Seventeen

by Hideo Yokoyama

  They’d decided to set out at 6:00 a.m. Yuuki had been of two minds about it, but in the end he went ahead and broached the subject before they hit the trail.

  “There’s one thing I have to talk to you about before we get going.”

  Rintaro paused from clearing up the breakfast things and gave Yuuki his full attention.

  “Do you remember back then when your dad was in the hospital and I visited for the first time?”

  Rintaro blushed.

  “I do. I remember it well. I remember clinging to you.”

  “Yes, that time.”

  Yuuki stretched out his back muscles.

  “I have to apologize to you for something. I took advantage of you hugging me that day, and I’ve used you for something ever since.”

  Rintaro looked puzzled.

  Yuuki needed to say that today’s climb was going to be in memory of Kyoichiro Anzai. But before his attempt on Tsuitate, he wanted to confess everything that was on his mind. It was what he had been thinking about all the way here. He continued.

  “That time at the hospital, it wasn’t you I was hugging—it was Jun. I was so happy that you put your arms around me, but I really wished it was Jun who’d done it.”

  Rintaro’s gaze didn’t falter.

  “About a year later, I took you and Jun to Mount Haruna. Do you remember? To tell the truth, my relationship with Jun was tense, to say the least, and things used to go very badly whenever the two of us spent any time alone together. I’d always wanted to take Jun to the mountains, but I couldn’t work out how to do it. That’s how I took advantage of you. Jun and I could be together if there were three of us. Fortunately, you and Jun had become friends. Of course, I was very fond of you, too. But—”

  Yuuki hung his head.

  “—your mother believed I was being a father to you, and thanked me for it. I guess you probably thought the same. You were thrilled when I invited you to go to the mountains with us. You looked at me the way you would look at a father. And it broke my heart to see it. Actually, it still pains me. And I really invited you for the sake of Jun and me.”

  Rintaro had loved him. That was the only real thing that Yuuki had been able to believe in back then. That was why he was always able to behave naturally around Rintaro. And he adored the boy. At times, he’d even wished that Rintaro was his son instead of Jun. Nevertheless, Yuuki had never given up on Jun. He’d wanted to start over from the beginning. To rebuild that father-son relationship.

  A fresh breeze blew across the riverbed.

  “I kind of understood,” said Rintaro quietly. His eyes were as bright as usual. They weren’t angry or disappointed.

  “I had so much fun.”

  “Huh?”

  “Back then, I used to look forward to Sundays so much.”

  His words lifted Yuuki’s spirits.

  “Yes, it was fun,” he said, looking into the distance.

  Every Sunday, Yuuki used to take Jun and Rintaro to the mountains. Climb a bit, stop to eat a packed lunch, then climb some more. It was always the same pattern, but it was true—it had been fun. Those were precious memories. Jun didn’t really take it seriously, and never became much of a climber. On the other hand, Rintaro made steady progress, and it wasn’t long before he was more skilled than Yuuki. Like father, like son. Yuuki truly believed that saying.

  “Shall we make a start?” said Rintaro, getting to his feet.

  “Can you forgive me?” Yuuki managed finally to get the words out.

  Rintaro crouched back down and met his eyes. “You mustn’t say things like that, Yuuki-san. You are kinder than anyone, and I should know it.”

  Yuuki felt a rush of emotion and struggled to hold back the tears. Rintaro abruptly spun on his heels and began to check the climbing equipment: rucksacks, rope, helmets, carabiners. Even from the back, Yuuki could see that his earlobes had turned bright red. For a man as shy as Rintaro, this was a once-in-a-lifetime speech.

  Yuuki looked up again at Tsuitate. Finally, he was going to confront it.

  “Yep. Let’s go.”

  As Yuuki watched Rintaro sling his rucksack on his back, he recognized a change in the man’s usually placid expression. This was a look he had seen numerous times in the past: Kyoichiro Anzai about to face off with a wall of rock.

  They were about to set foot in Devil’s Mountain territory. This time Yuuki really was going to take on the beast.

  Rintaro set off walking; Yuuki followed. They were planning to pass through the main Ichinokurasawa valley, heading for Tail Ridge, the stepping-stone to Tsuitate.

  They followed the gently sloping trail through the brush. Tsuitate was visible just to the right, ahead of them. It was a behemoth. Not even the soft morning sun could make that vertical wall any less fearsome.

  They took stepping-stones across the stream, crossed back again, and detoured around the left of Hyonguri Waterfall. They skirted around a belt of shrubs, and from there the path began to climb. Rintaro advanced, sure-footed; neither too slow nor too fast, there was a fixed rhythm to his strides.

  Approaching Tail Ridge, they followed the stream downhill a ways and crossed a snowy valley. The surface was rugged and uneven, and difficult to walk. The valley looked as if someone had scooped it out with a giant spoon, hence its nickname, Spoon Cut. It was dotted with rocks that had fallen or been swept down in an avalanche. There was no longer anywhere that could be called safe.

  Yuuki’s heart was beating fast. He knew they were now in the heart of Ichinokurasawa. He was supposed to walk this trail with Anzai seventeen years ago. Instead, he was walking it now with Anzai’s son. If he raised his eyes, he could see the famous rock faces, all visible in a bunch. There was Takizawa Slab; Lower Takizawa, which rose perpendicular to the main valley; the inner wall of Eboshizawa. And finally, their destination—the Tsuitate face.

  It took about forty minutes for them to reach the base of Tail Ridge. Rintaro turned around.

  “Do you want to rest a minute?”

  “No, I’m fine. Let’s go.”

  Rintaro nodded and began to check the rock for holds. Last night there’d been a sudden shower, so the rock surface, polished smooth by many years of avalanches, was glistening with rainwater.

  “Let’s tie on.”

  It was reassuring to hear Rintaro’s concern for him. It was obvious he could sense Yuuki’s uneasiness. Normally they wouldn’t tie on the rope at this point, but Yuuki was not at all confident about climbing this wet rock.

  As he passed the rope through the carabiner he was surprised at how strong his sense of relief was. This was what it was all about, he thought. He was attached to Rintaro by a single piece of rope, and it was enough to give him the energy to climb.

  “Here we go! Okay?”

  “Okay!”

  He set foot on Tail Ridge.

  Rintaro mostly used his feet to climb. Yuuki had a more bent posture and relied heavily on his hands. He scrambled up as fast as he could below Rintaro. As they climbed, Tsuitate changed from a towering presence before his eyes to a heavy weight above his head. He’d never seen anything so intimidating.

  I don’t know if I can do this.

  The voice that had answered him seemed far away in his memory.

  “There are plenty of guys like you who do it.

  “… set off climbing as fast as they can, utterly focused on what they’re doing.

  “… the body gets overstimulated, reaches a level of extreme excitement. The fear makes them numb.”

  Climber’s high.

  Something suddenly occurred to him.

  That day, seventeen years ago, he had reached that level of extreme excitement.

  13

  He felt dog-tired. He’d spent far too long at the hospital, and by the time he’d run to his car and rushed back to the newsroom it was almost 4:00 p.m. He was greeted by the furious tones of the managing editor. He quickly got his head back into crash-coverage mode. The events at the hospital were already fading
from his mind.

  “You good-for-nothing!” Oimura roared. “What kind of leader vanishes like that without telling anyone where he’s going?”

  The reason the Firecracker had exploded was that, during Yuuki’s absence, there had been a development in the story. The wires from Kyodo News were full of the breaking news. One of the survivors—the assistant cabin crew manager—had talked about the state of the aircraft just before the crash.

  “At 6:25 there was a loud bang from somewhere above us, then my ears began to hurt.

  “Inside the cabin everything went white. The vent hole under the cabin crew seats opened. A piece of the ceiling above the lavatories came loose. Right at the same time, the oxygen masks dropped down.

  “The plane was rolling and oscillating quite badly. It seemed to have gone into a Dutch roll.

  “In the end the plane descended at a very sharp angle. There were two or three separate strong impacts. All the surrounding seats and cushions, everything, was thrown around.”

  From her account, it was thought that the crash was probably caused by damage to the vertical tail or something toward the rear of the plane. This was the conclusion drawn in the Kyodo News wires.

  Yuuki felt a surge of anger. It had been Japan Airlines management who had heard the testimony and passed on the information to the journalist. Just last night the prefectural police had set up a special headquarters to investigate criminal liability. The testimony of a witness would be vital to the course of their investigation. It goes without saying that, when building a case, the written account of an assistant cabin crew manager with specialized knowledge of the aircraft would be invaluable to the investigators. Despite this, Japan Airlines, who might very well end up being the defendants in the criminal case, had gotten in with someone connected to the survivor and managed to obtain her testimony first. What’s more, they’d made it public. The testimony seemed believable, but could anyone be sure now that the information hadn’t been doctored in some way to make it more favorable toward Japan Airlines?

  If the purpose had been to answer the questions of the relatives and members of the public about conditions in the plane at the time of the crash, then they should have waited for the assistant cabin crew manager to make a full recovery, at which time she could have been interviewed by a delegation from the news media. It could have been left to the Ministry of Transport’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Committee to listen to her testimony.

  There were a lot of people at the North Kanto Times who thought that the next day’s local news pages should center on this “vital testimony.” The number of voices suggesting that it ought to be the newspaper’s lead story began to grow, and Yuuki started to worry. He’d already decided that Sayama’s eyewitness article was going to have the top spot, and he had no intention of moving it.

  Just after five o’clock, Kasuya’s potbelly made an appearance in the newsroom.

  “Hey, what are we going to do with the testimony story?”

  “Front page, second story.”

  In other words, he was treating it as the second headline story. He’d thought about banishing it to the second page of local news but he didn’t want to rub people the wrong way. In the end, he was going to placate the chorus of voices calling for it to be lead with a compromise of second headline.

  Kasuya looked doubtful.

  “Going with the second spot, eh? I think it ought to be the top story.”

  “But—”

  Yuuki emphasized the danger of the possible manipulation of the report by Japan Airlines. In his heart, he felt real indignation that the airline company had made their announcement at Haneda Airport. Japan Airlines Flight 123 had gone down in Gunma Prefecture. The assistant cabin crew manager was in a Gunma hospital, so her testimony had been obtained inside that hospital building. So why was the announcement made in Tokyo? Those ominous phrases “inherited accident” and “borrowed space” that they’d had to swallow so many times before were resurfacing.

  Reluctantly accepting Yuuki’s decision, the editor in chief left the floor and Yuuki set about reading all the wires and articles that had arrived in his absence. He was once again reminded that this was an unprecedented catastrophe. The number of hours he’d been away from his desk were in direct proportion to the size of the stack of papers.

  121 bodies retrieved, 51 identified

  Lamenting and clinging to the coffin

  Was underlying cause tail strike seven years ago?

  Aircraft had congested schedule—flew five times a day

  Japan Airlines plans complete inspection of 49 jumbo jets in near future

  Crash investigation: flight and voice recorders found. Analysis under way

  JAL President, Takagi, informs Prime Minister Nakasone of his intention to resign

  Prefectural police plan to question assistant cabin crew manager

  U.S. President offers his condolences

  Uenomura village office administrators paralyzed

  Demand for travel insurance multiplies fivefold

  Total compensation to reach fifty billion yen

  Condition of four survivors improving

  Just after seven in the evening there were angry exchanges in the newsroom. People were feeling exhausted and their patience was wearing thin. That was how Yuuki, who was deeply absorbed reading, managed to miss the oily voice behind him.

  “Oi!”

  He finally noticed that Nozawa, at the next desk, was calling him.

  “What is it?”

  Having finally gotten Yuuki’s attention, Nozawa turned to look over his shoulder, and Yuuki did the same. Yuuki stiffened. The hooked nose and mustache of Ito, the head of Circulation—and Anzai’s departmental chief—was right behind him.

  “You have a minute?”

  He had a strange way of speaking that sounded as if he had a mouthful of gum or something.

  “Yes. What is it?” Yuuki asked cautiously.

  “Yes, well … I was wondering what time the deadline was likely to be tonight.”

  “We’re not extending tonight, so I assume we’ll go to press at the usual time.”

  “Is that right? Well, that’s fine, then. Because when the printing runs late and the paper doesn’t reach the Circulation Department on time, we do get a lot of complaints from our newsdealers.”

  He spoke slimily, and for some reason he flashed Yuuki a meaningful smile.

  Yuuki had never forgotten the first time Ito had spoken to him. It was shortly after he had started at the North Kanto Times, and the sound of the man’s voice had chilled his heart. It was exactly like a voice he had heard many times as a child.

  “Hey, kid, I heard your mom’s a pan-pan girl.”

  Pan-pan girl. Street whore. It was something he’d heard way back when he was in primary school, some thirty years before. The person who had spoken his mother’s secret out loud was a boy of high school age who used to hang around a nearby children’s playground. The kid was in a different school catchment area from Yuuki, but they lived on either side of the boundary of neighboring districts. That must have been how he knew him. But he had no idea where the boy’s home was, and he had no memory of them calling each other by name.

  Yuuki never went back to that playground. In fact, he was afraid for a long time. Whenever he thought about running into that high school boy again, he’d be terrified of going out to play. He’d spotted him once at a distance and fled home as fast as his legs would carry him. He’d even had nightmares once or twice about being chased by him.

  When he’d heard Ito speak at the office, he’d immediately recalled the boy’s voice. And although fifteen years must have passed in the meantime, and it was normal for a voice to have changed a little, Yuuki was convinced that this was the same person. He looked up Ito’s address on the list of personnel and, sure enough, his house was in the district next to the one where Yuuki had grown up. However, for some reason, he had no memory of what the high school boy had looked like. Only his vo
ice had stuck with him. He must have been so afraid he hadn’t dared look the boy in the face.

  If that boy was indeed Ito, he must remember Yuuki, too. That fear had been living inside Yuuki ever since he started at the company. Back then, the boy had already been sixteen or seventeen and knew who Yuuki’s mother was. So it wasn’t too much of a stretch to assume that he also knew Yuuki’s name.

  Ito didn’t give anything away in his behavior. It was a long time ago and he may well have forgotten about it. And anyway, it may not even have been him. Still, in a small gesture here, or a slight change of expression there, Yuuki would imagine he was listening again to that voice: “I heard your mom’s a pan-pan girl.” He would flinch, and his skin would come up in goose pimples. The stink of the alcohol on his mother’s breath and the smirking faces of the men would come back in vivid detail and he’d be overtaken by the urge to vomit.

  He’d felt it all again this evening. Ito didn’t seem to have any urgent business with him, yet he wasn’t moving away from Yuuki’s desk. It was as if he had some sort of evil agenda.

  Yuuki reached for the next paper in the pile: Ministry of Labor launches investigation into passengers’ work-related death insurance.

  As soon as he began to read, Ito spoke again.

  “Oh, yes, I just remembered…”

  “Yes?”

  Yuuki looked at him coolly.

  “Today, you went to see Anzai, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “How was he?”

  “How was he? Well, he was asleep.”

  “That’s right. It’s a bit of a problem.”

  Yuuki felt like yelling.

  “And how about his wife?”

  “What?”

  “Anzai’s wife? Was she there?”

  “Yes, she was there.”

  “She say anything?”

  Yuuki remembered what Sayuri had said to him: “I think it’s terrible how hard they made him work!”

  Anzai wasn’t really interested in the newspaper company or the work. Or at least that’s what Yuuki had always believed, so Sayuri’s comment had been totally unexpected. Anzai had been overworked. Apparently Ito knew it, too.