mentality, but when a fish runs out of food, it has one of two choices: to escape or die. Still the struggle to possess seems to be the unifying element in all relationships. Maybe it appeals to the masochist and sadist in every one of us. As for me, however, no matter what else, I knew I'd always possess a beautiful dragon and a Kirin right there on my back. They'd never betray me, and without eyes they'd never fly away. They'd always, always be there.
57
The hole in my tongue, which could only hold a lOg before the tattooing began, had now grown to accommodate a 6g.
And every time I stretched it further it hurt so much I kept thinking that this was as big as it was ever going to get. On every day where I'd moved up to a bigger stud, I found I couldn't even taste anything for the rest of the day. The constant pain also made me me irritable and made me wish that everybody would just die.
And in my typical selfishness, I took all my frustrations out on Ama. That's me, though, just simple. With all the intelligence and values of a monkey.
The world outside the window was cold and gray. It was the second week in December, and you could smell the dryness of the air the moment you stepped outside the front door. Being a freeter, someone who just picks up temp jobs here and there, it really didn't make any difference to me what day of the week it was. It was more than a month since my tattoo had been completed, but somehow I still felt as if it had sapped all the energy out of me. I told myself that it was probably just the cold weather and willed the days to pass as quickly as possible. Not that it would even make a difference anyway. After all, there's no point in me waiting for a solution when I don't even have a problem in the first place. Life just seemed so empty, that's all.
I'd just wake up in the morning, see Ama off, then go back to sleep again pretty much every day. Once in a while, I'd go out and do a little work, maybe have sex with Shiba-san or meet up with friends, but no matter what I did, I always ended up feeling low. When Ama came home at night, we would go out for dinner, sharing a plate of this and a plate of that interspersed with drinks. Then we'd go back home and carry on with the 58
drinking. I wondered if I was turning into an alcoholic. Ama was worried about me too. He'd keep fussing over me and do his best to cheer me up by talking excitedly about this and that.
Then when that wouldn't work, he'd just burst into tears, crying
"Why? Why?" at me, and going on about how angry and hurt he felt.
Seeing him like that made me want to respond to his feelings, but whenever a tiny seed of hope took root in me and began to grow, it was always crushed by a heavy downpour of self-loathing. Simply put, there was just no light. My life and future were pitch black, and I couldn't see anything at the end of the tunnel. It's not as if I'd been expecting great things for myself before that, it's just that now I could clearly imagine myself turning up dead in a gutter somewhere and I didn't even really have the energy to laugh it off. At least before I met Ama, I'd always been prepared to sell my body if it came down to that. But now I just couldn't bring myself to do anything other than sleep and eat. In fact, I thought I'd rather die than
go with stinking middle-aged men. I wondered which would be better—to work as a prostitute to live, or to die rather than work as one? I'd say the latter answer would be the one chosen by the healthy mind, but then again, there's not really anything healthy about being dead. Anyway, they do say that women who are sexually active tend to have a better complexion. Not that I cared if I was healthy or not.
On the day I stretched my tongue hole to a 4g, blood oozed out of it pretty freely and I couldn't bring myself to eat, so I just drank beer. Ama said I was rushing my tongue, but I didn't care—I was 59
in a hurry. Of course, it wasn't as if I was up against the clock or suffering from something terminal; it's just that I was getting this strong feeling that time was running out. Maybe there are just some times in life when things need to be rushed.
"Do you ever feel that you want to die?" Ama asked out of the blue one night after we had come home from dinner and drinks.
"All the time," I said.
He just stared emptily at the beer in his glass for a while, then let out a sigh and said, "I wont let anybody kill you. Not even yourself. If you decide to take your own life, you have to let me do it. I wouldn't be able to stand anybody but myself determining your fate."
Ama's words reminded me of Shiba-san. I wondered which one of them I would ask to do the deed when the temptation finally became too much. Which one would do the best job of it? That turned my thoughts to Desire, and I decided I'd go there the next day. For some reason, as soon as I decided on that, an inkling of a will to live returned to me.
After seeing Ama off to work around noon, I put on some makeup and was just about to call Shiba-san, when he called me, as if he'd read my mind or something. wHi?"
"It's me. Can you talk?"
"Sure. I was just thinking of coming over to your place today. Is something the matter?" "Yeah, well, it's about Ama."
"What is it?"
60
"Do you know if he was involved in some kind of trouble sometime in July?"
I felt my chest tighten at Shiba-san's words, and the image of Ama repeatedly punching the guy came to my mind.
"I don't know . . Why do you ask?"
"The police just came by and asked me to show them my list of tattoo clients. They wanted to know who had gotten dragon tattoos. I only keep a list of first-time customers, and Ama's name wasn't on it, so I guess there's nothing to worry about. But still..."
"It's not him they were looking for. He's been with me the whole time."
"I'm sure he has. Sorry. It's just they said the guy had red hair.
And you know Ama had red hair then, so I just kind of wondered."
"I see," I said and inhaled deeply. My heart was beating so hard it was shaking my entire body, and I had to concentrate on my hand to make sure I didn't drop the phone. I wondered if I should confide in Shiba-san. It would take a huge weight off my mind and I would like to know his thoughts on it, but would it really be the
right thing to do? He might tell Ama. And I didn't know what Ama would do if he found out that I had seen the article in the paper. Would he turn himself in? Would he skip town? He was normally so easy to understand and we spent so much time together, but I suddenly felt an uneasy distance when I realized I had absolutely no idea how he would react. What does go through someone's mind when they kill someone anyway? Do they think about the future? The people they care about? Their life all the way up to that moment? And how could I even begin to guess?
61
I was a person who could see no future for myself; a person who cared about no one. I couldn't even understand my own life, which was little more than a pastiche of drunken moments. All I knew was that over the weeks and over the months, I had come to have feelings for Ama.
"Lui, don't worry about it. So you coming over today?
"Actually .. I think I'll stay home today. Maybe another time."
"Come over. Please. I want to talk to you."
"I don't know. I'll see how I feel."
I put down the phone, paced the room a little and tried to compose my thoughts. Unfortunately, however, 86 my thoughts had other plans, so I got frustrated and decided on a drink. I opened a botde of sake that Ama and I were planning to drink together, put it to my lips, and swallowed it down direct. It tasted even better than I'd expected, and it was going down really well too. I could feel it filling up my otherwise empty stomach, I drank the entire bottle, then I finished off my makeup and walked out the door.
"Good afternoon."
"Good afternoon? Since when have we been so formal?" said Shiba-san with a frown as he turned to see me standing by the door.
"Life got you down?" he asked with a wry smile. I smiled back weakly and walked up to the counter. The strong perfume of an incense stick smoldering on the counter hit my nose and made me want to throw up immediately.
&
nbsp; "I'm not kidding. Somethings wrong with you."
62
"Like what?"
"When did I see you last?"
"About two weeks ago?"
"And how much weight have you lost since then?" "I don't know. Ama doesn't have any scales." "You're sickly thin. Sickly thin and totally pale. And you stink of alcohol."
I looked at my reflection in the glass showcase. It was true. I looked like a crane fly. I couldn't believe how grotesque I looked. I guess this is what happens when you lose the will to live. I remembered how I had been basically living on alcohol and bar food. In fact, I couldn't recall the last time I'd had a proper meal. At the time, though, I thought this seemed really funny and I couldn't help myself from laughing out loud.
"Isn't Ama feeding you properly?"
"Ama? He's always nagging me to eat more, but I'm happy just drinking."
"If you keep this up, you'll starve. Then how are you going to kill yourself?"
"I'm not going to kill myself," I said, and walked past Shiba-san into the back room.
"I'll go buy something. What will you eat?"
"Get me some beers."
"I've got beers in the fridge. Anything else?"
"Shiba-san, have you ever killed anyone?"
Shiba-san stared at me for a second, sending a sharp pain shooting through my body. "Well . ." He left a long pause that felt like forever. "Yes," he said, then came closer and stroked my hair.
I don't know why, but tears welled up in my eyes and began streaming down my face.
"How did it feel?" I asked, my voice shivering with tears.
63
"It felt good," he replied, as if all I'd asked was, How was your bath?
I was obviously asking the wrong person.
"Good, huh?" I said, wishing I hadn't started crying.
"Take off your clothes."
"I thought you were going shopping."
"Your crying face gave me a hard-on."
I took off all my clothes except my underwear and reached out to Shiba-san, who was wearing a white shirt and gray pants. He unbuckled his belt, then picked me up and placed me on the bed. My crotch responded to his cold stare—like a weird sexual version of one of Pavlov's dogs.
Within seconds it felt like his fingers and penis were everywhere. Poking me, prodding me, making me gasp and grimace with pain and with pleasure. I felt as if his fingers were getting rougher each and every time we had sex. It was probably a sign of his passion, I thought, but if he continued like this, then one day he would end up killing me.
When we'd finished, I stayed on the bed, and Shiba-san got up to get his cigarettes.
He sat down next to me, lit a cigarette, and said, "Why don't you marry me?"
"Is that what you wanted to talk about?"
"Yeah. Ama is too much for you to handle. And you're too much for him. You guys just aren't compatible."
"And me and you are?"
"Nah. That's a whole different question. I just kind of want to get married." He said it in a real nonchalant manner, but it was still a strange thing to say. I just kind of want to get married?
Proposals surely don't come any less heartfelt than that.
64
Without waiting for my response, Shiba-san stood up and put on his clothes. Then he walked over to the desk and took something metallic out of the drawer.
"I went ahead and made you a ring anyway," he said, and handed me a huge ring that covered my entire finger from the knuckle right down to the nail. It even had joints so you could move your finger, and although the design couldn't be any more punk, it was pretty well made. I slipped the ring onto my index finger.
"You made this?"
"Yeah, it's one of my hobbies. Though I guess it's not exactly your kind of thing."
"Wow. Well, it's uh . . . chunky," I said, and laughed, which brought a grin to Shiba-san's face. "Thank you," I said, and gave him a kiss. Shiba-san shrugged off the kiss and said that he was going to pop over to the store.
After Shiba-san stepped out to the store, I thought about what he had said about Ama and me not being compatible with each other. What exactly did it mean to be compatible anyway? Was it even possible for two people to be completely compatible with each other?
I found myself thinking about the possibility of marriage, though the whole idea seemed unrealistic. In fact everything seemed pretty distant to me. The thoughts in my head. The scene in front of my eyes. The cigarette I was holding between my middle and index fingers. It was as if I was looking down at myself from some faraway place.
There was nothing for me to believe and nothing for me to feel. In fact the only feeling with the power to kick me back to life was the feeling of acute pain.
65
Shiba-san came back from the convenience store with some food.
"Here, eat some of this. At least a few bites."
Shiba-san placed a serving of pork cutlet on rice and beef on rice in front of me.
"Which one do you want?"
"I don't want either, thanks. Can I have a beer?"
I got to my feet before Shiba-san could answer and took out a beer from the fridge. Then I sat down on a pipe chair next to the desk and tipped it down my throat. Shiba-san looked at me as if to say, Hopeless.
"Okay, be like that. See if I care. Just let me know if you want to get married, okay?"
"Will do!" I said cheerfully, and downed the rest of my beer.
I headed home before it got dark. Outside, a cold wind was blowing. I wondered how much longer I could live, and I had a sense that it wouldn't be long. Once I got back to Ama's place, I put in a 2g tongue stud. Blood started to run out straight away and the pain was so bad it brought tears to my eyes. I didn't know why I was doing this. I knew that Ama would be angry with me when he
got back, and drank another beer to dull the pain while I waited for him.
Ama never came home that night. Something must have happened, that was pretty much for sure. After all, ever since we'd been living together there'd never been a single instance of him not coming home. He was extremely conscientious and always came back to the room where I waited. That's the way it 66
always was with us, and we'd come to rely on things being exactly that way. Even if he was going to be just a little bit later coming back from work, he always phoned to tell me.
Not once had he failed to come home. I called his mobile phone, but it just went straight to the voice mail without ringing even once. I tried again and again, but the result was always the same. That night I didn't sleep at all, and by the morning I had bags under my eyes. I didn't know what to do and I started to get angry at Ama for leaving me all alone. I wondered what he was thinking. What he was doing. And somewhere inside me I felt an awful feeling that something in my life was coming quietly to an end.
"Ama." My pathetic voice echoed through the room— a room without Ama. I'd put in a 2g tongue stud and I wanted to tell him. I wanted him to smile and be happy for me. To tell me he was glad that I was one step closer to a forked tongue. To get pissed off at me for drinking all the sake on my own.
Eventually, I managed to get myself to stop thinking. Then I braced myself, walked to the door and strode out with renewed determination.
"You don't have to be family to report a missing person, do you?" I asked at the police box.
"No, you don't."
I felt I could have punched the policeman for his blasd attitude.
"Make sure to bring a photo of the guy when you do."
67
I walked off without answering, moving at a fast pace but no real direction. Then the severity of the situation suddenly hit me.
"I don't know Ama's name . . .," I muttered to myself.
Without a name I couldn't even report him missing.
When I saw Shiba-san, he looked into my angry face as if there was something he wanted to say.
"What's Ama's name?" I asked.
"Huh? What are you on about?"
&nb
sp; "Ama didn't come home. I need to report him missing."
"What, you don't even know his name?" "No."
"But you two live together."
"I know," I said, tears welling up in my eyes.
"Don't cry. You must have seen his name outside the front door or on letters and stuff," said Shiba-san, looking into my eyes with a look of total surprise, maybe at my sudden tears.
"Ama doesn't have his name up outside the door, and the postbox is so full of leaflets that I never bothered opening it."
"He went to work as usual yesterday, right? So he didn't come back last night?"
"No. He hasn't been back since he went to work yesterday."
"Why are you getting so worked up about it? It's only one night. I'm sure everything is fine. Don't panic just because he didn't come home for a night. He's not a kid, you know."
His inability to grasp the situation was seriously starting to irritate me.
"All this time that we've been living together, Ama has never stayed out without telling me. He even calls me if he's going to be half an hour late."
68
Shiba-san looked down at the counter and said nothing.
Then he looked up at me and muttered, "But still...
Maybe I shouldn't have been so worried, and I started to wonder if Shiba-san was right. That there was nothing to worry about. It was only one night, as he said. But no, I had to look for Ama. That's when I decided to play my trump card.
"Ama might have killed someone."
"You mean the pimp guy in Shinjuku the police were talking about?"
"It was my fault. If I'd just ignored that guy, Ama never would have beat him up. I didn't think he would die. So when I saw the newspaper article, I didn't think it could be the same person. I was sure it was someone else. I didn't think that it could have been about Ama..
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