by Kōji Suzuki
Now it feels like I’m lying down on a bed in a small room.
A fluorescent light in the center of the ceiling bathed the room in white. This light was of a different kind than the ones in her illusion—it was unsteady, and fragile.
Akane moved only her eyes to ascertain the circumstances around her.
Suddenly, the scent of soil climbed to the surface of her consciousness and nearly made her choke, only to be replaced by the medicinal smell of alcohol-based sterilizers.
Recalling what had happened to her, she presumed that she was in a hospital room.
Now everything came back to her. She remembered stepping through the school gate, and then she’d smelled the soil, lost consciousness, and collapsed. Right next to her, there’d been a man who looked like a gardener or a guard. He must have called the ambulance. If so, she guessed that this had to be the emergency ward in a hospital not far from the school.
“You’re awake now.”
She heard a voice near her ears and sensed somebody standing up. A young woman dressed in white walked toward her, crossed her field of vision on her left side, and called a doctor using the intercom.
The doctor who came into the room right afterwards looked even younger than the nurse. He peered into Akane’s face, smiled, and began talking very rapidly. She couldn’t understand very well what he was saying thanks to the special medical terms and his fast pace. What was more, a metallic sound echoed deep inside her ears at times and interfered with her hearing.
…Stabilization of cardiopulmonary functions, degree of impairment of consciousness, oxygen saturation level, vitals…
The words she could catch were breaking up, and it was hard to grasp the whole context. That said, she couldn’t ask him to repeat himself, and she simply sighed.
“There’s no need to worry. Your consciousness is only minimally impaired.”
That wasn’t what she was hoping to hear. She wanted to know how long she’d been unconscious.
Since she’d been brought in by ambulance, allowed to rest in the treatment room, and given basic tests, at least several hours must have passed. But as far as the worst-case scenario, she had no idea. Passing out and going unconscious, then waking up and regaining consciousness…It felt like a momentary blink, but that moment could conceivably have lasted a whole year.
“What’s today’s date?” Akane asked fearfully.
They were the first words she’d uttered after waking up.
“It’s June 18th, 2:50 p.m. You’ve been unconscious for two hours and fifty minutes.”
Realizing that only two hours and fifty minutes had elapsed since noon when she collapsed, Akane sighed with relief. Having any more blank periods cutting into the film of her life would be unbearable.
As Akane followed the exchanges between the doctor and the nurse, she began to grasp her condition.
No evidence of any alcohol or drug use…
Naturally. She wasn’t accustomed to drinking alcohol, nor had she taken any medications for the past two or three years.
…Cardiopulmonary functions stable…no sign of infectious disease or external injury…cranial CT scan came back fine, brain center functioning normally…
The doctor rattling away at high speed and the nurse, who spoke in a placid tone in contrast, together conveyed that none of the tests performed thus far had revealed the true reason Akane had lost consciousness.
For her part, Akane couldn’t tell whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. Even if the indices they used to evaluate her health were all favorable, as long as they couldn’t pinpoint why she’d been unconscious, the same thing could happen again at some later date.
While her intellect struggled to make sense of her physiological state, the surface of her skin detected an anomaly. From her head to her neck on her right side, she felt a current of air recurring at a certain rhythm.
Someone was there on the right in her blind spot. There seemed to be another person in this small room besides herself, the doctor, and the nurse. Had the person been standing not three feet behind her this whole time, perfectly still and with bated breath? Perhaps it was another nurse preparing an intravenous drip or trying to take her blood pressure. But Akane couldn’t tell the person’s gender. Was it a man or a woman behind her? Her ability to sniff that out just from the ambience wasn’t functioning properly.
She raised her head and turned it right.
A woman wearing a kimono was sitting on a stool in the corner and staring at Akane. It was an old-fashioned kimono that looked out of place in an E.R. She had a folding fan in her hand and was waving it gracefully.
What Akane had felt on her skin was the wind coming from the fan.
Even after meeting Akane’s gaze, the woman showed no change in expression. She didn’t even move an eyebrow and kept fanning herself at the same speed.
The doctor and nurse carried on, too, ignoring the woman’s presence.
“Forgive me, I’d just like to confirm something. Are you pregnant?”
When the doctor asked her this, Akane’s head was still turned around. His words reached her brain, but she couldn’t bring herself to respond. With both eyes open wide, she observed the woman’s handsome face.
She had crow’s feet—appropriate for her age—and her skin was so white it seemed almost transparent. Her fingers were slender and elegant, but the cuticles of her nails were peeling.
Mom, why are you here?
She almost wondered it out loud. Bringing the back of her hand to her mouth, she swallowed the words along with her breath and frantically sealed them in her heart.
Akane’s mind was nearly thrown into chaos. When she struggled to think of a logical reason for her mother’s presence, there was a buzzing in her brain as if her blood vessels were short-circuiting.
They brought me here by ambulance, so maybe it’s to be expected that the school would’ve called my immediate family. But they couldn’t have known how to get in touch with my mom. Even if they did, there’s absolutely no way they could’ve made contact.
When Akane looked in front of her again, the doctor’s face was extremely close to hers. He seriously wanted to know if she was pregnant.
“If your loss of consciousness was caused by eclampsia, which can occur in early pregnancy, it’s a bit of a problem. Your blood pressure is normal, so I doubt that’s what happened, but we need to check just to be sure…”
Akane realized her predicament as she looked back and forth at the doctor and the woman behind her.
Right in front of her mother, Akane was going to have to tell the doctor about getting pregnant out of wedlock.
Her mother considerately maintained a neutral expression, waiting for Akane to answer, but her cool gaze seemed to be saying, “You are pregnant, aren’t you?”
For Akane, her mother was an eternal mystery.
Akane had been three years old when her mother died. She’d departed this world at the age of twenty-four, the very same age that Akane was now. Whether her mother had died from illness or from an accident, Akane had never been told. She didn’t even know who her real father was, and her memory was even vague about whether a funeral had been held for her mother.
Sometimes, roughly once a year, Akane’s mother would appear to her like this as a hallucination that only she could see.
But what felt even stranger was that her mother—who had died young—appeared to have aged appropriately in her illusory form.
If she were still alive, she would be forty-five this year. Though she remained as beautiful as she was during her lifetime, the luster of her skin had faded in keeping with her age.
Mom, you got old…
Her mother hid her face with her fan as if she could hear Akane’s silent mutter.
7
Takanori never sat down on the train, not even when seats were free. He always stood leaning against the doors and stared at the scenery outside.
At night during the rainy season, the inbound train on the Keihin Express had
empty seats, but as usual Takanori was standing with his cheek nearly pressed against the glass. His own reflected face, melting into the scenery of the city as it passed by on the other side, looked like a ghost’s.
Three hours earlier, when he had been heading to Kawasaki on the outbound train, he’d spotted a cluster of tombstones beneath the elevated track on his left in the direction he was traveling. They hadn’t been on any temple grounds, but rather had been lined up closely together in rows in a small space that cut through a residential area. Originally, such a cul-de-sac could only have been used as a parking space, but it had been turned into a graveyard. Seeing tombstones directly under you when you opened your apartment window made for a bizarre view, he’d thought, and he couldn’t help but stare.
This time, he couldn’t find any graves in the scenery outside the window he was leaning on. With the track as a dividing line, the view on his side had a completely different character than the townscape on the other side, with the sloped road that passed through the residential district disappearing into the darkness over the hill.
It felt like almost a whole day, but when he looked at his watch, obviously, he’d only learned three hours ago of Akane’s hospitalization.
For him, the day felt very long. He’d gone to the studio in the morning and received the call from her that she was pregnant. Then, President Yoneda had given him the USB stick containing the video of the suicide scene. Takanori’s doubts had grown deeper and deeper as he analyzed it in his home office, and he’d had to go back to the studio. While Yoneda was telling him about Kiyomi Sakata, Takanori received another call: Akane had passed out in the schoolyard and been taken to the hospital by ambulance. He rushed to Fujimi Hospital in Kawasaki on the Keihin Express, and after confirming Akane’s condition, was now going back on the same line.
He’d been traveling back and forth all day.
On the stool beside her, he’d held her hand the whole time, right up until visiting hours were over. Her thin fingers had felt so cold—she’d intertwined them with his, showing how much she needed him.
Even after being transferred from the emergency ward treatment room to a four-bed room in the general ward, Akane had sometimes raised her head and looked at the wall, her expression suggesting that her mind was elsewhere. He’d followed her line of sight and gazed in the same direction, but there’d been nothing to see.
It was past eight now; it would soon be lights out. Takanori thought of Akane’s loneliness, what with her being left alone in a hospital room at night. Since he knew about her upbringing, he could imagine how she’d be tormented by anxiety.
The thought that he could no longer allow her to be alone was bubbling up inside him. He was the only person she could depend on. No matter what the results of her exam, once she was released from the hospital, he wanted to file the marriage registration right away and start living together.
For now, her blood pressure and kidney function were both normal, and there were no signs of eclampsia. All the numbers from her blood test and urine analysis were fine, too. She was not at risk of seizure, either, and her head CT scan hadn’t discovered any abnormalities. They were waiting for more detailed test results, and if nothing was out of the ordinary, she’d probably be discharged the next day.
That means I’ll have to do this same trip to Kawasaki again and help with her release.
Suddenly feeling tired, Takanori redirected his gaze to the train interior and searched for an empty seat. There were several, but for some reason, he just staggered over to the doors on the opposite side without sitting down. The train came to a stop at Aomono-Yokocho station, and the doors that were now across from him opened. He’d moved to this side in advance in order not to block the way for people who’d be boarding.
Just as he’d thought, a drunkard got on and grabbed the spot where Takanori had been, and once there the man sneezed twice, magnificently. The stench of alcohol mixed with sweat wafted from his body, and the foul odor filled the car.
Guess I was right to move from that side to this one.
Lifting his face, Takanori returned to looking at the scenery outside. There was a long, narrow gap between the wall on the platform and the roof, and in that slim space he spotted the windows of an old-looking apartment building. Though he couldn’t tell how many floors it had, he saw six balconies lined in a single row with an elevator in between.
He was struck by a powerful sense of déjà vu.
I’ve seen this place before…I’m sure of it.
Takanori could predict exactly what was going to happen next. Of the units that were visible from the gap at that moment, only the two on either end had their lights on, but the ones in the third apartment from the right were about to come on.
…Three, two, one.
He began counting down, and just when he reached “zero” in his head, light leaked through the window of the unit he was looking at. The scene he’d foretold now presented itself before his eyes. As he continued to look, the light from the apartment window got blocked out, gradually, before being restored to its original state. Maybe the blinds were shut, and then opened again? Yet a curtain would have opened and closed from side to side while this had occurred up and down, like a shutter falling and rising. To Takanori it seemed like blinking.
Even more than the light turning on as he’d predicted, what truly surprised him was his sense that an enormous eyeball floating in the darkness had blinked.
He couldn’t avert his gaze from the window. The third apartment from the right made him uneasy, as if it had imparted some sort of sign. These past few moments, he’d been able to foresee the immediate future, which only braced him against what was to come.
On his back, he perceived a subtle change in the mood inside the train. The vile odor was no different than before, but he’d gotten used to it and no longer minded it as much. Despite his fatigue, his senses seemed to be growing sharper. The jumble of other passengers’ conversations stood out to him clearly and reached him on a conscious level. He could distinguish the sounds of each and every car running along the Keihin No. 1 route and picture the crow that had cawed and the dog that had howled.
The skin of his neck told him that the temperature inside the train car had risen. It’s definitely gotten even muggier in here. When he turned to look behind him, the reason became clear. The doors had been left open, allowing hot air to flow in from outside.
Takanori now noticed that they’d been held for too long at the station. If this were a local making every stop, it might need to remain at the platform for a while, waiting for a connecting train to arrive, but this was an express.
A few seated passengers half-rose and looked around, their heads tilted in confusion. Everyone seemed to have begun wondering why the train was being held for such an unusually long time.
Following the movements around him and scanning the interior, Takanori’s eyes came to rest on the sub-headline in an ad for a weekly magazine.
Rapid Rise in Suicides Over Last Several Months, Cause Unknown
To be sure, he’d seen and heard about quite a few suicides in the news recently. And tucked inside his pocket was the USB stick with the suicide video.
Intrigued, Takanori began to approach the ad poster, and just then an announcement came over the loudspeaker.
“Ladies and gentlemen, due to a fatal accident ahead of us at Shinagawa station, this train is now out of service. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.”
Gasps and tongue clicks escaped from the passengers’ lips.
Suddenly, an image of four limbs scattered on the tracks arose in the back of Takanori’s mind. The person’s abdomen had been cut in half, and steam was rising from the viscera that had spilled out. It was so vivid, he felt as if he were actually seeing it.
Takanori scratched his neck as if to scrape away the imagery and moved back to where he’d stood before.
When it came to such accidents, you needed to be ready to wait a rather long time. The
sensible thing to do was to get off the train and hail a taxi. It would necessitate extra travel costs, but staying inside a rank, sweltering car with no idea how long the cleanup might take was sheer agony.
As he prepared to step onto the platform, Takanori looked up again at the apartments peeking through the rectangular gap.
When did the light go out?
The third apartment unit from the right was covered in darkness.
8
The hands of the clock said it was past 11 p.m. This long day would be over in another hour. Having bathed, Takanori was about to throw the jeans he’d taken off into the washing machine when he recalled that the USB stick was still in its pocket.
Yikes, that was close.
Yoneda had told him that this was now the only memory stick on which the images were saved. If it were lost or damaged, the rare video would be no more. Takanori couldn’t quite remember if he’d saved his data when he played the video that afternoon.
He removed the USB stick and turned toward the desk where his computer sat.
Everyone on the Studio Oz staff liked to take their work home with them. A home computer customized for personal use made the work go more smoothly than the machines at the office.
Takanori was no exception. That was why he’d left the office in the afternoon and returned to his apartment. He’d made a round-trip between the office and home twice that day. The second time, it had been to ask Yoneda why they were analyzing the video.
Yet the president hadn’t given a straight answer, and the conversation had gotten nowhere. As for what Kiyomi Sakata’s intent had been in delivering the USB stick, not even Yoneda knew for certain. The plan to process the scene and use it in a special television feature had long since vanished into thin air.
In other words, he had come to share Takanori’s doubts.
“Sakata’s usually pretty blunt, but the way she talked this time was weird, like she was trying to hide something, y’know?” Yoneda had said, tilting his head.
Withholding the most crucial bits, namely which parts of the video she needed them to analyze, and how, and to what end, she just seemed to want to know how viewers might feel after watching it and if they might find anything strange about it—that was Yoneda’s impression. Moreover, he’d sensed trepidation and unease from her speech and in her mannerisms. Now, in Takanori’s view, the president could be a bit obtuse. He wasn’t the type to pick up on every psychological subtlety lurking behind somebody’s outward behavior. Had Sakata been so shaken that even Yoneda could discern her mental state? It seemed to contradict the image Takanori had of her as a strong woman, based on the rumors he’d heard—it somehow just felt unlike her.