Real World

by Natsuo Kirino

  At first I thought, Serves him right, as I listened to this, but Worm went on and on and it started to creep me out. Signaling him we should hang up, I grabbed away the phone and found Wataru had hung up a long time ago. What an ass.

  “He hung up. Redial it.”

  I punched in the number. At this point I didn’t care whether they traced the call or he reported us to the police or whatever. No matter how much I let it ring, though, Wataru didn’t pick up. Damn—I started to feel really upset and took it out on Worm.

  “It’s all your fault,” I said. “You got me involved and it’s made me twisted. You’re the root of all evil, you know that? You’re the cause of all this trouble. I’ve had it. I’m going home. Back to the ordinary world you’ll never be able to return to.”

  “The world I can’t return to?” he said. “You mean I’ve been kicked out?”

  Worm raised his head and gave me a hard look. In the dark, his eyes glittered.

  “But you’re the one who decided to leave that world,” I said.

  Worm sighed. “I’m—frightened,” he said. “Please—I need you to stay with me.”

  This was the second time Worm had surrendered. What a wimp. How could I not feel superior? Worm was weak, and I was strong—it was as simple as that. This night had been a turning point that had really changed me. I felt victorious, like I’d defeated an enemy. But still I was kind of uneasy. Maybe I’d entered Worm’s world after all. Maybe that’s why I’d made that threatening call to Wataru. But—was this really me? Was I really such an awful person?

  * * *

  I was just about finished eating, but Worm was still slumped over his bowl of ramen.

  “I just realized I don’t have an appetite.”

  “’Cause you’re thinking about your mother, I bet,” I said sarcastically, in a low voice. “You regret what you did and it scares you.”

  Worm was facing me, but his eyes were elsewhere.

  “I wonder. I—don’t know.”

  “I don’t really care one way or the other,” I said, “but what happened to all the military talk?”

  “Too much trouble.”

  Adrenaline surged through me. “I’ll take that,” I said, and switched my empty ramen bowl with his full one. This was the first time in my life I’d grabbed someone else’s food. My parents always led a pretty well-off life, so good table manners were a kind of duty I’d been brought up with. Eat all your meat, don’t leave any carrots. You know the drill. Mom always trimmed all the fat from our beef and pork and removed the skin from chicken. Snacks were homemade cookies or pudding, and she always made a homemade lunch for me to take to school. I didn’t like egg yolks, so Mom always made me special fried eggs using just the whites. But right now, I was a total brat. I held on to the bowl of ramen Worm hadn’t touched and thought, Yes! A strange idea came to me: Is this the kind of girl I really am? Meaning what happened last night, too.

  With nothing else to occupy him, Worm sat there, engrossed in the TV. A program was on featuring NaiNai. A commercial for Geos came on next, with Okamura speaking English, but Worm still stared at the screen, like he was fascinated by it. I could understand what he was feeling. Like he was watching a world that he had no connection with anymore. The greasy TV set itself sat on top of this tacky colored box, the kind you could pick up in a supermarket. The cabinet was stuffed with dog-eared manga magazines that the other customers—young guys, truck drivers by the look of them, and the older guy, an outdoorsy type who looked like he ran the local motel—picked up and took back to their seats.

  “Something’s wrong with you, you know that?” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s like you’ve totally lost your confidence.”

  “No way.”

  Worm acted all tough, but when it came to breaking into a cottage he made a mess of it. He’s the one who suggested that we sneak into a vacant cottage and stay there for a while, but I was the one who actually picked it out. I picked a pretty one with a nice red roof. But just when we broke the window of the bathroom with a rock, this earsplitting siren went off and a caretaker showed up in a four-wheel-drive car. How was I to know that cottages in the mountains had security systems?

  We raced back down the mountain road in the dark. We finally came out on the highway but had nowhere to go to. We only had about ten thousand yen left and didn’t want to spend it on a love hotel again, and using a vacant cottage hadn’t worked out. That’s when Worm started acting like all his batteries had given out. He stopped that stupid pretending-to-be-a-soldier routine, and his eyes got all vacant. You’ve got to eat something, I told him, and tried to comfort him by offering to pay for dinner. No matter what spin I might put on it, the reason I didn’t take off for home right then and there was ’cause I found it interesting to watch Worm’s steady decline. Or maybe I should say I enjoyed twisting Worm around my little finger. I never realized I had this streak of cruelty in me. Maybe what I really regretted about my relationship with Wataru was that I wouldn’t have him under my thumb. So there was this side of me I never knew about before. And I was starting to think that maybe I liked it. A Kirarin who’s stronger than anybody else. Stronger than Toshi, than Yuzan, than Terauchi. A woman who was bad. Maybe I’d finally discovered my real identity.

  “As soon as you’re done, let’s get out of here.” Worm poked me in the side with his elbow. His elbow grazed my breast, and I frowned.

  “Knock it off, you pervert. I don’t want anything to do with you.”

  “Sorry,” he apologized meekly.

  “Where’re we going when we leave?” I asked.

  “To a convenience store. I like them.”

  Worm looked uncomfortably around the interior of the ramen shop. We paid for the food, and when we went outside the sky was full of stars. We hadn’t noticed before, maybe because it was still a little light out. I gazed up at the night sky, a mountain in my peripheral vision. It was Mount Asama. I couldn’t see the whole mountain—it was like some huge monster crouching there, melting into the dark. A mountain like that at night is awful. It reminded me of Worm last night, crouched by the bed, his eyes glittering in the darkness. The guy is definitely weird, I thought, and shuddered. Deep down, I wanted to get away from him.

  “Do you think I should kill my dad?” Worm asked me as we trudged along the highway, heading toward a convenience store we could see lit up in the distance.

  “If you wanna kill him, then why not? It’s got nothing to do with me. You have to do it, otherwise you won’t feel like you got back at him, right?”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Yeah, I guess you’re right. But I don’t understand why I have to murder to settle a score. Why do you think that is?”

  Worm had become totally introspective and moody. And I’d turned arrogant. Go figure.

  “Don’t ask me. It’s something you have to settle yourself. So why did you kill your mother? She’s the one who gave birth to you. So you didn’t want to be anybody’s child anymore?”

  Worm came to a halt and let out a deep breath. His loneliness came to me like a vibration in the air, but I turned away from him to show him I wasn’t buying it. Worm, in his own world. Everybody else is still in my world. Everybody except Wataru, that is. Last night I was sure I was in Worm’s world, but I was wrong. I hadn’t killed anybody. I felt kind of relieved. In the dark I could hear Worm muttering.

  “You’re exactly right, Kirarin. Maybe what I want is to cut all ties with everybody. The thread or something that keeps me connected to the world, the worthless proof that I exist.”

  The instant I heard him say my name I had a weird feeling. An uneasy sense. This side—the other side. Which one was I on? As I walked along in the darkness of this plateau, hemmed in by mountains, I wasn’t sure.

  All of a sudden my cell rang. The orange display lit up the sender’s name: Wataru. Maybe he realized it was me calling last night. Worm, up ahead, turned around and shot me a suspicious look. Trying to keep my hea
rt from racing, I answered the phone.

  “It’s me. Wataru. You okay?” I missed him so much I was about to tear up.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “It’s been a long time. Maybe a year and a half?”

  My voice naturally got higher. Worm was standing a little ways off, looking in my direction.

  “Yeah, I think that’s about right. You have college entrance exams coming up next year, right?”

  Wataru was in college already, in the law department at Waseda. Which is why I was originally thinking of trying for Waseda myself, but now I’d given that up and decided to settle for some junior college. My guilty conscience was making it hard for me to get the words out.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “You preparing for it?”

  “I guess…”

  “Well, good luck with it. You know something? Last night I got this weird phone call. I thought maybe it had something to do with you, so I started to get worried about you.”

  “What kind of call?” I asked.

  “Never mind. I don’t want to talk about it. It was just a prank call, but I got concerned, hoping nothing terrible had happened to you.”

  “You were worried about me? That makes me happy.”

  My eyes started to well up. I still like you, Wataru. I love you. I felt so sad and lonely it hurt. I felt guilty, too, for the ugly thing I’d done out of jealousy. The thing I’d done that had soiled this shining person, Wataru.

  “But why are you worried?” I asked. “Nothing’s happened to me.”

  “The guy who called mentioned the girl I used to go out with, and you’re the only one. He said it quite clearly—your old girlfriend. So I thought he had to have something to do with you. I thought maybe you’d gotten mixed up with some weird guy. But if you’re okay, that’s great.”

  At this moment it hit me: I’d lost Wataru forever. He’s the one who told me he loved me the best of all, so why didn’t I trust him anymore? I wanted to talk with him some more and was searching for the right words when he said, “Well, see you,” and hung up. Devastated, I stared at the screen. The whole call had lasted only three minutes and twenty seconds.

  “Who was it?” Worm asked.

  “None of your business.”

  He was annoyed, and out of spite he called Terauchi. It’s okay, I thought. I get it. We’re not going out or anything, so when it’s just the two of us it’s like I can’t breathe. I need air. I knew it was stupid, but I couldn’t shake this sadness and I got more and more depressed. Here I was, walking in the dark, in this place I’ve never been, with a guy I just met. What’s the matter with me, anyway?

  Worm made a show of being all cheerful as he talked with Terauchi. The idiot. “I want it to be really original,” he was telling her. He was discouraged but tried to put on a brave front. While he was talking I got on with Terauchi. She told me she’d seen Worm’s photo on the Internet. In the other world. The world where Wataru was, and Terauchi, and Toshi. The world of exams, hooking up with guys, Shibuya, friends. I can’t go back anymore, Terauchi. That’s what I felt, but I forced myself to sound all bouncy and cheerful as I talked with her, trying to stand the pain of losing Wataru, of being banished from their bright world forever.

  Next we stopped by a convenience store, bought some boxed lunches and drinks, and stood for a while leafing through magazines. Worm took a bath last night at the love hotel, but he was smelly already. I was worried I was starting to smell, too. I might not share in his guilt but was starting to think there were some things the two of us shared. As we left the store, I grabbed a can of deodorant and spritzed my underarms when no one was looking. Just then I got a text message from Teru.

  Kirarin, what’s going on? You’ve got me worried. Give me a call.

  Too much trouble to tell the truth, so I lied: I’m back home now. I’ll tell you all about it later. Don’t forget the concert next week. Not to worry—I’m fine.

  Why was I starting to find Teru a nuisance? I’d always been proud of having this nice gay friend whom I could tell anything to. But I’d only been using his friendship for my own purposes. When I was with him it looked like I was with a guy, but it was totally safe and fun. Who knows—maybe having a high school girl as a friend was something he was proud of, too. A typical party girl like me. It had always been a light kind of relationship, where you didn’t share any of your pain or sadness. If Teru had really been a friend, I might have answered him like this: “Being with Worm I don’t know up from down anymore. I always thought I was a good person, but maybe I’m really bad. Maybe even a worse person than Worm. Hey, can you lend me some money?”

  “I want you to go home.”

  I was staring at the cell phone when Worm, standing behind me, muttered this. I turned around.

  “How come?”

  “It’s pointless for you to be with me. Besides, I’m a criminal.”

  The whites of his slanty eyes stood out as he stared at me. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I realized that the last thing I wanted to do was go home. A weird feeling—like on the one hand I wanted to go back to that other world, but at the same time didn’t care if my connections to it were cut forever. It wasn’t a feeling of being free or anything. I just didn’t want to go back. I wanted to float somewhere in between.

  “But last night you said you wanted me to stay with you,” I said.

  “So you want to be with me?”

  “Not particularly.”

  Worm walked on, the plastic bag from the convenience store swishing with each step. And I followed behind him.

  * * *

  I started to notice that there were a lot of cops around as we were walking along a mountain road toward more cottages thinking we’d try to break into another one. Two patrol cars, one after the other, drove up the road from the foothills. The second one stopped in front of the nearest cottage, and a policeman got out and buzzed the intercom. Worm and I were hiding in a thicket of bamboo grass and he nudged me.

  “This is bad. Doesn’t look like they’re just after some sneak thief. Somebody must have ratted us out.”

  “But who’d do that?” I asked.

  “Your friends. They all know about me. Maybe Yuzan. I don’t like her much and I acted kind of cold to her.”

  All of a sudden, Terauchi’s laid-back voice came to me. Whenever she talks that calmly it means she’s up to something. Only when she’s trying to hide her real intentions does she tell all those stale jokes and act dumb.

  Dude. Sounds like you and the murderer are getting along just fine.

  I hear you’re in Karuizawa?

  “It’s got be Terauchi!” I yelled. “I’m sure of it. Toshi and Yuzan both helped you escape. They wouldn’t turn you in. Terauchi’s the only one who didn’t help out.”

  “So that’s the kind of person she is?”

  Worm looked despondent. Maybe he was regretting giving her that childish order to write his criminal manifesto.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The others I can read, but not her. She’s the only one who’s unpredictable.”

  Which means I don’t trust her, I guess. For the first time in my life, I felt like I understood the relationship between Terauchi and me.

  “Damn,” I said. “We’re in for it now.”

  I tried calling Terauchi but her phone was turned off. That settled it. I had to get out of there. I panicked. I had to escape, no matter what. I mean, if they arrested me now I’d be stuck in this world forever. Floating is fine, but getting stuck isn’t. Before anyone even realized it, I wouldn’t be able to go back to the other world—the one Wataru lived in. The world where the sun shines. But why was Terauchi trying to get me shut away like this? There’s a moment with her when a kind of severe look crosses her nice features, the kind of look that keeps everybody out. No way, Terauchi! I won’t forget what you’ve done! I was burning with hatred.

  “What should we do?” Worm said.

  I looked at him. He laid his backpack down in
the bushes, tilted his long neck to one side, lost in thought. We don’t have time for that, I thought, and grabbed his arm.