by Kōji Suzuki
It finally occurred to Ando to ask himself who had pulled the plug.
It clearly hadn't been the super. He hadn't taken one step into the room. He hadn't even taken off his shoes.
Then who?
Ando took another step into the bathroom and crouched down. He held out his hand and hesitantly touched the surface of the water. It was still slightly warm. A few strands of hair tangled themselves around his fingers. It felt just like… sticking his hands into an eleven-hour-old corpse and finding it had maintained body temperature. The apartment had supposedly been vacant for a week. But only an hour ago, someone had filled the tub with hot water and, even more recently, pulled the plug. It was for ventilation that the window had been left open.
Ando hurriedly pulled his hand back and wiped it on his trousers.
On the other side of the toilet, directly below the toilet paper, he noticed a brownish stain. It wasn't fecal matter, but rather, like something that had been vomited up. Covered in a thin film, it retained the outline of undigested food. A reddish, square object-perhaps a piece of carrot?
Did Mai vomit this?
Ando was squatting with one foot in the tiny bathroom, but in order to examine the vomit he had to lean over. When he did so, though, he lost his balance.
He came to rest with his face pressed up against the edge of the toilet. The cream-colored porcelain digged coolly into his cheek, and he could only imagine what kind of expression he was making.
At that moment, he thought he heard someone laugh behind him.
Ando fought back the urge to scream, and froze in that ungainly posture.
It wasn't his imagination. He'd heard a distinct giggle behind him, from a point rather low to the floor. As if it had welled up from the floor, like some plant shoot poking up from the ground, blossoming forth in laughter. Ando tensed his muscles and held his breath.
"Hee-hee." There! The same giggle. He wasn't hallucinating. He was absolutely certain someone was behind him. But he could hardly move, much less turn around and look. He couldn't figure out what to do. With his face still pressed up against the smooth porcelain, he managed to call out, rather stupidly, "Is that you, super?" He couldn't prevent his voice from trembling. One foot still sticking out of the bathroom door, he thought he felt a current of air on it. Something was moving out there. Now, that something touched him on the patch of exposed skin between the hem of his slacks and the top of his socks, where they'd scrunched down. It brushed against him as it moved past, leaving behind the memory of its slithery touch. The lower half of his body shrank from it, and he let out a cry. He tried to tell himself that it was nothing; maybe a cat that'd been trapped in the room had licked his Achilles tendon. Nothing more. But it didn't work. Every one of his five senses knew that it was something else. Some unknown thing was behind him.
His face was below the top of the bathtub, so he couldn't see inside, but he could hear the water inside trying to gurgle out. There was a faint slurping sound as the water swirled down the drain, hair and all. But above that sound, he heard the floorboards creak. The creaky noise receded slowly from him.
He couldn't stand it any longer. He raised his voice in an inchoate yell, banged the bathroom door with his knee repeatedly, and even flushed the toilet. All the racket he'd caused finally gave him the courage to creep to his feet. Using his hands to steady himself, he raised himself until he was almost fully upright, and then he stopped to listen behind him. He desperately tried to think of a way to step out of the room without turning around. The hair on the nape of his neck stood on end, as if countless tiny spiders were crawling up his back.
He inched backward towards the entrance, making sure that his heel wasn't touching anything, and then he whirled around, grabbed the doorknob, and stumbled out into the hallway. He banged his shoulder on the wall, but he ignored the pain as he watched the door swing shut.
Gasping for breath, Ando headed for the elevator. The super's keys jangled in his pocket. Thank God he hadn't left them in the apartment! He certainly didn't want to go back in there again. He was sure something was in there, even though he could recall every corner of that room and he couldn't think of a single place for anything to hide. The futon was folded up neatly. The built-in wardrobe was neither wide nor deep enough. There was no place for any living thing to hide- unless it was pretty small.
An out-of-season mosquito buzzed in his ear. He tried to swat it away, but it kept right on droning about him. Ando coughed weakly and jammed his hands into his pockets. Suddenly he felt cold. The elevator was taking forever to arrive. Finally, frustrated, he looked up, only to see that it was still on the first floor. He'd forgotten to push the button. He pressed it two or three times, just to be sure, and put his hand back in his pocket.
4
"Hey, what's up?"
Ando didn't realize he'd been drifting away until Miyashita spoke to him. The sensations of two hours ago had become a tidal wave, threatening to rip his consciousness out by the roots. He resisted frantically, and got gooseflesh for his efforts. Miyashita's fervent monologue reached his brain only intermittently.
"Are you even listening to me?" Miyashita sounded annoyed.
"Yeah, I'm listening," Ando replied, but his expression said his mind was elsewhere.
"If there's something eating at you, maybe you ought to tell me about it."
Miyashita pulled a stool out from under the table, plopped his feet onto it, and leaned back. He was a visitor in Ando's office, but he acted as if the place were his own.
Ando and Miyashita were the only ones in the forensic medicine lab at the moment. Despite how dark it was getting outside, it was still not quite six in the evening. After his harrowing experience at Mai's apartment, Ando had come directly back to the office to meet Miyashita. As a result, he hadn't had any time to regain his equilibrium. And Miyashita had been telling him about the virus the whole time.
"No, nothing's bothering me." He had no intention of telling Miyashita what he'd experienced in Mai's apartment. He had no words to express it, first of all. He couldn't think of an appropriate metaphor. Should he compare it to that feeling you sometimes get, standing at the toilet in the middle of the night, that there's someone behind you? The one where, once you've sensed them, the monsters in your imagination just keep growing and growing until you finally turn around and dispel the illusion? But what Ando had experienced was no such run-of-the-mill affair. He was sure there'd been something behind him when he lost his balance in Mai's bathroom and hit his cheek against the toilet. It wasn't a product of his imagination. Something had emitted that high-pitched laughter. Something that had made Ando, not normally a coward, too scared even to turn around.
"You look pale, though. Paler than normal, that is," said Miyashita, wiping his glasses on his lab coat.
"I haven't been sleeping well lately, that's all." It wasn't a lie. Recently, he'd been waking up in the middle of the night and having trouble getting back to sleep.
"Well, never mind. Just don't keep asking me the same questions over and over. No one likes to be interrupted."
"Sorry."
"Now. May I go on?"
"Please do."
"About that virus they discovered in those bodies in Yokohama…"
"The one that's just like smallpox," Ando volunteered.
"That's the one."
"So it resembles smallpox visually?"
Miyashita slapped the tabletop. He flashed Ando a look of exasperation. "So you really weren't listening. I just told you: they ran the new virus through a DNA sequencer in order to analyze its bases. Then they ran it through a computer. Turns out it corresponds closely to the library data on smallpox."
"But they're not identical?"
"No. We're talking maybe a seventy percent overlap."
"What about the other thirty percent?"
"Brace yourself. It's identical to the basal sequence of an enzyme-encoding gene."
"Enzymes? Of what species?"
"Homo s
apiens."
"You're kidding."
"I understand it's pretty unbelievable. But it's true. Another specimen of the same virus contained human protein genes. In other words, this new virus is made of smallpox genes and human genes."
Smallpox was supposedly a DNA virus. If it were a retrovirus, then it would be no surprise to find it had taken human genes into itself. Such a virus would have reverse transcription enzymes. But since DNA viruses didn't have them, how did this one pick up human genes and incorporate them into itself? Ando couldn't think of any process. And with one virus containing enzymes and another proteins, it meant that together they contained human genes, but in separate components. It was as if the human body had been broken down into hundreds of thousands of parts, and those parts apportioned out individual specimens of a virus for safekeeping.
"Is the virus from Ryuji's body the same?"
"Finally, we come to that. Just the other day, we found a nearly identical virus in a frozen sample of Ryuji's blood."
"Another smallpox-human combo?"
"I said 'nearly'."
"Okay."
"It's almost identical. But in one segment, we found a repetition of the same basal sequence."
Ando waited for Miyashita to continue, and he did.
"No matter where we cut it, we kept coming up with a repetition of the same forty-odd bases."
Ando didn't know what to make of it.
"Are you following me? They didn't find this in the two bodies in Yokohama."
"So you're saying that the virus found in their bodies is subtly different from the one that killed Ryuji?"
"That's right. They look alike, but they're slightly different. Of course, we really can't say much until we get data from the other universities."
At that moment a phone rang two desks over. Miyashita cursed under his breath. "What now?"
"Excuse me a minute, okay?" Ando leaned over and picked up the receiver. "Hello?"
"I'm Yoshino from the Daily News. I'm calling for a Dr Ando."
"That's me."
Yoshino wasn't quite satisfied. "Are you Dr Ando the lecturer in forensic medicine?"
"Yes, yes."
"I understand you performed an autopsy on a Ryuji Takayama at the Tokyo Medical Examiner's Office on the twentieth last month. Is that correct?"
"That's right, I was in charge of that one."
"I see. Well, I'd like to ask you a few questions about that, if I may. Can we meet?"
"Hmm." While Ando deliberated, Miyashita leaned over and whispered in his ear.
"Who is it?"
Ando covered the mouthpiece with his hand before answering. "A reporter from the Daily News." Then he quickly brought the receiver back to his mouth and asked, "What is this about?"
"I'd like to ask your opinion regarding a certain series of incidents."
The man's phrasing took Ando by surprise. Had the media already caught a whiff, then? It seemed far too early for that. Even the various med schools in charge of the autopsies had only begun to discover a connection among the deaths of the last two weeks.
"What series of incidents do you mean?" Ando decided to play dumb to try to find out how much Yoshino knew.
"I mean the mysterious deaths of Ryuji Takayama, of Tomoko Oishi, Haruko Tsuji, Shuichi Iwata, and Takehiko Nomi-and of Shizu Asakawa and her daughter."
Ando felt as if he'd been hit on the head with a board. Who'd leaked all that? He didn't know what to say.
"So how about it, doctor? Think you have time to meet with me?"
Ando wracked his brain. Information always flowed downhill, so to speak, from those who had more of it to those who had less. If this reporter had more information about the case than Ando, then perhaps Ando should try to get it from him. There was no need for Ando to show all his cards. The thing to do was to find out what he needed without giving up his own secrets.
"Alright, let's do it."
"When would be best for you?"
Ando took out his planner and looked at his schedule. "I assume you'd like it to be as soon as possible. How about tomorrow? I'm free for two hours after noon."
There was a pause as Yoshino checked his schedule.
"Okay, good. I'll come to your office at noon sharp."
They hung up nearly simultaneously.
"What was that all about?" Miyashita asked, tugging on Ando's sleeve.
"It was a newspaper reporter."
"What does he want?"
"He wants to meet me."
"Why?"
"He said he wants to ask me some questions."
"Hmmph," sighed Miyashita, thinking.
"It sounds like he knows everything."
"So what does that mean? A leak?"
"I guess I'll have to ask him that when I see him tomorrow."
"Well, don't tell him anything."
"I know."
"Especially that it involves a virus." "If he doesn't know already, you mean." Suddenly Ando remembered that Asakawa also worked for the company that published the Daily News. If he and Yoshino knew each other, maybe Yoshino was in pretty deep. Maybe tomorrow's meeting would turn up some interesting information. Ando's curiosity was piqued.
5
Yoshino kept reaching for his water glass. He'd pretend like he was going to pick it up, and then look at his wristwatch instead. He seemed to be worried about the time. Maybe he had another appointment right afterwards.
"Excuse me for a moment, will you?" Yoshino bowed and stood up from the table. Threading his way between the tables on the cafe terrace, he went over to the pay phone next to the cash register. As Yoshino flipped open his notepad and started punching buttons on the phone, Ando was finally able to stop for breath. He leaned back in his chair.
An hour ago, at exactly noon, Yoshino had shown up at his office at the university. Ando had taken him to a cafe in front of the station. Yoshino's business card still lay before him on the tabletop.
Kenzo Yoshino. Daily News, Yokosuka Bureau.
What Yoshino had told him, Ando couldn't believe. It had left his head spinning. Yoshino had come in, sat down, and launched into a monologue that did nothing but seed Ando's mind with doubts. Now he'd gone off to call God knew who.
According to Yoshino, the whole thing had started on the night of August 29th, at a place called Villa Log Cabin, a property of the South Hakone Pacific Land resort, located where the Izu Peninsula met the mainland. A mixed-gender group of four young people who stayed a night in cabin B-4 had found a videotape recorded psychically by some woman. A videotape that killed anyone who watched it, exactly a week later. What the hell?
It sounded like nonsense no matter how many times Ando went over it in his head. "It's probably something akin to psychic photography," Yoshino had said, as if that explained it. Mentally projecting an image onto a videotape? That was out and out impossible. And yet… Suppose he told somebody about the numbers he'd found on the piece of newspaper that poked out of Ryuji's belly? Or the strange vibes he'd felt in Mai's apartment? Wouldn't people think he was talking nonsense? There was just no equating what you've experienced yourself with what you've heard from someone else; one could never feel as real as the other. But Yoshino had been directly involved, and what he said was substantiated by Ando's own experience, at least. He'd helped Asakawa and Takayama investigate the case. His words were not entirely lacking in persuasiveness.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," Yoshino said, returning to his seat. He quickly wrote something in his notebook, then poked his bearded cheek with the tip of his pen. His beard looked wiry, and it was long and full, as if to compensate for the thinning at the top of his head. "Now, where was I?" He leaned forward, bringing his hirsute visage closer to Ando. He had a certain charisma that came through when he spoke.
"You were starting to tell me how Ryuji got involved."
"Right. Now, if you don't mind, what was your relationship with the late professor?"
"We were classmates in med school."
&nbs
p; "Okay, that's what I'd heard."
Ando interpreted the remark to mean that Yoshino had run a check on him before contacting him.
"By the way, Mr Yoshino, have you watched the tape yourself?" The question had been weighing on Ando's mind for a while.
"You've got to be kidding," Yoshino said, wide-eyed. "You'd have met me in the autopsy room then. No, I don't have the guts." He chuckled.
Of course, Ando had had a sneaking suspicion for some time now that a videotape was involved in these deaths. But never in his wildest dreams did he suspect the existence of a video that killed anybody who watched it in exactly a week's time. He still couldn't quite believe it. How could he? He couldn't accept such a thing, short of watching the video himself. Even then, he'd probably only truly believe it a week later, at the moment death came for him.
Yoshino drank his now-cold coffee, taking his time. He must have gained a little leeway in his schedule, because his movements no longer signaled haste.
"So why is Asakawa still alive? He watched the tape, didn't he?" There was a note of scorn in Ando's voice. Asakawa might be catatonic, but he was still alive. That didn't seem to square with Yoshino's story.
"You've hit the nail on the head, there. That's exactly what's bothering me, too," Yoshino said, leaning forward. "I suppose the best thing to do is to ask the man himself, but I tried that and it got me nowhere." Yoshino too had visited the hospital in Shinagawa, and he too had failed to communicate with Asakawa.
Then Yoshino seemed to have an idea. "Maybe…" he trailed off portentously.
"Maybe what?"
"I think you know what I'm talking about. If we could just get our hands on it."
"On what?!"
"Asakawa's a reporter for our weekly news magazine."
Ando had no idea what Yoshino was getting at. "I know."
"Well, he mentioned to me that he was putting together a comprehensive report on all this. I mean, the whole reason he got interested, to begin with, was that he thought he was onto a scoop. He teamed up with Takayama, and the two of them rushed off to Atami, and then to Oshima Island, hoping they'd find clues to unlock the riddle of the videotape. I think they found something. And I'll bet you anything that it's all written up and stored on a floppy disk." Yoshino turned his head, leaving Ando staring at his profile.