by Mariko Koike
“You have a lot of nerve, asking me that. This is the second time, too.”
“The second time for what?”
“The second time you made me look like a fool. It’s just like what happened with Reiko.”
Teppei was squatting on the ground. Now he raised his head, very slowly, and looked directly at his younger brother, but the harsh sunlight streaming into his eyes made it impossible to read the expression on Tatsuji’s face. “What do you mean, this is just like what happened with Reiko?” Teppei asked in a carefully controlled voice.
“Okay, if you really want to know, I’ll tell you. I’ve been holding back on saying anything for years now, but I still can’t forgive you for what you did. The truth is, I think you’re a terrible person. You’ve always been so completely wrapped up in yourself that you never stop to think about other people, even a little bit. I mean, when Reiko died, I was the one who got stuck with cleaning up the mess you made with your sordid affair. I took care of every little detail—making the funeral arrangements, getting in touch with your office to explain why you hadn’t come to work, even apologizing to Reiko’s family on your behalf. I really covered your ass, but I’ll be honest: I wasn’t doing any of that for you. I did it all for Reiko because I felt so sorry for her, suffering alone while you were out feeding your giant ego and tomcatting around with another woman…”
“Shut up!” Teppei shouted, hurling one of the coffee spoons onto the concrete floor of the roof. It landed with a loud clang and bounced away.
Shaking with anger, Tatsuji glowered down at his brother. Teppei picked up another coffee spoon and as he was twining one of the rolled-up memos around it, he once again looked up and caught Tatsuji’s eye.
“Okay, let’s get this straight,” he said. “You will never again take that kind of self-righteous tone with me, do you understand? What happened with Reiko is our problem—Misao’s and mine—and nobody else’s. It has nothing to do with you. You may be my brother, but when it comes to my first marriage you’re nothing but an outsider. Don’t ever forget that.”
The brothers glared at each other in silence for a few moments, finally averting their glances so nearly in unison that it would have been hard to say who was the first to look away.
Tatsuji walked over to the iron railing with a weary gait. Leaning against it, he let out a long, deep sigh. “Just go ahead and tell me already,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Tell me what’s been going on in this building.”
“Even if you heard the whole story, it probably wouldn’t make sense to you. I mean, it wouldn’t make sense to anyone in his right mind.”
“I don’t care. I want to know. You got me into this predicament, and I think I have a right to know what’s going on.”
Holding a bundle of memo-encased coffee spoons in each hand, Teppei went to stand next to Tatsuji at the railing. “Okay,” he said, “here goes nothing.”
Once Teppei began talking, it only took a few minutes to summarize the frightful and baffling events that had taken place since they moved into the building back in March. Simplifying each anecdote as much as possible, he gave his brother a compressed rundown, starting with the peculiar shadow on the TV screen, then moving on to the mysterious (or, at best, unsatisfactorily unexplained) injury Tamao had sustained while playing in the basement. He talked about his surreal walk-and-talk conversation with the bar hostess who used to live on the fifth floor, and the bloodcurdling—and, again, inexplicable—phenomena he and the two caretakers had encountered when they went down to the basement to look for the source of some midnight noises. He also touched briefly on the elevator outages, and the warnings he and Misao had received from Mr. Shoji, the yoga instructor. (He made no mention of the sudden death of their pet bird the night they moved in, because he still couldn’t see how that tied in with the other occurrences.)
“And then Misao went to the ward library and did some research into the history of this area,” Teppei continued, without pausing to give Tatsuji a chance to respond to the first installment of revelations. “Back in the 1960s, there was apparently a plan to relocate the graveyard and build a big high-rise housing complex on the land. Naturally, that would have resulted in an increase in the area’s population, so the master plan included the creation of an underground shopping mall, which would have extended all the way from the train station to right about here. The people who represented the temple and the graveyard rejected the plan outright, but it’s possible that the city ignored them and went ahead with the excavation for the underground street.”
“And exactly what does that have to do with our situation right now?” Tatsuji asked impatiently, making no attempt to hide his irritation.
“I don’t know,” Teppei replied. “There may be no connection at all.”
Both brothers lapsed into silence. They could hear the creaky songs of cicadas wafting up from the weed-choked fields in the near distance.
“I’m sorry about the things I said before,” Tatsuji finally murmured.
“That’s okay,” Teppei replied equably. “I’ve known for a long time now that you were harboring those feelings.”
“It’s just that I really liked Reiko a lot and I still feel sorry for her, even after all these years.”
“Look, I don’t care if you want to blame me, but you need to leave Misao out of it,” Teppei said, shooting Tatsuji a warning look. “She’s suffered plenty herself.”
Tatsuji gave an almost imperceptible nod. “I know. I’m not trying to place any of the blame on her, at all.”
Then, from not too far away, they heard the sound of an engine. Teppei had been sitting on his haunches, but now he jumped up and ran over to the railing that bordered the south-facing side of the roof.
On the narrow road that flanked the temple and the graveyard, a van was approaching. The distinctive blue logo of the telephone company was clearly visible on one side.
“Tats, come here, quick!” Teppei called.
Tatsuji rushed over to join his brother at the edge of the roof. “Somebody’s coming!” he said excitedly. “Thank god, we’re saved!”
“Okay, listen,” Teppei said. “We need to watch for the exact moment when they step out of the van, and then throw these notes at their feet. I mean, one of the spoons might end up hitting someone on the head, by mistake, but at this point we can’t be worrying about that sort of thing. It probably wouldn’t cause much of an injury, even if it did happen. Anyway, as soon as they look up, we’ll start yelling for help as loudly as we can.”
Teppei handed Tatsuji a fistful of the memo-bearing coffee spoons and then, hoping against hope, he focused his attention on the approaching van. Please help us, he pleaded, silently. Please just read these notes and then do what needs to be done.
Teppei couldn’t help noticing that the van’s engine didn’t seem to be running very smoothly, as the vehicle juddered up the driveway and wheezed to a stop in front of the entrance. The two large, dark stains were still visible on the stone steps, but the steam, at least, had dissipated.
The driver’s door opened, and a fortyish man in a blue uniform stepped out. He appeared to be alone. After a moment, he stuck his torso back into the van, as if searching for something. Finally, he extracted a small black satchel, then slammed the door behind him.
“Now!” Teppei shouted. “Ready, aim, fire!” On that cue, he and Tatsuji proceeded to toss their missives off the roof. They all fell straight down, and one or two caught the sunlight and flashed silver as they plummeted toward the ground. The hail of spoons landed on the driveway side of the stone steps with an unexpectedly loud clatter. The driver immediately looked up.
“Hey!” Teppei called, waving one arm. The driver was glaring at him, but the expression on his face didn’t seem to indicate mistrust or suspicion. He simply appeared angry that anyone would engage in such risky behavior.
“Please read the notes!” Teppei shouted.
“Huh?” the man said, cuppin
g a hand around one ear. Then, evidently catching on, he gazed with obvious interest at the memos littering the ground around him. Picking up one of the spoons, he unfolded the note. After he had finished reading, he looked up again. Flinching slightly at the prospect of a further onslaught, he demanded loudly, “What’s going on?”
“Please, just call the police!” Teppei shouted back.
“Say what?” Again, the man put a hand to one ear.
“Police! CALL … THE … PO … LICE!”
“Oh, I see,” the man said, clearly flustered. His hands were shaking, and he looked as though he might keel over at any moment.
Right about then, the brothers heard the sound of another vehicle in the near distance. Turning to look toward the temple, they saw a white hatchback sedan approaching along the access road. “That’s probably the guy from the electrician’s place,” Teppei said.
A minute or two later the hatchback pulled up and stopped directly behind the phone company van, just as the first man was about to climb back into his vehicle. When the telephone repairman noticed the newcomer, he ran toward the hatchback, yelling something unintelligible and pointing frantically at the rooftop. After a moment a corpulent, middle-aged man emerged from the driver’s side of the hatchback sedan. It was the same employee who had been diligently picking his nose in the middle of the electrician’s shop, apparently making productive use of his afternoon break, earlier that week when Teppei stopped by to set up an appointment to have the air-conditioning unit uninstalled, so it could be moved to the new place today. (Teppei had thought, more than once, that the absence of central air conditioning was another piece of evidence that the Central Plaza Mansion had been designed to look alluring on the surface, while every possible corner was being cut in order to reduce construction costs.)
Now the electrician looked up at the roof. Leaning over the railing, Teppei waved both arms and shouted, “Help us, please!”
The man from the phone company handed the memo to the electrician. As he read, the new arrival’s plump body began to tremble visibly, like that of a hippo emerging from a wallow. He gave a cry of alarm, then conferred briefly with the telephone repairman. After that they hustled to their respective vehicles, and a moment later the engines roared to life.
All at once a flash of what appeared to be an unnaturally strong ray of sunshine blasted through the rear windshields of both cars, shattering the glass to bits. The vehicles were engulfed in a colossal whirl of light, followed by a blinding afterglow that was almost too bright to look at. The radiance was truly fearsome to behold, like the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. To Teppei and Tatsuji, watching in open-mouthed horror, it seemed as if the sun’s rays were being absorbed into a gigantic mirror, then refracted directly into their eyes.
In the same instant, the two drivers and their vehicles disappeared from sight. A couple of brief, terrified screams arose from the vicinity of the vehicles, but those heartrending sounds soon faded away, leaving only silence.
Teppei witnessed this appalling scene in a state of nauseated disbelief. He saw two large plumes of white smoke rising from the road, while a singularly gruesome sound filled the air. It was the kind of sizzling you might hear if you immersed something fragile (fabric, say, or flesh) in a vat of sulfuric acid. The entire sequence couldn’t have taken more than five or six seconds. The plumes combined into a single thick cloud billowing up from the area where the men and their cars had been, and then the haze began to clear, revealing several large black blobs on the road.
Tatsuji reached out and grabbed Teppei’s arm with a hand that was cold as ice, and Teppei wondered fleetingly whether the parade of shocking occurrences had caused his brother’s body temperature to plummet. He himself was feeling extremely dizzy and disoriented, and he found it difficult to catch a proper breath. The summer sun seemed to burn hotter by the minute, almost as if it were trying to set Teppei’s scalp on fire, just for fun.
“Come on, Tats, let’s go downstairs,” Teppei said. Or rather, he intended to speak those words, but no sound came out when he opened his mouth, which didn’t surprise him at all. The amazing thing, he thought, was that he was even able to remain on his feet.
Stumbling along together, he and Tatsuji made their slow way across the roof and began to descend the emergency staircase, heading for the one place in their topsy-turvy world that still felt like a safe haven. When they were about halfway there, Tatsuji suddenly plopped down on one of the stairs and began to scream incoherently.
Teppei couldn’t understand a word his brother was saying. Stretching out a hand, he pulled Tatsuji to his feet and forcibly hauled him down the remaining stairs, praying with every fiber of his being that they would both make it to their destination alive.
21
July 26, 1987 (2:00 p.m.)
Misao was the first to notice that there was no electricity. Tamao was whining about the heat, and how thirsty she was, so Misao had wandered over to the refrigerator with the intention of offering everyone something refreshing to drink.
Normally, the light inside the fridge came on as soon as the door was opened, but when that didn’t happen Misao knew immediately that the problem was more than just a burned-out bulb. The power had evidently been down for some time, because drops of condensation were already forming on the outside of a jar of strawberry jam.
Tatsuji hadn’t yet begun to recover from the most recent events, and he was sitting on the living room floor, hugging his knees to his chest and staring straight ahead with shell-shocked eyes. Weaving her way between him and Naomi, whose pallid face wore the same look of stunned bewilderment, Misao went to check on the air conditioner. When she got there she found that the on button, which should have been illuminated, was dark.
She shot Teppei a look that clearly conveyed We need to talk, then led him into the hall. “There’s a power outage,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“The fridge and the air conditioner are both off.”
“Now that you mention it, the air in here does feel kind of hot and muggy.”
“Could you go take a look?”
Teppei nodded, then went into the entry hall, where the fuse box was located. He pulled it open and peered inside. None of the breakers had been tripped, and there was nothing to indicate a blown fuse. He tried flipping the switches back and forth a number of times, with no success.
His next move was to step out into the corridor and push the elevator’s call button. The light went on and the door slid open, as usual.
“It looks like the electricity’s only off inside our apartment,” he reported when he returned to the kitchen a moment later.
“How is that even possible?” Misao asked incredulously. “A selective power outage? That makes no sense.”
“I guess they’re at it again,” Teppei said nonchalantly, as though that statement constituted a normal, rational explanation.
“What’s going on?” Tamao asked as she joined her parents in the hallway.
“The electricity’s been acting funny, so—” Misao broke off in midsentence to ruminate. There was still quite a bit of food in the refrigerator, and a fair number of drinks, as well, but without electricity a lot of things were going to start to spoil very quickly in the heat. And, speaking of heat, how were they supposed to go on living in a place where the windows wouldn’t open and the air conditioning didn’t work?
“I wonder what we ought to do,” she said aloud, half to herself. “It’s just going to keep getting hotter and hotter in here, and as for food…”
Teppei looked at her with a glum expression. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the water stopped running before too long, as well,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow. Tamao skipped off, calling for Cookie to come and play.
“Oh no. I never thought about that,” Misao said.
“They’re going to try to starve us out,” Teppei stated matter-of-factly.
“But if we don’t have any water…”
“
I don’t know. I mean, we have no idea what we’re dealing with here, so how are we supposed to understand their end game?”
This is just too much, Misao thought. Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked around to make sure Tamao was out of earshot. No matter what happened, Misao felt it was her duty as a parent not to do or say anything that might make this ordeal any more upsetting for her little daughter.
“What’s left in the way of food?” Teppei asked in a subdued tone.
“Not a whole lot,” Misao replied. “There’s a bit of ham, and some cheese, and a few pickled plums. I think there might be three slices left from the loaf of bread I used for our breakfast sandwiches. I made a point of emptying out the fridge so we wouldn’t need to cart a lot of perishable food over to the new place, and there’s really nothing else except for some ice in the freezer. Oh, wait: there’s one jar of jam, and a container of miso paste, and some salad dressing. I think that’s about it, though I may be forgetting some small things.”
“Okay. What about drinks?”
“We have a few cans of cola and beer in the fridge, and there might be another couple of dozen in the cupboard, in cartons. I was planning to wait and put them in the refrigerator when we got to the new place.”
“How about canned goods?”
“There are some tins of corned beef, and tuna, and vegetable soup. Not very many, though.”
As a family, their diet had never included much in the way of so-called convenience food, but Misao now found herself wishing she had kept more canned goods and instant mixes on hand for emergencies.
“And that’s all? Please tell me that isn’t everything we have on hand to feed five people,” Teppei said reproachfully. Misao understood his sentiments with excruciating clarity, but she couldn’t stifle the knee-jerk reaction.
“Yes,” she snapped, “that’s all. I was just trying to be practical and simplify the move. If I’d known we were going to end up trapped in this building, I would have done a big shopping. I mean, who could have foreseen something like this?” She was unable to hold back her tears any longer and they streamed from the corners of her eyes, blurring her vision. Lowering his gaze apologetically, Teppei reached out to pat her forearm.