Real World

by Natsuo Kirino

  Pretty soon I was getting all hot and bothered not just by the nighttime goings-on but thinking about what the woman next door was doing during the day, when her husband was gone and she was alone. Maybe she was getting off by herself? I’d love to see that, I thought. One day I skipped out on school and while Mom was out shopping I went out on the veranda and peeked around the partition. The curtains were closed, though, and I couldn’t see anything. I was disappointed, but just then I noticed that she’d hung out her laundry to dry. Her tiny panties were all hanging from a round little dryer hanger. They were so pretty I reached out to try to touch them. I couldn’t quite reach them, so I went back inside and brought out a dust mop. But I still couldn’t get them. My arms got tired, and just when I was taking a break, a piece of thread wafted down from above. I looked up and two floors above us a lady was airing out her futons. She was a friend of my old lady’s, I’m sure, someone she got to know through the co-op. Unconcerned, the woman went on beating her futon. Damn. I went back inside.

  That night my old lady came up to me with this scary look on her face.

  “What in the world were you up to during the day? Tell me.”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “You were trying to get something from next door, weren’t you?”

  “No, I wasn’t. I dropped an exam answer sheet and was just trying to pick it up.”

  My mom thought about this for a minute. I thought I’d conned her, but she shook her head.

  “You should have just knocked on their door. I’ll do that right now.”

  “No way!” I yelled, but off she went. I waited thirty minutes, then an hour, and she didn’t come back. I was getting worried. Finally she came back, her eyes all red and puffy from crying.

  “We can’t live here anymore,” she said.

  What was going on? I didn’t do anything that bad. I stayed silent, while Mom made a big show of crying.

  “Maybe I’ve been a bad mother. I can’t believe you’d do something like this.”

  “What did they say?”

  “The husband answered the door and said there wasn’t any exam paper around. He said that he didn’t have any proof, but it looked like you were trying to steal his wife’s panties. He said one pair was lying on the ground and it looked suspicious. What if your school found out about this? What then? The husband said they wouldn’t make a big deal out of it or anything because of your age, but I can’t stand living here anymore!

  “I can’t believe it, can’t believe it, we can’t stay here anymore,” she kept repeating, crying hysterically. The upshot was we left there soon after and moved here. In the beginning, after we moved, Mom seemed to have forgotten all that had happened and was happy. The nearby supermarket made her ecstatic: “They have my favorite salad dressing there!” she’d say. “And can you believe it—they carry pie sheets! It’s a much higher class of customers here.” When she found out that Toshi lived next door, though, she gradually grew more cautious.

  “You can’t see her room from yours, can you, Ryo?” she asked. How stupid can you get, I thought. You’re the one who decided this would be my room! I didn’t bother answering. And then there was this whole new incident with Toshi in the bath. You understand how disgusted I was with my mom? She was constantly smothering me. When I was in the bath myself, for instance, she’d be hovering outside next to the sink and I couldn’t even come out when I finished. God, I hate her!

  * * *

  On the fateful day, I slept until eleven, with the AC on full blast. Just about the time when my old lady would come and try to get me up. But I was ready for her. The desire to kill her hadn’t wavered since the day before. I got out of bed and grabbed my aluminum bat. I had on an old T-shirt instead of pajamas, in case there was a lot of blood. And a pair of boxers. I thought about doing it naked, but that would look stupid. I heard someone coming upstairs, noisier than usual. The old lady must be pissed about something again. Excellent. She knocked on my door and opened it.

  “Are you going to sleep all day?” she complained.

  She stopped, surprised at how chilly my room was. As I raised the bat I shouted out and she looked up at my hands. She shouted, too—“Stop it!” she yelled.

  I swung the bat down and she leaped back out the door. Strike one. The bat slammed against the top of my bookshelf, banging off the pile of manga on top and shattering the lightbulb in the lamp next to my desk. The old lady scrambled down the stairs. Hey—you’re not bad, I thought. She was pretty damn fast. I slowly came out of my room and came down after her. When she saw that I still had the bat in my hands, she dropped the phone she was holding. I placed it neatly back where it belonged and grabbed her hair. She struggled and finally broke free. I slammed the bat against the back of her head. It made a solid crunch but wasn’t a direct hit. Foul ball. Blood dripping down her head, she staggered over to the bathroom. Probably thought she could lock herself inside. I raced after her and whacked her again on the back of her head. Smush! Sounded good, but it was still a bit off center. Another foul ball. Blood splattered out on my face. The old lady fell forward, head over heels, and collapsed, shattering the glass door to the bathroom. She was still alive. Her hair was matted with blood as she crawled toward the kitchen.

  “You’ll…be a criminal…” she moaned.

  “I know. And I don’t give a shit.”

  She nodded, but I could see the blood drain out of her face. It looked like she was dead. So the last one wasn’t a foul ball after all, but a clean hit. Finally, the woman who gave birth to me, raised me, ordered me around, yelled at me, turned me into a sex maniac, who complained all the time, was dead. And I’m the one who killed her. I suddenly felt light and airy, like a balloon. Puffy. Swollen. I tossed the bat aside and sank down, exhausted, to the floor.

  * * *

  From the grass I could hear the low electric buzzing of some insects. Something must be up with my brain, I thought. Maybe something’s seriously wrong with me. I don’t feel even a bit of guilt. Holding my head, I stood up. The handles of the bike must be burning hot ’cause of the sun. This random thought was cruising through my head when the cell phone rang. It had to be Toshi.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hi, my name’s Kirari Higashiyama. We talked before.”

  She had a high, clear voice. Different from Toshi’s calm voice, or Yuzan’s attempts to talk like a guy. Or that girl Terauchi with her gloomy voice. It made me happy.

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “Yuzan told me the number. So what are you doing now?”

  “Just thinking, I guess. Or daydreaming. About all kinds of things.”

  “Really? Hey, are the police after you, or can we talk for a while?”

  She sounded sympathetic. This girl didn’t seem like she’d be much of a bother. An image came to me of the woman who lived next door in our old apartment building. If this girl was like her, that’d be cool.

  “I don’t know. Hey, babe, how ’bout we—?”

  “Everybody calls me Kirarin.”

  Kirarin. I was too embarrassed to call her that silly name.

  “Could we meet?” I asked.

  “Are you sure?”

  She hesitated, but I could tell she was curious. Maybe I really had become these girls’ hero. Happy and excited, I wiped the sweat off my forehead.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  KIRARIN

  Could we meet?”

  Worm sounded just like the guys I meet through text messaging when they phone me. Kind of fawning and brazen, like they know exactly what I want. Like all they’re thinking about is getting it on.

  “Are you sure?” I asked him hesitantly, but I was disappointed as usual. Hmm…so even a pumped-up young mother-killer like Worm wants to hit on girls. I’d been hoping he’d have a bit more backbone than that. Yet unconsciously my fingers started moving like I was typing out a text message. Sure, I want to meet you, too. I’m all by myself today and kind of lonely. A total lie.

  I’ve only r
ecently started playing around on chat-room sites. I’d type in a message like, I’m hoping to hook up with someone right away. I’m sixteen, and going to a private high school. In a flash I’d get nearly a hundred replies. From guys who are pretty sure this wasn’t really a high school girl, but who are still dying to hook up. Idiotic.

  I’d like to meet you. I’m eighteen, six-foot-one, and am into karate—sometimes you get those types. And then I type back: You’re really tall. That’s cool. I’m only four-ten. Do you like small girls? It’s a game of mutual lies flying back and forth. I wondered if Worm wanted to play this game with me. If he does, I thought, he’s a total idiot. I decided I’d tease him a bit.

  “Where can I meet you?”

  Worm hesitated. “It’s not like I don’t trust you or anything, but you won’t tell the cops, will you?”

  “Sounds like you don’t trust me.”

  I said this in an intentionally high, weak voice like he really had hurt me. I’ve gotten pretty good at using my voice like this. It’s a phone call, after all, so you can’t see the other person’s face. Guys are all suckers for a sweet, high-pitched voice. And Worm was typical. He started to get a bit flustered.

  “No, I trust you,” he said. “It’s just that I have to be careful. They’re after me.”

  They’re after me—he sounded almost proud. You don’t have any guts at all, I wanted to tell him. You killed your own mother, didn’t you? What do you expect? Of course they’re going to be after you. You’re a criminal!

  “Well—okay, then.”

  In situations like this I always act a little disappointed but keep it short and sweet. I don’t pursue it any further because girls have guys after them all the time, so I know how it feels to be pursued. If you play too easy to get, you’ll regret it. The kind of guys I’m attracted to are the ones who don’t dig too far either.

  “Kumagaya. Do you know it?”

  “How come you went that far away?”

  “It’s superhot.” Worm sighed. “I’d like to lug around an air conditioner with me.”

  Well, you’re the one who ran away, I felt like saying. I started to feel a little cold and cruel. Give me a break—you murdered your own mom. So don’t complain about a little heat!

  “Come to the station,” he said. “I’m on a bike, so I can’t go too far in this heat.”

  Well, Worm, you’ve got a bit of an ego, don’t you think? Asking a girl you’re meeting for the first time to go all the way out to Kumagaya? Can’t be many guys who’d do that. I gave him one of my patented lies.

  “I’ll come over right now. I’ll call you when I get to the station.”

  “Cool. I’ll be waiting.”

  Go all the way to Kumagaya when it’s ninety-five degrees out? Not in this heat. Still, you don’t get many opportunities to talk with a mother-murderer. This might be my only chance. Plus, Worm doesn’t seem to like Toshi or Yuzan that much. I guess I should consider this a kind of honor, if I’m the only one he’s asked to meet. I suddenly got all excited at the chance, and decided I’d better ask Teru for advice before I did anything.

  Teru’s a good friend of mine. A different kind of friend from Toshi, Terauchi, or Yuzan. We always have a lot to talk about, so it’s fun to be with him. So much fun I’ve even thought we should do a make-believe marriage. Teru’s gay. He’s twenty-one and a freelancer. Until a while ago he drove a delivery truck, but then he landed a job creating Web sites. I knew he was in the middle of work, but I went ahead and called anyway.

  “Hey, Teru, what’s up?”

  “I’m making a home page for this artist who makes these strange dyed fabrics. Soybean-flour and squid-ink colored fabrics. I saw some of the actual works and they were a really sickening color.”

  “But you’re lucky you have work,” I said.

  “You’re on summer vacation, right? You’re the lucky one.”

  I loved Teru’s sort of helpless, slow yet gentle way of talking. I first met him one day when I was wandering around Shibuya. He’s the one who stopped me, and I was sure he was going to proposition me.

  “I want to be a girl just like you,” he told me. “You’re beautiful. Could we be friends?” I guess it was a kind of proposition after all.

  Teru seemed to have some time on his hands, so I brought him up to speed with what’d been going on. Was he surprised! I could imagine his eyes, with their green contact lenses he’s so into now, wide open. I love his eyes. They’re different from most Japanese eyes, or men’s or young people’s eyes. More like the weird eyes of some alien from outer space. Like on that commercial, you know? I think it was for ACOM?

  So, anyway, I didn’t like Teru as a guy, but I still wanted to watch him all the time. It’s like when I see him I feel calm, unafraid. Most guys want to get it on—you don’t know what they’re going to do to you and deep down that scares me. Maybe I don’t really trust them. But Teru is kind, more fragile than Toshi and the others, and a very good guy. His kind of hurt-by-the-world look is cute. Teru’s into role-playing, and I love that part of him, too. I don’t think he’s been doing it lately—it’s too hot—but this spring he was always dressed up like characters from Battle Royale. He’d wear a school uniform with one of those high, round collars.

  “Kirarin, do you mean that murder that was in all the papers yesterday? Is this the same guy who beat his mother to death and ran away?”

  Teru seemed worried about being overheard and kept his voice down.

  “That’s the one. He lives next door to Toshi. At first he stole Toshi’s cell phone and bicycle and took off. He’s a weird guy, and started calling all the girls listed in her contacts. Yuzan seemed to like him so she helped him, gave him a bike and new cell phone. He called me, too. When I dialed the number the guy was so happy and said he’d like to meet up with me.”

  “But why would Yuzan help him out?”

  “I think because her mother is dead, too. It made her sympathize with him. He called me, too, but I just led him on.”

  “That’s pretty risky, Kirarin,” Teru said, sounding worried. “That kid must be pretty desperate by now.”

  But would a desperate guy sound like one of those horny guys who e-mail me?

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s more like he feels free and ready to get it on.”

  “What are you thinking? It’s terrible.” Teru sounded more like a girl than me. “And why does he want to meet you? Why not Toshi, Yuzan, or Terauchi?”

  Teru’d never met any of them, but I’d told him all about them.

  “Maybe ’cause I used my cute voice. Like always.”

  Teru didn’t like it that I played around in online chat rooms. Everybody just tells lies on those sites, he said, all serious, so what’s the fun in that? I knew that but still held out the slim hope that I might actually hook up with some hot guy. That slim hope always drove me to the sites. Maybe I’m boy crazy or something.

  “This is sounding worse and worse.”

  “But how many chances do you get to meet an actual murderer?”

  “Mmm,” Teru said, thinking it over.

  “Yeah, I suppose,” he said. “Let me think about this and get back to you during lunch. See ya.”

  I was thinking about getting Toshi’s advice, too, and was about to press the speed dial, but decided against it. I could always depend on her, but I knew she’d get all serious on me. She didn’t really understand me that well.

  * * *

  Of the four of us in our group I’m the only one who isn’t a virgin. I’m also the only one who has made other friends, people I go out with outside of school. The only one who posts all kinds of lies on online chat rooms, the only one who has a gay friend. The other three girls, though, just think I’m a cute, cheerful, what-you-see-is-what-you-get type of girl. When Toshi told me that just looking at me calms her down, that made me feel all squirmy. I’m not deliberately trying to fool them, it’s just that I’m not as simple as they think.

  The other group
I’m in is a bunch of girls who do a just-okay job of studying for college exams, figure they’ll get into some easy junior college, and love to party. Girls who, when the time comes, will marry some so-so guy, raise some kids, and continue to shop and have fun like they did when they were single. They’re very matter-of-fact about going out with guys, and just let life take care of itself. They don’t smoke, but carry Zippo lighters and when a guy takes out a cigarette, they love to say, “I have a lighter. How ’bout I give you a light?” All they think about is how to please guys.

  So, anyway, I’d go with these girls to Shibuya, get picked up by guys, go with them to a karaoke place, go drinking, spend the whole night having fun. If I run across a guy I like, I might go to a hotel with him, but I absolutely never do it for money. Once a guy finds out you’re selling it, his attitude does a one-eighty. I like fooling around with guys, but hate being used like a toy. That makes me sad and miserable. Fooling around with guys is thrilling, like walking next to a busy highway. If you fall off the curb, it’s all over.