the Defense Agency.”
“My uncle promised not to tell my father about my secret. I’m glad that he’s a Yakuza.”
“Oh, really.”
“I mean…I’m glad to have such an understanding uncle. He’s not as conventional as my father you know. Though he’s changed his attitude toward me since then.”
“I think it a natural reaction.”
“What’s the natural?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug off his hostile glare.
“Don’t look away from me, Luna. Answer me. Make some clever escape.”
“I think it’s something that you feel without being conscious about it.”
“Whatever it is, it crushed his confidence in me for sure.”
“I don’t think so.”
“My uncle said he had been, in some way, aware of my secret long before. That’s why, I think, he believed what you told.”
“Did I do something wrong? I just want to know the truth.”
“He is dead. I repeat: Yukio is d
ead. He is gone.”
“That’s why I’m looking for the one who killed him.”
“Are you a necrophilia or what? You look as if you’re being possessed by his ghost.”
“You’re right. That’s exactly what I am.”
“Why don’t you give up, Luna? There’s no truth in this absurd world. Don’t you get it? We’re already in a high school for Buddha’s sake. Grow up. You’re such a pain in the neck.”
“Will you speak a little bit low, please?”
“Oh, don’t sneer at me like Yukio used to do. It’s creepy.”
Then Takeshi unwraps a candy and throws it into his mouth. I am watching him slowly hang down his head between his knees.
After a short while Takeshi starts talking as if in monologue.
*
The sky used to look magical. We used to have that kind of blue sky when we were little, didn’t we? There were neither my father nor my uncle in the balcony of my room. It was on the second floor facing south. Lying on my back, I kept watching, for hours, a patch of clouds leisurely crawling on the sky. There seemed to be a lot of air to breathe in those days. I didn’t need to be the winner then.
Oh, by the way, that was something of a heartbreaking story which you had told me yesterday. Of your little sister Naomi. I didn’t know about the car accident at all. My mother told me that your little sister had died of a brain tumor. I really feel sorry for you.
Now I’m going to tell you few things which even Yukio had never heard of.
Have you ever felt the oneness of the mind and the body?
I could feel it all the time. Even when I was a six-year-old kid, I could run down the stairs of a Buddhist temple faster than anybody else. As if I were running on a flat land at full speed you know. I could leap over a guardrail and jump off a branch of a pine tree like a Ninja. I was not even conscious of my being while I was doing those things. My body always reacted at my pleasure. The nervous system and muscles in my body become perfectly one with and beautifully harmonized with each other.
A Japanese Schoolgirl Page 17