Real World

by Natsuo Kirino

  “We’ve got to decide right now,” I said. “If we don’t do something we’re going to get caught.”

  “I know, I know. But I just can’t think of anything.”

  “Let’s stay over at a cheap love hotel and take a train back to Tokyo tomorrow morning. If it’s a local train we should be able to afford it.”

  “But where’re we going to go when we get back?” Worm tossed his boxed lunch on the ground. “I killed my old lady, remember? I don’t have anyplace to go.”

  “Then let’s go kill your dad, too.”

  I clung to Worm’s ridiculous plan. Instead of debating what was right and wrong, I wanted to get moving and do something. That’s all it was.

  “You’d kill my dad with me?”

  I shook my head.

  “No. ’Cause I don’t hate him.”

  My mind wasn’t working anymore. I stood there, feeling like I’d lost everything. A mosquito landed on my bare leg, but it was too much trouble to brush it away. As I sat there vacantly, Worm suddenly hugged me to him. “You stink, you idiot,” I told him. I tried to push him away, but he held me tight and wouldn’t let me go. We plopped down into the bushes. The stems of the bamboo grass poked me. It hurts, I was about to say, but before I could, Worm had mashed his lips against mine, rough and strong. I was faceup and he made a grab for my breasts. The moment I decided he could do whatever he wanted with me, the pain turned to pleasure. I pulled up my T-shirt and took off my own clothes. I was on fire, the first time I’d ever felt that way. How could we be doing something like this, I thought, when we’d been driven into a corner? We laid our clothes down on the ground to lie on, then had wild, frantic sex.

  “I’m hungry.”

  Worm, naked, was looking around to locate the box lunch he’d thrown away earlier. He finally found it and came back to where I was. He’d suddenly gotten all kind and gentle, and it made me happy. Naked, we ate the lunch together, taking turns swigging sips from the water bottle. After that we did it again, this time standing up with me leaning back against the trunk of a tree. I felt like I was doing it with him forever.

  Suddenly a flashlight shone above us and we heard men’s voices. Maybe the police had heard us talking and had tracked us down. Were they combing the hills for us? We flattened ourselves against the ground, avoiding the light. What would we do if they found us? I was scared out of my mind. Not of being chased by adults, but of being discovered like this in the hills, naked, having sex, being scolded and accused. It was a feeling close to original sin. Like Adam and Eve.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Worm whispered.

  I threw my clothes on; then Worm grabbed my hand and we raced down the mountain path. Every time a car or patrol car passed we hid beside the road in the bushes. When we finally reached Highway 18, there was a patrol car outside the convenience store we’d stopped at.

  Just then an empty cab drove up. If I let that cab get away, I thought, I’ll never escape this world.

  “Let’s take that cab back to Tokyo,” I said.

  “We don’t have enough money.”

  I looked Worm in the face.

  “Didn’t you tell me you were going to rob a cab?”

  I ran out onto the highway and flagged down the cab. The cab slowed to a stop, and I could see a surprised look on the driver’s face as Worm pushed me from behind.

  “Let’s do it.”

  We climbed in the back of the cab. It was full of cigarette smoke and chilled by the AC. The driver, with his typical white cloth-covered cap, was obviously local, and he turned around slowly. An old guy in his late forties. A plastic bottle of tea lay on the seat beside him.

  “When I just saw the girl I figured it was a ghost. So you’re dating, huh?”

  “That term’s too old. We’re not dating, we’re a couple.” My voice shook as I spoke, and I laughed to try to cover it up. “Excuse me, but we’d like to go to Tokyo. We have to get back to Tokyo right away.”

  “To Tokyo at this time of night?”

  “There aren’t any more trains, and someone is very sick, so we’ve got to get back. Please let us out in Chofu, at the Chofu exit.”

  The driver checked out Worm in the rearview mirror and looked startled for a second. Did he know who we were? Worried, I looked over at Worm, who was staring down, his face pale. You jerk. Get it together. I kicked him on the foot.

  “It’s his father,” I explained. “He’s on his deathbed. So, please, take us there.”

  “I see,” the driver said, his expression kinder. But his next question was anything but friendly. “I’m sorry to ask at a time like this, but do you have enough money? Night rates apply now and it should easily be fifty thousand yen to Tokyo.”

  “Don’t worry. We have enough cash.”

  Still looking doubtful, the driver slowly started to pull away.

  “I’m glad to hear that. I was just a little concerned, you being so young and all.”

  “Please just take us there. Don’t worry, you’ll get paid.”

  The driver pulled the cab over to the side of the road.

  “Sorry, but would you mind showing me the cash?”

  The driver’s stubbornness really pissed me off. I had only ten thousand yen, so how in the world was I going to pay? Worm suddenly yelled, “If we don’t have enough, my parents will pay the rest! So please—my dad’s dying here.”

  Worm’s yelling clearly pissed off the driver. And he stared hard at me, checking out how I looked. My T-shirt was muddy and covered with leaves. I quickly brushed them off.

  “Miss, please don’t do that. The cab will get all dirty.”

  At a loss for what to do, I glanced over at Worm. With one hand he was rustling around in his backpack on the floor. He’d taken the butcher knife back. I held down his arm and said in an insistent voice, “I’ll phone home.”

  I had no choice, so I dialed home. As I expected, my mom, sounding sleepy, answered, grumbling right off the bat. “Where in the world are you? You didn’t call, so I was worried. What are you doing out this late?”

  “I’m on my way home, but don’t seem to have enough for the taxi fare. When I get there, can you pay it?”

  She was launching into another complaint, so I hurriedly hung up.

  “She said they’ll pay.”

  The taxi driver must have overheard my mom, so he nodded reluctantly and started to drive. Good—at least we’d get back to Tokyo. I felt optimistic—as long as we got back there, something would work out. Then the enka song on the radio suddenly cut off and a voice came on, full of static.

  “A customer has forgotten something in one of the cabs. Something very large. It’s a young male customer. I repeat, a customer has forgotten something in one of the cabs. A young male customer. If anyone finds this large item, please get in touch right away.”

  The driver looked up into the rearview mirror. I felt uneasy.

  “That was the police channel, wasn’t it?” Worm asked.

  “No, it’s from our company.”

  The driver didn’t look back anymore. He was driving at a leisurely pace. I drank the rest of the water from our plastic bottle. The bottom of the bottle was muddy, so I wiped it on the seat. Now this was an adventure! My confusion I felt before about having sex with Worm in the woods had vanished, and I was happy with how bold we’d been. As I stared at the taillights of the car in front of us, I got sleepy, and finally started to doze off.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  At Worm’s voice, I jolted awake. The butcher knife was right in front of my eyes, its point aimed at the driver’s neck.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “This jerk was going to pull into a police station.”

  Flustered, I looked outside and saw a police station pass by on the left side. The driver, looking upset, was facing straight ahead. “You guys better knock it off,” he muttered. “Robbing a cab is a felony. You’ve got to think of your future.”

  Worm just s
neered at him. “I don’t have a future, buddy. I murdered my old lady.”

  The driver gulped. The butcher knife glittered as the lights from passing cars shone in on us. We were nearing the highway intersection. Several cars were lined up, including a patrol car near the entrance. “They’ve set up a checkpoint!” I yelled to Worm.

  “Take the frontage road,” he commanded the driver.

  Reluctantly, the driver turned off onto the side road, a country road lined with drive-ins. “You won’t be able to escape forever,” the driver said in a pitiful voice. “I’m not trying to trick you or anything, but I think you should stop it. I’ll give you my money, but just get out of here, okay? You’re still young.”

  “Shut up and drive,” Worm replied.

  “Where to?”

  “I told you a million times, you idiot—to Tokyo!”

  The driver clammed up and the taxi continued down the narrow road. The driver’s cell phone suddenly rang, and I was surprised by the melody, the fanfare signaling the start of a horse race. “Don’t answer it,” Worm ordered, and the driver nodded in resignation. The phone rang one more time, but he ignored it. After about fifteen minutes, Worm said to me, “Hold the knife for a while. I’m getting tired.”

  He handed me the butcher knife and sank back, exhausted, onto the seat. With a trembling hand I took the handle. Worm must have been pretty tense, because the grip was slippery with sweat. The driver glanced at the knife and then looked straight at me. Miss, stop what you’re doing, his eyes pleaded with me. I held on to the knife tightly with both hands and pointed it at the driver’s throat. An old guy’s dirty throat with veins sticking out. I remembered, when I was a freshman in high school, how middle-aged guys in Shibuya used to call out to me, trying to pick me up.

  Hey, how ’bout a cup of tea?

  They were such grungy old guys that it made me wonder how they could possibly pick up young girls. Cigarette breath, shabby suits, at most ten thousand or twenty thousand yen on them. They could try to pick us up, girls the same age as their own daughters, because they thought we were fools. Their daughters were in this nice world, they thought, but girls like me were in a fallen world. They made a clear distinction between the two. All of a sudden, I got good and steamed and pressed the knifepoint, which hadn’t been touching the driver, right up against his wrinkled throat.

  “Miss, that’s a little too close. You’re scaring me,” the driver begged.

  “No way. Don’t screw with me.”

  “I’m not. I’m asking because it makes it hard to drive. If we got into an accident here you’d be the ones who’d regret it. I don’t know what you guys did, but you’re going to get in a lot of trouble.”

  I was enraged. He didn’t seem afraid, even with the knife to his throat. He really wasn’t scared. Beside me, Worm sat up.

  “I was just about to call it a night,” the driver said, “so when you said drive you all the way to Tokyo I wasn’t too happy about it. But at the same time, I thought if you really were in a bind, I’d help you out. Taxi drivers are generally pretty good people, you know. But it really pisses them off to get threatened by punks like you. Me, too. I was thinking of doing this, and I don’t care if I get hurt.”

  Suddenly he started zigzagging the car back and forth. I fell over on Worm’s lap and the knife dropped onto the floor. The driver kept on weaving back and forth. Worm and I were tossed left and right, our bodies smashing into each other. A truck coming in the other direction blasted his horn and barely managed to slip by.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

  Worm picked up the butcher knife and sliced it across the driver’s throat. Blood spurted out, and I couldn’t stop screaming, “Stop it! Stop it!” But I had no idea what it was I wanted to stop. Probably not Worm cutting the driver’s throat—instead, I was furious that the driver was swerving all over the place. You idiot! Stop making fun of me! You dirty old men. And Terauchi. And Wataru.

  “I’m not going to stop. I told you I don’t care if I get hurt.”

  The driver unsnapped his seat belt. The taxi continued to race down the road, veering over into the opposite lane. We passed a motorcycle and zoomed up a road into the hills.

  “I told you to knock it off!” Worm screamed. I grabbed the driver’s hair from behind to get him to stop, but the plastic screen got in the way. His white cloth-covered cap flew off. At the same time a stream of red blood sprayed against the windshield. I was covered in hot blood—the hideous, filthy blood of an old man. I screamed. And then we crashed hard into something and I felt myself flying off somewhere. Flying through the sky. Such a wonderful, wonderful feeling.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  NINNA HORI, PART 2

  Dear Ninna Hori,

  Or maybe I should say “Dear Miss Toshiko Yamanaka”? Or maybe “Dear Toshi-chan—I love you”?

  I’m writing to you, Toshi, because you’re the only one I can tell this to. I know you might get mad and say, “What a thing to say!” But I know you’ll also sympathize with me and say that Terauchi must be a pretty lonely person. And that’s fine. Both are true, so please listen to me.

  By the time this letter gets to you tomorrow morning, I won’t be here in the world anymore. I know starting out the letter like this makes it sound like some dark manga or dumb novel, and I bet it’ll disappoint you. But it’s true. As soon as I mail the letter I’m planning to die. I’m going to die right away because I think it would be a lousy thing if you heard about my death before you got this letter, and I want to avoid that at all costs. By the way, I actually did try writing a dumb novel like this with a similar opening line, but the thing turned out to be the pits, so I crumpled it all up, ripped it into a million pieces, and flushed it down the toilet along with my pee.

  This is the first and last serious letter I’ll ever write to you, Toshi, and I wish I could stop hiding, but it’s like that’s all I can do anymore. Still, I feel sorry for myself and feel awful about vanishing from this life, and I’m writing this as a kind of pep talk to tell myself I’ve got to have the guts to do it, and I’m having this dilemma about how I can possibly convey to you the struggle I’m going through. Words are such a pain, so sluggish I feel like ripping my tongue right out. But if you think about it, writing this puts it into words, but since I’m not telling you directly, in person, my struggle is not so much about words as it is about me. That’s right—I’m still afraid of being totally honest. I’m more afraid of this than dying. So what am I doing getting all shy about something like writing, huh?

  Okay, I’ve finally calmed down a bit. If you say I hide things because I’m shy, that can’t be right. I’ve finally realized it’s for a different reason—that I don’t want to see the darkness that lies in my heart. And this agony I’ve been going through as I try to figure out what I want to tell you in this letter, Toshi—I finally understand the reason I’m writing. I’m really a dismal excuse for a person. But I’m so tense and nervous, hoping I can somehow communicate to you, Toshi, about the kind of person I am.

  I know this is a roundabout way of talking, but that’s the way my thoughts work, spiraling round and round. My mind works like that, too, but the conclusion is surprisingly simple. All I want is for someone to understand me before I die. With death staring me in the face, I finally understand the reason novelists write books: before they die they want somebody, somewhere, to understand them. In my case this isn’t my mother, or father, or Yukinari, or Yuzan. It’s just you, Toshi-chan.

  I know you may find this a pain, but I want to wipe the slate clean before I die, so please read this. If you don’t want to, could you just stop here? Even if you don’t want to read it yourself, that’s cool, but whatever you do, don’t show it to my mother, okay? Just keep what you’ve read so far in your heart and throw it away.

  I’m sorry if this is a burden for you. But I’m so happy I met you, Toshi. If I hadn’t, I’d have died without revealing to anyone the darkness inside of me. This might soun
d all pure and righteous, but it isn’t. The reason is that I need to die, but only after really taking a good hard look at myself and seeing what kind of person I am. Do you see what I mean? And to do that, you need somebody else’s eyes to look at you. So please, Toshi, see through to the real me, be brave, and laugh. Say, “What a jerk she was, that Terauchi! A girl like her leaving the world? Well, I say good riddance!” Is that asking too much?

  If our positions were reversed and you were in my shoes, I would definitely do that. I promise you I would. You might think that’s kind of a sneaky thing to say, to talk about something impossible like making a promise to you even though I’m dying first. But there’s nothing sneaky about it. Because I’m exposing things I’ve dragged out while you weren’t aware of it. You’ve changed me, little by little, Toshi. So we’re in the same boat. What I mean is, you have to deal with my death.