Edge

by Kōji Suzuki

  He didn’t know how much time they had left; it might be a matter of minutes, or perhaps hours. But the end was near. He had to make a decision, and he had to make it now. He could just get up and leave and not go through the wormhole. But it was precisely this need to choose on the spot, rather than his fear of the unknown, that was enervating him.

  If he did leave and only 172 people remained, would that be enough to change their destiny? Leaving meant exposing himself to the phase transition. It was hell either way. Even so, he knew that he had to force a decision. One path meant a slow, tortured death; the other, the possibility of a painless and sudden end. He didn’t know what waited for him through the wormhole; he could only see ambiguity and chaos. Faced with an impossible decision, Hashiba gave up all his efforts to think rationally and craned his neck upwards. Stars continued to blink out one by one, each one seeming to accentuate the relentless passage of time. His nerves were on fire.

  Hashiba closed his eyes and clasped his hands together in prayer.

  9It all began with you …

  Saeko replayed Seiji’s words in her head. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t work out what he meant. The only option was to ask him directly. Seiji’s mouth hung half open, and his brow was furrowed. Saeko had never seen a snake about to deliver its venomous charge, but that was the image that came to mind looking at him now.

  “You still don’t know how the world works, do you, little girl?”

  Saeko sat bolt upright. How the world works. That was a phrase her father had used countless times. “And you suppose that you do?”

  “Well, you know, it’s like a bundle of threads rolled together. Each end has its own idea, the exact opposite of the other end.”

  “And?” she pushed for more.

  “You can’t think of these ideas as isolated things, separated by the length of the thread. Each helps the other. Each complements the other. The thread joins them. You know of how the Devil came to be, right? The Devil is a fallen angel.” He let out a vulgar, croaking laugh.

  Again, Saeko felt afraid of something she couldn’t quite place. Her father had once explained to her that the universe was composed of opposing ideas. “God and the Devil complementing each other?”

  “Every little thing that happens is related to something else.” Seiji brushed his fingers along the table next to him. “It’s like a spider’s web, an amazingly intricate tapestry of threads. The world is built on the shoulders of these relationships. The passage of time is simply an expression of the development and change in these relationships.”

  Saeko glanced at her wristwatch. Why was she sitting here listening to him talk at her? If it were her father, she would probably be impatient for more, but the words of this grotesque man … All she could see was a feeble attempt to hide his disgusting nature. She wanted to get out of this situation as soon as she got the chance, and every moment was precious.

  She glanced at the plaster casts on his legs. If she made a run down the corridor it was unlikely he would be able to give chase, but she had to be sure about the wormhole. Would it open in this room or not? Besides, she had to know what he meant when he said that it had all begun with her. She had to know what happened to her father. She had to get him to talk.

  “Let’s get back to the point. Enough rambling.”

  “Not exactly the attitude you’d expect when someone’s asking a favor, now, is it? So, you want to know what happened, yes?”

  Saeko began to nod but stopped herself in mid-movement. She glared at the man before her, her heart thumping wildly. All she could do was wait.

  “All right, then. Humans are only aware of a tiny, infinitesimal part of the world. It’s like an iceberg, most of it hidden below the sea. What most people see is just the visible bit, but some people see more. They can discern the tangle of relationships hidden beneath the surface. Those with a third nipple—in other words, us. That old bag Shigeko was one too. Some of her better predictions were right on the mark.

  “Life is full of traps, catastrophe is never far away. The contract between God and the Devil has always been in force, but cleverly kept secret. That’s why people put things down to luck, whether good or bad, unable to see the truth. It’s easy to wrap inevitability in the guise of coincidence.”

  Seiji pulled the crutches around from behind him and placed them on his lap. He rested his elbows on his knees and bent forward, cradling his head in his hands. The movement was designed to arrest her attention, but Saeko caught a glimpse of something like fatigue. The threatening, challenging look that had been there when she first entered the room seemed to be fading away.

  Saeko seized the opportunity. “You said just now that you killed the family. That was a lie, wasn’t it?”

  Seiji raised his brows and opened his eyes wide. He scratched at his throat as though it ached under the skin. With what vigor he had left he let out, “What makes you say that?”

  “You wouldn’t dirty your own hands. It’s clear, listening to you talk.”

  “Well, you’re entitled to your opinion I guess.”

  “Just answer me one thing,” Saeko was pleading now, holding her anger in reserve. “What happened to my father?” If nothing else, she at least wanted to know that.

  “You sure you want to know?”

  “Please, just tell me …”

  “You already know what happened.”

  “Don’t jerk me around.”

  “Think about what happened here, those eighteen years ago. You work it out yourself now. Think about the order of events.”

  Saeko’s eyes darted around.

  Work it out yourself. Grasp the logic …

  It was her father’s teaching. Only when she was completely stuck, he’d provide an image in the way of a hint. Visualization was indispensable; reasoning that wasn’t accompanied by any tended to be bankrupt.

  She decided to take Seiji up on the challenge. In order to replay her father’s movements on that August day eighteen years ago, she tried to picture details as vividly as she could.

  For some reason, after 8 p.m., at a hotel in Narita, he had suddenly changed his plans and decided to head for Takato. At that time of day it would have been impossible to get there by train; the only possible mode of transport would have been a cab. Kitazawa had confirmed that her father hadn’t rented a car for the trip.

  Saeko didn’t have much to work with to guess what his companion, Haruko, might have been thinking. Traveling in Bolivia, perhaps she’d fallen in love with Saeko’s father, but just how serious was their relationship? Had Haruko resolved to throw away everything? Or had she just been out to play around a bit? What were her feelings for her husband?

  Saeko stopped there. Why had she never considered Haruko’s husband in the equation? If her father had fallen in love with Haruko, then it was her husband, Kota, that he needed to confront. It just hadn’t crossed her mind to think of him. She tried to visualize Haruko and her father leaving the airport hand in hand. And then, waiting at their destination, Haruko’s husband: Kota Fujimura.

  And now she saw something else too, realizing her error as soon as she pictured her father and Haruko in an embrace. Both image and logic indicated that it wasn’t Seiji who had the third nipple, but Kota.

  Considering the scene between her father and Haruko all of eighteen years ago in conjunction with her own experience, her hunch became conviction. They had met in Bolivia and decided to travel together, but they hadn’t consummated their relationship. Perhaps mindful of Haruko’s marriage, her father had managed to hold back his passion and not cross that line. In other words, he loved Haruko deeply enough to respect her situation.

  There was no other way to explain the timing of her father’s sudden change of plans. The two of them had come back to Japan and booked a hotel room for their last night together. Haruko had been planning to return to her husband the next day. Maybe the impending sadness of parting had pushed them to cross the line. After he called Saeko, something hap
pened and they moved to consummate the relationship. Caught up in the moment, they tore each other’s clothes off, but something stopped them—just like with her and Hashiba.

  The fragmented images ran across her mind like a cinematic flashback. She saw two bodies, tangled together in a passionate embrace, fumble their way to bed. Haruko’s hands traced her father’s chest and came to a halt. Discovering his third nipple, her thoughts immediately returned to her husband, the tactile sensation dissipating her lust, as with Hashiba when he found the lump on her breast.

  Seiji was right. Saeko was surprised at how easy it was to see the links between each event. Haruko would have explained why she’d stopped, whispering into her father’s ear, “My husband also …”

  What if the locations of the third nipple were a mirror image? If Kota’s was on the right side, while Saeko’s father’s was on the left, what would he have made of the reverse symmetry? Matter and anti-matter—those were the words that came to Saeko’s mind, and she was sure her father had thought the same.

  Despite having the same mass and spin, matter and anti-matter had opposing electrical charges. If her father and Kota were somehow mirror images of each other too, then the analogy was nagging. The revelation must have astounded her father, who interpreted alignments of numbers and phenomena not as mere coincidence but as signs of a higher force.

  By falling for the same woman, he’d discovered the existence of his mirror image. He would have been convinced that this fact concealed an important secret that could wreak havoc if ignored. The key to finding out its meaning was Kota himself. That was why her father acted right away.

  So that was it. Her father’s purpose in coming to Takato on that August day eighteen years ago had never been to confront Seiji. It had been Kota all along.

  “It’s something to do with Kota Fujimura.”

  On the mention of the name Seiji broke out into a coughing fit. His convulsions jangled the crutches balanced on his lap. “Atta-girl. You’re getting warm now.”

  He still wanted her to get to the answer herself. Saeko tried to imagine what might have happened next.

  It would have been sometime after two in the morning when they finally arrived at the Fujimura house. What happened then? Did her father get in a fight with Kota over the love triangle with Haruko? A horrifying image crossed her mind and she shuddered. Crimes of passion, of a jealous husband killing his wife’s lover, weren’t uncommon. Could Kota have killed her father that night? Was her father murdered and tossed into the lake? She could hardly bear the thought of it, let alone put it into words, but the only way forward was to ask.

  “Was … Did Kota kill my father?”

  “What a mundane answer,” Seiji’s grin was full of scorn. He shook his head.

  Saeko’s instincts told her that he was telling the truth. So Kota hadn’t killed her father.

  What else could have happened? If there had been no violence, perhaps the two of them had been able to talk. In fact, Saeko already had something to help her work out the contents of their discussion.

  She clearly remembered the words that had come to her during the filming, when she’d placed her hand on her father’s notebook on the table in front of her.

  If that’s what you want, go right ahead. I won’t stop you.

  She hadn’t known the voice at the time. Now she finally had an idea whose it might be. She’d been thorough in her research into the Fujimura family, but since they’d gone missing, she’d never heard their voices.

  At the time, she’d assumed that the words referred to the notebook. But now that she was able to picture the scene between her father and Kota, their point became clear.

  Perhaps because she had connected the voice’s timber to its speaker, the sequence of events flowed like a dam had broken. Eighteen years ago, her father had faced Kota in this room. The cabinet, the table, the chairs, and everything else in it stimulated her imagination now, and a conversation began to play out in her mind.

  It was late, two or three in the morning. Perhaps having gone to bed, Haruko wasn’t with them. Kota was in the living room, her father in the dining room.

  Kota was doing all the talking; her father listened in silence. Kota sat on the floor, legs outstretched, his back against the living room wall. Her father was half obscured in the shadows, but she imagined him leaning against the wall, too. They were back to back but in different rooms with a thin partition between them.

  A single light shone from above in the darkened living room, a spotlight illuminating Kota from above. Saeko’s image was three-dimensional, like a hologram, but the light was weak and hazy, the outlines blurred. She couldn’t discern Kota’s expression. The tone of his speech flitted randomly between the formal and informal; its content, too, seemed full of contradiction, courtesy and insult and resignation and excitement intertwining. One moment, his tone would be loud and mocking. The next he would speak almost too quietly to make out the words, suddenly more serious, even solemn. The random fluctuations were enough to instill a deep sense of unease in Saeko.

  The night was quiet, and the low rasp of Kota’s monologue filled it:

  You should be grateful. I mean, if you don’t want to, then just turn me down. Although I don’t think you’ve got that in you …

  I’ve got to say, though, I feel pretty damned lucky. Meeting you like this. It was worth putting out the bait. I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life in this place, this dull place, accomplishing nothing as a serpent stripped of its wings. But here you are, and now I can finally take flight. I can take back my wings, fly as high as I wish. It’s not all bad for you, either. If you hadn’t met me, you’d have been informed of a loved one’s death. We both stand to gain.

  You know what I’m talking about. If you choose to do nothing, your pretty, sweet little daughter is going to die tomorrow morning. She’ll set out for the library, then out of nowhere—a speeding truck. She’ll be dragged, half-alive, a hundred meters under the wheels of the thing. What a pitiful sight, torn to pieces like that. There’s only one way to alter that fate.

  Just swat down United Airlines Flight 323 that took off from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

  Don’t look so surprised. Your daughter’s life and UA323 are tied together with an invisible string and are related, taking one means losing the other. You know very well how the world’s structured—the relationships that obtain behind it all.

  All we have to do is make an agreement. A contract, if you will. You give me your powers. It will save your daughter. And you get a nice little prize called Haruko in the bargain.

  If that’s what you want, go right ahead. I won’t stop you.

  Saeko’s heart felt like it would burst, and she stroked her chest. Was it true? She had indeed seen an article that UA323 had crashed; it had said that all 515 people on board were presumed dead. But she’d had no way of knowing that she was fated to die if the 515 had not. If her father had called her the evening before—at eight o’clock, as he never failed to—then she would indeed have gone to the library the next day. He hadn’t called, she’d worried, and her schedule had changed as a result.

  Saeko often found herself asking what would have happened if she’d made a different decision. What if Hashiba hadn’t discovered the lump? They would have made love, and that would have seriously altered her subsequent path. It was the same with her father. If he hadn’t embraced Haruko that night in Narita, he would never have obtained the information about Kota’s third nipple. He would not have traveled to Takato and would have had his daughter’s death on his hands.

  The sound of rasping laughter filled her ears. Again she heard Kota’s voice fill the room:

  The number of people? Why get hung up on that at this point? Have you got it all wrong? What the invisible string connects isn’t one life and another, but phenomena—a traffic accident and a plane crash. There just happens to be a disparate number of victims.

  Now, don’t get so huffy. It’s not like you to fr
et over the imbalance. You can’t possibly not know that it’s not about the head count. Are you feeling a little confused? Are you telling me that if the price of your daughter living were just one stranger’s life, then you’d take the deal without batting an eye? In that case, what if the number was ten? Or a hundred, or a thousand? Where do you draw the line? The number of people sacrificed doesn’t change the choice.

  This is business as usual behind the stage, just unknown. Accidents, illnesses, disasters, terrorism, you name it. A lot of people die every so often. Ever wondered why it should have been them and not you? Well, it doesn’t matter who. Death rains down arbitrarily. It just happened to be them and not you. If what’s going on behind the stage became known, I bet humans wouldn’t be able to take it. Life, in the first place, rests on the sacrifice of others. Knowing the sacrifices’ names and faces, though, would easily unhinge people. It’d be hard not to picture the sorrow of the bereaved. Not knowing allows people to go about their lives not caring.

  As I’m sure you know, you can choose to strip me of my power. But doing so will bring about the death—the appalling, tragic death—of your beloved daughter. There’s only one way to save her. You give me your power, and the man that is Shinichiro Kuriyama disappears from the face of this planet, for good. Sure, to make phenomenal ends meet, a plane will have to crash too, but I couldn’t care less.

  Please don’t just die, though. In any case, you couldn’t even if you wanted to. You’ll just have to keep falling.

  Shinichiro Kuriyama ends here. From now on, you live as Kota Fujimura. You’ll get Haruko for yourself. You have to become my successor for this to work smoothly. My departure will leave a gaping hole. It’s your job to stay and fill that hole. You’re the only one that can, after all, since you understand how this works. All that studying you’ve done, all that physics. Hell, I’m just preaching to the choir here, right? Clear as day to you, I’d imagine.

  It’s just so exciting! All the possibilities, all the things I can do. In the world I alight upon as a god, I’ll be able to conduct all sorts of nifty experiments.