Lonely Hearts Killer

by Tomoyuki Hoshino

  The outline of this grandchild copy of a grandchild copy was getting fainter. If I didn’t concentrate, I wouldn’t understand or remember what she was saying.

  “I’m sorry to tell you this is no battlefield. You get caught up in ideas like fighting, winning, losing, and surviving because you use the word battlefield.” It took everything I had just to get that out. “I’m really tired. Let’s end it there.” I left the quiet film crews behind and withdrew to my room.

  After that I felt sluggish and weak from repeated interviews until I could only answer with the same old tired phrases – “Yes, that’s right” or “I’ll leave it to your imagination.” The reporters eventually gave up too.

  The initial public reaction to our exchanges was, at first glance, sheer outrage. Still, it was nothing I hadn’t already seen. “Fuck you, Iroha! You are all high and mighty, laughing while the rest of us common people have to get dirty.” Or “Iroha, you didn’t have the guts to go through with the first love suicide, did you? You decided to run away. Thanks to that, now the rest of us are stabbing each other in the back in this miserable killing game. We would have taken it on the chin if you’d shown some courage as the first person to blaze this trail.” There were more comments echoing that reporter’s words, which people tried to pass off as their own ideas. That’s why even the violence stayed on message. Even the people who were yapping themselves must have been worried about that eventuality.

  Actually, audience interest in the special features about us that ran on daytime talk shows was pretty dismal, and within a week public interest had shifted away from us. The new controversy was whether police efforts to guard a special group were themselves the problem and whether there were limits to self-reliance.

  I felt like something had made it over the pass. I was overcome by the idea it would start an avalanche and then move on and, at the same time, filled with hateful thoughts of it cascading into bigger and different forms. I thought no one could bear these recurrent thoughts. What happens when you can’t stand it anymore?

  The film crews had thinned out by the time Mokuren was hobbling around the lodge on crutches. Each news outlet kept one or two people on site and replaced their topnotch seasoned reporters who’d been here before with inexperienced newbies.

  Ironically, over the course of that one summer month from when Mokuren took out the ad through the arrival of the reporters, the attack, and up until my interview, there wasn’t a single report of an indiscriminate love suicide. But as soon as attention turned away from the mountain retreat, an incident occurred. A guest at a youth hostel in Furano electrocuted herself and an employee to death. Each woman left behind a suicide note about how she was “tired of the lies.” It was like traveling back in time for me, but the news coverage wasn’t nearly as intense as before. In fact, the incident barely made the news at all. After that, three instances each of love suicides and justifiable self-defense were reported, but not one loss of life was reported with more attention than would have been given a bad traffic accident.

  Like a clap of thunder in a clear sky, Her New Majesty’s succession ceremony was held on September 1. The government had scheduled the date for spring, but the public lost interest, Her New Majesty was convalescing, and the press was restrained. We were finally reminded of her a few days beforehand when they started airing special features.

  I was glued to the internet despite myself, but compared to the number of people who watched her interview on the anniversary of her brother’s death, the ratings for this ceremony looked pretty bleak. Maybe people couldn’t stomach the idea of having to listen to another one of her canned speeches.

  After the ceremonial parade was over and she returned to the Palace, Her New Majesty, like her brother, began to speak extemporaneously. Without any notes or prompts, she looked straight into the cameras and began talking.

  “I am not following my brother and predecessor’s example by speaking to you in this fashion because I want to respond to the people’s hopes as he did. Leaving aside all hopes and expectations, I first wish to express my own feelings.

  I deeply respect my predecessor’s mission. Having been called forth as Majesty, I wondered how an unconventional successor such as myself might take up his mission, which was cut so regrettably short.

  I am certain that many of you wondered why I offered no words of comfort when havoc was wreaked on these islands after my predecessor’s death. How could I not be pained when looking at such devastation?

  And yet I could not understand why people committed such acts after my predecessor was taken from us. He did not choose to die. Without such understanding, I had no words to say. While remembering my Predecessor, I continued to reflect on his bequest and the people’s actions.

  People invested hope in my predecessor because he was so different from his predecessors. Rather than a mere continuation of the roles assumed by Their Previous Majesties, he called for a new era, one in which we would strive to live as individuals and cultivate ourselves as individuals, even while upholding tradition.

  My predecessor tried to be the beginning. I believe that is natural for us as people. We all carry on the wisdom and spirit of our ancestors and yet are uniquely different beings. We are, after all, our individual selves in the end. My predecessor was trying to be himself.

  The suicidal trend destroying these islands is the exact opposite of what my predecessor intended. For people to reenact the actions that led to earlier deaths is nothing more than imitation. Can such a death even be called one’s own? If even your own death, an event that comes to each of us only once, is modeled on another’s, for what purpose were you granted the light of life in this world? My predecessor must be rolling over in his grave. I think his sadness deepens with every empty imitation.

  I am a new Majesty. I am a different person from my predecessor. I cannot serve as a substitute for him. What I can do is take up his bequest in my own way. I pray that I can persevere, living my life as myself. I want the ancestral spirit called Wisdom to become a part of me, to find its way into the pieces of my heart. Perhaps in doing so, that spirit can be reawakened. My predecessor’s death was his own. I want everyone, when the time comes, to die in his or her own way.”

  Her speech stole my words. A strange feeling welled up deep inside me, but it seems useless to try and describe it. There was something deep down in my body like optimism and also like an enormous sense of futility. But as soon as I try to render it into words like this, it loses meaning. Any words I could think of would only be puny imitations of what Her Majesty said.

  Her Majesty’s speech also seemed similar to Inoue’s document. If so, was this simply a surprising coincidence or had Her Majesty read Inoue’s document? I imagined Inoue and Miko as having been the warm-up act just so Her Majesty could shine like a star with her speech that day.

  I expected the worst as I headed to the spring. I was relieved when the visions of Miko and Inoue appeared, and I tried to tell them about Her Majesty’s speech. But in the middle of trying, I felt like I’d already recited these lines to them many times before, so I stopped without finishing. I also felt sick of the imaginary conversations with them I’d been creating in my head, and I started running my camera as I wished them into mere light and sound. I zoned out for a bit. Then Miko and Inoue were gone. What did it mean for Miko and Inoue, who botched their deaths, to disappear? Had they really finally died? Or had the Majesty-less world Inoue predicted come to pass and the two of them been reborn? Those words feel meaningless to me too.

  The speech was rebroadcast many times and brought calm to the streets too. After several days of chewing on Her New Majesty’s words, people were struggling to change into flesh and blood and in agony over what they should do now. Exactly like after His Previous Majesty’s death. So much so that not even my mom picked up the phone to call.

  However, in this lodge with no TV and just my one radio, Her New Majesty’s succession speech went away with the wind, and life was unchanged
, as quiet and colorful as ever. Having bid good riddance to the film crews, the lodgers could return to their routines, birds flocked to the garden birdbath and chirped away, and across from them people sitting in the rattan deck chairs and swinging in the hammock soaked up the breeze. You could hear the grass murmuring, and the trees let out sighs for the benefit of human beings.

  After lunchtime on September 4, Kisaragi headed to her room for her usual nap. Only this time, the person waiting for her there was not Udzuki, but a young reporter who’d arrived only a week earlier. He had a length of thick cotton rope in his hands. It was the same rope he used to tie up Udzuki, who was bound inside the sliding door closet. The reporter closed the door and announced he wanted Kisaragi to die with him. That guy didn’t understand. You’re the one who wrote that letter to the editor, aren’t you? You’d understand me. If you do, then I can end this without being alone, and if I can’t end it all with a moment when I’m not alone, I’ll have to return to an unbearably lonely existence, you’re tired, rest quietly, you don’t have to say you’ll stay with me after we die, each person goes on to their own afterlife, I can end it without the loneliness as long as you understand me.

  Kisaragi listened to him without stirring until he finished and then asked him what he’d been doing the past week. The reporter answered that he’d walked around the woods and came to this conclusion while walking, so he wasn’t being impulsive. Kisaragi apparently felt flames rising all over her body. And then she laid into him.

  Is imitating other people the best you can do? I want to die my own death so I say hell no to imitating anyone else’s. If you still want to die, you’re going to have to use force. Because I definitely will not understand, and I will resist you to the very end.

  Then she walked straight up to him and snatched the rope out of his hands. In my eyes, you’re not even there. A copy imitating a person isn’t human, just scenery, so go ahead and try. And she handed the rope out to him.

  The reporter was stiff and couldn’t move. We heard Kisaragi’s yelling and came running. We held him down while he was still frozen and unable to respond. He was arrested by the round-the-clock security cop for intent to kill. I don’t suppose there are many cases where the word “intent” fits quite so well. He passionately wanted to do it, but he couldn’t follow through.

  The reporters still stationed at the lodge were relating this incident via live telecast in no time. They made Kisaragi look quite the heroine for her firm stand and determination. Her face during the interview was a radiant postpartum red, her eyes were sparkling, and her voice rang out as clear and resonant as if she were singing an aria. She was, in a word, divine. The phrase that came out of her mouth and echoed out in the world was “a copy imitating a person isn’t human, just scenery.” Many people’s spirits rose when they heard those words. They agreed and were emboldened and resolved. This mountain lodge was called things like “The Hall of Courage,” and for a little while the whole world wanted to visit Kisaragi.

  That was the last attempt at a love suicide. After that, love suicides began to seem impossible, and the uneasiness in people’s hearts disappeared. Society returned to “normal.” People who took a defiant attitude like Kisaragi and refused to “imitate others” conquered their fears, and they were filled from head to toe with the confidence that her high spirits could be theirs too. The media called the end of the age of love suicides the “snow-melt” and pronounced that spring was on its way.

  It goes without saying that it’s been a while since the “snow-melt.” That much you all know. So, I don’t need to go into more longwinded explanations about everything that’s happened these past three years. This is already too long.

  But if I had to leave off by saying just one thing, it would be that the snow hasn’t melted for me.

  As you know, in the “election to change the world” held immediately after the “snow-melt,” Terujirô Kishi, the student from the first justifiable self-defense incident back when the war began, was serving as Secretary General for the new political party, which became the dominant party ruling the coalition government. “Those of us who are here today survived because we were meant to survive. We should forge ahead, confident in our fate and our ability with a zest for life, as we set about creating a proud, healthy society.” That appeal of his resonated with you all, didn’t it? With a strong push forward for the stability of law and order everyone desperately wanted, they took over and absorbed all the other parties and established rock-solid leadership. Kishi assumed the prime minister-ship in no time at all and was celebrated as “The Winning Team’s Premier.”

  Well, as I’ve written more than once already, our mountain retreat was under surveillance. Even after the “snow-melt,” the police remained on the grounds that the danger of another attack on the lodge had not passed. If anything, the police presence increased, and everyone visiting the retreat was, without exception, subjected to intense security checks. Most of the lodgers were annoyed by all the intrusions and went back down the mountain never to return. And that’s why now it’s a forgotten “reservation.”

  Because of Inoue’s mistaken approach, the holes in this screen we call society get filled with cheap pride whenever they become visible, and the projector starts back up. The post-love suicide era Kisaragi rang in with her shining declaration is nothing more than a gargantuan remake. In order to deny the reality that it’s a shoddy imitation, people voluntarily become screens and believe the film projected onto them is really them. All the individual does is weave and press the screen called society. Who can say they are really living their own lives?

  On the other side of the screen, reserved in taboo confines, I have lived with painful thoughts these past three years. I also have a bad feeling that if we keep going like this, we’ll see another era of love suicides.

  And that’s why I’m breaking the taboo. I want to expose how it’s all just movies projected on the surface of the moon and that, just like before, no one exists, and no one is participating in the world. As a start, I’m copying and disseminating Inoue’s document.

  THREE: SUBIDA AL CIELO

  I got back from my business trip to Shanghai, and Iroha wasn’t here. According to Udzuki, she uploaded Inoue’s document and her additional file and then turned herself in at the gate police-box. I can imagine how dazed and confused Officer Murai must have been. His strong sense of duty to protect the lodge is so cute and sincere. When Iroha suddenly showed up saying she’d committed a crime, asking to be arrested, and handing over the evidence, he must have had no clue what to do. He probably went along with it more because she was so eager than because he was focused on carrying out his duties. That’s how good-natured he is. The poor guy.

  That woman! She really took advantage of my absence. She did it all without sharing or discussing anything with me. She better not have been trying to make fun of my self-righteousness. And she better have known she’d get chewed out if she told me.

  I was bitching like that as Udzuki gave me the lowdown. Then he said, “The document part is nothing,” and he took me to her room.

  On the other side of the door was a fake room. Directly in front of us, the afternoon sun was shining through the sliding glass door to the terrace (it was, by the way, evening at the time), and beyond the terrace was the mountain range. You could see the trees in the garden from the western window. But there was nothing on the eastern wall, or to be more precise, there was just a white sheet hanging there.

  “That projector is kaput. Iroha didn’t catch that one,” Udzuki explained.

  Sure enough, the southern terrace and western window were just movies Iroha made that were being projected on the walls. If you took away the screens hung there, you’d see the identical real things, the terrace or the window.

  A human figure appeared at the far end of the terrace. It was Iroha. She walked towards the glass door with a cup and saucer in her hand, looking off and occasionally back this way, and she was saying something. She’
d start laughing and stagger off balance too. But there was no sound.

  A figure crossed the western window too. Then it came back. Somehow it was me.

  Udzuki said, “I’m not in this. I feel so unwanted.”

  Iroha faced us and walked into the room from the terrace. You couldn’t read her expression because of the backlighting. There was something a little menacing and powerful in her movements. Just when I unconsciously backed away, Iroha disappeared. She must have stepped out of the camera’s range.

  “Don’t get mad in this next part and just keep watching,” Udzuki warned.

  No one was left on the terrace, and everything was bathed in orange like time had passed or maybe the sun suddenly sunk. That scene was frozen for a minute and then the orange tone that was spreading out in thin rays of light from the edges of the landscape shattered into particles that fell like sand in an hourglass. The scene in the room collapsed. Nothing was projected after things fell apart. Just one of those screen saver thingies.

  When the bits of color had all fallen down, the room went dark. She must have lined the sheet she used for a screen with blackout paper. I couldn’t tell where Udzuki was.

  Eventually, a faint light began to rise up from the floor. A gentle lemon-colored arc of light.

  “Oh no, tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

  “It’s what you think it is.”

  “As if this was a planetarium.”

  It was the surface of the moon. And it stopped when it covered the lower third of the screen. I stood on the lunar surface, gazing out at the horizon, to the west and to the south. The horizon divided the light from the darkness. You could even see the pits and rocks on the surface. And she’d carefully made sure stars floated in blue space on the western wall. How did she get her hands on that film?

  The light of the lunar surface gradually grew stronger. From lemon to silver to a blinding white. At the same time, the darkness deepened until it was a pure jet black. The contrast sharpened until finally the lunar surface was a high-contrast black and white. Then the close-ups of the black and white surface began. It was like riding in some kind of spaceship at light speed above the surface. I felt a little woozy.