by Kōji Suzuki
Even after his son was done, Mitsuo kept his eyes fixed on one spot on the wall without blinking. This was a habit of his. Whenever he pondered the future, his eyes moved rapidly, and whenever he tried to recall the past, they remained locked in one place.
“I’ve read Ring,” Mitsuo said. “Not in book form. It was a printout of a document saved on a floppy disc.”
“Okay, then since you know the story, this should go quickly. I want you to tell me everything you learned when you autopsied Ryuji Takayama.”
“Usually, a myocardial infarction is caused by a blood clot where the artery stiffens and the lining gets narrow. But in his case, there was a blockage right before the left circumflex coronary artery. The cause of the blockage was a sarcoma…”
Takanori put his hands out with his palms facing Mitsuo to stop him. He already knew about the sarcoma in the left coronary artery from the material that Kihara had gathered.
“Dad, enough with the medical interpretation. What I want to know is what those nonsensical events mean. Starting with the four teenagers, then Asakawa’s wife and child, and Ryuji Takayama…They all died from watching the images projected psychokinetically by a young woman named Sadako Yamamura. Is it some kind of silly joke? That’s impossible, you know that. As a doctor, how do you explain such a total farce? I want to know what you really think, dad.”
“It does defy logic.”
“So, what, has the world gone mad?”
“You know,” Mitsuo said, “I sometimes suffer from hallucinations. At those times, it feels like the world we’ve come to know has gone insane and vanished. I can’t help thinking the world we’re living in is completely different from the one we used to inhabit.”
“But isn’t that exactly what scientists are for? Pinning down the mechanics of how things work no matter what the world is like?”
“We tried to come up with the most logical explanation for the absurd phenomenon. We tried everything. A certain possibility occurred to us: an unknown virus.”
“A virus…” Since the term appeared many times in Ring as a sort of keyword, he felt like it made sense when Mitsuo mentioned it.
“We gathered as much data as we could and divided the victims into two main groups: those who watched the videotape and died without following the directions, and those who followed the directions and escaped the effects. Kazuyuki Asakawa and Mai Takano followed them but died in unfortunate accidents and were autopsied. Asakawa was the victim of a car crash, while Takano wasted away after she fell into a vent on the roof of a building. Thus the two belong to the category of people who escaped the tape’s effects by following its directions.
“We autopsied both groups, took their tissue, and turned it over to our pathologists. The unknown virus was found in the bodies of both groups.
“That’s the gist of it. A conscious viewing of the video imagery produces the unknown virus in your body, and the virus creates a sarcoma in the coronary artery, which interferes with blood circulation, which causes an acute myocardial infarction. It’s not so rare for consciousness to produce a physical effect.”
“But the people who followed the directions didn’t have sarcomas. Had the effect of the virus been suppressed?”
“No, there was a manifest difference in the virus between people who hadn’t followed the directions after watching the tape and those who had.”
“Are you saying that the virus mutated?” asked Takanori.
“Yes. In the case of the former, it formed a ring shape, so we named it the ring virus to make it easier to distinguish. But with the latter group, part of the ring was severed, and it looked like sperm. It formed the letter S, and when I saw it under a microscope, it wriggled like a snake.”
“You mean, the virus can be categorized into two types, the ring-shaped version and the S-shaped one, and the former could produce a sarcoma, but the latter had lost that effect. Is that right?”
“Right,” Mitsuo affirmed.
“What does the latter type do? How is the S virus harmful to the human body?”
“It does nothing…”
“That can’t be! Asakawa and Mai Takano both died.”
“Their causes of death had nothing to do with the virus, they just died from unfortunate accidents.”
Takanori couldn’t believe it. It was hard to accept that a simple mutation of the virus—so pernicious that it could form a sarcoma in the coronary artery—rendered it completely harmless to the human body. He found it rather more reasonable to think that the virus, once transformed, had grown even more virulent.
“Dad, what if I’m already infected with the virus? What would you do?”
“Impossible. It can’t be…”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because it’s all over. Twenty-five years ago, the virus became extinct, and the human race overcame the crisis of potentially losing its diversity.”
From his diagonal vantage point, Takanori peered into Mitsuo’s eyes. Unable to bear his son’s gaze, Mitsuo shifted his eyes in the opposite direction.
He’s lying.
Takanori knew this in his heart. For the most part, his father was trying to give an accurate account of what happened. But after a certain point, it seemed his intention was to hide something.
“Dad, please. Please tell me the truth.”
“I’m not lying about anything at all.”
“If you’re hiding something, it’s the same as lying to me,” Takanori said.
“You’re still young, son. You’ll likely live more than twice as many years as you have already, and I sincerely hope you do. But in order to live happily over those long years, it’s better not to learn certain things. Your promising life might turn out to be a hard and painful one thanks to what you learn. Well, I’m only saying this by way of example…”
“You underestimate me, dad. You’re assuming the truth will crush me and that I’ll lose heart. Since I was little, I’ve learned at your knees. You used to say I shouldn’t avert my eyes from impending danger…that I shouldn’t be blind to the truth, even if I don’t want to face it…That’s what you always told me. Have you forgotten?”
“Well…I only borrowed those words from somebody else,” Mitsuo said, wiping the sweat on his forehead with the back of his hand.
“No, those words came from the heart.”
Mitsuo’s face contorted and turned red. He nearly pounded the table with his fist but halted it midair. Barely stifling the desire to raise his voice, he swallowed his words, put his elbows on the table, and covered his eyes with both hands.
“I just have one wish,” he said. “I want you to lead a happy life. It was a blessing, please don’t waste it…”
“I know, that’s why I’m asking…”
“Please just let this go. It’s for your own sake.”
As Mitsuo weakly hung his head, Takanori found his own ardor dampening. Bursting into this office in pursuit of the truth, he’d been determined not to go easy on his father, but now his stance was softening. If Mitsuo had yelled without listening at all, Takanori could have been more emotional and adamant. But the weaker his father became, the more discouraged Takanori felt. They were father and son, and not strangers, and their states of mind couldn’t but correspond to some degree.
Mitsuo pressed the intercom and called his secretary.
“The guest is leaving,” he said.
“I have no intention of leaving yet.”
“It’s not for you to say. I’m busy here. And anyway, it’s all over now. There’s no cause for concern. The virus can’t be resurrected.”
“What makes you say it’s over? Tell me the reason.”
At this, Mitsuo sprang up from the sofa, and the momentum seemed to give him the strength to say, “Because Kashiwada’s dead. There’s no overturning that fact.”
Mitsuo seemed convinced of Kashiwada’s death, but Takanori had his doubts. The video on the USB stick began transforming the moment it was transferred to his ha
rd drive, and Kashiwada’s figure was gone without a trace. Almost as if he’d been sucked into a network that floated like a cloud…
And the empty ring of the rope had brought the first edition of Ring into focus.
It felt so much like there was some powerful intent at work.
But whose?
Kashiwada’s, of course. That was why Takanori couldn’t believe so easily that the man was truly dead.
2
After meeting up with Yoneda in the hotel lobby, Takanori took the elevator with him down to the first basement level.
With the press conference about to begin, the basement lobby was a mess of media representatives clutching their camera equipment.
Takanori cast a sidelong glance at them as he entered the meeting hall. Then they both found empty seats and took them.
Television cameras were packed tightly in the space between the wall and the last row of the two hundred folding chairs lined up there, while the seats in front were filled by TV, weekly magazine, and tabloid reporters.
The hotel that was serving as a press conference venue stood right next to the building where Studio Oz was located. Not in any position to help with the promotion, Yoneda and Takanori had come purely as spectators. Having found themselves a couple of empty chairs, they kept a low profile.
In a few minutes, the press conference to announce the completion of the new film Studio 104 would begin, with the main cast coming out on stage followed by the director and the producer.
With his small eyes wide open, Yoneda leaned over and whispered into Takanori’s ear, “You know, there was talk about how the suicide video on the USB stick was uploaded on an online video site and leaked, but that seems not to have been the case.”
“It was a lie?”
“It was unrelated. Live streams of suicides were causing a stir on the net, so Kiyomi Sakata simply took advantage of that. Turns out it was sent directly to her email as an attachment.”
Takanori had felt that it didn’t quite make sense back when he’d first heard about it from Yoneda. When some lurid clip got uploaded to an online video site, there were always people who made copies, and as soon as it was taken down, it popped up elsewhere, and round and round it went. It just seemed strange for the only surviving copy of the video to be on a USB stick that Takanori happened to receive.
“But why would Kiyomi Sakata have lied like that?” he asked.
“Beats me,” replied Yoneda. “It looks like some complicated circumstances are involved here. Speak of the Devil—look, here comes Her Highness.”
The entire conference venue lit up with a multitude of flashes, and the starring actors came out on stage, followed by the director and the producer. Bringing up the rear was Kiyomi Sakata. From under a skirt that ended above her knees stretched her long, slender legs; when she placed one of them on the end of the platform and raised up her well-proportioned body, the number of flashes noticeably increased. Described as being of uncertain age, she had to be around fifty judging from her career. On top of that, she’d given birth to two children by different fathers, once when she was a teenager and then again in her late thirties. Perhaps her beauty and sex appeal, which belied her age, was captivating to the attendees, and it seemed to Takanori that the number of flashes for her exceeded those for the leading lady, Yoko Aso.
The movie Studio 104 had been planned and produced by Kiyomi Sakata, and that was prompting a lot of extra attention.
The lead actress, Yoko Aso, occupied center stage. Yuji Nakahara and Yoshihiro Tachiki, who played supporting roles, sat on either side of her, the director Anzai on the far left, and Kiyomi Sakata on the far right. With the actors and the staff, there were five people seated on stage in total.
In his mind, Takanori was overlapping the view with an imaginary press conference that could have taken place in the past.
Twenty-five years earlier, Kiyomi Sakata was supposed to have appeared front and center at a press conference as the female lead for the movie Ring. But just when the first draft of the script was completed and the casting was nearly complete, the movie was cancelled.
The file Kihara had handed Takanori the day before briefly described the circumstances—part speculation—behind the cancelation. Takanori had read that part repeatedly, so he remembered it in detail.
Each file Kihara made was brilliantly ordered. Some of the info had been obtained through interviews over the phone or in person, but more than half of it owed to online searches.
It would have taken Takanori more than a week, but Kihara had spent just one day collecting all that info.
According to his file, the lead actress for Ring had changed more than once. At first, a totally fresh face was almost chosen through auditioning, but she ended up declining for personal reasons. Subsequently, the starlet Kiyomi Sakata (screen name: Nao Aizawa) landed the main role.
In the file, it was implied that Kiyomi Sakata was ultimately responsible for the movie’s cancelation. The truth was shrouded in mystery, and so with the proviso that the cause remained a matter of speculation, Kihara had related the following account.
Supposedly, Sakata had been suspected of using stimulants and other types of drugs, and there’d been an anonymous letter demanding that the movie be called off. Furthermore, she’d lied about her age and passed herself off as an innocent young girl, when in fact she’d had an affair with a family man and given birth while still a teenager. With so many factors piling up, the producer had lost his nerve.
An illicit affair might have made for suitable marketing material. A criminal offense on the part of the lead actress, however, would sink the movie. If the studio went ahead with production and a scandal erupted past the point of no return, it meant taking a huge financial hit.
It was best not to court danger…and thus the producer had chosen to shelve the film before it could suffer fatal damage.
With her career as an actress besmirched, from that point on Kiyomi Sakata lived in obscurity, driven into an early retirement.
What brought her back into the limelight was her marriage to the famous television newscaster Shuichi Sakata. Kiyomi had made a name for herself as a fortuneteller, and Shuichi had come to her for advice after falling into a slump. They’d fallen in love and married when Kiyomi was in her late thirties. It was Shuichi’s third marriage but her first.
She had a baby boy the following year and then gotten involved in television and film production through her own venture, remaining active on the TV gossip show circuit to the present. She was naturally gifted at attaining fame in the celebrity world.
Her background was full of the sorts of episodes common in show business, and Takanori was engrossed as an observer. However, Kiyomi Sakata was now working under her real name, and when Takanori had seen her maiden name in the file, he’d let out a little yelp of surprise.
It was Niimura.
In pursuing the strange phenomena surrounding the USB video, the shadow of Hiroyuki Niimura had appeared and disappeared time and again, yet Takanori hadn’t the slightest idea who he was or how he was connected to the case. If the child born to Kiyomi and her adulterous partner were Hiroyuki Niimura, then a tangled web of relationships lurked behind the events.
The file did not state the name of Kiyomi’s child. Devoted to her career, she practically abandoned her baby and left its care in the hands of her mother. The file did list the address of the grandmother who was entrusted with raising the boy.
Funabashi City, Chiba Prefecture.
Takanori remembered that place name as well. Seiji Kashiwada had been employed as a teacher at a college-prep school, and both his residence and workplace had been in Funabashi.
There was a good chance that the connection between the condemned prisoner Kashiwada and Niimura lay in Funabashi.
Nonetheless, there was no chance that they were the same person or even siblings.
Kashiwada was in his late forties when he died; Niimura had to be in his early thirties. And prior to mar
rying Shuichi Sakata, Kiyomi hadn’t given birth to any other children.
Another major commonality worth noting was Ring, multiple copies of which had existed in Kashiwada’s home in West Funabashi. A single volume was visible in Niimura’s studio apartment in Aomono-Yokocho. Each owned the rare first edition.
As Takanori thought of the many connections rising to the surface from Kiyomi Sakata’s past, his mind drifted away from the stage for a moment, but when he heard the entire hall stirring, it snapped him back to reality.
The host had asked Kiyomi to predict whether Studio 104 would be a hit, and she’d gently admonished, “If we could tell our own futures, we fortunetellers would all be rich.” That seemed to have set the hall abuzz.
Kiyomi Sakata seemed to know all too well that a fortuneteller couldn’t predict his or her own future, no matter how skilled. The current situation attested to that much; fearing that she couldn’t, she’d brought the USB stick to a video expert, though she’d concealed the circumstances in asking for it to be analyzed. Takanori didn’t doubt that she held some secret that she couldn’t afford to let slip.
Then a notion flashed through his mind. Although she’d practically thrown Niimura away, in all likelihood Kiyomi knew his address. She might have visited his apartment in Aomono-Yokocho and been familiar with its interior. Astonished to receive a live suicide video as an email attachment, she noticed that her son’s apartment had been the venue, even if the hanged man was somebody else. In the absence of anything like a threatening note, not knowing the sender’s intent would have only intensified the creepiness.
Being unfamiliar with modern imaging technology, Kiyomi had sought to learn if CG could be used to create such a composite image. If she could tell whether the video was genuine or fake, she’d be able to discern whether the whole thing was a nasty prank. Perhaps she also desired any information she could get on it, and drumming up some perfunctory reason, she’d brought her request to Yoneda at Studio Oz as a last resort.
Twenty-five years ago, Kiyomi had lost her chance to star in a movie, Ring, thanks to unsubstantiated rumors. This time, on the cusp of producing her first major picture in quite some time, she was taking the greatest care to avoid repeating the same mistake.