Hiromi recorded several sentences for the Edo woman that could be used to construct any number of voice cues for the Anima character. Years spent working at 7-Eleven, before she’d met Takahiko and gotten pregnant, had prepared her to dip into the highest registers of her voice. “Irrashaimaise!” the attendants on duty would say, one after the other, like a chorus of robots to welcome each new customer into the store. Her supervisor told her that it was important to go into a high head voice. The men at 7-Eleven went almost as high as the women. Rather than have Hiromi collect royalties on the voice work, Takahiko had insisted she let Second Life, the company that created Prius, pay her in one lump sum, which would release all her rights to the voice. The money, though, had gone quickly, and now they were on the dole.
Kimi’s elbow hit the side of the crib jerkily, a shudder running through her as if she were seizing. Hiromi hadn’t noticed this the last time she had seen her, which, she only now realized, must have been some fifteen hours before but could have been longer, as she had lost track of when she’d come home from the Internet café at Laox. She remembered being exhausted when she had returned from the café the night before, so tired yet still exhilarated by her time in Prius; it had been thrilling being that close to Anima. After all these months of playing to earn the child, it felt natural to Hiromi to finally be able to enjoy Anima’s companionship and trust in her abilities. She simply had looked past Kimi’s crib on her way to bed with only a quick dart in its direction where it sat in the back of the closet. Kimi wasn’t making a sound, and her blanket was pulled almost all the way over her head, as if she were a sack of potatoes with one blackened spud peeping out of the top for air. Hiromi hadn’t had the energy or the desire to pick her up or even touch her. She had quickly put on her nightgown, then fallen onto the unmade futon on the floor.
Something clenched the pit of her stomach at the thought of touching the thing, Kimi, this whining sack of flesh, who, if she thought long and hard enough about, neither looked nor sounded like her. Kimi smelled foul even though Hiromi was sure Takahiko must’ve changed her before he’d headed back to the café. Anima wasn’t like that; she didn’t need to be fed and changed on a constant schedule. A couple of days before, while rearranging the bedding, Hiromi had brushed her hand against Kimi. The touch seemed to awaken the child from some kind of deep, troubled sleep. Kimi’s eyes were weak but still bore into Hiromi with the desperately unfocused stare of a blind person. The infant searched for the source of the disruption and had reached out to Hiromi for something (for what, Hiromi didn’t know, which made her angrier, this lack of clarity in Kimi’s constant desires and needs); Kimi grabbed at Hiromi’s wrist from a corner of the crib like a spastic roach. Hiromi had pulled her hand out of the crib, then hastily turned out the light.
The sun was coming up when she finally hit the streets. She was thankful, on the one hand, that she was up early enough to catch the first train downtown. It annoyed her, however, that the Yamanote line adhered to such a ridiculous schedule, strictly closing the gates each night at 12:30 a.m. sharp. Even if Hiromi were running toward the station entrance to catch it, her shoes untied, breathing in the dragon-like up-rush of air that came from underground, she would often find the gates at the bottom of the stairs closed and locked. She was thankful she could now get back to Akihabara, back to the Internet café at Laox, back to the safety of Prius, where Anima, she hoped, was waiting for her.
She was also worried, though. Takahiko must have taken the last train of the night only six hours before her. Only she wasn’t sure when he had left their bed or even whether he’d come home at all. Could he still be at the café in front of the game since they’d last gone together the morning before? She was concerned that he might be cross with her when she found him. When he was awake more than twenty-four hours, she had a difficult time gauging what kind of a mood he might be in.
If they didn’t start out playing together, Hiromi often found it was harder to connect with Takahiko. Losing oneself inside Prius was disorienting at first. Players had to let go of themselves in the “real” world so they could belong to themselves in the fantasy. When Hiromi and Takahiko entered the forest together, they did it as a unit. They were a team, which was how they’d always envisioned themselves when they’d first started to play Prius. Advancing in the world of Prius had been a way to achieve something together they’d been unable to pull off outside of the game. As they walked together into the dense, thick brush of the entrance to Prius, they were confronted with the tallest trees imaginable—taller even than the monstrous firs in Yoyogi Park. A warmth glowed from within the center of the collection of trees. Hiromi even saw a kind of misty halo over her character’s head as she glided through the forest entrance. Holding hands, they’d step in unison over ancient logs that were filled with peonies that grew out of small cracks, just like the ones Hiromi used to see growing along the banks of the Arakawa River. Strong shafts of yellow light from an unseen sun broke through the leafy canopy, leaving a path of light pockets for them to hop farther along together, so swiftly, so effortlessly that their ankles felt winged.
If she found Takahiko at the café after he’d already entered Prius, it was like entering that same forest, but it would be dark and quiet because she was alone. With no one to help guide her through the initial thickness of the foliage, she was pricked and poked with jagged brambles. The forest floor would shift below her, unstable and prone to sudden holes that, if she fell into them, would subtract credits from her bank. Lose too many credits, and there went the house, her alliances with neighbors (fellow players); even her hard-won child could be stripped from her. The prospect was frightening to ponder. Takahiko was almost impossible to connect with once he’d already entered Prius.
Several bunches of white, blue, and orange balloons blocked the entrance to Laox. It appeared that the store was having some type of sale. Hiromi pushed through the balloons and headed toward the escalators that would take her to the café. When she made it to the top of the escalator, she spied Takahiko at their usual station, at the end of a long row next to the aisle. She sat down at the terminal beside him.
“Have you left at all?” she asked him. He looked at her briefly then went back to the game.
“Huh? What? No,” he grunted at her.
“Have you eaten anything?”
“I’m eating now.”
She looked at his screen, and sure enough, Takahiko was wolfing down virtual kimchi at the dining table of their thatched-roof home in Prius. The clock on his screen indicated that he was going on his eighteenth hour of play. A small pop-up message appeared in the corner of the screen and asked, “Maybe you should go outside?”
“Have you seen Anima?” she asked cautiously.
“She’s around.”
Has he gotten bored of her this quickly? she asked herself. He didn’t know how to talk to Anima like she did.
“I saw her talking to someone,” he said.
Only recently had Hiromi finally won them their child. She had mixed a potion in the apothecary that had saved a member of the royal family, a princess who had been poisoned by an outsider posing as entertainment for the castle. Anima had descended into the forest in a globe, like a weather balloon. She was an amnesiac and didn’t know where she had come from. A blank slate, she brought no baggage to her relationship with Hiromi. But her missing knowledge held several clues to the secrets of the town. And the closer Hiromi could get to her, the closer she would be to unlocking the secrets of Prius.
Hiromi donned the headgear that allowed her to enter the virtual chamber of the game. She positioned her hand on the computer’s mouse, which featured a red sensor that lit up when it was in use. Then she entered Prius. Just as she thought, uncertainty plagued her initial descent into the forest opening. Black vines hung in front of her face, and the small rays of light that made their way down from the canopy forest weren’t strong enough for her to make out. Anima popped out from behind the trunk of a large cryptomeria
tree and walked alongside Hiromi as she went through the forest toward the village center.
Anima tagged behind Hiromi with a friendly gait, those wide eyes of hers brimming with beauty. But she wasn’t someone to be messed with. Because she walked behind Hiromi, she could be on alert to attacks from behind. The alterna-world helper babies looked cute and friendly, but they possessed powers and abilities that were hidden even from their parents. Hiromi hoped the longer she had Anima, the more she could use the child’s knowledge and abilities to advance further in the game. Being the apothecary of the town was an honor, of course, but she was certain she could climb further.
“Mochi, mochi, Mama!” Anima said to Hiromi, who reached into her satchel to give the blond baby girl several pieces of hard candy. Anima’s skin tone was a closer match to her own than Kimi’s, and it was like hearing her own voice when Anima spoke, which, of course, it was. She could hear the high note of accommodation in the voice, the same one she had used at the 7-Eleven. Patient, kind, inviting.
On their way to the apothecary, Hiromi and Anima crossed paths with Takahiko, who was heading back from the orchard where he had been picking apples to sell at the open market.
“Hello,” she typed into the message panel.
“I have to sort these apples back at our hut,” Takahiko answered.
“Can Anima and I help?” Hiromi asked.
Anima circled over to where Takahiko was leaning against a tree. She had taken the full weight of the basket of apples and was placing it on her back. “I’ll take these home for you,” she told him.
“Thank you, Anima,” said Takahiko.
They watched together as Anima traveled farther down the path toward the village. Anima turned her head back several times to look at them.
Takahiko sat down against the tree. Anima looked back once more before disappearing around the corner.
Hiromi saw a rare opportunity to initiate sex. Taking herself out of the game for a moment, she pulled down on her jumpsuit to make her stomach look less lumpy. She had gotten a warm fluttery feeling when she’d accidentally rubbed up against a man when taking a seat on the train that morning. It had surprised her, this feeling, the sudden rush to her cheeks, its strangeness. It had been so long since she’d felt any human contact that the sensation had felt foreign to her. Before she’d become pregnant with Kimi—before they’d discovered Prius—Takahiko had wanted to spoon with her from behind on their futon. He’d hold on to her stomach as if it made his hands warm to touch her there.
She placed one of her hands down the front of her pants, waving a finger or two delicately over her vagina just to tease herself at first. She scanned the café and spotted only a few people on the other side of the room, all of them deeply fixated on their screens with blank expressions. She glanced over at Takahiko, who sat at the computer station beside her. He also was staring straight ahead in a similarly rapt fashion, but he seemed to indicate that he understood her intentions. His dry tongue hung out of his mouth in a parched and desperate way, then it ran over his lips like an invitation to her. She realized he wanted to have sex too but that it had to happen inside the game. So Hiromi went back into Prius. She sent an instant message to Anima to wait for her at the apothecary.
Hiromi pulled Takahiko aside, behind one of the thatched-roof homes, and took off his weapons—the quiver full of arrows first, then the gun at his side, and finally the bow. The rest of his armor came off in one slick move, and his massive torso was revealed. Hiromi slipped out of her bodice and grabbed the sill of a window so Takahiko could enter her from behind.
As their bodies undulated under the straw thatch of the roof, hidden from the sight of passersby, Hiromi saw through the window into the house. Anima had stayed at the apothecary as she had been told but was talking to a woman who lived in this house. Using points in her cache, Hiromi gave herself the ability to hear the conversation inside.
“We can make it look like she did it. Who else in this town has access to poisons?” Anima told the woman.
It was inconceivable. Was her own child plotting against her with another player, setting her up as the patsy, wanting her to take the fall for what—a murder? There was no mistaking what she had heard. After all, it was her own voice she had just listened to.
“Stop, Takahiko,” she said, trying to push him off her and get back into her bodice so she could get into the house.
“I’m almost done. Just wait.”
“I have to get over there! Now! Get off me!”
He kept thrusting and had grabbed her neck, pulling it back so far she was sure he would break it.
“Get off me, you fucking bastard!” She exited the game and pushed him out of his chair.
“Stupid cunt,” he muttered, looking up at her as he lay on his back. He was glassy eyed, and sweat ballooned under his arms, emanating a stale body odor from his hours of listless, stationary play. Hiromi left him stinking on the floor of the café.
She ran down the long set of stairs into the dark underground of the train station at Akihabara. A man was urinating near the entrance. When she swerved to avoid walking through his stream, she lost her balance and fell against a support beam, but she recovered quickly and continued down the stairs. The hot, stale air blew through her as she made her way farther, dodging through what felt like an army of young men in suits flanking her sides but also rushing toward her from the bowels of the station. Most were heading to meetings, but several were probably en route to electronics shops, the gaming center, or the capsule hotels where a man could stay in what barely amounted to a coffin for the night or an afternoon if he was too far from home or too drunk—an overnight tomb.
Hiromi pulled a five-hundred-yen coin out of her wallet and slipped it into the slot to obtain her ticket. Once through the turnstile, she found herself pressed against a throng of people, salarymen mostly. She felt her grasp of something as orderly and concrete as time had vanished, and she couldn’t be sure what time it was. In Prius the sun never went down, so there was never any night. The forest may have been a bit dark when players first entered, but only the dense nature of the trees shielded them from the sun.
Three drunk men were laughing at something, punching one another in the arms. One of them noticed Hiromi and motioned to the others to look at her as well. They stopped laughing and moved away from her to join another line forming along the yellow-painted subway platform. Hiromi didn’t know what they had seen in her to make them look away. Was what they had witnessed the same thing Kimi saw when she watched her through the bars of her crib tucked in the back of the closet?
As the train approached, the single-file lines that led to each available train-car door tightened like accordions. Hiromi felt a man behind her breathing against her neck, his briefcase jabbing hard into the small of her back, as if it were trying to turn on a switch attached to her spine. The train stopped, and when the doors opened, the lines of passengers streamed into the car. Hiromi barely lifted her feet, but she felt herself carried along toward the center of the car. She grabbed a metal bar attached to a seat so she could steady herself, but two more people came to either side of her, pressing against her chest. She barely could expand her lungs to take a breath. Trying to swallow, she also realized she was almost unbearably parched. How long had it been since she’d had something to drink? To eat?
A schoolgirl stood next to her, texting on a pink flip phone, with a Hello Kitty charm dangling from a metal loop in the corner near the hinge. She wore a plaid, pleated skirt with long white socks that bunched up along her shins. Her backpack, hot pink intermixed with black-and-white stripes, featured Pikuro, the doll in Kimi’s crib.
Hiromi wondered about Kimi. It was one of the only times she had thought of her without the child actually being in front of her in what felt like days, maybe a week. Without Anima now, she felt as if there were more space inside her to fit Kimi—Kimi, with her little Pikuro doll that watched over her because Hiromi and Takahiko could not. Wasn’t that all righ
t? What else did she really need besides her toy, this character, that bottle? Hiromi was sure there’d been formula in it—a white vanilla-tasting powder that came in large tin canisters she got from the grocery near their building. But then she remembered the formula had run out, and neither of them had gotten more, and how long could you simply add more water to fill up the bottle before it was just water? The train stopped, and she fell out into Sugamo station and went down more stairs, farther underground, to switch to the Mita line, which would take her to the station at Motohasunuma and then home.
The Mita line wasn’t as crowded as the Yamanote, but the harsh lighting inside the train made Hiromi feel exposed. She looked down at the tan jumpsuit, the one she always wore, and noticed various stains on the pant legs. Under the arms the fabric had become discolored and rough. Her reflection in the train-car window shocked her; her face was gaunt, her cheeks sunken. Her hair was ragged and oily. She put her hand up to her mouth to hide a gasp. After five stops, she arrived at Motohasunuma station.
It was raining, and the steps that weren’t covered by the awning leading out of the station were wet and slippery. Hiromi grabbed the handrail and pulled herself up the steps two, three at a time. When she hit the sidewalk, a rumbling of thunder in the distance propelled her along the way. She remembered how scared of the thunder she had been as a child in the small fishing village in Kunisaki Prefecture, where she had lived with her grandmother; she’d hide under her bed as it crashed down. Is Kimi afraid? she wondered. How could she be afraid? Hiromi didn’t know. She knew nothing about Kimi.
Read by Strangers Page 18