Lonely Hearts Killer

by Tomoyuki Hoshino

  October 3, again

  Iroha’s mom called. She’d met with the lawyer, and it looked like the prosecution wouldn’t be pursuing the case against Iroha. She called to ask what we should do. Her voice was as bouncy and breathless as ever. I answered, “Let’s set up a family court trial for her welcome home party.” We joked around about how we’d give Iroha a hard time, and it felt good.

  I had a fight with Udzuki. A fight so bad even a dog wouldn’t eat it. So, what kind of classy fight would that be? It’s nutritious. And even if it isn’t, it tastes good. Hardly. Fighting with Udzuki isn’t nutritious or delicious. I dish it out for myself, and still it doesn’t agree with me.

  Yet again, the subject was children. Apparently it wasn’t okay for me to say the lack of people and quiet must have had a negative impact on Iroha. Because Udzuki then said, “That’s exactly why I’m asking you to think about having children.”

  Udzuki and I are together now. He and Kisaragi broke up. Kisaragi went back down the mountain. It was back when people were leaving the retreat – like the annoying surveillance was plucking them away one at a time like strands of hair. Kisaragi announced, “The mountain retreat is going down.” I had no idea what she was talking about. That’s what you say when whatever it was that drew people together for the same purpose ends up collapsing. Like this island nation is going down, or Down With the Tokugawa Clan, or the East Harajuku Projects are going down, or taking Western Aoyama down to the ground. Don’t talk like that, I told her. Iroha and Udzuki nodded in agreement. And then Kisaragi said, “It’s time to join society.”

  She went on. “Anybody can be themselves when no one else is around. For people who can’t take care of themselves beyond that, it’s fine to be holed up in isolation. But now the whole world has rejected imitating other people. People want to live life in their own individual way. So, you don’t have to hole yourself up to be yourself anymore. Nowadays, you can be yourself out in the open. I think I’ll have a more authentic sense of myself by putting myself into the mix and interacting with other people.”

  Udzuki’s biting response: “Isn’t it still imitating other people if everyone’s acting like they’re not imitating anyone?” Kisaragi blew up at him and insisted the experience of almost being killed made a huge difference in her life. She called him a “spoiled brat.” Udzuki’s comeback: “Yeah, that’s right. I keep whining and I won’t let up. I’m a fucking idiot. My lover goes fucking crazy, fucking scary, and still I don’t give up. I keep coming back for more. I’m impossible.” For days on end, they fought like that until Kisaragi had finally had enough and went down the mountain and back home.

  There wasn’t anything the least surprising about her departure. For one thing, Kisaragi’s famous line rang in the “snow-melt,” just like Iroha pointed out, and seeing as how she was the catalyst for the new “snow-melt” era, it was only natural that Kisaragi felt a kind of responsibility to it. Everyone was looking to her as a model for overcoming the love suicide era fears. Or at least for thinking they already had. Kisaragi felt like she had to be there with everyone. Now she’s renting an apartment in the building Iroha’s mom manages, and she’s got a kid too.

  Time passed, and before I knew it my room and Udzuki’s room became the same, and we consciously decided to create a partnership. As we sorted through all the ins and outs of living together, we didn’t encounter any major points of disagreement. The only issue where we didn’t see eye to eye was children.

  Udzuki said he wanted to have children someday. I said I didn’t know. I honestly don’t know what I want in terms of kids. Udzuki couldn’t accept that. But that’s his personality. He wouldn’t relent. Why don’t you know? When you say you don’t know, can you be more precise and tell me how you feel? Those kinds of questions. I couldn’t satisfy him with the kind of answers he wanted. If he asked me whether I wanted children, I’d answer that I wasn’t interested in having any now. He’d ask if “I don’t know” was just a roundabout way of saying I didn’t want any, and I would be speechless. If adoption is a viable option, would you consider it? In theory we weren’t supposed to have any troubles, but we ran into one.

  After the “snow-melt,” society moved onto the “one child policy.” In order to compensate for the population lost during the love suicide era, the plan was for people to pair off in couples and then for each couple to have at least one kid. Various incentives were introduced to promote this. And outrageous slogans told us we survivors would bear children ready to survive, children born strong and in total health, so we shouldn’t worry and just do it.

  But the one child policy wasn’t particularly effective. Most couples didn’t try to have kids, and, more than that, there weren’t many couples, particularly couples that stayed together very long.

  Udzuki asked whether I was being influenced by those trends. I told him I didn’t think so. We didn’t fit the conventional definition of a couple after all.

  “Maybe this environment is too comfortable, and you don’t want to risk ruining anything?”

  My life with Udzuki was, in all honesty, too cozy for comfort. We didn’t get tangled up in any of that annoying falling in love business, but we shared tender feelings, enjoyed a rich sex life, and maintained a good power balance. Our efforts paid off for both of us. If the situation were to change, couldn’t we simply adjust the nature of our efforts to compensate? We’d been pretty flexible up until now. That’s precisely why I answered, “Probably not.”

  “Are you worried about how Iroha would feel?”

  “No way. She’d be thrilled if there was a kid here. She’d be excited to babysit too.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  For a moment, I felt like I was experiencing the exclusion Iroha herself felt while Udzuki and I were having that conversation. The relationship among the three of us may have been one of the reasons for her actions. Or maybe the fact that I was worrying was a bad sign that we’d get caught up in a romantic power game.

  And then today, Udzuki asks me this,“You want us to hit a dead end, don’t you? I figured it out when I was reading the files Iroha put up. In Inoue’s document, it says, ‘the world wants to die’. Those are Mikoto’s words. You feel the same way. You want it to end with you, don’t you?”

  When he said that, I remembered how children were a bone of contention with Iroha and Mikoto. But it wasn’t as if Mikoto wanted children. Without thinking, I let slip, “You’re insensitive, Udzuki.” Iroha let slip the same words to me once too. “That’s a romantic way to say it, that the world ‘wants’ to die. How on earth can I sympathize with that? If I wanted it to end with my generation, adoption would be okay, wouldn’t it? So something else is holding me back, I think.”

  “What can I do, Mokuren? It’s weird that you can’t analyze some parts of yourself. What with you picking over my issues all the time the way you do.”

  “I hardly ever analyze myself. You really don’t know me very well.”

  “Tell me you’re not worrying that your business might go under if there’s a baby boom.”

  The rest was a bargain basement trade war of words. I feel bad about it.

  It just occurred to me that there’s something about children that smells authentic. Maybe I’m put off by whatever that smell is, like the essence of human divinity or something. And that smell seems artificial to me.

  In that case, maybe I’d be okay with a fake kid. But what in the hell would a fake kid be like? Iroha’s idea of an “island of children” is swimming around my brain.

  Yikes! Am I starting to feel the curse of real-thing-consciousness?

  October 4

  She’s back. Iroha came back. And she was carrying on as if nothing had happened.

  She opened the door, looked at me, and while panting (elated really) said, “It finally started. The Love Suicide Era!” I didn’t say anything, but just looked at her skeptically, and she insisted, “I’m serious. It’s the truth. On my way back, I saw a couple up at the top o
f Mount Morokami. They held hands and looked down below. They looked really serious. Then they suddenly embraced each other. That’s a love suicide.”

  “Oh really?” I halfway believed her.

  When we got to the spot and saw a middle-aged couple sitting back and enjoying rice balls on the mountaintop, I wanted to needle Iroha and say, “Yeah, it really looks like they’re itching to die.” We were out of breath, huffing and puffing, when the couple spotted us and came up to ask, “Sorry to bother you when you’re in such a hurry, but would you mind taking a picture for us?”

  I deferred to Iroha, the professional after all. When Iroha had their camera ready, they sat up close to each other, took off their sunglasses, and smiled. I recognized their faces from somewhere. Were they actors?

  Iroha returned the camera, and they politely bowed their heads and said, “You were obviously in a hurry, and we hated to bother you. Thanks so much.”

  I said, “Don’t worry. We were rushing because we saw you.” Iroha went pale and glared at me. “We’re actually out to solicit guests, for that little log cabin over there,” I pointed beyond the ridge. I had finally realized who the woman was, and by hook or by crook, I wanted her to stay at the lodge. “Where are you staying tonight?”

  “We’d just planned to make it a day trip. I wonder if that’s too short.”

  “Yes, that’s definitely too short.”

  “She says it’s too short,” the woman said to the man. “And I want to stay here a little longer. Let’s spend the night.”

  The man objected in a hushed voice, “But Chichibu is waiting for us.”

  The woman pulled a cell phone out of her fanny pack and said, “Why not send for Chichibu? If Chichibu can’t come, we can always cancel.”

  “You’re not going to get any reception up here in the middle of the mountains.”

  “I won’t know until I try. There might be cellular coverage up here on the summit with nothing in the way.”

  While the woman was calling, the man asked, “We don’t need reservations?”

  “It’s not the most spectacular mountain, so we don’t get many guests.”

  Then Iroha had to butt in and say, “Well, we do screen our clientele a bit.”

  “You’re right. There’s no reception.”

  With a relieved expression, the man looked at the woman and said, “They screen their clientele? That doesn’t sound so good. Why don’t we save it for another time?”

  The woman gave up and replied, “We’re so close, but I can’t get through, so I suppose that’s the way it goes. We’ll stay next time if you’ll have us.”

  “Oh,” I let my disappointment show. I was actually disappointed. Even so, I tried to sustain the conversation by asking, “Do you go mountain-hiking often?”

  The woman looked me in the eye and said, “Yes, I actually came here a long time ago. It’s changed a lot since then.”

  “When was that?”

  “Oh, ages ago. Your lodge looked much older then.”

  “You knew it before? Did you stay there?”

  The woman shook her head. “I wanted to stay over then too, but I was just passing through.” Then she drew a breath and whispered, “I was really keen on staying tonight, but we’d already made plans with someone, so we have to go back.”

  “I don’t know what it was like back then.” I couldn’t contain myself. The weather has changed so drastically, and I heard it used to be an ordeal to cross the pass. That it wasn’t unusual to find the bodies of people who didn’t make it. I heard that’s how it got the name Ascension Pass.”

  She laughed and said, “That was a long time before I came here, before the shake-up in the government. It seems like even though the name stayed the same, the meaning changed to fit the times. Over a hundred years ago, a famous writer jumped with his secret lover, and for a while it was famous as a place where troubled youth came to kill themselves. It must have been hard on the people living around here.”

  “To be honest, when we saw you two standing at the edge of the cliff, we thought the worst and came running.” I finally said it. Iroha, who’d been quiet this whole time, looked ready to pass out.

  The woman broke into a lighthearded laugh. “If you see someone looking down from Ascension Pass, you wouldn’t be able to stop them anyway.”

  “What did it feel like when you looked down?”

  “It felt good, like I was ascending to heaven.” The man grimaced at her joke. I could tell he did that to keep from laughing.

  “You really can fly. All the way to Shanghai. It must have something to do with the air currents. Next time you come back, why don’t you give it a try and see? If you don’t prepare a little, you’ll come crashing down before you make the ascent to heaven though.” My smile was earnest.

  She laughed and said, “Crashing down sounds like it could be interesting too.” He couldn’t keep up his poker face this time and joined in the laughter.

  But a stone-faced Iroha threw water on our slightly cryptic, but pleasant mood by saying, “Ascension Pass is that way. This is Mount Morokami.”

  “When the famous author jumped off the cliff, it must have been slightly confusing for him.” Judging that it was time to leave, I segued into parting words, “Well, enjoy yourselves, at least until sunset.”

  “I thoroughly enjoyed visiting with you. Next time we’ll definitely stay the night. Take care of yourselves,” she said. I told them to do the same and took Iroha’s hand, and we quickly made our way back down the ridge.

  I broke the silence by whispering, “That was Her Majesty, huh?”

  Iroha snorted as if to mock me. “Please! That was just an ordinary middle-aged woman.”

  “Wasn’t Her Majesty already an ordinary middle-aged woman before?”

  “That’s disgusting. Was she on her Roman Holiday?”

  “It doesn’t matter if you think it’s disgusting. It’s true.”

  “Mokuren, then you know what?”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t figure it out?”

  “Figure out what?”

  “If that woman was Her New Majesty, then the man with her was her older brother, His Young Majesty.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Even a sparrow would notice. Those two looked exactly alike. Both of them had double lids on their right eyes. Having two lids on only the right eye is a characteristic of that family.”

  “It’s just a coincidence. I would have recognized him if he’d been His Young Majesty. Sure, now that you mention it, they look alike, but it wasn’t him. Let me put it this way, His Young Majesty’s hair was a little thinner.”

  “Now they can make it grow back. That’s no reason.”

  “Well, neither of us can know for sure, so why don’t we each believe what we want?”

  “That’s okay for you, Mokuren. Because if you think she was out hiking with her secret lover, all that means is that her medical leave is a lie and that she’s living it up. But if that woman was Her Majesty and the man was His Young Majesty, there’s a lot more involved in what I have to imagine.”

  “You mean that the rumors were right and His New Majesty came back from the dead?”

  “Or maybe that he never died. You have to think about what it all means. Like what’s up with their relationship, and what they intend to do, and what will happen to Their Majesty’s family, and so on and so on until your head starts spinning.”

  “Iroha, you don’t have to worry about any of that. That’s for the two of them, the government that makes the institution, and Parliament to think about. Even if we do worry about it, that kind of conversation will not happen out in the open. And if you do obsess over it, you’ll be caught in a trap, like Mikoto.”

  Iroha looked dazed and muttered, “That’s true.”

  After waiting a bit, I told her that Inoue’s parents had visited and that they wanted her to erase the document. “What will you do?”

  “Erase it.”
>
  “That’s irresponsible. Think about all the people who’ve read it. Don’t you at least want to give people an explanation?”

  “Mokuren, you write it. You’re already writing anyway, like a diary. Udzuki told me. That you’re writing your opinions about us all.”

  “I don’t think it’s anywhere near as exciting as what you wrote.”

  “That’s why you should write it.”

  “I’ll pass. Other than that, Inoue’s parents want to meet you. How about it?”

  “Okay. Invite them up. You’re having a welcome home party for me, right? I heard you’re putting me on trial too, huh?”

  “Call them yourself.”

  Iroha didn’t answer. I couldn’t tell if it was rage or rapture, but I was seized by an intense feeling, and, in a loud voice, I asked, “Wanna jump?” Before Iroha could reply, I yelled, “Let’s jump.” And again, “Let’s jump already.” Three times, I pushed my voice to its limit, and I thought I was pretty clever. I felt like a flying horse.

  A reporter friend said this as a joke. Until they get the matter of an heir resolved, they could keep Her Majesty alive for one hundred or even two hundred years even if she physically died. I don’t know if any mysterious plans have been laid, and assuming there haven’t, even if she died, they could say she was still on medical leave, so she’d continue to exist as The Current Majesty. In effect, she’d be The Last Majesty. And I seem to recall a certain someone having a dream about a Land of Majesty without a Majesty. He willingly and passionately laid his life on the line for that dream. He was a great person.

  Her Majesty opted out with that in mind. It’s as if she said, “Sorry parents of these islands, but I’m not playing mommy.” Or did she stop to blend in with all the other ordinary people? Maybe she became another one of the children?

  I know the answer. I found it in the conversation I just shared, along with my faith.

  So come on, Iroha, let’s jump. Come jump with me. I’ll be waiting at the bottom.