by Misumi Kubo
I knew that I’d been doing exactly the same thing, so it didn’t make any sense to feel hurt by what he was saying, but I did.
“I’ve always been really good academically, you know. Like your brother. I really thought that if I just kept on studying, then the things I didn’t know about the world would gradually diminish. But the truth is that the older I get, the less I understand. About love, about sex, girls, even myself . . .”
If there were things that even someone as clever as Hinata couldn’t understand, I thought, then I didn’t stand a chance. Although maybe that was exactly it. Unlike Hinata, I’d never thought, even for a second, that one day I’d understand it all.
Hinata turned his back to me and slowly put his boxers and jeans back on. Then he sat down on the bed, next to where I was still lying stretched out.
“You know that woman in the photo with my brother, from Nagano? Was he in love with her, do you think?”
“I think so. My guess is that she’s the first person he ever really fell in love with. I mean, he hasn’t had a girlfriend before, right?”
I laughed and shook my head, and Hinata smiled.
“For someone as untainted as that, I guess Nagano might have been a real wake-up call.”
“The free sex part?” I snickered, but Hinata pulled a serious face and rested his palm on top of my head again.
“Imagining someone you’re in love with having sex with someone else right close by is tough for anyone.”
The white thighs of the woman Takumi had sex with flashed in front of my eyes.
“I don’t feel I can laugh at your brother or mock him for what he did. Sometimes when sex is dangled in front of you like a carrot, all you can do is run straight for it, however ridiculous you know you might look to other people. I think that’s especially true of men.”
I pictured Takumi grabbing hold of the white thighs and starting to thrust like crazy.
“It’s really difficult to draw lines, you know. Between love and lust, and that sort of thing, I mean. I think the best thing would be to get to the point where you feel like there isn’t any need to make those kinds of distinctions.”
Saying that, Hinata took out a bottle of mineral water from the fridge and handed it to me. I decided to ask him something I’d been wondering about for a while.
“Did she give you a sexual initiation, too? That Nagano woman?”
“No, I . . . I went to the camp to see a girl. The first girl I ever fell for. Someone in my year. But she wasn’t at the camp anymore, and after that she dropped out of school. I’ve no idea where she is now.”
Hinata unscrewed the cap of the water bottle and drank noisily.
“I know it’s weird to be saying this, considering I brought you here and everything but . . . You’re still a virgin, right? And I—I felt like I shouldn’t be your first. I mean, really, you want to do it with him, right? The guy you like.”
As I listened to what seemed to me like a roundabout sort of excuse come spilling out of Hinata’s mouth, it occurred to me, on a deep kind of level, that Hinata really didn’t have feelings for me after all. I didn’t feel anything for him whatsoever, yet that idea made me feel pathetically sad, as if I’d been dumped for the first time. Watching Hinata’s face in profile as he drained the rest of the water in the bottle, I thought about how much I wanted to have sex with Takumi.
Suddenly, the fact that I alone was lying there totally naked, showing my A-cup boobs to Hinata, felt unbelievably embarrassing, and I hurriedly pulled the sheet up to cover my chest. My panties were still strung around my ankle, and my privates were still warm from all Hinata’s probing. Of course I wanted to have sex with Takumi. That was what I really wanted above anything, but, right now, in this instant, I also wanted Hinata to touch me more, like he had before. The more I felt like that, the more I hated Takumi. Underneath the sheet, I put on my bra and my dress that Hinata had taken off. What I didn’t know was that, at that moment, a little egg of lust was already incubating inside me, and it would grow and grow, just like a Tamagotchi, until it became nothing but big fat trouble.
Hinata rode with me to the station where I had to get off and bought me a plastic umbrella from the convenience store there. Looking up at the sky when I emerged from the ticket gates, I saw it was covered by a low blanket of ash-colored cloud, and occasionally a large drop of rain would come smacking down onto my umbrella.
I checked my phone to see a message from Akutsu.
“It turns out the woman in that Takumi video is a housewife way older than him! He’s even more pervy than we thought.”
Since that time by the river, I’d been getting messages from Akutsu about Takumi practically every day. I was starting to get kind of sick of them, actually. But if it was a housewife, then maybe it really was the person who lived in that apartment building by the river. But seriously? A housewife, getting dressed up in cosplay and then doing that stuff? I felt confused about absolutely everything.
As I started across the bridge, the rain and wind suddenly grew harder, and when I looked down at the river I saw the water was spewing past with a scary churning sound. It looked like coffee-flavored milk. I wondered if that housewife had sexually initiated Takumi. I was standing there, lost in thought, when there was a huge great rumble of thunder directly above me. It gave me such a fright that I let go of my umbrella.
I watched it, that umbrella Hinata had bought for me just minutes ago, as the wind caught it and sent it sailing down off the bridge as if in slow motion. I watched it as it hit the surface of the water and was instantly sucked up in the seething current, carried away in no time. There was another clap of thunder, and I found myself screaming. I was too scared to cross to the other side of the bridge, so, with my hands over my ears, I ran back the way I’d come, the opposite direction from my house.
With my clothes and my hair all soaked, I stood in front of Saito Maternity Clinic. I opened the door and called out, but nobody came. Not sure what to do, I deliberated for a while, but then I took off my shoes and went up the stairs.
I opened the door to Takumi’s room to find him lying there on the bed just like the last time, in the same T-shirt and shorts.
Treading across the manga-littered floor, I went to the bed. When I climbed up and sat astride Takumi, he opened his eyes and looked at me in surprise. I was even more drenched with rain than I thought, and droplets from my hair and clothes fell down and left little wet patches on his T-shirt. I scrunched my hand into a fist and punched his chest. I wanted to hit him much harder, but I couldn’t find the strength.
“Are you not going to go out with me anymore?”
Takumi was looking at me, but it was as if he wasn’t. I was still warm and sticky between my legs. The sensation of Hinata’s fingers and tongue moving still lingered there.
“I really like you, you know.”
I punched him again in the chest. A peal of thunder like a drumroll sounded somewhere in the distance. I took hold of the neck of Takumi’s T-shirt and shook it from side to side.
“Were you that into her? Huh?”
Takumi shut his eyes, frowned a little, then nodded his head.
“Why? Why did you do it? Getting all dressed up in cosplay like that to have sex, then having it spread all around the internet! Only a complete idiot would let something like that happen!”
I shook the neck of his T-shirt again, and his head lolled limply from side to side with it.
He covered his face with his hands. Go ahead and cry if you want to, I found myself saying inside, just like a bully would do.
“Because I was in love with her,” Takumi said from the other side of his palms in a muffled voice. Just then, the door opened. Mrs. Saito, seeing me sitting there on top of Takumi, quickly shut it again without saying anything.
“Sorry, sorry!” I heard her voice loud from the other side of the door, then the sound of her powering down the stairs, so I jumped off the bed, opened the door, and called out to where she was sta
nding at the bottom of the stairs.
“Sorry for barging in without telling you I was here.” I bowed my head in apology.
“So, um . . .” she said as she climbed the stairs slowly and came in to Takumi’s room again. She looked between the two of us. I felt myself blushing to my ears and had no clue how I should behave. For some reason totally unclear to me, I decided it would be a good idea to sit down on the tatami with my back straight and my knees tucked under me, as if I was attending some formal gathering.
“So, now . . . What was I here for again?” Mrs. Saito rubbed her temples with her two middle fingers.
“Oh, yes! I remember. I got such a surprise it went clean out of my head.”
She smiled broadly, in a way that made her look even more like Takumi. From outside the window I heard a whoosh of running water. Had the rain got even worse?
“So they’re saying it’s possible we’ll be flooded tonight, what with all this rain. There’s been a torrential downpour in the mountains, and they’re saying that if the dam overflows we might be in trouble here. I’ve got two women in at the moment. One of them has already given birth, and her family’s coming to pick her up, but the other one might just give birth tonight, so I’ve arranged for her to stay with a friend of mine who’s also a midwife, somewhere higher up. When this area starts flooding, it fills up in no time. After I’ve cleared up downstairs, I’m going over there in the car. But you guys um . . . Sorry, your name was . . . ?”
“It’s Nana. Nana Matsunaga.”
“And where do you live, Nana?”
“Right next to Dairoku elementary school.”
“Oh, that’s the place where several houses got washed away before, right? There’s a good chance that bridge might become unusable, so you’d better get home. Soon as you can. Your parents will be worried, I’m sure. Takumi, you go and take Nana home now, while you still can. If the rain gets really bad, you don’t have to come back. Go over to Ryota’s. I can’t imagine the water will get all the way up there.”
As Mrs. Saito rattled all that off in a fast voice, she grabbed a towel from the basket in the hall and handed it to me.
“Come on, Takumi, get a move on! Nana, you’ll get soaked with just an umbrella, so I’ll lend you a raincoat and boots.”
Saying that, she went clattering down the stairs.
I put on the magenta Gore-Tex coat Mrs. Saito had loaned me, and Takumi and I set out across the bridge. The coat was too big, and my hands got lost in the sleeves. The boots were huge on me, too, so the rain had no problem finding its way inside. By the time we set foot on the bridge, my toes were already icy cold.
Takumi walked slightly ahead of me, still in the same T-shirt and shorts he’d had on in his room. There was a strong wind blowing from the east, so the left half of his body got quickly soaked, and that part of his T-shirt stuck to his skin. The rain would come falling down with insane power, and then stop just as suddenly. Sensing something dark flash through the sky, I looked up to see a group of big black birds that looked like ravens being blown about and thrown off balance as they tried to make their way toward the mountain. The river was usually so piddling and short on water that I’d often wondered why they’d bothered making the bridge so long, but today the cloudy water took up the entire width of the river, and was rushing past at a crazy speed. Now and then, I saw a plank of wood or a chunk of white polystyrene go whistling by. The wide grassy riverbeds on either side of the river were totally soaked. I watched as a homeless man carrying a blue vinyl sheet walked unsteadily across the middle of the flooded sports field there.
When we reached the middle of the bridge, Takumi stopped walking and peered down at the surging water. All of a sudden, a siren sounded very close by. On impulse, I rammed my fingers into my ears, and of course the rain took that opportunity to come flooding into my sleeves, dribbling all the way down my arms. Opposite the bridge was the old apartment building I’d once followed Takumi inside—the place where the housewife lived. On the days Takumi hadn’t come to work, I’d sometimes spied him standing on that bridge, staring moronically into the distance.
“Are you going to see her again?” I looked up at him, feeling the raindrops slapping down on the skin of my face, running into my eyes. I could see it hitting Takumi’s face, too, totally without mercy.
“She’s not there anymore.”
A car driving too close to the curb sent dirty water flying up, spotting Takumi’s white T-shirt with brown. The spray hit me in the face, too.
“Things might be easier if I just jumped off,” Takumi said.
I began to shout at him. “If you want to die, then go ahead and jump, right now! I’m not gonna stop you. You’ve had your fair share of fun times, after all, so I guess you might as well. Goodbye!”
I set off, using the umbrella to shield myself from the rain. As soon as I stepped off the bridge, the dark sky was lit up with a flash as if a giant camera had gone off, and immediately after, there was a clap of thunder so huge it rattled my insides. The shock of it made me stumble in those enormous rain boots, and I fell flat on my face like a toddler. I felt so pathetic, and my knees hurt so much, I burst into tears, lying right there facedown on the ground. My face and my clothes were wet with some mixture of tears and rain. A passing car sent dirty water flying into my mouth.
Enough of the ribs of the umbrella Takumi’s mom had lent me had bent that it was now basically ruined. I got up slowly and looked behind me to see Takumi standing there, watching me expressionlessly. After a while, he came over, took my arm, and helped me up. I held onto his arm while I took off each of my boots in turn and emptied them out. I was surprised by how much water came gushing out.
“I wanted to have sex with you, you know.”
“I can’t do it anymore.” Takumi looked away from me as he spoke, and with the huge noise of the rain, it was hard to make out what he was saying clearly, but I caught it. “It’s no good. Nothing happens, whatever I look at. Ever since I split up with her.”
It was only evening, but the sky was as black as if it were the middle of the night. The headlights of a passing car picked out Takumi’s face so it glowed white against the surrounding dark. I thought suddenly of Hinata’s thingy pointing straight up at the ceiling in the hotel. That had been just earlier today.
“My grandma always used to say that the gods punish the wrongdoers. It must be your punishment from the gods, for being so mean to me!” But even as I was saying the words, I wondered if there was any god that would punish Takumi just for having sex with the person he was in love with.
Even now, when I was totally wet through and chilled to the core, the tears running down my face felt warm. It struck me for the first time that all the liquid inside the body must stay pretty warm. Takumi went off striding ahead down the bridge toward my house without looking back at me. I broke into a run and followed after him. At the foot of the bridge, men in yellow raincoats were piling up sandbags.
“They’ve issued an evacuation order for this area!” one of them shouted. “Go and take shelter in Daiyon middle school, quickly!”
When I turned back to look, the grassy riverbeds were now totally submerged, and the water level was nearly up to the top of the banks. A flash of silvery blue lightning lit up the sky above the mountain. It looked just like fireworks. I’d never seen the river like that before, a thick black current that appeared to get more powerful by the second. It seemed like it could swallow up a whole town at any moment, just like my brother had said it would. When I imagined my house submerged by that water, a shiver ran down my spine. Without thinking, I grabbed Takumi’s arm and was surprised to feel it trembling.
We turned onto the road by the river, where my house was. The water that had made it over the riverbank was seeping its way onto the street, little by little. It only reached to Takumi’s calves, but it came all the way up to my knees. I held onto his arm as we waded slowly through the water. I was sharing his umbrella by now, although we were both so
soaked it was basically pointless. Apart from the sirens, the only sound was that of the rain beating down. It was kind of eerie.
My cell phone had no reception, so I couldn’t even send texts. Finally, my house came in sight. I could see a figure on the balcony. My brother was standing there with his binoculars, his white shirt soaked through.
“My God, what an idiot,” I said. I only realized I’d actually spoken the words out loud when Takumi turned and looked at me.
“My house is just there,” I said, while inside I carried on cursing my brother. Idiot, idiot, idiot.
Wading through water used up a surprising amount of energy, and my teeth were chattering with cold and exhaustion. When we turned the corner that led to my house, I saw that the lights of all the other houses around were out, and there was no sign of anybody anywhere. Only the light in my familiar old hall was on. The whole garden was deluged, and a garden sandal and a few of the plastic dishes we put under plant pots were bobbing around on the surface of the water. It took a joint effort between Takumi and me to pry the front door open.
“Mom!” I called, and she came running out of the back room.
“Nana! My God! I’ve been calling and calling, but I couldn’t get through!”
Mom’s eyes turned to Takumi.
“This is Takumi, who lives in the maternity clinic. He brought me home.”
Takumi bowed his head at Mom, then said, “Goodnight.” He made to open the door, but Mom reached out and took hold of his arm.
“No! You can’t go out there now, it’s too dangerous. They say it’ll stop by tomorrow morning, so you stay the night here.”
Mom’s voice was so urgent and fierce it took both Takumi and me by surprise.
“Everyone else has already taken shelter in the school, but you hadn’t come home, and Yusuke . . .” Mom trailed off and looked up the stairs. “Anyway, for now, take your shoes off and come in. You’ll catch a cold if you don’t change out of those clothes.”