Real World

by Natsuo Kirino

  I don’t think you understand at all why I’m going to die, so let me explain a little. That’s only fair. There are a couple of reasons why I can’t go on living anymore.

  One is my difficult personality. I think you know about that. I’m this superphilosophical kind of person. Stuck in a prison of abstract ideas and overpowering emotions, I have this personality that makes it really hard to survive. Plus, I’m living in the middle of a familiar transformation, I guess you’d call it, something mankind’s never experienced before, with the role of the family getting more messed up than anybody imagines, changing day by day, growing more and more complicated and individualistic, something nobody can really comprehend, and I have to pretend to fill all these roles every day. Otherwise I can’t survive. That totally wears me out. In the reality of everyday occurrences I’ve had to submit to people in order not to lose them.

  It’s less the submission that bothers me, I guess, than how it makes my life miserable. And what happens if I can’t forgive myself for making that choice? And what if, in order to keep on living, I have to continue to accept myself? What am I supposed to do? Conclusion: It’d be best if I’m destroyed. The best thing is for me to just vanish.

  By the way, the person who’s caused me so much grief is someone you’ve met before, Toshi—my mother. A mother complex? Sorry, that’s not it. I’ve already gone beyond that. Still, as a person, I like her. I don’t want to make her suffer, yet I’ve turned into this old person who shouldn’t outlive her.

  There’s one more major reason that I don’t want to—can’t—go on living. There’s something I have to take responsibility for. Kirarin’s accident. The accident in which Kirarin and that taxi driver from Nagano died, and in which Worm was critically injured. It’s all my fault.

  After I die, nobody will be able to discover the truth, so I want to set it down clearly here. The night Worm and Kirarin phoned me I told the police where they were. I made an anonymous call from a public phone at a convenience store in front of the station and told the police that they were in a vacant cottage in Karuizawa. That’s why Worm and Kirarin tried to escape the police dragnet by robbing a taxi, which led to the accident. So something that never should have happened did, all because of my thoughts and actions. A clear-cut cause-and-effect relationship. I was the one who caused it, and I should probably get the death penalty. Or maybe what I should say is I’m the one who pronounced the death sentence on myself.

  I can hear you saying, Toshi, that I shouldn’t feel responsible. But, like some criminal who’s convinced that what he’s doing is right, I ran Kirarin and Worm into a corner and tried to punish them. That’s a fact. I despised Worm because he ran away from something that can’t be undone and chose the easy way out of something that can be. Which for him was killing his mother. He chose the easy path and then ran away, and I despised him for it.

  I love my mother too much and so I forgave her, but I hated myself for forgiving her, and started to hate myself so much that I didn’t want to be in this world anymore. At the same time I burned with hatred for Worm, for the hostility he had toward his mother. ’Cause what he did didn’t involve my kind of roundabout thinking. It evaded thinking, actually. It was just too simple. I was angry because he boiled down his trouble into a very simplistic response. I think I started to apply this weird logic to Kirarin, too. Needless to say, I was also angry at you, Toshi, for hesitating to report Worm to the police, and at Yuzan for lending him her bike. Still I pretended as always to be casually helping out Worm and Kirarin. I wonder why. Maybe I’m evil, after all.

  After I phoned the police I felt awful, like I had something bitter in my mouth that I couldn’t get rid of, no matter how much I swallowed. Now I realize that taste came to me the instant I crossed the line. That night I tried to avoid the whole thing, got into bed, and forced myself to shut my eyes, but then had lots of weird dreams. In one dream, Kirarin was riding in the back of a truck, going off to be sold somewhere. In another one, I reported my mother to the police. Wonder what Freud would say about that?

  Then early the next morning I got a phone call from you. As soon as I heard you scream through the cell phone that Kirarin had died, I knew it. That what I had done had brought on a tragedy that could never be undone. For me the idea of something that can’t be undone seemed an internal emotion, etched in the hearts of the living. But when I realized I’d lost Kirarin, that this was something real that truly was irreparable, I got goose bumps all over. I was terrified. Terror is more dangerous than the prospect of self-exposure; I could see my whole philosophy of life falling apart. The world I’d thought was real collapsed, and out of it another reality appeared. A meta-reality. I’d been pondering for a long time who I was and had almost reached a conclusion, but now I had to start again from scratch. I wonder if I was wrong.

  I was acting strangely, so my mom asked me what was wrong. “Kirarin died in Karuizawa,” I told her, “in an accident.” My mother was shocked and said, “How could that happen? Her poor mother.” What do you think I said back to her then, Toshi? A line that even now makes me blush. Something so dumb that would make this hyperphilosophical girl a complete laughingstock. No matter that this letter is my suicide note, it’s too embarrassing to write down what I said to my mom. Out of consideration for our friendship, I hope you’ll forgive me.

  Anyhow, I’m ashamed of myself. And very, very tired. It seems like I’ve reached the right moment to die. I feel sorry for my mother, but she has someone more important in her life than me, so I’m sure she’ll survive. Sorry, but I’m not thinking about my father and brother, either. I’m sure that for you, Toshi, getting this letter knowing I’ve died will be really tough. But you’re a good person, with a strong, honest soul, and I know you’ll be okay. Not me, though—I’m done for. I want to say good-bye to everybody. Hmm—sounds like something from Dazai Osamu, doesn’t it? How pointless was that, writing reports for school? Bye-bye. I’m off on a journey to the real world. ’Cause within this meta-reality what’s real is this—my death. You hang in there, now, okay? Later, dude.

  Kazuko Terauchi

  No doubt about it, this was a suicide note. I’d never held a suicide note, or read one, in my life. When I thought that these were Terauchi’s last words, somehow I couldn’t fathom what they all meant.

  She ended up not actually mailing the letter. It was sealed, with my name on it, on top of her desk. It didn’t have a stamp on it, so she must not have wanted to take the trouble to buy one. Instead she jumped off the roof of a nearby apartment building. Even though she’d made such a big deal about how she wanted the letter to arrive before the news of her death. Such impatience. Just that fact alone revealed how confused Terauchi had been. It made me want to laugh, but instead my face was all scrunched up in pain. Come on, you dummy! I wanted to say. Get it right!

  Worm’s mother’s death, Kirarin’s death, the death of that taxi driver, Worm’s injury, Terauchi’s suicide. Too many shocking things had happened one after another, and tears wouldn’t come. I couldn’t think about it deeply. Like an empty shell, I opened up Terauchi’s last letter and had to read it with Terauchi’s parents and my mother looking over my shoulder.

  “What did she say?”

  Terauchi’s mother asked this the second I finished reading. In just half a day her face had turned dry and listless, drained of life. She looked desperate to know the reason why her daughter killed herself. Only Terauchi’s father was sobbing—her mother was toughing it out. Yukinari, her younger brother, had shut himself in his room and refused to come out.

  My mother rested her hand on my shoulder as if to protect me, and it felt heavy. Terauchi’s mother had phoned us, saying, “There’s a letter left behind addressed to Toshiko, so I’d like you to come over and open it.” As soon as we heard this, we dropped everything and raced over.

  I’d never imagined that I’d be hearing about Terauchi’s death, and it was all so sudden and crazy that it was almost funny. That’s why I couldn’t
cry. My heart just felt empty. To begin with, early that morning we’d gotten the shocking news of Kirarin’s death and that turned into a huge uproar, not just in my house or the neighborhood, but with calls coming from school, too.

  The female detective who’d questioned me before was the one who told me the news about Kirarin’s death in the accident. And then, half a day later, this phone call telling us Terauchi had killed herself. So as I started to read her letter, I had no clue at all what it was all about. I was totally confused and tried my best to be calm.

  This is how it all took place:

  Early on the morning of August tenth, our home phone rang. It had to be either a salesman or a relative. Other people would just call each of our cell phones, which made a phone call coming in the morning all the more ominous. Nobody else was up yet, and I counted the rings as the phone echoed in the quiet house—one…two…Six thirty by my clock. It’s got to be bad news, I thought, and tugged my blanket up to my chest. At the fifth ring it sounded like Dad answered it downstairs. No way. No way! The extension in my room rang, and it was Dad’s voice.

  “It’s from the police. They want to talk to you.”

  I was pretty depressed, figuring they’d finally caught Worm and had learned how we’d helped him get away. I guess depressed isn’t the right word. It was more like Darn it all! Racing to think up some excuses, I reluctantly came on the phone.

  “Good morning. My apologies for calling so early.” It was the female detective from before, and she was so polite it made me even more confused for a second.

  “Toshiko? I apologize if you were sleeping,” the woman went on. “But something terrible has happened and I thought I should let you know. It will shock you, but please try to remain calm. It’s hard for me to make this call. The Nagano Prefectural Police contacted us and informed us that a high school student named Miss Kirari Higashiyama passed away a short time ago in a hospital in Karuizawa. She was with the boy who lives next door to you, and I was really surprised, wondering how this happened. She goes to the same high school as you, so is she a friend of yours? I wonder if she had been seeing the boy next door before this. I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me whatever you know.”

  Kirarin was dead. I was totally shocked, and was sure that Worm must have killed her.

  “Was Kirarin murdered?”

  “By Kirarin you mean Miss Higashiyama?” the female detective asked calmly. “I don’t have all the details, but we do know that your neighbor robbed a taxi late last night. The taxi was weaving back and forth and crashed into an oncoming car and was destroyed. Miss Higashiyama went through the windshield and was thrown onto the road. They said she was unconscious. She suffered trauma to her entire body and passed away. It’s unclear why she was with the young man, but eyewitnesses state they seemed to be close. Please tell me what was going on.”

  The detective, it surprised me, was close to tears. A random thought sprang into my mind—the image of the heavy brooch pinned to her blouse. The fact that Kirarin was dead just wouldn’t sink in.

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  Which was true, I didn’t have a clue. I might have known that Kirarin was with Worm, but why did she have to die? It made no sense. It was like some totally astonishing thing had just fallen from the sky and my world was suddenly in chaos.

  “Is that so? Well, I guess we can talk about it more some other time.”

  She sounded resigned.

  “How do you know they attacked a taxi?” I asked.

  “The driver was cut with a knife and died from loss of blood. His throat was apparently cut. They must have cut him from behind. Your neighbor testified to this as well at the hospital.”

  Damn. This was awful. How could Worm take Kirarin with him and do something like that? I couldn’t believe it. My knees started to shake and I couldn’t stand. I collapsed onto the bed. Somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up and Dad was there, holding out an opened newspaper to me. The headline read, “Runaway Assaults Taxi and Causes Accident.” The news managed to make it into the morning paper. Neither Worm’s nor Kirarin’s name was given, but she was described as “the high school girl accompanying him,” hinting at her being an accomplice.

  “What happened to Worm—I mean the boy next door?” I asked the detective.

  “He’s got injuries on his right arm and head and broke some ribs, and was taken to the hospital.” Maybe I was just imagining it, but her voice sounded cold. “They suspected some internal damage, as well, but I haven’t heard anything after that. We’re going there now to check on the situation.”

  As soon as she hung up, I dialed Kirarin’s cell phone but only got her voice mail. What happened to her phone? When I pictured her little pink cell phone lying along the side of some road, it hurt. I dialed her home next, but it was the same thing—voice mail.

  I looked at the curtain. I could sense, outside, the blue sky of morning. It looked like another hot summer day. Was this really happening? I couldn’t believe it, and my mind was total confusion.

  My father seemed to be saying something but I couldn’t absorb it. Suddenly I realized I had to phone Terauchi. I jumped up to get my cell again, and when he saw this, Dad left my room.

  If I hadn’t phoned her, Terauchi might not have died that day.

  “Terauchi, Kirarin’s dead.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Did you hear me? Kirarin’s dead.”

  “I heard you.”

  Her voice was so small and low it sounded like it was filtering up through the earth’s core. How can she possibly be so calm? I wondered.

  “I’m not kidding. The police just phoned me. Worm attacked a taxi driver and there was an accident. Kirarin was unconscious and died. Worm just broke some bones and survived. The driver died, too. They said his throat was cut. The two of them attacked the driver. What happened, do you think? Maybe they were trying to rob him? What should I do? What are you supposed to do in a situation like this?”

  I got all this out in a rush of words and finally noticed Terauchi’s silence.

  “What’s the matter, Terauchi? Did you hear what I said?”

  She answered in this slow, casual way, “That’s awful. That things ended up like that.”

  “Of course it’s awful,” I said. “But they’re dead, and there’s nothing we can do about that. I was so shocked when I heard. It’s all my fault. What do you think?”

  I was shaken, convinced I was to blame for the whole thing. I never told the police about my bike and cell phone being stolen. I’d gotten in touch with Worm a number of times after that, and even rooted for him to escape. All of us had been idiots. Criminals, even. Terauchi tried to cheer me up.

  “There’s no need for you to get all upset, Toshi. You didn’t do anything so bad. I’m the one who did something bad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m the one who changed fate, I guess.”

  Terauchi mumbled this puzzling thing. Then I heard this popping noise, like she was getting the kinks out of her neck.

  “What’s that sound?”

  “I’m setting my alarm clock.”

  “You’re going back to sleep?”

  I couldn’t believe how nervy she was. What she thought of all this, what she was thinking about, I didn’t even try to imagine. Or even give it a thought. All I could think about was myself. About me and how the adults were going to blame me. Looking back on it now, I can see that when she set her clock she was setting a time limit for herself, for how much longer she had to live.

  “That’s right. I’m going back to sleep. See you, Toshi. Hang in there.”

  What do you mean, hang in there? Am I the only one who has to hang in there? Terauchi’s coolness bothered me, and I couldn’t help but get angry at her. Like she felt she was okay because she’d just been an observer all along. So I pushed down hard on the End button on my phone. This was the last contact I ever had with her, pressing down hard on the button to end the cal
l. The sensation stayed in the pad of my thumb for a while. In contrast, when I called Yuzan next she made me feel encouraged, but at the same time, got me even angrier.

  “Kirarin’s dead?” Yuzan shouted, and burst out in tears. “How could this happen? I-I won’t stand for it. I’m gonna kill that Worm myself!”

  “Well, okay, but Yuzan…” I said. “I feel responsible for Kirarin’s death. I made a huge mistake.”

  “But I’m the one who’s most guilty. I took the bike to Worm, gave him the cell phone, so it’s my fault. Don’t blame yourself, Toshi. You have to remember that Kirarin went on her own to meet up with him, so in a sense she brought it on herself. All of us were kind of enjoying his escape. It’s a shock that Kirarin died, but don’t let it get to you that much. All of us will take responsibility. You don’t need to suffer over it alone.”

  As I listened to Yuzan, I suddenly realized that the shattering of the glass I’d heard next door was the beginning of the end of the world. Ever since that day things had gradually been changing, and today was the final blow. Things couldn’t possibly go any lower. I recalled how Terauchi’s voice sounded like it was filtering up from underground. But Kirarin’s death was too much of a shock for me to dwell on anything. I fell back on my bed. Kirarin—are you really dead? It came back to me—her overlapping teeth showing when she smiled, that lively look she always had when she was startled. I started to cry. She really was dead, after all. I couldn’t believe I’d never see her again.