Toward evening several groups of customers came in all at once. Mitsuyo took care of two men in their midtwenties. As they pawed through the racks of suits, their banter was like a comedy routine; from what Mitsuyo heard, she gathered that the shorter of the two had just had a successful interview for a new job and had dragged his friend along with him.
“I’ve always worn work clothes, so I’m kind of lost when it comes to choosing a suit.”
“Yeah, but usually when guys buy suits they bring their wives along.”
“Don’t be an idiot. If I bring her with me, she’s going to choose the cheapest possible outfit, from the suit to the shirts and ties.”
“So what? You’re planning to buy the top-of-the-line brand?”
“No, not really. Just something in the middle, you know?”
They went on, grabbing one suit after another from the rack and holding it up to see how it looked.
“They’re so young looking,” Mitsuyo mused, “but already married.” She kept her distance, patiently waiting for them to ask her something.
The floor manager, Kazuko, stood over by the fitting room, tape measure around her neck. She’d just finished a break and Mitsuyo had asked her if she had a little free time tonight. “Maybe we could go out for a drink,” she said.
Kazuko tilted her head at the unexpected invitation, then replied, “That shouldn’t be a problem. My husband’s going to be a little late tonight. But where should we go? How about that new kaiten sushi place next to the new bar, the Bikkuri?” Kazuko seemed unusually up for the idea.
Once they decided on a place, Mitsuyo was about to go back to her station, but Kazuko grabbed her hand. “You took last Saturday off,” she said with a grin, “so I was kind of wondering what was up… Any good news?”
“No, nothing really,” Mitsuyo said. “I just thought we hadn’t gone out for dinner in a long time.” She managed to get away, but couldn’t keep from smiling.
After leaving the love hotel on Saturday, she ended up spending the whole day with Yuichi. They’d eaten eel, and were planning to go to the lighthouse, but as they left the restaurant it started pouring so they gave up and went to another hotel.
On Sunday evening Yuichi drove her back to her apartment and they had one long last kiss in the car. That was two days ago, and Monday evening they’d talked for three hours on the phone. Tamayo had come back from work while they were still on the phone, so the last thirty minutes Mitsuyo sat on the staircase outside in the freezing wind.
Less than a day had passed since then, but she was dying to hear his voice again.
She looked up and noticed that the two-man comedy team was rummaging through the rack along the wall. The suits on this rack were three thousand yen more than the others and no extra trousers were included.
“Oh, I went to see that new movie Fishing Nut-the comedy,” one of the men said.
“By yourself?”
“No way. I took my son.”
“To that kind of movie?”
“Kids like them.”
“Are you kidding? The only kind my little one’s interested in are the anime specials.”
Though in their midtwenties, they acted more like college buddies. But here they were talking about their kids and picking out suits.
Mitsuyo watched them, amused. The men may have sensed her presence, for the shorter one turned to her and said, “Excuse me. Could I try this one on?”
His friend grabbed it away and teased him. “You gonna go with this one? Kind of looks like a host in a bar or something.”
The first guy, who seemed more easygoing, said, “You think?” and gave the suit another look.
“Why don’t you try it on?” Mitsuyo smiled. “It does have a certain shine to the fabric, but if you wear a white shirt with it it’ll look more subdued.”
Her advice seemed to give the man confidence again, and he strode over to the fitting room. His friend, like someone not really in the market for a suit, casually flipped through the price tags.
The suit was a perfect fit. Mitsuyo handed him a white shirt to see how it would look, and the combination went well, strangely enough, with his baby face.
“How do you like it?” she asked as the man turned from side to side, checking himself out in the mirror. His friend had sidled over and said, “You’re right. It really doesn’t look all that gaudy.” In the cramped changing room the man nodded in the mirror to Mitsuyo and his friend.
Mitsuyo took her well-worn tape measure from her pocket and measured the cuffs to see how much would need to be taken up.
When it rains it pours: there was one customer after another, not just browsing but actually buying, and she sold a number of suits.
The store finally closed for the day, and at the table next to the register Mitsuyo was going through the day’s sales receipts in the half-darkened floor. “This only happens on the one day we plan to go out for a drink,” she said.
Kazuko, herself with a fistful of receipts, said, “You got that right.”
Mitsuyo nodded a reply and checked the clock. Eight forty-five. By this time she’d normally have changed and be pedaling home on her bike.
“Is it going to take you much longer?” asked Kazuko, who had already finished sorting out her own paperwork.
“Give me another fifteen minutes,” Mitsuyo said as she flipped through the receipts.
“I’ll wait for you in the break room,” Kazuko said, and went downstairs. Mitsuyo was left alone on the half-lit, gloomy floor, her legs chilly now that the heat had been turned off.
Right then she heard the ring tone on her cell phone, which she’d left on the register stand. She reached for it, thinking it was Tamayo, but saw Yuichi’s name instead. Her thumb still stuck in the sheaf of receipts, she picked it up with her other hand.
“Hi, it’s me,” she heard Yuichi say. Looking around to make sure she was alone, Mitsuyo answered happily, “Hi! What’s up?”
“You still at work?” he asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Do you have plans today?”
“By today, do you mean right now?” Her happy voice echoed in the empty floor. “Aren’t you in Nagasaki? Did you finish work already?” she asked.
“I finished at six. I drove my own car to the construction site today, and was thinking about going to see you right after work.”
The signal was cutting in and out, as if he were driving already.
“Where are you?” Mitsuyo asked. Before she realized it she was standing, and her thumb had slipped out of the sheaf of receipts.
“I’m almost on the highway.”
“Highway? You mean the Saga Yamato?”
Mitsuyo glanced toward the window. From the Saga Yamato interchange it took only ten minutes to get here. She sat back down. “I wish you’d told me sooner you were coming,” she pouted happily.
They agreed to meet in the parking lot of the fast-food place next door, and Mitsuyo hung up. An almost painful thrill of joy shot through her as she thought of Yuichi coming to see her so unexpectedly on a weekday night.
As she quickly checked the receipts, she could picture Yuichi’s car whizzing down the streets. With each receipt she stamped, she felt his car get that much closer.
She rushed through her receipts in five minutes. She turned off the rest of the lights on the floor, and as she ran into the locker room on the first floor she found Kazuko there, already in street clothes, pouring a cup of strong-smelling dokudami herbal tea from the thermos she always carried with her.
“That was fast.”
“Uh… yeah.” For a moment Mitsuyo was at a loss for words. She hadn’t forgotten about their plan to go have a drink, but things had changed so quickly she hadn’t had time to formulate an excuse.
“What’s the matter?” Seeing Mitsuyo so flustered, Kazuko was worried.
“Well, it’s just…”
“What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
“No, nothing. I just, ah, had a phone call…”
“Phone call? From who?”
Mitsuyo still faltered. She wanted to tell Kazuko of her change of plans, of meeting Yuichi, but somehow the words wouldn’t come.
Kazuko watched Mitsuyo carefully. “How about we go next time? Any time’s fine with me.” A meaningful smile crossed her lips.
“Sorry,” Mitsuyo said.
“Your boyfriend decided to come see you all of a sudden, is that it?” Kazuko smiled, unfazed by the abrupt change of plans. “I was pretty sure you had a boyfriend. I mean you took a day off on the weekend, and you’ve been floating around with this happy look on your face the last few days.”
“I’m really sorry,” Mitsuyo apologized again.
“Don’t worry about it… So, is he from Saga?”
“No, from Nagasaki.”
“He suddenly decided to come all the way from Nagasaki? I guess this isn’t the time to go out for a drink with me! Come on, you’d better change.” Mitsuyo was standing there like a statue and Kazuko gave her a friendly pat on the rump to get her moving.
After Kazuko had left and Mitsuyo was alone in the locker room, she hurriedly changed out of her uniform. As she was changing, her cell phone rang with a message from Yuichi. I’m here, it said.
Glad I wore the leather jacket today, Mitsuyo thought. The down jacket she usually wore had a dirty collar. That morning she’d pondered whether to wear it one more day before sending it to the cleaners, and had decided against it.
This was the same leather jacket she’d worn when she met Yuichi that past weekend. She’d bought the jacket a year ago, when she and Tamayo had gone shopping in Hakata. She’d hesitated over the price-¥110,000-but in the end had decided to go ahead and splurge.
She locked the locker room, handed the key to the night watchman, and left by the back door. The cold wind whipped at her feet and she pulled her muffler tight. The huge parking lot was a sea of white lines, and beyond the fence was the fallow field and a steel pylon.
She turned and saw the familiar white car parked next to the fast-food place. The place wasn’t crowded and Yuichi’s car, polished to perfection, was the only thing sparkling under the streetlights. Mitsuyo walked along the highway, hurrying to the parking lot next door.
As she entered the parking lot, the headlights of Yuichi’s car came on. He must have been watching her all the way over. Mitsuyo gave a small wave to the dark interior of the car. As she got closer Yuichi snapped open the passenger-side door from inside. As soon as it opened, the interior light flicked on and she could see him, still dressed in his work clothes.
“I’m freezing,” Mitsuyo said, shivering as she hurried inside and sat down. She hadn’t met his eyes as she did, and the car again was dark inside. “Did you really come straight from work?” she asked, turning toward him.
“If I’d gone home first I’d have been even later,” Yuichi said, turning up the heater.
“You should have called me sooner.”
“I was thinking of it, but figured you were still at work.”
“If I couldn’t see you today what were you gonna do?” she teased.
“If I couldn’t see you, I guess I’d just go home,” he answered solemnly.
Mitsuyo placed her hand on top of his, which was resting on the gearshift. It may have been his work clothes, but this time, the car smelled old and dirty.
The car stayed for a time in the fast-food-restaurant parking lot, and didn’t move. Meanwhile, three other groups of customers had exited the restaurant and driven off. No other cars replaced them, and as the number of cars decreased it felt as if only theirs was left, like a small boat in a vast sea.
Minutes passed and Mitsuyo’s fingers remained entwined with his. Wordlessly their fingers spoke to each other.
“You have to go to work early tomorrow?” Mitsuyo asked as she gripped his middle finger. On the highway beyond the fence a car sped up.
“I get up at five-thirty,” Yuichi said, stroking her wrist with his thumb.
“Doesn’t it take about two hours from here to Nagasaki? We don’t have much time.”
“I just wanted to see you…”
The digital clock on the dashboard showed 9:18.
“You have to go back, right?” Mitsuyo asked.
The thumb stopped stroking her. Yuichi paused. “Yeah. If I don’t go back tonight, I’ll have to get up at three,” he said, forcing a smile.
I wanted to see you so much. I just had to see you, so I drove here right from work. Yuichi didn’t put it into words, but his fingers conveyed this message clearly as he stroked her wrist.
They could go to a love hotel now and spend a couple of hours together. But then he’d have to drive back to Nagasaki. That meant he’d get home around one a.m. Even if he went to sleep right away, Yuichi would have to go to his exhausting job with only four hours of sleep.
Two hours is fine, Mitsuyo thought, as long as I can be with him. But I want him to get as much sleep as he can, too-even an extra hour.
“If only my sister weren’t at home…” Mitsuyo surprised herself. She’d never thought of her sister as a bother before. She’d always worried instead about when Tamayo would be back.
“You want to go to a… hotel?” Yuichi asked. He seemed hesitant, as if worried about tomorrow morning.
“But if we go to a hotel it’ll be really late when you go home.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Yuichi’s fingers on top of the gearshift tensed.
“Nagasaki and Saga are so far away,” Mitsuyo murmured. “No… that isn’t what I mean,” she quickly added, shaking her head. “It’s not that… It’s just that you came all this way and I wish we could spend more time together.”
“It’s a weekday. Nothing we can do about it,” he muttered resignedly. He sounded cool about it, and Mitsuyo couldn’t help but say, “You’re so serious, you know that?”
“I can’t take a day off. It’s my uncle’s company.”
“But it’s hard for me to get Saturday off. It’s almost impossible for me to get two days off in a row like last time.” She sounded a bit miffed and the instant she said that Yuichi’s fingers went limp.
He came to see me, Mitsuyo thought. He didn’t come all this way just to be told that we don’t have time to see each other. He drove two hours to see me, after doing his backbreaking job.
“You want to park next door?” Mitsuyo tugged at his fingers. “The store’s closed and there won’t be any other cars. We can talk for a while. If you park behind the building, nobody can see you from the road.”
Yuichi glanced over the fence toward the darkened menswear store, and quickly released the parking brake.
“Hold on a second,” Mitsuyo hastily added. “You probably haven’t had any dinner. Let me buy you something.”
“No, I had some udon at a rest area. I couldn’t wait,” Yuichi laughed.
He drove out of the fast-food-restaurant parking lot and over to the lot behind Wakaba. Behind the store it was dark, the only light an illuminated billboard for makeup in the field beyond the fence.
“Next Friday’s a holiday, so I was thinking of going to Nagasaki. Just a day trip,” Mitsuyo said. The car had come to a halt and Yuichi’s hands were resting on the steering wheel. He suddenly reached out and placed his hot hand on her, stroking her earlobe and neck. Without a word, he kissed her. For a second, Mitsuyo was taken aback, but before she knew it he was all over her. She closed her eyes and let him have his way.
It was after ten p.m. when they left the parking lot. Mitsuyo wanted to stay in his arms forever, but she knew that that would make it all the harder for him the next morning. After they left the parking lot, Yuichi headed to her apartment without needing directions. He deftly changed lanes, zooming past one car after another.
“Three days from now, I’ll take the bus to Nagasaki,” Mitsuyo said, letting herself sway back and forth with the motion of the car, a lulling feeling she was already used to.
“I finish work at six,” Yuichi said, pulling up close to the car in front.
“I have the day off, so I was thinking of going in the morning and doing a little sightseeing by myself. It’s been years since I’ve been in Nagasaki… Last year my sister and I went to the Huis Ten Bosch theme park, though.”
“I wish I could show you around…”
“Don’t worry. I’ll just eat some champon, go see the cathedrals…”
It usually took fifteen minutes by bike to go home but at the speed Yuichi drove, it took only three. As he did the last time, Yuichi steered his car down the unpaved path right up to the apartment building.
“Darn it-my sister’s home.” Mitsuyo looked up to the second-floor window, where the light was on. “I wish we had more time,” she added in a low voice, and as she did Yuichi’s dry lips covered hers again.
“Drive carefully,” she said. Yuichi nodded, lips still glued to hers. For a second it seemed as if he wanted to say something more, so she pulled away a bit. But he just looked down and was silent.
Mitsuyo watched as the car pulled away down the dirt path. When he came out on the paved road he beeped his horn once and shot away.
I’m so lonely, she thought. I can’t wait to see him again. Mitsuyo stood there watching until his rear lights disappeared.
She remembered how when Tamayo was going out with a guy who was a hairdresser, she’d said the very same thing. That she was so lonely. That she couldn’t wait to see him again. At the time, Mitsuyo couldn’t understand her feelings, but now she did. She understood, and wondered how anyone could stand it. She wanted to run after his car-or fall to the ground and cry her eyes out. If she could only be with Yuichi, anything was possible.
Yuichi wasn’t sure how much time had passed since Mitsuyo’s figure in the rearview mirror, waving goodbye, had disappeared. At an intersection near the on-ramp to the highway, he had to stop for a red light. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and saw he had less than five thousand yen. If Mitsuyo had agreed to go to a hotel, he would have had to take the surface streets home, no matter how late that made him. Fortunately she’d been worried about his job, so he still had enough money to take the highway.
He’d been dying to see her. Although they’d only met a few days ago, he was scared to death the relationship would end. At night, no matter how long he talked with her on the phone, he couldn’t rid himself of this fear. As soon as he hung up he couldn’t stand it, convinced he’d never see her again. When he slept, he dreamed she was gone. As soon as he woke up in the morning he wanted to call her, but hesitated since it was five a.m.; he thought about her all day long at work. By the end of the day today, he couldn’t stand it, and before he knew what he was doing, he was heading toward Saga. Maybe he’d already made an unconscious decision to do just that, which is why he took his car to work instead of riding in his uncle’s van.
The red light seemed to take forever, and Yuichi pounded the steering wheel. If another car hadn’t been right beside him, he would have slammed his forehead against it in frustration.
When I was little, he recalled, before Mom took me to live with my grandparents and we were still living in an apartment in the city, she said she’d take me out to see my father, and I was so happy getting ready, and riding the streetcar together. “When we get to the station we’ll transfer to a train,” she explained. I asked her, “Is it far?” and she said, “Way far away.”
In the crowded streetcar, she clung to the strap. And I held on to her skirt. When the streetcar started to move, some men seated in front of us began to elbow each other and laugh. They were laughing at my mom, who’d forgotten to shave her underarms. Mom turned all red and hid her underarm with a handkerchief. It was a hot day. The packed streetcar lurched to one side and her handkerchief slipped off and the men tried to keep from laughing.
We got to the JR station and transferred to a train. Trying so hard to hide her underarm on the lurching streetcar had left Mom covered in sweat. As we were waiting at the crowded ticket counter to buy our tickets, I said, “I’m sorry” to her. Mom looked at me vacantly, her head tilted. “It’s so hot, isn’t it?” she said. She smiled, and wiped my sweaty nose with that handkerchief.
A car horn blaring behind him brought Yuichi back to the present. He accelerated abruptly and his body, clinging hard to the steering wheel, was snapped back against the seat. He was so distracted he didn’t merge into the highway but went straight over the overpass.
He slowed down to do a U-turn and switched on the radio to get his mind on other things. The local news was on. Yuichi did a huge U-turn, and the on-ramp to the highway loomed closer.
“In another story, in the case of the murder that took place just after midnight on the tenth of this month at Mitsuse Pass, the twenty-two-year-old man police have been searching for as a material witness has been found. Last night a clerk at a sauna in Nagoya contacted police, who immediately took the man into custody. He has been transferred back to Fukuoka, where police are questioning him about the incident. As we get more details, we will update this story on the eleven o’clock news.”
The news ended and an insurance commercial came on. Yuichi steered back, away from the highway on-ramp, and stepped on the gas. He cut in front of another car and the driver blared his horn. Yuichi sped up more, overtaking another car. Finally he slowed down and pulled off the road, coming to a stop in front of a vending machine.
A nostalgic Christmas song was playing on the radio now. Yuichi switched stations but couldn’t find any more news about the murder at Mitsuse Pass. He held on to the steering wheel, even though his car was stopped. A huge truck roared past, the blast of air rocking his car.
Yuichi shook the steering wheel, but no matter how much he tried, it didn’t move an inch. He tried again, but the harder he tried to shake it, the more his own body shook back and forth.
They’d captured the guy. The guy who’d been trying to escape. They’d arrested that guy who’d taken Yoshino Ishibashi to Mitsuse Pass. He found himself muttering these words, and as he did, for some reason he pictured again the scene, years ago, when he and his mother had gone to see his father. The men on the streetcar chuckling at her hairy armpit. Standing at the crowded ticket window and his mother’s face as she wiped the sweat from his nose. Why that day would come back to him now, he had no idea. But he couldn’t erase the images from his mind.
We took the streetcar to the JR station, Yuichi recalled, where we boarded a train. Mom had me sit down at a window seat, and she sat next me, dozing.
Just after Dad left, Mom used to cry every night. When I got lonely and sat down beside her she’d stroke my head and say, “Let’s just forget about anything sad, okay? Let’s just totally forget about it,” crying even more loudly than before.
From the window I could see the ocean. I was sitting on the mountain side of the car and on the other side, the ocean side, were two elementary school brothers wearing caps, traveling with their parents. When I leaned over to catch a glimpse of the sea, my mom woke up and said, “Sit down. It’s dangerous,” pushing my head down. “Once we get there, you can see the ocean as much as you like.”
I don’t know how much longer we were riding after that, but all of a sudden I dozed off like her.
“We’re getting off now,” she said, grabbing my arm, and I stumbled off the train still half asleep. We left the station, walked for a while, and arrived at a ferryboat dock.
“We’re going to take the ferry and go over there,” my mom said, pointing to the other shore.
In the parking lot of the dock there was a line of cars. “They’re all going to go on the ferryboat with us,” my mom told me.
Just like she’d told me on the train, there was the ocean, right in front of me. And way off on the far shore was a lighthouse. The first one I’d ever seen.
Yuichi’s cell phone rang. He was still sitting in the car by the side of the road, hands tightly clasping the steering wheel. Trucks continued to roar by right next to him, the air blast lifting his car up each time they passed.
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. The caller ID said Home. When he answered it, it was his grandmother, sounding a bit hesitant and timid.
“Yu-Yuichi? Where are you?”
It sounded like somebody was right beside her, and she was checking with that person as she spoke.
“What d’you want to know for?” Yuichi asked.
“The-the police are here.” She tried her best to sound upbeat, but her voice was trembling. “Where are you? Can you come back soon?”
Another truck roared past. Yuichi hung up, and almost reflexively his fingers began to move on the keypad.
Is that right? So Yuichi still remembers that time?… He must have been five, or maybe six then… I was sure he’d forgotten all about it. As I told you before, after Yuichi started working for me I treated him even more like a son. He’s really gotten good at his job these days, and was even thinking of getting a crane operator’s license.
If you think about it, that was how he came to live with his grandfather and grandmother. Really? So Yuichi still thinks he was going to see his father that day? That’s pretty sad. What happened was, that was the day his mother abandoned him.
I don’t know what Yuichi told you, but back then his mother was at the end of her rope. Everybody told her she shouldn’t get involved with that worthless guy, but she ignored them and did it anyway. Things went okay until Yuichi was born, but before three years were up the guy ran off and left them. I’m not trying to take her side or anything, but she did get a job in a nightclub and thought she could make a go of raising Yuichi. But things never work out that easy, do they? Working in a place like that, she took up with another bad guy, who spent all her money, and she got sick… She should have called her home for help, but she couldn’t. So she ended up alone, with no one she could rely on…
So anyway, his mother was desperate. She lied to Yuichi, telling him they were going to see his father, even though she had no idea where the guy was.
She abandoned Yuichi there at the ferry dock that day. He sat there, waiting, all alone, until the next morning. She said she was just going to buy their tickets, and ran away, but what she did was hide behind the pillars of the pier until morning.
The next morning, when one of the ferry workers found him, Yuichi refused to budge. “My mom told me to wait here!” he said, and actually bit the guy on the arm.
Apparently as she left his mother told him, “See that lighthouse over there? Just look at that lighthouse. I’ll go buy our tickets and be right back.”
His mother got in touch a week later. She said she felt like she was going to die, but I don’t buy it. So after that, Yuichi was taken over by Child Protective Services and Juvenile Court, but his grandparents took him to live with them, and not long after that his mother took up with another man and disappeared.
The whole parent-child relationship is a strange thing if you think about it.
Just around the time Yuichi started to work for me, the topic came up and I asked him if his mother had ever contacted him. His grandfather was doing poorly around then, and I figured if things turned out bad I should be able to get ahold of her to let her know about the funeral. It was just a thought I had that I blurted out.
I was positive that after she took up with that last guy there’d been no word from her. I asked his grandparents and they told me, “She sends us a New Year’s card every couple of years. Each time it’s a different address… Probably she’s with a different man each time.”
I asked Yuichi if she ever got in touch. He shook his head and I thought that was the end of it. But then he added, “If it’s about Grandpa’s condition, I already told her.”
“You told her? You mean… you have kept in touch with her?”
“We go out to eat sometimes.”
“What do you mean by sometimes?”
“Once a year, maybe.”
“Do your grandparents know about this?”
“No, they don’t,” Yuichi replied, shaking his head. His grandpa took great pride in the fact that he’d raised Yuichi, so it must have been hard for Yuichi to say anything about it.
“Don’t you get angry when you meet her?” I said this without thinking. I mean, look, his mother abandoned him there at the ferryboat dock, without anything to eat, and he ended up stuck with his grandparents.
But Yuichi said, “No, I’m not angry. I don’t see her enough to get angry.”
“Where is she now, and what’s she doing?” I asked.
“She works at an inn, in Unzen.” This was about three or four years ago.
Apparently he’s driven over a few times to see her. “What do the two of you talk about?” I asked.
“Nothing much.”
I know I can’t forgive his mother for what she did. I can still picture Yuichi at the ferry dock, abandoned. It’s not just me. His grandfather and grandmother, and the other relatives, feel the same way. But this parent-child relationship really is strange, isn’t it? None of us forgave her, but Yuichi did.
After seeing Yuichi off, Mitsuyo sat for a while on the staircase outside her apartment. The hard concrete chilled her backside, and from an apartment on the first floor, she could hear a young man soothing a baby.
Finally she couldn’t stand the cold so she headed back to her apartment on the second floor. She opened the door and called out, “I’m back!”
Tamayo, from the bathroom, called out, “You had to work overtime?”
“Uh, yeah,” Mitsuyo answered, and took off her shoes. She went down the hallway to the living room, where she saw a plate on the table. It looked like Tamayo had been eating stew.
“Did you make this yourself?” she asked, turning toward the bathroom, but there was no response.
She slid open the door to her small bedroom. Yuichi must be on the highway already, she thought. She found herself next to the window, pulling aside the lace curtain. A stray cat loped across the spot where she and Yuichi had said goodbye. Just then a car pulled off the main road at a high speed, almost spinning out as it headed in her direction. The cat, about to scurry toward the garbage cans, was illuminated in the bluish headlights.
Mitsuyo instinctively clasped her hands together. “Watch out!” she said to herself. The car came to a halt, just shy of hitting the plastic garbage cans. The cat, shrunk back in the headlights, scampered away.
“Yuichi?”
The car that had skidded to a halt there was definitely his. The headlights illuminated the empty space where the stray cat had been.
Mitsuyo closed the curtains and raced to the front door. She was in such a hurry she couldn’t get her heels into her shoes. As she grabbed her bag, Tamayo called out, “Where are you going?” Mitsuyo didn’t reply and ran out of the apartment.
From the staircase she could see Yuichi inside the dark car, head down against the steering wheel. The car’s headlights shone on the filthy garbage cans. As she ran down the stairs she came to an abrupt stop. Was this all a hallucination? she suddenly wondered. Did I want to see him so much I’m having a hallucination?
Still, as she slowly approached, the gravel crunched under her feet. She rapped on the window with her fingers and as she did Yuichi bolted upright. What’s the matter? she wordlessly mouthed. Yuichi’s eyes as they followed her lips looked like they were gazing at something else, something far away.
Mitsuyo rapped on the glass again, asking with her eyes again the same question, What’s the matter? As if in reply, Yuichi looked away. She tapped the window once more, and Yuichi, clutching the steering wheel, eyes down, slowly opened the door. Mitsuyo took a step back.
Without a word he got out of the car and stood in front of her. Looking up at him, Mitsuyo again asked, “What’s wrong?”
A car rushed by on the main road; the weeds along the road whipped in the blast of air. Yuichi suddenly grabbed her and held her tight. It was so quick that Mitsuyo let out a short cry.
“I wish I’d met you earlier,” he said as he held her against his chest. “If I’d met you earlier, none of this would have happened…”
“What do you mean?”
“Please get in the car, okay?”
“Huh?”
“Get in the car!” Yuichi suddenly said roughly, and grabbed Mitsuyo’s arm, pulling her around to the passenger side.
“What is going on?” Mitsuyo tried to pull away, her heels digging into the gravel.
“Just get in!”
Almost holding her under his arm, Yuichi opened the passenger door. With both doors open, the wind rushed through, carrying out the heated air from inside.
“Wait-wait a second!” Mitsuyo said, resisting. She didn’t mind so much getting in the car, but she wanted to know why.
“What is up with you? Tell me!”
As he pressed her down, Mitsuyo grabbed his wrist. After his harsh words, and the rough treatment, Mitsuyo was surprised to feel his trembling wrist feel so frail.
Yuichi shoved her inside, slammed the door shut, and hurried around to the driver’s side. He almost tumbled inside and, breathing raggedly, he released the parking brake. The tires sprayed gravel as he shot down the path. He roared past the vacant lot in front of the apartment building and turned sharply to the left. As he turned, he nearly crashed into a car coming from the opposite direction, and Mitsuyo screamed.
They barely missed the other car and sped down the dark path through the rice fields.
Fusae turned off the light in the bedroom, sat up in her futon, and, without making a sound, crawled over toward the window. With a trembling hand she parted the curtain a bit. Outside the window was a cinder-block wall with a few blocks missing, and through the holes she could see the narrow road in front. The patrol car that had been outside was gone now. Instead, a black car was parked there, and in the light from inside the car she could see a young plainclothes detective talking on a cell phone.
An hour before, Fusae had called Yuichi, the local patrolman and the plainclothes detective standing in front of her as she did. She could barely follow their directions to call him. Before she called, they warned her not to let him know they were there, but she’d blurted it out. When he heard this, Yuichi hung up.
It was all so unexpected. They’d all thought the Fukuoka college student was the murderer, but he wasn’t. Even so, she still couldn’t understand why the police had come here again.
“Yuichi has nothing to do with this,” she insisted, her voice trembling, but the police wouldn’t relent. “Just call his cell phone,” they told her. The instant she let slip that the police were there, they couldn’t hide their anger and disappointment. This is one worthless old lady, they must have thought, and their expressions were exactly like those of the men who had forced her to buy the Chinese herbal medicine. The irritated men who told her just to Sign it already!
She took her hand from the curtain. Usually the only sound she heard in this neighborhood was the waves, but now, with several strangers hanging around outside, she could sense their presence, even with the windows closed.
She closed the curtains and crouched down next to the wall. It seemed as though the wall were shaking, but she knew it was her. If she stayed still, the shaking would only get worse; she was about to faint. The Fukuoka college student they’d arrested apparently hadn’t murdered that young woman. He’d taken her to the pass-that much was certain-but what he said about events after that didn’t make sense. He said that before he gave her a ride she’d been at Higashi Park, in another man’s car, a car with Nagasaki plates. Apparently the other man looked like Yuichi.
In the dark kitchen, Fusae lowered the phone from its shelf and cradled it. She lifted the receiver and, still trembling, dialed Norio’s house. The phone rang for a long time, and finally Norio came on, sounding sleepy.
“Hello? It’s me, Fusae. Were you asleep?” Norio sounded out of sorts and Fusae spoke quickly.
When Norio realized who it was, he grew tense. “Did something happen to Katsuji?”
“No, that’s not it,” Fusae said. But the next words wouldn’t come. She realized she was sobbing.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” Norio asked. His wife sleeping next to him must have woken up, for Fusae heard him explain to her, “It’s Auntie Fusae. I don’t know… No, it isn’t Katsuji.”
“Yuichi isn’t coming back…” That was as much as she could get out between sobs.
“Yuichi? What do you mean he isn’t coming back? Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. The police are here and I don’t know what’s going on.”
“The police? Was he in an accident?”
“No. But I just don’t understand…”
“What don’t you understand?”
“I called him and told him the police were here and he hung right up… If he wasn’t involved in the murder he wouldn’t hang up like that.”
As he listened to Fusae’s tearful voice, Norio crawled out of his futon, slipped on a cardigan, and looked over at his wife, Michiyo.
“I’ll come over,” he said. “I can’t follow what you’re saying over the phone. Just stay put. I’ll be right over.”
Norio hung up and muttered to Michiyo, who looked extremely worried, “Yuichi seems to have gotten himself in some sort of trouble.”
“Something happened to him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he got in a fight or something. Fusae’s crying so much I can’t figure out what’s going on.”
Norio stood up and turned on the fluorescent light. The clock showed eleven-thirty. He took off his pajamas and tossed them on top of the rumpled futon, then reached for the neatly folded work clothes beside his pillow. They’d had the stove on until a short while ago but now, as he stood there in his undershirt, he shivered in the cold.
“I have no idea what happened, but whatever you do, don’t hit Yuichi, okay?” Michiyo said as she helped Norio change his clothes. “We’re supposed to be looking out for him, so you have to be on his side, you hear?”
“Okay! I get it!” Norio growled. Was it a fight? A car accident? Without buttoning his jacket, Norio leaped out of the house. He climbed into his work van and headed for Yuichi’s house. The road was empty of cars at this hour and the lights were green the whole way. Norio felt uneasy. He knew that Katsuji hadn’t died, but the dull agitation he’d felt still had hold of him.
Whether Yuichi had been in a fight or an accident, if he was injured he’d have to take time off from work. I don’t know the details yet, Norio thought, but I’d better get in touch with Yoshioka or Kurami as soon as I can. Tomorrow they’ll have to get to the work site on their own, and I can call them on their cell phones and tell them what they need to do.
As these worries ran through his mind, Norio arrived at the fishing village where Yuichi lived. The moonlit harbor was calm, the fishing boats still. But there were three or four cars he didn’t recognize on the normally deserted pier and a few people milling about, talking. Norio slowed down and drove onto the pier. His headlights shone on the fishing boats and he spotted some uniformed police and residents who had come out to see what was going on.
Norio parked and switched off his lights. He saw a group of locals milling about like the sea bugs that slither over rocks near the ocean. A shiver went through him and he jumped out of his van.
“Hey, Norio!” The residents’ association head was the first to recognize Norio. “What’s up? Something happen with Yuichi?” he asked as he approached, hunching his neck down against the cold.
Someone else behind him spoke to a policeman, saying, “That’s Yuichi’s uncle there!” and as soon as he heard this the young policeman hurried over. “Didn’t the police just come to your place?” he asked, flustered.
“No,” Norio said, shaking his head. “I just got a call from Yuichi’s grandmother and came over as soon as I heard.”
“I see. Well, I guess you must have just missed them.”
“My wife’s at home, though.”
The policeman turned to a patrol car parked some distance off and shouted, “The suspect’s uncle is here!” The door of the patrol car opened and the sound of the static-filled police radio mixed in with the sound of the waves.
“I need to ask you some questions, okay? I understand that Yuichi works for you?’
Before he knew it, Norio was surrounded by police and local residents.
“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to see his grandmother first,” Norio said firmly, cutting them off.
The next morning Mitsuyo withdrew thirty thousand yen from an ATM at a convenience store next to the road. Since graduating from high school ten years earlier, she’d been steadily saving her money, but most was in a CD and her ordinary account had only what she needed from week to week. So after she withdrew thirty thousand, there wasn’t much left.
She put the cash into her purse, went to the checkout stand, and bought two cans of hot tea and three rice balls. As she was paying, she glanced outside and saw Yuichi in his car, parked down the road, staring in her direction.
Mitsuyo left the store and hurried over toward the car, the two cans of hot tea in her hands. Yuichi opened his window and she passed him the tea and then pulled out her cell phone, thinking she had to call her store.
The store’s manager, Mr. Oshiro, answered. Mitsuyo had been sure that Kazuko would answer and she was flustered for a moment, but then she said, in an intentionally subdued voice, “Ah, hello, this is Miss Magome. My father suddenly became ill, so I’m sorry but I need to take the day off.” She was able to smoothly repeat the lines she’d prepared.
“Is that right? I’m sorry to hear that,” she heard her manager say curtly. “Actually, that girl who came for an interview, I’m going to have her start work this afternoon, so I was going to have Miss Kirishima move over from the casual corner to suits.”
She’d called him to ask for a day off and here he was telling her all about personnel changes he was planning.
“If his illness lasts a long time, that could be troublesome. And we’re getting into the year-end bargain sales, too… Anyhow, as soon as you find out any more, be sure to let me know.”
With that, the manager hung up. She’d felt apologetic at first about making the call, but he’d dealt with her so abruptly she felt as if he was making fun of her.
She’d only been standing outside for a few minutes, but the freezing wind had chilled her fingers. As soon as she got in the passenger side of the car, Yuichi handed her a can of hot tea.
“I called work and took the day off,” Mitsuyo said, smiling.
“Sorry ’bout that” was all Yuichi had to say in response.
The night before, after he roared off from the apartment, Yuichi drove by the bypass and down the frontage road toward Takeo. The flat road gradually became hilly, and until they entered the hill country, Yuichi didn’t say a word.
“Where are we going?” They’d been driving for fifteen minutes and Mitsuyo had finally calmed down enough to talk. Still, Yuichi was silent.
“This car is so spotless. Do you clean it yourself?” She couldn’t stand the silence and said this as she stroked the dashboard. The warmth of the dashboard, warmed by the heater, reminded her of Yuichi’s body when he’d held her a few minutes ago.
“On days off, I don’t have much else to do…” They’d been driving for nearly twenty minutes when Yuichi finally spoke. Mitsuyo couldn’t help laughing. He’d been so rough when he forced her to come with him, but now sounded so meek.
“Sometimes I catch a ride to work with the husband of an older woman I work with,” Mitsuyo said, “and his car is like a garbage dump. He says, Come on, get in! Get in! but it’s like, with all the junk where am I supposed to sit?” Mitsuyo laughed at her own words but when she glanced at Yuichi his expression hadn’t changed.
Yuichi suddenly brought the car to a halt just past a tiny village, right at the point where they were about to enter a dark mountain road. He slowed and steered toward the shoulder, the tires crunching gravel. At a break in the guardrail just up ahead was an unpaved path, barely wide enough for a compact car, that stretched up into the hills.
Yuichi kept the engine running but doused the lights. In an instant the world in front of them disappeared. With nothing to be seen outside, Mitsuyo looked over at him. And right then he leaned over and tried to get on top of her.
“What… what are you…?”
The emergency brake got in the way when he tried to find a place for his hand, and Mitsuyo could feel his frustration. Her seat fell back and she brought her legs, which had unconsciously spread wide, back together again.
Yuichi, on top of her, roughly kissed her lips, her chin, her neck. As her body sank back in the seat, it was strange how perfectly it fit her, almost as if she were tied down. Mitsuyo glanced out the window. From her horizontal position she could see the night sky, beyond the black trees. The sky was full of stars.
As Yuichi continued to cover her with kisses, she slowly pushed back on his chest. He clutched her tighter and she pounded on his chest. For a second his arms went limp.
“What’s wrong?” Mitsuyo asked, so close her breath went into his mouth. “I don’t know what happened, but you don’t have to worry. I’ll always be with you.”
She hadn’t rehearsed these words and was surprised at what she’d said. Her words seemed to seep into Yuichi’s skin. On the shoulder of this dark mountain road without a single streetlight, inside their parked car, all that existed were her words, and his skin.
“If you don’t feel like talking about it, I’m okay with that. I’ll just wait until you feel like it.” Mitsuyo slowly pushed him up, away from her, and Yuichi let her have her way.
“I just don’t… know what to do…” he murmured. “I was planning to go home. But I felt like if I said goodbye to you now, I’d never see you again.”
“So you came back?”
“I wanted to be with you. But I didn’t know what I should do to be with you… I didn’t know what to do…”
Mitsuyo pushed her seat up and reached out and touched Yuichi’s ear. They’d been in the warm car for quite a while, but his ear was surprisingly cold to the touch.
“I was planning to take the highway home. But all of a sudden I remembered something from the past.”
“From the past?”
“When I was a kid and my mom took me to see my father. What happened back then.”
He let her finger his ear as he spoke. She could tell something was troubling him, and she wanted more than anything to know what it was. But she felt as though once she did know, Yuichi would disappear from her.
“Let’s just be together,” she said, gently stroking his ear.
Another car drove past, lighting up the dark world outside. The guardrail stretched out far ahead, glaringly white.
“Why don’t we stay somewhere tonight, forget about work tomorrow, and go for a drive instead?” Mitsuyo said. “I mean, we haven’t gone to Yobuko lighthouse yet. The other day we spent the whole time in a hotel.”
Under her hands, Yuichi’s ear grew warm.
Seated on the step that separated the barbershop from their living quarters, bathed in the winter sun, Yoshio Ishibashi stared out at the road. Several days had passed since his daughter’s funeral, but he had yet to reopen his shop. He knew he couldn’t go on like this forever, grieving, and this was the end of the year, besides, usually a busy time for him. But as soon as he thought of reopening, he felt lethargic. If he did reopen, would anybody come? And if they did, he knew they’d talk with him warily, unsure of what to say.
Yoshio roused himself to stand up. All he had to do was take a few steps, go outside, and plug in his barber’s sign-and ordinary, everyday life would return. But reopening the shop wouldn’t bring Yoshino back.
He sat back down and was staring at his feet when there came a knock at the glass door. He looked up and saw the detective from the local precinct who had attended the funeral, face pressed against the glass, peering inside.
Yoshio gave a huge sigh, got to his feet, and trudged over to open the door.
“I’m sorry to bother you so early,” the detective said, his voice overly loud.
“It’s all right,” Yoshio said curtly. “I was just sitting here thinking about reopening the shop.”
“Well, you might have already heard it on the news yesterday, but they found that college student.”
The detective said it so matter-of-factly that at first Yoshio could only respond with a simple, “Oh, is that right?” But then, when it hit him, he raised his voice. “What? What did you say?”
“They located that college student in Nagoya.”
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?!”
“The thing is, we had to look into something last night, and we didn’t want to get in touch until we’d got everything straightened out.”
Yoshio had a bad feeling about this. Arresting that college student should mean they’d caught Yoshino’s killer, but the detective didn’t seem excited by events.
Yoshio sensed something behind him, and turned and saw his wife, Satoko, on all fours peering out in their direction.
“Ah, hello, Mrs. Ishibashi. Well, from what the college student has told us, and the facts at the scene, it would appear he is not the perpetrator. Though we are certain that he took your daughter to Mitsuse Pass.” The detective rattled on quickly so he wouldn’t be interrupted.
Before Yoshio realized it, Satoko had come out to the entrance and was seated formally there, legs tucked neatly beneath her. Yoshio clutched the white barber’s coat in his hands and said, “What-what do you mean the college student isn’t the criminal? You have to tell us everything!” Yoshio looked about ready to grab the detective by the collar, but Satoko reached out and clutched his hand.
“Well, we’ve established that the college student did drive your daughter to Mitsuse Pass. She ran into him at the park near the building where she lives.”
“By run into him, you mean she was planning to meet him there?”
“No. Masuo… I mean the college student… according to him, your daughter was meeting someone else there and just happened to meet up with him.”
“Who is this other person?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out. According to what this college student told us, there was definitely another person involved. He told us what this other man looked like and the type of car he was driving.”
“So-what happened to Yoshino?” As Yoshio shouted this, Satoko shot the detective a solemn glance and began stroking her husband’s back.
“They drove to Mitsuse Pass. There they apparently got into an argument and that man…”
“What? What did he do?” This time it was Satoko, not Yoshio, who fired back.
“The man forced your daughter to get out of the car.”
“In the pass, where there’s nobody around? Why would he…” Satoko looked about to cry, and now it was Yoshio who stroked her back.
“They apparently quarreled, and he pushed your daughter, and then her neck…”
Unable to bear it any longer, Satoko began to quietly sob.
“Rest assured, we grilled the college student thoroughly. He ended up blubbering and it was pretty pathetic. But he’s definitely not the one who killed her. The finger marks left on your daughter’s throat were larger than those of the college student’s hands. The difference between a child’s hands and those of an adult…”
The detective stopped speaking and Yoshio sat there, glaring at him.
“So who was my daughter meeting, then? Don’t hide anything from me. Was it someone from one of those dating sites or…” He couldn’t go on.
After the detective had finished his explanation and left, Yoshio slumped down in one of the barber chairs. Satoko, still seated formally at the entrance, was wringing her hands and sobbing.
Our daughter is killed and she cries, he thought. They can’t find the criminal and she cries, and she cries when it turns out the suspect is innocent.
According to the detective, Yoshino was supposed to meet a blond man with a white car. Yet she lied to her colleagues from work, and when she left them told them she was meeting this college student named Keigo Masuo. And even though she was meeting this other man, she only exchanged a few words with him and went with Masuo, whom she’d run into by accident.
They were talking about his daughter, the daughter he’d raised, but when Yoshio reviewed the events of that night, he just couldn’t picture Yoshino being part of it. It felt like someone else, some unknown woman who’d been pretending to be Yoshino.
When the two of them arrived at Mitsuse Pass they got into some kind of argument. Yoshio had no idea what they argued about, but that guy literally kicked my daughter out of the car, he thought. On that dark, deserted mountain road-he kicked my daughter out!
The detective had said they didn’t know yet exactly what happened after that. The chances were good that the man she was waiting for in Higashi Park knew something about it.
Yoshio had been sure all the time that the college student had done it. He’d promised himself that when they caught him he’d kill him himself, with his own hands, right in front of his rich parents with their high-priced inns.
Yoshio realized that he’d been hoping that this college student was indeed the murderer. Otherwise, he thought, my daughter has been snatched away by some unknown man, some man she met in an indecent way. My daughter isn’t the type of girl that TV programs and magazines should find amusing. She just happened to meet some stupid college student and got killed by him. She wasn’t like those disgusting girls you see on TV and in the magazines all the time. She couldn’t be! Satoko and I didn’t raise her like that. The daughter we raised so lovingly-there’s no way she could be like all those idiots on TV.
Yoshio took the white barber’s coat he’d been clutching and flung it at the mirror he’d been staring at. The coat just spread out and barely grazed it.
Yoshio got to his feet and leaped out of the shop. If he sat there any longer, he knew he was going to scream. As he closed the front door he heard Satoko calling out “Honey!” to him, but Yoshio was already running.
Yuichi drove through Tosu and then toward Yobuko. The scenery flowing past changed, but they never seemed to get anywhere. When the interstate ended, it connected up with the prefectural highway, and past that were city and local roads. Mitsuyo had a road atlas spread out on the dashboard. She flipped through the maps and saw that the highways and roads were all color-coded. Interstates were orange, prefectural highways were green, local roads were blue, and smaller roads were white. The countless roads were a net, a web that had caught them and the car they were in. All she was doing was taking off from work and going for a drive with a guy she liked, but the more they tried to run away, the more the web of roads pursued them.
To shake off this bad feeling, Mitsuyo snapped the book shut. Yuichi glanced over at the sound and she lied, saying, “Looking at maps in the car makes me feel kind of queasy.”
“I know the way to Yobuko,” he said.
That morning, after they’d left the love hotel and eaten the rice balls they’d bought at the convenience store, Mitsuyo had asked him, “Shouldn’t you call your work and let them know you won’t be in?”
“No, it’s okay” was all he said, shaking his head and avoiding her eyes.
She knew it didn’t make up for Yuichi not calling, but Mitsuyo phoned her sister, who was already at work.
“Oh, thank goodness!” she said. “I was thinking that if you didn’t get in touch today, I might have to call the police.” She sounded both relieved and angry.
“I’m really sorry,” Mitsuyo said. “A whole bunch of things happened-nothing to worry about, though. Anyway, I’ll tell you all about it when I get home.”
“You mean you’ll be back today?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? I thought you might be at work, so I phoned your store. Mrs. Mizutani said, Gee, sorry to hear about your father. I played along, but come on, Mitsuyo…”
“Sorry. Thanks for covering for me.”
“What’s happened? You gotta tell me.”
“I don’t know… I just wanted to take a day off. You’ve done that yourself, right? Remember when you were a caddie and played hooky from work?”
Yuichi was listening intently to this conversation as he drove.
“Is that all?” Tamayo asked, still not totally convinced.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Mitsuyo insisted.
“Well, okay then… But, where are you?”
“I’m on a drive.”
“A drive? With who?”
“With who? Well, it’s sort of…” She hadn’t meant to do so, but she realized her voice had softened, making it obvious to her sister that she was with a man.
Picking up on this, Tamayo said, more loudly this time, “No! Are you kidding me? When did this happen?”
“I’ll tell you all about it when I get back,” Mitsuyo replied.
They had just entered Yobuko Harbor, where there were stands lining the road selling dried squid.
Tamayo still wanted more information, but Mitsuyo cut her off and was about to hang up, when she heard Tamayo say, “Is it somebody I know?”
“See ya,” Mitsuyo said, and hung up.
They parked in the parking lot away from the harbor, and when they got out of the car they were hit by a blast of cold wind from the sea. There were several more stands near the parking lot, and the wind blew the strands of dried squid hanging down.
Mitsuyo shivered. “The food there is really good,” she said to Yuichi as they got out of the car. She pointed to a bed-and-breakfast-cum-restaurant next to the seaside.
When Yuichi didn’t reply she turned to him, and he suddenly murmured, “Thank you.”
“Huh?” Mitsuyo said, holding down her hair in the sea wind.
“For being with me the whole day,” Yuichi said. He was still clutching the car keys tightly.
“But I told you yesterday. How I’d always be with you.”
“Thanks… Let’s eat some squid over there and then drive out to see the lighthouse. It’s kind of a small lighthouse, but they have a little park there with a great view from the end of it. And it’s nice just to walk there.” Yuichi had hardly said a word in the car, but now the words poured out of him.
“Okay.”
The sudden change in him left Mitsuyo at a loss for words. A young couple in another car drove into the parking lot, and Mitsuyo took Yuichi’s arm to guide him out of the way so the other car could pass.
“Is squid really all they have?” Yuichi asked cheerfully, as if something had been opened inside of him.
Taken by surprise, Mitsuyo nodded, “Ah, yeah,” and went on to explain the menu. “You start off with squid sashimi, then they have deep-fried legs or tempura…”
It wasn’t yet noon but the restaurant was filling up. The tables on the first floor, which ringed a tank of live fish, were full, so when Mitsuyo told the middle-aged waitress in her white apron that there were just the two of them, she urged them to try the second floor.
They went up the stairs and removed their shoes. They were led down a creaky hallway to a dining room with a large window overlooking the sea. The room would probably fill up soon, but at this point it was empty, with eight tables lined up on the worn-out tatami. Mitsuyo went straight to a table by the window. Yuichi, seated across from her, couldn’t keep his eyes off the scene of the harbor below them. There were rows of squid-fishing boats, and far off, beyond the breakwater, the surface of the sea glittered in the winter sun, white-caps leaping about. Even with the window closed they could hear the sound of the waves breaking against the wharf.
“The view’s much better from here than on the first floor,” Mitsuyo said as she wiped her hands with the hot towels. “We kind of lucked out.”
“Have you been here before?” Yuichi asked.
“My sister and I came here a couple of times, but we were always on the first floor. The first floor’s okay, though, with the live-fish tank and everything.”
The waitress brought them hot tea and Mitsuyo ordered two set lunches. As she turned to look at the scenery outside Yuichi murmured, “It reminds me of my neighborhood.”
“Oh, that’s right. Your house is on a harbor, isn’t it?”
“Not a harbor like this, just a fishing village.”
“You’re lucky. I love this scenery. You know they have those articles in magazines that introduce fancy restaurants in Hakata or Tokyo? Every time I see the seafood in those articles, I think, I bet it’s expensive and doesn’t taste half as good as the squid in Yobuko.”
“But don’t girls like that kind of restaurant?”
“My younger sister always wants to go that famous French place in Tenjin, I forget the name. I like places like this. The food’s so much better. On TV they’d probably say the food here is second-rate gourmet fare or something. I can’t stand that. ’Cause the ingredients here are great.”
Mitsuyo got all this out in a burst of enthusiasm. Without realizing it, she was getting increasingly excited at the prospect of skipping work and having the whole day free. She suddenly noticed that Yuichi’s shoulders were trembling and his eyes were red.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. Yuichi’s fists were balled tight on the tabletop and were audibly shaking.
“I-I killed someone.”
“What?!”
“I’m sorry…”
For a moment she couldn’t grasp what he was saying. “What?” she repeated, startled. Yuichi just looked down, clenching his fists and didn’t say another word. His eyes were tearful, his shoulders trembling. Mitsuyo stared at his tightly clenched fists on the cheap tabletop. She could see them, right in front of her.
“Wait a second. What are you telling me?” Mitsuyo reached out her own hand but then, confused, pulled it back. It felt like somebody else’s hand.
“You killed somebody?” she said. Outside the window was the calm harbor. The fishing boats bobbed in the water, their lines creaking.
“I know I should have told you before this. But I couldn’t. When I was with you, it felt like all of this might disappear. Though I knew it wouldn’t… I wanted to be with you today, just one more day together with you. Yesterday I was thinking of telling you in the car, but I didn’t know if I could get the whole story out.” Yuichi’s voice trembled terribly, as if shaking in the waves.
“Before I met you I knew another girl. She lived in Hakata…” He paused after each word. For some reason Mitsuyo recalled the pier they’d just been walking along. It was beautiful off in the distance, but now she saw all the garbage floating there, washed by the waves. A plastic bottle of laundry detergent, a filthy Styrofoam box. A single beach sandal.
“I got to know her through the Internet and met her a few times. She told me if I wanted to see her I had to pay for it…”
Just then the fusuma slid open and the middle-aged waitress in her apron came in carrying a large serving plate.
“Sorry it took so long.”
She placed the heavy-looking plate on the table.
“You can use the soy sauce on the table there.”
The white plate was heaped high with colorful seaweed, on top of which was an entire squid. Its body was translucent, clear through to the seaweed below. Its silvery, metallic-looking eyes were unfocused and stared into space. Its legs alone were still writhing, as if they could escape from the plate.
“The legs and whatever else you leave we’ll make into tempura or deep-fry for you,” the waitress explained, giving the table a tap for emphasis, and then she stood up. They thought she was about to leave, but she suddenly turned to them. “I see I haven’t gotten your drink orders yet,” she said with a friendly smile. “Shall I bring beer or something?”
Mitsuyo shook her head quickly. “No, we’re fine,” she said, her hands, for some reason, held up as if holding a steering wheel.
The waitress left, keeping the fusuma open behind her. The two of them were alone again in the dining room. Yuichi sat there, head hung down, in front of the plate of squid. Though she’d just heard an unbelievable confession from him, Mitsuyo still reached out and, almost without thinking, poured soy sauce into two smaller plates.
She stared at the two plates with soy sauce for a moment, unsure what to do, then pushed one in front of Yuichi.
“I don’t know where to begin,” Yuichi murmured as he stared at the plate. He paused. “That night that girl and I had made a date to meet. In a place called Higashi Park in Hakata.”
As he began, Mitsuyo found herself wanting to ask questions, but she held back. What kind of woman was she? How many times had they met before this? Yuichi’s story tumbled out in bursts, and in the gaps, Mitsuyo thought of one question after another. Finally she asked, “When did all this happen?”
Yuichi looked up. He tried to reply, but his lips were trembling so much he couldn’t form the words.
“Before I met you…” he managed to say. “Remember when you sent me e-mails? It was before that…”
“You mean the first message?”
Yuichi shook his head listlessly.
“I didn’t know what to do back then… I couldn’t sleep, it was terrible, and I wanted to talk with somebody… And then you started e-mailing me…”
They could hear the waitress greeting newly arrived customers down the corridor.
“That night I made a date to meet her, but she made a date to meet another guy at the same place. ‘I don’t have time to see you tonight,’ she said, and got in this other guy’s car. And they took off somewhere… I felt like she was laughing at me and I couldn’t stand it, so I followed them…”
On the table in front of them, the squid’s legs were squirming and writhing.
The night was cold, so cold he could see his breath.
In his rearview mirror he saw Yoshino, walking along the path by the park. Yuichi gave his horn a tap to signal her. Startled by the sound, Yoshino stopped for a moment, stared ahead of her, and then hurried over. It all happened quickly. She didn’t run to his car, but ran right past him. Flustered, he turned to see where she was going and saw her run up to a man he’d never seen before.
Yoshino grabbed the man’s arm in a friendly way and started to talk with him. The whole time the man was looking over in Yuichi’s direction with this spiteful look in his eyes. It must be a coincidence, her meeting him here. Once she said hello, she’d come back to him.
As he expected, Yoshino soon walked over. Yuichi was about to open the passenger door, but anticipating this, Yoshino picked up the pace, opened the door herself, and said, “Sorry. Tonight’s not going to work out. Just transfer the money to my account. I’ll e-mail you the info later.”
Then she slammed the door shut and almost skipped back to where the other man was. It happened so quickly. So quickly he had no time to even open his mouth, let alone figure out how he felt.
The man standing in the road wasn’t looking at Yoshino as she approached, but at Yuichi, staring at him. He seemed to be smiling, laughing at Yuichi, but Yuichi couldn’t tell if that was just the way the light from the streetlight hit him.
Yoshino got in the man’s car without glancing back at Yuichi. The car was a dark blue Audi A6, the kind Yuichi could never afford no matter what kind of loan he put together. The car headed down the empty, tree-lined road beside the park, its exhaust white in the freezing night air.
I’ve been abandoned, Yuichi realized. The little scene had been so abrupt. He felt his blood boil beneath his skin, as if his whole body were engorged by anger.
Yuichi stepped on the accelerator and sped away. The man’s car was up ahead at an intersection, about to turn left. Yuichi had shot off so fast it almost appeared that he intended to ram the other car from behind. Actually what he had in mind was to cut it off from the front and grab Yoshino to get her back. It was less an articulate thought, though, than a physical reaction.
After turning at the intersection, the man’s car headed straight toward the next light. Yuichi stepped on the gas, but the light changed and cars started to move in from both sides. There weren’t so many of them, though, and when there was break in the traffic he sped through the intersection, ignoring the red light. About a hundred meters later he caught up with the car carrying Yoshino.
Yuichi gunned his engine as if he was going to rear-end the other car, but right as he got up to it, he changed his mind. He was still enraged, but knew that hitting the other car would damage his own.
He sped up and pulled alongside the man’s car. As he drove, he glanced over at the car and saw Yoshino in the passenger seat, beaming as she talked to the man. All he needed was a word of apology from her. It was Yoshino who broke their date and he wanted her to tell him she was sorry.
The road headed toward the Tenjin shopping district. Yuichi slowed down and continued to shadow the car. Several other cars pulled into the space separating them, but by the time they reached the road heading to Mitsuse Pass, no other cars came between them, even when Yuichi opened up the gap.
Occasional streetlights lit up the red mailboxes and neighborhood notice boards along the dark street. The road started to rise, and Yuichi followed the headlights as they palely illuminated the pavement. It looked as if a clump of light were ascending the narrow mountain road.
Yuichi followed, maintaining an even distance. With each curve, the car’s red taillights looked brighter, and each time they lit up, they dyed the forest ahead a deep red. The man was driving fast, but was a poor driver. Even with curves that weren’t so sharp, the guy stepped on his brakes right away. And each time he did, Yuichi’s car got closer. Yuichi made sure to slow down, and the man’s car pulled farther ahead of him. Still, though, every time it rounded a curve on the dark road, Yuichi could spot the car’s lights through the thick trees.
The car came to an abrupt stop just near the top of the pass. Yuichi hurriedly braked and switched off his headlights. In the darkness, the red taillights looked like gigantic, glaring red eyes.
Hands on the wheel, Yuichi stared at those red eyes in the woods. It was as if only the pass itself were breathing. A moment later, the interior light of the other car came on, and the shadows of the man and Yoshino were moving. It all happened quickly. The door opened and Yoshino was getting out. The man kicked her in the back. Yoshino was like an animal struck by a car. She collapsed by the side of the road and struck her head sharply on the guardrail.
The man’s car shot away, leaving Yoshino crouching down, facing away from the guardrail. For a second Yuichi wasn’t sure what he’d just witnessed, and was about to take off after the man’s car. But as soon as he’d released his parking brake he could picture Yoshino, left behind beside the road. Lit up by his red taillights, Yoshino looked as if she were on fire. Yuichi hurriedly set his parking brake again. He yanked it so sharply there was a weird sound from the undercarriage.
Once the man’s car rounded the next curve up ahead, all color faded from the scene. Yoshino’s red-dyed figure was about to be swallowed up by the darkness of the pass. Yuichi wasn’t sure how much time had gone by after the man’s car drove off, but he nervously turned on his headlights. The lights didn’t quite reach to where she was crouched down, but it helped more than the weak winter moonlight.
He released his parking brake again and lightly stepped on the accelerator. The bluish headlights inched down the road toward Yoshino as slowly as water soaking into a cloth. When the headlights finally reached her, she looked up fearfully, squinting into the brightness. Yuichi set his parking brake again and opened his door. Yoshino clutched her handbag defensively.
“Are you okay?” Yuichi called out, but his voice was swallowed up in the dark pass. The only sound was that of the car engine, like the earth rumbling in the distance.
As Yuichi stepped into the light, Yoshino’s expression changed.
“What are you doing here? Did you follow me? Just quit it!” she yelled, clutching her handbag to her and crouching by the roadside.
“Are you-okay?” Despite her yells, Yuichi continued to approach her, reaching out to help her to her feet. But Yoshino brushed away his hand.
“You saw it all?” she said. “You’re unbelievable!” She struggled to her feet.
“What happened?” Yuichi asked. As she staggered to her feet in her high-heeled boots, Yuichi took her hand, which felt as if pebbles were embedded in it.
“Nothing happened! I don’t have to tell you anything!” She brushed away his hand and started to walk off. Yuichi took her arm again.
“Why don’t you get in the car. I’ll give you a ride home.” When he said this, Yoshino glanced toward his car. The two of them stood there in the headlights, as if this were the entire world.
Yuichi tugged at her arm and she shouted, “Enough already! Leave me alone!” She shook free.
“You can’t walk back from here!” Yuichi retorted, pulling her arm hard. His timing was off and the movement made Yoshino, who was starting to walk, slip. She lost her balance, and fell right in front of the car. Yuichi reached out hurriedly to support her but his elbow pushed her right in the back. Yoshino twisted in a strange way and banged right into the grille of the car. As she reached out to break her fall, her little finger got stuck between the front of the car and the bumper.
“Ouch!” her scream echoed, enough to send a flock of birds sleeping in the dark woods shooting into the air.
“Are you okay?” Yuichi hurriedly tried to lift her up. Yoshino’s finger was still stuck. He put his arms under her sides and tried to lift her up again, but as he did so she screamed and her little finger bent back at an awful angle.
It all had happened in an instant. The blood drained from her face, lit by the bright headlights as she crouched there, and each single hair on her head stood on end.
“I… I’m sorry… I’m really sorry.”
Yoshino, her faced twisted in pain, finally pried her finger loose, and clenched her teeth. “You murderer!” she screamed the moment Yuichi rested his hand on her shoulder. He pulled away.
“You murderer!” she screamed. “I’m going to tell the police! Tell them you assaulted me and kidnapped me. How you kidnapped me and almost raped me! We have a lawyer in our family, so don’t think you can get away with this! I’m not the kind of woman to go out with a guy like you! You’re a murderer!”
Yuichi knew it was all a lie, but he found his knees shaking.
When she’d gotten it all out, Yoshino started to walk away, holding her injured finger. Once away from the car, her figure was sucked up into the blackness of the pass.
“Hey-hold on a second,” Yuichi called out, but she walked on.
As the sound of footsteps grew farther away in the darkness, Yuichi ran after her.
“Don’t lie like that! I didn’t do anything!”
As he shouted this and ran toward her, Yoshino halted, and turned around. “You better believe I’m going to tell them!” she yelled. “I’m going to tell them how you kidnapped me and raped me!” Even though he was in a mountain pass in the middle of winter, Yuichi’s ears were filled with the loud buzzing of cicadas echoing from all the hills. A buzzing so loud he wanted to block out the noise.
He didn’t know what he was afraid of. She hadn’t been kidnapped or raped. He knew it was a lie, but he turned pale as if he had really committed these crimes. You’re lying! That’s a lie! he desperately shouted inside his mind, but instead he heard the pass whisper back:
Who will ever believe you? Who in the world will ever believe you?
The only thing there was the dark mountain pass. There weren’t any other witnesses. There’s nobody to testify that I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything! He could picture himself trying to explain things to his grandmother. Himself, shouting out, I didn’t do anything! to the people surrounding him. He recalled his voice when he was a child at the ferryboat dock, explaining, My mom will be coming back! His voice when nobody believed him.
Yuichi grabbed Yoshino’s shoulder.
“Don’t touch me!”
As she pushed him away, her arm hit Yuichi’s ear. Pain shot through him as if he’d been struck by a metal rod. Instinctively, he grabbed her arm. As she struggled to get away, he pushed her down until he was sitting on top of her on the chilly pavement. Yoshino’s face in the moonlight was twisted in anger.
“I didn’t do anything.”
He held down her shoulders. In a voice at once pained and snarling, she shouted back, “Who’s ever going to believe you! You murderer! Help!” Yoshino’s screams shook the trees in the pass. Every time she screamed, Yuichi’s body trembled in fright. If someone ever heard these lies of hers…
“But I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything.”
Yuichi shut his eyes. He was desperately pressing down on her throat, so frightened he couldn’t help it. No one could ever hear these lies she was spouting. He had to kill these lies quickly or else the truth itself would die. And the thought terrified him.
Several squid-fishing boats were tied up at the wharf. The lines that tied them up were slack, and schools of small fish swam up from the bottom of their hulls. A moment ago, a little girl had pedaled her tricycle over to where Mitsuyo and Yuichi stood on the wharf, then pedaled back to where her mother was at one of the stands.
Mitsuyo and Yuichi had left the restaurant without finishing their meal. By the time Yuichi had finished his story, the squirming legs of the freshly prepared squid on the platter had gone limp. Fortunately, no other guests had come into the second-floor dining hall. The middle-aged waitress, however, had checked in on them a few times.
When he finished speaking, Yuichi had simply said, “I’m sorry,” in a small voice. Mitsuyo was silent and he went on. “I’m turning myself in now,” he said.
Mitsuyo nodded, her mind blank.
Just then, the waitress came over and asked, “You’re not that fond of sashimi, then?”
“It’s not that,” Mitsuyo lied. “I’m just not feeling very well.”
Mitsuyo stood up and Yuichi looked at her, resigned. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. Yuichi was amazed; he had expected her to leave him there. When they apologized to the waitress for leaving all the food, she said, “It’s okay. It’s on the house.”
They left the restaurant and walked along the wharf where the boats were anchored. Without really realizing it, they were heading toward the parking lot. On one level, Mitsuyo knew she was going to get into his car, the car of a man who’d murdered someone, but as she walked along the cold, windswept wharf, there seemed to be nowhere else to go. She was amazed at herself for having listened to him to the end, without screaming, without getting up and running away. What he told her had been too overwhelming, so overwhelming that her mind wouldn’t function.
As they came to the end of the wharf, Mitsuyo stopped and looked down at all the garbage bobbing up against the wharf.
“I’m going to go to the police right now.”
Staring down at the flotsam, Mitsuyo nodded.
“I’m really sorry. I never meant to cause any problems for you, Mitsuyo…”
Mitsuyo nodded again before he’d finished. The little girl on her tricycle was pedaling over to them again. A pink ribbon tied to the handlebars looked about to rip off in the cold, stiff wind.
The girl pedaled between them and started back to her mother at the squid stall. Mitsuyo watched her, pedaling furiously away.
“Forgive me,” Yuichi said, bowing to her and heading off alone to the parking lot. His back looked as if it had shrunk one whole size. As if he would break down in tears if she touched him.
“Which police station are you going to?” Mitsuyo called out.
Yuichi turned around. “I don’t know. I guess if we go into Karatsu there must be a station somewhere,” he said.
What do you care? part of her mentally shouted. Get out of here as quick as you can. But she also felt terribly frustrated. She had to say something.
“Don’t leave me here alone,” Mitsuyo said. “If you leave me here by myself, what’ll I do? I’ll go with you, to the police. We can go together.”
A blast of wind from the sea blew her words away. Yuichi stared at her intently. And then, without a word, he started walking away again.
“Wait!” Mitsuyo shouted, and Yuichi halted.
“I can’t let you do that. You’ll get in trouble,” he said without turning around.
“I already am in trouble!” she shouted. A middle-aged woman cleaning squid on the other side of the road shot them a glance.
Without replying Yuichi set off again and Mitsuyo ran after him. She’d wanted to say something, but not that.
When he reached the parking lot Yuichi stopped, and clenched his fists as his shoulders shook.
“Why did things turn out like this?” he moaned.
The sound of Yuichi’s crying drowned out the slap of the waves against the breakwaters. Mitsuyo walked around in front of him and took his tightly clenched fists in her hands.
“Let’s go to the police,” she said. “We’ll go together… You’re scared, aren’t you? To go alone? I’ll go with you. If we’re together… if we’re together I know you can make it.”
Yuichi’s hands trembled in hers. He nodded again and again. “Yeah… yeah…” he said, and she could feel him trembling, and feel each nod.
It was past two p.m. when it started to get cloudy. After he heard the detective’s explanation, Yoshio Ishibashi had run out of his shop, walked the three minutes to the parking lot where he rented a space, and got in his car. Where he was headed, though, he had no idea.
The Fukuoka college student wasn’t the murderer after all. Instead, it was some man she’d met on an online dating site. That’s what the police had told him, but he still wasn’t convinced. He wasn’t even convinced that his daughter had been part of all this. It had to be some kind of mistake. Somebody, for whatever motive, must be out to get them.
Yoshino is still alive somewhere, he told himself. Waiting for me to come and rescue her… but I don’t know where she is. Everybody I ask keeps telling me she’s dead.
He drove aimlessly. He knew these streets well, but through his tears Kurume looked like a place he’d never seen before.
His car was one that Yoshino had picked out, back when she’d just entered high school. He’d told her he didn’t want any bright colors, but she kept insisting he had to get a red car. “Red is so cute!” she’d said. He finally compromised, buying a light-green compact.
The day the car was delivered, they took a picture of the three of them posed in front of it. Yoshino was overjoyed, and no matter how much Yoshio tried to persuade her, she wouldn’t allow him to remove the plastic protective sheets over the seats.
He drove aimlessly for hours around Kurume. He just wanted to see Yoshino. He wanted to know where she was. He could hear her voice, calling out for help, but where his daughter was, he had no idea.
Before he knew it, he was heading toward Mitsuse Pass. He drove out of Kurume onto the highway, crossed the river, and suddenly realized he was driving down a road through the fields in the Saga plains. Before him lay the mountains of the Sefuri range.
The weather started to cloud up right about the time he stopped at a gas station. He went to the restroom as they were filling up his gas tank, and from the small window he saw the dark rain clouds moving in over the mountains. The clouds spread out until they hid the peak of the pass and began to approach the plain where Yoshio was.
It began to sprinkle right as he left the restroom. There was an outdoor sink, but he didn’t wash his hands there and instead sprinted for his car, whose gas tank was full now. A girl about the same age as Yoshino trotted over and handed him the receipt. It was wet with the rain. Yoshio paid her and pulled out. In the rearview mirror he could see the girl in the rain, standing there, bowing as he left.
It began to pour just as he started up the road to the pass. The low rain clouds covering the sky turned the road dark and gloomy.
Yoshio switched on his headlights. Beyond the wipers he could see the pale asphalt road rising up. Rain lashed his windshield and his wipers moved so quickly that it looked as if they would blow away.
The headlights of cars descending from the pass lit up the beads of rain on the windshield. The rain drowned out the sound of his engine, and even from inside the car, all Yoshio could hear was the sound of rain whipping against the trees.
On the day of Yoshino’s funeral his cousin, who worked in a factory in Kurume, had said, “Someday I’d like to light some incense in memory of Yoshino at the spot where she died.” So many things had happened to him so quickly, and Yoshio couldn’t reply at the time, but one of his female relatives had added, “If you go, I’d like to go, too. And place some flowers there, and some of the sweets that Yoshino liked…”
He knew they were only being kind to him, but it felt to Yoshio as if accepting their kindness would mean saying goodbye to Yoshino forever.
“I’m not going” was all he said to them. His relatives fell silent.
He couldn’t recall when it was, but at some point after the funeral, he saw a scene on TV picturing flowers and cans of juice lined up at the site of the murder. Perhaps his relatives had quietly visited the site after all, or maybe complete strangers had gone to offer flowers to Yoshino, who had been the brunt of so much criticism. When Yoshio had seen this, he sobbed. The criticism of Yoshino in the press and on TV had been indirect, but the obscene faxes and letters he’d received were anything but.
Sorry your prostitute daughter was killed? She asked for it.
I slept with your daughter once. ¥500 for the night.
No wonder that girl was murdered. Prostitution’s against the law.
You should have sent her more spending money!
Some of them were handwritten, others printed from a computer. It had gotten to the point where Yoshio was afraid when the mailman arrived every morning. He’d disconnected the phone, but still heard it ringing in his dreams. It seemed as if the whole country hated his daughter, as if everyone in Japan despised him and his family.
The rain grew stronger as he climbed the pass. The fog was thick, mist accumulating a few dozen meters in front of his car.
Just before the entrance to the Mitsuse Tunnel, there was a sign indicating the old road. The sign loomed up for an instant, as if someone had momentarily blown away the fog with their breath.
Yoshio hurriedly turned and started down the narrow old road. As the road narrowed even more, it felt as if his small car would be engulfed in the cascade of water rushing down the cliffs. The rain washing down the face of the mountain struck the cracked asphalt and then plunged to the cliffs below.
On the main road he’d passed a few other cars, but on this older road, he saw not a single one. The guardrail protruded, as if there’d been an accident. And that’s when his headlights lit up the bouquets and plastic bottles lined up on the ground. The bouquets, wrapped in clear plastic wrap, seemed about to be swept away in the rain. Yoshio slowly braked. In the fog, these items placed in memory of his daughter somehow stood up to the pounding rain.
He reached for the umbrella that had slipped to the floor in the backseat, and stepped out into the downpour. The car engine was still running, but all he could hear was the roar of the rain, as if he’d wandered behind a waterfall.
The umbrella was heavy as the rain beat down on it, and the cold rain stung his cheeks and neck. Yoshio stood in front of the offerings lit by his headlights. The flowers were wilted, and the stuffed porpoise toy that someone had left was drowning in muddy water.
Yoshio picked up the soaked toy. He hadn’t meant to grip it so hard but found cold water dripping between his fingers. He knew he was crying, but in the cold driving rain he couldn’t feel the tears flow down his cheeks.
“Yoshino…,” he said without thinking. The faint voice turned into white breath and left his lips.
“Daddy’s here, honey… I’m so sorry it took me so long. Daddy’s come to see you. You must be cold. And lonely. But Daddy’s here.”
He couldn’t stop. Once his mouth opened, the words just kept pouring out.
The rain slapped against his vinyl umbrella and flowed to his feet. As it struck near his feet it soaked his dirty sneakers.
“Daddy…”
Suddenly he heard Yoshino’s voice. It wasn’t an illusion, she was clearly calling to him. He spun around. His umbrella slanted to one side but he didn’t care that he was getting soaked.
The headlights of his car shone on the fog. And standing there was Yoshino. She didn’t have an umbrella, but wasn’t wet at all.
“Daddy, you came to see me?” Yoshino was smiling.
“Yeah, I did.” Yoshio nodded.
The downpour was striking his hands and cheeks, but Yoshio no longer felt the cold. The freezing wind blowing down the road, too, went around the light.
“What are you… doing in a place like this?” Yoshio asked. Tears and his dripping nose combined with the rain to flow into his mouth and he could barely get the words out.
“Daddy, you came to see me…” Yoshino, enveloped in light, smiled.
“What… what happened here? What did they do to you? Who did this to you? Who?… Who?…” Unable to bear it any longer, Yoshio broke down and sobbed.
“Daddy…”
“Hmm?… What is it?” Yoshio wiped his tears and runny nose with his wet jacket sleeve.
“Forgive me, Daddy.” In the light, Yoshino looked apologetic. Ever since she was a child this was the sort of look she gave him when she apologized.
“You don’t need to apologize for anything!”
“Daddy… I’m so sorry. I’m sorry you had to go through this…”
“You don’t need to apologize. No matter what, I’m your father. And no matter what, I’ll protect you… I’ll always protect you.”
The sound of the rain whipping against the trees grew louder. As the sound grew, his daughter looked about to disappear, and he yelled out her name. “Yoshino!” Sobbing, he stretched out a hand toward the light and his daughter, fading from view.
In an instant Yoshino had vanished. All that was left was the headlights illuminating the downpour. Calling out her name, Yoshio frantically looked around him. The wet guardrail stretched out around a curve and disappeared, and beyond that was a dense, dripping forest.
He no longer cared that he was drenched. Yoshio ran to where he’d seen Yoshino standing. But the rain-soaked cliffs stood in his way, and the wet grasses brushed his cheeks. Yoshio touched the cold rock face with his hands and called out Yoshino’s name twice. His voice pierced the rocks.
He turned and saw that his umbrella was lying in front of the flower offerings. He hadn’t noticed that it had fallen, but now it was upside down and filled with rain.
Just then it started to get a bit lighter out. He looked up and saw a small patch of blue sky, far off, barely peeking through the thick clouds. Rain continued to spatter at his feet, and his trousers were soaked to the knee with muddy water.
“Yoshino…”
His soaked body was frozen, his breath white.
“You didn’t put Daddy through anything bad. I can put up with anything if it’s for you, honey. If it’s for your sake, Mom and Dad can put up with anything…”
His voice gave out and he knelt down on the soaked pavement.
“Yoshino!” he cried out one last time to the sky. But no matter how long he waited, she did not appear again on the foggy mountain road.
It kept on raining and his wet clothes were heavy.
Daddy, I’m so sorry.
Trembling now in the cold, Yoshio heard his daughter’s voice again in his ear. “Yoshino…” he murmured once more. The name fell to the wet pavement and formed a ripple in a puddle.
“I’ll never forgive him! Never!” Yoshio pounded the wet pavement a few times with his fist. Blood oozed out from his hand, into the freezing rain.
Finally, he stood up in the rain and with his bloody hand picked up one of the wilted bouquets of flowers someone had left by the roadside.
“I’m telling you there’s no way. Me a murderer? Kill that kind of woman? You gotta be kidding!”
Victoriously, Keigo Masuo went to the counter to get his second beer, then happily began to gulp it down. He’d been questioned by the police for just one night, but was acting as if he’d been released from jail after many years.
Seated on the sofa were a dozen or so of Keigo’s friends, including Koki Tsuruta. As Keigo stood there downing his beer, they looked up at him almost reverently.
Koki had barely touched his beer, but now he took a sip. As the group discussed what they had thought when they heard that Keigo had disappeared, they were so loud they drowned out the late afternoon music in the café, and even the clatter when a waitress dropped a plate.
It was after two that afternoon when they’d received an e-mail from Keigo. Koki had been in his apartment, asleep as usual, when the e-mail came in saying that anybody who wanted to hear what had happened should drop everything and come to the Monsoon Café in Tenjin. Koki was sure it was a practical joke, but a few minutes later Keigo phoned him. “Did ja see the message?” he said in a carefree voice. “You gotta come. I’ll tell you all about life on the run.” Koki had a million things he wanted to ask him, but Keigo just laughed. “Too much trouble to repeat the story to everyone individually, so I’d like to just tell it once to everyone.” And then he abruptly hung up.
The Monsoon was the kind of upscale café college students liked, where they served alcohol during the day, and the food and prices were reasonable enough. The kind of place where the management spent all its money on the interior design.
When Koki got there, ten or so people were already waiting for Keigo, but the guest of honor had yet to arrive. They all knew Keigo had been arrested in Nagoya, and were loudly speculating about how he had to be innocent, since the police had let him go.
When Keigo showed up outside the glass-enclosed café, a shout rose from among his friends. Some young girls, bent over their uninspired lunches, looked up to see what the commotion was about.
As Keigo came in, he winked at a waitress he apparently knew, and announced, “I, Keigo Masuo, have now been freed!” and spread wide his arms and bowed. Some of his friends clapped, others burst out laughing.
Keigo started off by telling his impatient fans why he was late. Earlier that morning, he’d been completely cleared of all charges by the police and released, and had gone back to his condo to take a shower. Which perhaps explained why he didn’t have the pathetic look of a runaway criminal that his friends had pictured.
As soon as Keigo sat down among them, they peppered him with questions: “Okay, so what really happened?” “You really didn’t kill her, right?” “If you didn’t, then why run away?” Keigo stopped them and turned to the vacant-looking waitress standing there and ordered a Belgian beer.
“One at a time, guys… I guess you could say it was simply a misunderstanding on my part.”
“A misunderstanding?” everyone around the table asked.
“Yeah, you could say that. I don’t know where to start. Hey, did they redecorate this place?”
Keigo was the one who’d called them all together, but he seemed to find the conversation kind of boring. Koki, sitting beside him, tried to get the story back on track. “Why don’t you start by telling us what happened that night,” he asked.
“Yeah, right, that night…” Keigo glanced up at the ceiling fan, then looked back at them. “Well, it’s true I was with that girl that night,” he began. “I was feeling kind of irritated. You guys get that way sometimes, right? There’s no real reason for it, but you feel kind of disgusted by things, and then you can’t sit still.”
The young men all nodded.
“It happens, am I right? Well, that night I was feeling like that, so I decided to get in my car and race around. I was driving around and had to piss, so I stopped at the Higashi Park, and that’s where I ran into her.”
“Did you know her?” the man seated farthest from Keigo asked, leaning out over the table.
“Uh, yeah, I did. Koki, you knew her, too, right? Remember those three girls who worked for an insurance company we met at a bar in Tenjin? The ones who were like fresh off the farm? Some of you must have been there that night?”
Several of his friends finally remembered. “Yeah, that’s right,” they said.
“It was one of them. After that, she wouldn’t let up with the e-mails. Oh, yeah-that’s right! The police checked out my phone and there were still a few of her messages on it. You want to see them?”
Want to see some e-mail from that girl who was murdered at Mitsuse Pass? Keigo was proudly asking them, and the group of men leaned forward expectantly. For a second, Koki had a creepy, bad feeling about it, but he was carried along by the enthusiasm of the others, so he felt he couldn’t object.
Keigo pulled out his cell phone and scrolled through his e-mails. “So anyway, I happened to run across that girl that night and gave her a ride. That was my first mistake…”
He paused, then continued. “She was looking at me with these dreamy, please-take-me-somewhere eyes. Like I said, I was in a bad mood, so I just thought, Why not take this slutty girl somewhere, get it on, and that might make me feel better. So I gave her a ride. But she’d apparently had gyoza and her breath stank, and that sort of made me lose interest. So anyway, after we drove up to Mitsuse Pass I couldn’t stand being with her anymore and left her there.”
Keigo was roughly scrolling through the messages on his phone, apparently having trouble locating the older ones. His friends grew impatient watching his fingers move.
“If you just left her there, then why run away?” somebody asked, and Keigo’s fingers stopped. He looked up and grinned.
“The girl didn’t want to get out, so finally I got physical. I wasn’t really thinking. And she hit her neck and it wound up like I was strangling her.”
As one, the men surrounding him gulped.
“No, that isn’t why she died. I was just pushing her out the door and accidentally pushed against her neck, that’s all. But when I heard that that girl had died there, at the pass, and there wasn’t anyone else around at the time, I jumped to the wrong conclusion and thought, Wow, what if that was why she died…”
Keigo laughed, trying to ease the tension, and gradually his laughter spread to the others. Koki, however, felt disgusted. He looked around, but he was the only one with a grimace on his face.
“So that’s why you went on the lam for a couple of weeks?” someone asked, and Keigo nodded sheepishly.
“As the girl was getting out of the car, I gave her a huge shove with my foot and she fell out and hit her head on the guardrail… But she didn’t really get hurt or anything.”
As Keigo nonchalantly continued, Koki felt as if he was going to vomit. Just as Koki was about to stand up, Keigo finally located the old e-mails.
“Oh, I got it! Here they are.”
He placed the cell phone on the table and someone stood up behind Koki and bent forward eagerly, leaning against him. Koki lost his balance and nearly hit his forehead against the table.
“Here, check it out!”
Hands went in all directions, in an attempt to grab the cell phone. Finally the guy seated across from Keigo grabbed it, and pushing away everyone else, he started to read the messages aloud in a high-pitched, girlish whine.
Just then they heard some loud girls’ voices near the café entrance. The men turned to look at the commotion and found three girls from their college, the core of a flashy group that hung out with Keigo-Keigo’s entourage, as others referred to them.
“Keigo!” one of the girls shouted and the three of them ran over to him in a group.
“What’re you girls doing here?”
The men scrunched over on the sofa to make room and the girls squeezed in. As soon as they sat down, they peppered Keigo with the same questions the men had earlier, and Keigo, being Keigo, gave them the same answers as before.
While Keigo and the girls were talking, the men passed around Keigo’s cell. Koki could tell from their expressions what sort of messages the dead girl had sent him. To him it felt as if the murdered girl’s body itself were being passed around from one pair of hands to the next.
A girl who’d sent one e-mail after another to a guy with no interest in her had been murdered at Mitsuse Pass. Keigo, sitting next to him, hadn’t murdered her. Still, if Keigo hadn’t met her that night-even if was just coincidence-the girl would never have wound up at the pass.
It was Koki’s turn to see the phone. Beside him, Keigo was entertaining the girls with the story of how he was interrogated by the police, and it was hard to tell how much was true and how much was being embellished for their benefit. Like, did they really shine a bright light on Keigo as they interrogated him, just like in a TV drama?
“A drama,” Koki muttered to himself. He looked down and saw the e-mail from the murdered girl. He didn’t want to read it, but he couldn’t pull his eyes away.
Universal Studios sounds like so much fun!
The words leaped out at him.
There was a patch of blue sky off in the distance, but raindrops were still striking the windshield. Drops mixed together and silently flowed down the glass, followed by more.
The car was stopped by the road that ran along the coast. The wet asphalt had changed color, making the surrounding scenery look dark. The inside of the car where Mitsuyo and Yuichi sat was as dark as if it were twilight.
Down this road was the police station. Just a few dozen yards more and they would enter its grounds.
They had no idea how long they’d been sitting there. Had they parked just a moment ago, or sat there the whole night? Mitsuyo reached out to touch the rain on the windshield. She was inside the car and of course couldn’t really touch it, but her fingertips felt as if they were wet. It was hard to see very far beyond the car.
For the last few minutes she’d noticed Yuichi’s ragged breathing beside her. If she turned, she would see him, but she couldn’t bring herself to look. She was seized by the fear that if she did look over, it would all be over.
At the Yobuko pier Mitsuyo had told Yuichi she’d go with him to the police. I can’t let you do that. You’ll get in trouble, he’d insisted, but she’d almost forced her way into the car.
She was with a murderer, but Mitsuyo didn’t feel afraid. It felt less like she’d met a murderer than like somebody she already knew had committed a crime. It had happened before she’d even met him, but still she felt frustrated and exasperated, as if she could have done something to prevent it.
They’d driven away from the parking lot in Yobuko and headed toward the center of Tosu. Until they hit the city, they didn’t say a word to each other. The roads were empty, and they soon neared the city center. As they did, a sign for the Tosu Police Department appeared by the side of the road. Yuichi shook the steering wheel nervously and slowed down.
A few dozen yards ahead was a cream-colored building standing alone in a large lot. A traffic-safety banner hung from the building, billowing in the strong wind from the nearby sea.
There were no other cars on the street.
“I think… you’d better get out here, Mitsuyo,” Yuichi said, hands on the wheel, eyes avoiding hers.
That’s when it started raining. The sky had become cloudy, and now raindrops were drumming against the windshield. A young mother pushing a baby carriage down the street hurriedly pulled on its plastic hood.
“You’d better get out here, Mitsuyo,” Yuichi repeated, and fell silent.
She was silent, too. “So that’s it?” she finally muttered.
Yuichi kept his eyes down, staring at his feet. She didn’t know what she hoped to have him say by asking that, but simply being told to get out here was too sad to bear.
They were silent again. The rain on the windshield began running down the glass in rivulets.
“If they see you with me you’ll get in trouble,” Yuichi murmured, his hands tightly clasping the wheel.
“You mean if I get out here, I won’t get in any more trouble?” Mitsuyo said roughly.
“Sorry,” he said.
She had no idea at all why she’d said that. The last thing she wanted to do at this stage was to abuse him.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice.
In the side mirror she could see the young mother from behind as she pushed the baby carriage. The young woman was walking along at a normal speed, though she must have wanted to sprint to get out of the rain. Mitsuyo let out a huge sigh. She felt as if she’d forgotten to breathe for the past few minutes.
“After you go to the police, then what?” This came out of her mouth before she’d thought it through. Yuichi stared at his hands on the wheel, then looked up and shook his head as if he hadn’t a clue.
“If you give yourself up, then they won’t punish you as much, right?” Mitsuyo said.
Yuichi shook his head again as if he had no idea.
“Someday we’ll see each other again, won’t we?”
He looked toward her and she saw the tears welling up in his eyes.
“I’ll wait for you,” Mitsuyo said. “No matter how many years it takes.”
Yuichi’s shoulders began to shake, and he kept on violently shaking his head. Mitsuyo reached out and touched his cheek. She could feel his shaking through her fingers.
“I’m… scared. I might get the death penalty.”
Mitsuyo gently held his ear. It was burning up.
“If I hadn’t met you, Mitsuyo, I wouldn’t be this scared. I was kind of nervous before, thinking they’d arrest me, but I couldn’t give myself up. But I wasn’t this scared. I knew my grandparents would cry about it, and I’d feel sorry for all they’d done for me, raising me, but it didn’t hurt as bad as it does now. If I hadn’t met you…”
Mitsuyo listened as the words streamed out of Yuichi. She could feel his ear grow even hotter in her hand.
“But you still have to go,” Mitsuyo said. She felt him shaking, and could barely get the words out. “You have to give yourself up, and pay for what you did…”
Yuichi nodded, as if all the energy had drained out of him. “I might get the death penalty… Then I’ll never see you again.”
The phrase death penalty simply didn’t register with Mitsuyo. She knew what it meant, of course, but all the meaning had drained out of the term, and she could only comprehend it as goodbye.
Mitsuyo took his trembling hands. She wanted to say something but nothing came. The two of them were not simply saying goodbye, since goodbye still held the hope of a future. Mitsuyo felt she was making some huge mistake, and she desperately clutched Yuichi’s hands. Something was coming to an end, she knew. Right here, right now, something decisive was coming to an end.
That’s when the memory of a scene came to her. It came so suddenly she couldn’t recall where and when she’d seen it. She closed her eyes and tried to conjure up the details. Desperately she squeezed her eyes shut, and finally a vague, unfocused scene floated before her.
Where am I? she murmured. But what she pictured, like a single photograph, was a frozen scene, and when she tried to see the other parts they wouldn’t materialize.
Two young girls were standing before her. Their backs were to her, and they were giggling happily together. Beyond them was an older woman, her back also turned, her face to a wall. She was talking. No, it wasn’t a wall. A kind of window. Beyond a transparent board there was man’s face, a man selling tickets.
Where am I? she asked herself again. She kept her eyes shut and recalled a map of routes above the ticket window.
“Oh!” Mitsuyo suddenly called out. It was a map of bus routes. She was standing at the ticket window for the long-distance buses from Saga to Hakata.
The instant she realized this, the still scene came alive with sound and movement. From behind her was an announcement for the arriving bus. The girls were giggling. The old woman who’d just bought her ticket was putting away her purse as she left the ticket window, and was heading over to where the bus had just pulled in.
It had to be. There was no doubt about it. This was the bus to Hakata, the one that was hijacked.
Don’t get on that bus! In her mind, Mitsuyo yelled out to the old woman. But no one heard her.
Don’t buy them! she screamed again, but no sound came out. Her legs began to move forward in the line, and she was trembling all over. If nothing stopped her, she was going to buy a ticket herself. My cell phone! she remembered. This was the moment that her friend called. When her friend informed her that her son was sick, could they reschedule?
Mitsuyo rummaged frantically through her handbag, but couldn’t come up with her cell phone. The young girls had bought their tickets and were happily traipsing over toward the bus. I can’t find my cell phone. I can’t find it. The man at the window said, “Next!” calling out to Mitsuyo. She didn’t want to, but her legs carried her forward. She struggled to run away, but her face approached the counter and her mouth moved on its own.
One adult for Tenjin.
My cell phone’s gone. The one that’s supposed to ring right now.
Almost ready to scream, Mitsuyo opened her eyes. In front of her was a rainy street, and beyond that a rainy police station. She looked over at Yuichi. And right then it happened. A patrol car was coming toward them from the opposite direction. It slowed down, put on its turn signal, then made a right turn into the grounds of the police station.
“No way!” Mitsuyo shouted. “No way! I don’t want to get on that bus!”
Her voice was loud enough to echo inside the car. Startled, Yuichi held his breath.
“Start driving! Please. Just for a while, just for a while is okay. Get us out of here!” Yuichi stared at her, wide-eyed. “Please!”
For a moment, Yuichi didn’t know what to do. Mitsuyo kept on shouting, and her panic finally infected him. He hurriedly released the parking brake and stepped on the gas.
They roared past the police station, and soon turned left. The road ran along a concrete embankment. Ahead was the prefectural yacht harbor, its large sign dripping in the rain. Yuichi stopped the car there. The police station was still visible.
As soon as they had started driving again, Mitsuyo began to sob. Having to say goodbye to Yuichi meant she had to get on that bus. Get on that bus and have that boy come at her with a knife.
Yuichi kept the engine running, but switched off the wipers. In an instant the windshield was wet, the scenery before them a blur.
“No! No way!” Mitsuyo shouted as she stared at the blurry windshield. “No way! If I have to leave you now, I have nothing left… I thought I was going to be happy! After I met you I thought I was finally going to be happy! Please don’t take that away from me!”
Yuichi wavered, then reached over to Mitsuyo, touching her shoulder, and swiftly pulled her close. Mitsuyo roughly tried to break free, but Yuichi held her even tighter, and all she could do was stay still and cry in his arms.
“I’m so sorry… so very sorry…” His voice sounded as if it were biting her neck. Mitsuyo shook her head as hard as she could. Her cheek struck his with each shake of her head. “I’m so sorry… so sorry I couldn’t do anything for you…” Mitsuyo couldn’t tell if she was crying, or if it was Yuichi.
“Please!” she pleaded into his shoulder. “Don’t leave me behind! Don’t ever leave me alone!” She knew they couldn’t run away, but still she shouted for them to do exactly that. “Let’s run away!” she cried. “Let’s run away together!” She knew she was never going to be happy now, but still she shouted out, “Stay with me! Don’t leave me behind-ever!”