The Kingdom

by Fuminori Nakamura

  “You’re important. I need you, so I’ll do anything I can for you. I was there when you came into this world. I said, hello, little boy. I know I’m not much, but I was there for you. You’re always a sourpuss, and aren’t cute at all, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t care what other people think. I love you.”

  Shota looked at me, serious. I was a bit shocked at what I said. I got this feeling that I would have to do a better job keeping myself together.

  “But I guess I will make you marry me. Just ’cause you’re cool.”

  I smiled, and the edges of Shota’s mouth moved slightly. When I think about it now, that must have been a smile. He’d had to watch as his mom gradually ruined herself with alcohol. I wonder if he ever smiled then. He reached his arm out slowly toward my hand. We held hands and walked back.

  But Shota never made his transplant. I was informed that his condition had suddenly gotten worse. I rushed over to the hospital, but by the time I got there his eyes were closed. I will always remember the grimace on his face. It was like all the unfairness of this world had been taken on by his small body, and that grimace was the scar it left. Seeing him like that crushed our hopes and all that we had prepared for emotionally. There was no changing it. Reality was too sudden, too undependable. I could see the moon through the window. I forgot to glare at that incomprehensible light. Standing there, I couldn’t even cry. Tears finally came a few days later when I saw a small, thin child trying to get on his bike in a parking lot. I don’t know why I cried then. I was standing on a narrow road, and I couldn’t hold the tears back. I thought they would flow forever. I was powerless. It was like all I could do was cry.

  All of the money we collected for the transplant we gave to kids in situations similar to Shota’s. On the inside, the crushed feeling never got better. The image of Shota’s furrowed brow never disappeared from the back of my mind.

  I kept taking jobs from Yata. After Shota’s passing, I couldn’t grow attached to anything. I couldn’t make sense of his death. But the days passed. Whatever my situation, time just passes, unconcerned.

  I lost all of my weaknesses. Without hope, there’s also no need to endure the cruel sadness of losing someone. All that’s left is a pathetic life like mine.

  6.

  Several leather couches lined the big room. In the middle was a huge table covered with alcohol and food. Next to every man sat a woman in a dress. There were about fifteen or sixteen men there, and more than twice as many women. Unlike a normal party, the room was pretty dark. Spread across the floor was a rug with a strange pattern made of many lines intersecting in a complicated fashion. We were on the thirty-first floor of the Reldurant Hotel.

  The men spoke quietly, and the women by their sides nodded along. Every woman’s appearance was highly polished. I showed someone the card Yata gave me. All that was printed on it was a complicated color pattern. I pretended to have been sent here and snuck in. I needed to listen to all the demands of any man here. When I first came in, a strange man who seemed to be managing the party told me that. I didn’t know the backgrounds of any of the men there, but they were all wearing expensive clothes. They must not have been starving for women, either. None even tried to touch the girls sitting next to them.

  In the corner, sitting on an enormous sofa, was Kizaki. He was wearing sunglasses even though it was dark. Silent women surrounded him while he talked to an Arab-looking man sitting across from him. Even though he was far away, I knew it was him immediatey. I took a glass of champagne in my hand, smiled, and approached him slowly. Violent noises rose up from deep in my chest. I was trying something desperate now.

  •••

  Even after looking at his photo, and even seeing him here in person in the dark, I could not tell if he was really Kondo. But after hearing the name Kizaki from that man who took my knife, I felt there was a possibility that they were the same person, even if they seemed to have a different feel to them. And, when I considered all the circumstances and the timing of Yata’s request, there was also a chance that this man was involved with the hacking of Yata’s email, me getting sent on a job I wasn’t supposed to have, the dead body in the hotel, and that phone call where someone mentioned my old last name. And if that man really was Kondo, I still wouldn’t know why he was trying to approach me, but it would mean he had some business with me, and that he knew what I do.

  I couldn’t tell Yata that this man might know who I was. If I said that, Yata would try to use it against me, and I would get dragged in even deeper.

  Now I had to face this man who might know all my tricks, and I had to steal something of his. I don’t consider myself particularly attached to my life, but I don’t want to die a violent death. I needed to get past this and convince Yata I did my job. Suddenly, I noticed the heat in my body. Something began moving inside me—as if I were being sucked toward something. I exhaled. I was nervous, but being nervous wasn’t an option. There were only a few ways to take advantage of the fact that Kizaki knew who I was, and get out of this place.

  Carefully arranging my short dress and my bare legs, I sat in the empty space next to the Arab man across from Kizaki. When I turned my eyes to Kizaki, my heart began to race. His shoulders were wide, he was tall, and there was something forceful about his body. The Arab next to me smiled and raised his glass slightly. Kizaki stared straight at me.

  “. . . I see.”

  Kizaki kept staring at me.

  “Do you know why all of the women in Marquis de Sade’s books are unhappy?” he asked suddenly after producing a slight smile. Judging from his expression and his voice, he was definitely Kondo. But would I have recognized him so quickly in this darkness if no one had mentioned it to me before? He really had nothing to do with the orphanage. But I had no idea what that meant. He knew who I was, but he didn’t change his expression at all when he saw me. I pretended not to know who he was either, smiled calmly, and stared back at him. My pulse grew faster.

  “Because they’re beautiful. When beautiful women are granted a chance at happiness, they’re also granted a chance to fall into despair. And the closer they get to whatever they desire, the more chances they’re given to fail. You should remember that.”

  “Are you complimenting me?” I asked.

  His expression would not budge. He hid behind his sunglasses, smiling. The woman next to him inched closer, and asked, “What about me?” She was tall and beautiful. But Kizaki did not even look at her. He just kept staring at me.

  “I’m not complimenting you. Despair has greater gravity than happiness. That’s how this world is.” He continued to ignore the woman next to him and stare at me. Somehow, my pulse got even faster.

  “I was just talking to this man about this earlier. Do you know about Gnosticism?”

  “What’s that?”

  “It was the largest heretic faith, born during the early Christian era. Gnostics thought this world was created by a low-level god.”

  What was he talking about? I couldn’t guess where this would lead.

  “If you look around, humans plagued by disasters and illness, poverty and starvation, they fill the wilds of this world. The Gnostics thought it impossible that a good, all-powerful god created such an imperfect world. They concluded that the god that created this world must have been low-ranking amongst all the gods and filled with evil. As the Gnostics carried their children dying of starvation through the wilds, they looked up at the sky and cursed god. They stopped worshipping the god written about in the Bible. There were other, real gods out there. They thought they had to worship a better god, a god who had nothing to do with the creation of this world, and nothing to do with humans. This thinking is similar to a pattern you can see at orphanages, where suffering children cling to the hope that they alone have real parents, even though none of the children around them do.”

  Kizaki kept staring at me. I didn’t change my expression.
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br />   “Practitioners of this heretical faith were persecuted by orthodox Christians, and disappeared from the main stage. There were many different groups. You must know about Cain. The man who, in legend, was the son of the first humans, Adam and Eve, committed the world’s first murder by killing his brother, Abel. Among the Gnostics, there were even people who worshipped Cain. Their group was called the Canaanites. They thought that by disobeying an evil god, Cain did something good. They tried to do everything that was forbidden by God. They stole, and were very free with their sexuality. It must have been quite fun.”

  The Arab next to him jokingly gestured like he was apologizing to God.

  “This man,” Kizaki said, pointing at the Arab, “says I’m a Canaanite. That’s a big mistake. I don’t pray like that to anything. If I had to say, I sympathize with that poor god. Think about it. Don’t you think it would be wonderful? You could see people writhing in pain and suffering right under your nose, and even savor the movements of the feelings born within them. And, at the same time, you could watch their admirable acts. You could feed on their depression, twisted by all the pain, feed on their positive feelings, and mix the two opposing emotions together within yourself. That god writhed for thousands of years, intoxicated. The world twists like a whirlpool, propelled by the countless dynamisms of those two opposite emotions. Where that leads is a mystery of course. But if the god who created this world was really a perfectly good being, would he, for example, make a world where animals have to eat animals to survive?”

  Kizaki moved his hand slightly.

  “Let’s say there is a man on the bed in a love hotel in Ikebukuro, and you stab him straight through the chest.”

  I focused on my nerves and maintained my smile. I’m sure he was saying it on purpose, but he didn’t show it at all.

  “Just staring cruelly at that man as he suffers from his wound is boring. Smiling while you watch him suffer, that’s boring, too. You must feel what he feels. Make your imagination call up his lover, and the parents who raised him, and shed tears of sympathy. But keep stabbing. Deeper. Deeper. Then, both the overwhelming, cruel joy of destroying a life and the warm feeling of sympathizing with that life will seep through you. When those two opposing feelings mix together and finally become one, human emotion will surpass the human. Good and bad will continue to provoke each other, those feelings will go beyond human capacity and keep rising up forever. Like a whirlpool. What’s important is to leave nothing unappreciated. It’s great. That moment.”

  Kizaki reached out and suddenly grabbed the neck of the woman next to him. He squeezed it tightly. She was surprised, and her eyes popped wide open. Kizaki’s fingers sunk into her white, rubbery neck. She couldn’t understand what was happening, but she felt the sheer strength of that hand. She wondered if she would actually die there, and startled by the sudden unfairness of life, her eyes, bursting with surprise, met mine. Five seconds passed as Kizaki continued to strangle her. Ten seconds. I kept up my smile, but it got hard to breathe. The air was tense, stinging. More time passed, and more time. Kizaki suddenly pulled back his hand, and the woman collapsed, coughing. Kizaki smiled, his breathing not the slightest bit upset.

  “Even at times like this, I think of others’ emotions. I feel what it’s like to be surprised, to have your life up to this moment ignored and to suddenly die for no reason . . . Do you see?”

  I didn’t change my expression. My life until now was not easy enough to let myself be bothered by something like this. I didn’t know if the Arab sitting next to me understood what Kizaki was saying, but he was smiling.

  “You’re a scary man.”

  “Ha ha. You’re funny. Tell me about yourself.”

  “Hm?”

  “Introduce yourself.”

  “My name is Yurika.”

  I didn’t see the point in lying.

  “That’s not what I mean. I want to know about your nature. Tell me about how you were born, what you’ve done in this world until now, and what you haven’t done. Then I can grasp what you are, your nature, and what sort of tendencies you have. That is what I like. I like taking people in.”

  Kizaki kept staring at me. My pulse was racing, and I felt heat in my body. Things were happening fast.

  “I can’t do that. Not here, with all of these people.”

  I forced my eyes to tear up, and smiled at Kizaki sweetly, challenging him. Kizaki stood up and grabbed my arm. I took his arm and leaned my body against his as he started walking. What did this man intend to do with the woman who came to trap him? It got cold around me.

  7.

  I walked down a dim hallway with Kizaki gripping my arm. Even when I tried to catch up to him, he managed to casually stay a bit ahead of me. My small bag felt heavy. His shoulders were wide. There wasn’t a single wrinkle in his fine suit.

  I didn’t see any men who looked like bodyguards. It was just the two of us walking down the hallway. I could possibly accomplish my goal right now if I hit his exposed neck with my stun gun. But I couldn’t move my arm. He pulled me along, his coercive force confusing my every movement. I felt with my whole body that something bad would happen if I made a move now.

  When we reached the end of the hall, my pulse grew even wilder. He slowly opened a door, and on the other side were several men. The moment I tried to steady my body to run away, the men turned their backs to us and I noticed they were looking at something deep in the darkness of the room. A single spot was lit starkly, and I could hear a woman wailing. On a white platform lay a naked woman.

  “It’s a show. Watch.”

  She was tall, and her body was well balanced, and pale. She was beautiful. Her hands and arms were bound, and some sort of machine was attached to her genitals. She was on display in front of all those men, lit by an evil light. Her naked body was wet with sweat. She wailed and shook, but she could not move her bound arms and legs. She whispered something, raised her body for a second, and began shaking violently. She yelled again. The men smiled and stared at the woman as if they despised her. She looked less like she hated them than that she knew they hated her, and the more they hated her, the greater her desire. She cried and wailed. Her body kept responding to the machine. A woman crying but feeling pleasure is an ugly sight. I stared at her with hate as well. She had a terribly sexy body that must have enticed every man. Ejaculate squirted out of her and stuck to the suits of several of the men watching. They continued to smile, but looked as though wiping that liquid off was an awful chore. I felt myself fill with hate, but my body grew hotter and hotter.

  “How depraved.”

  “You should keep watching.”

  A man in black quietly approached the woman. That man raised a lever on the apparatus, and the woman’s wails grew louder. The man crouched by her, and brought his mouth close to her ear. Then he said, “Curse the world!”

  “Ahhh! Ahhh!”

  She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling.

  “Curse it!”

  “I . . .”

  The man lifted the handle even further.

  “I . . . I want them to die! Die!”

  “Who?”

  “Everyone! Everyone, die!”

  The woman screamed suddenly. The men continued to smile, and a quiet rustling passed through them. The room was filled with their cigarette smoke.

  “Everyone. Everyone die! I’m the best. Everyone.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My father.”

  The woman writhed, and cried out. She looked as if she was gradually forgetting herself.

  “What did your father do?”

  “Ahhh! Ahhh! Dad. He . . . me . . .”

  The men watching cheered quietly.

  “And?”

  “That’s why. I . . . I killed him.”

  The men seemed satisfied, and another rustling ran through them.

&nb
sp; “But it won’t get better.”

  “That’s right. It won’t get better. You won’t get better. That’s why. More. More.”

  The woman screamed. When the man raised the handle again, she screamed, “More.” The men watching grew gradually quieter.

  “More! Give me more!”

  The man furrowed his brow. The white smoke grew thicker. The man lifted the handle even further, and the woman began to laugh as if she had gone mad.

  “Ha ha ha ha ha.”

  A stern look spread across the man’s face. The men watching did not say anything. The woman’s mouth was open wide.

  “Cowards! Ha ha ha. Ahhh! More! Ahhh! Please. Ahhh! Die! Die! More!”

  The way she pled so earnestly and desperately despite being tortured pricked something inside me.

  “I beg you! Ahhh! It’s not enough! Please!”

  The men continued to watch, silent.

  “Who do you think is in control here?” Kizaki asked suddenly, standing next to me. I was slightly surprised to hear his voice.

  “The woman is.”

  “That’s right.”

  The woman bent her back even further, and continued to plea.

  “Masochism stimulates the other’s desires, awakens the madness inside them, and drags it out. After that, you can keep begging for more and more. When the master isn’t useful any more, the masochist can just change masters. The ultimate end of sadism is ruin and murder. The one in control is always the masochist.”

  The woman’s body trembled and she continued yelling at the man.

  “But there’s no choice but to kill a monster like that,” Kizaki said.

  One of the men watching approached the woman silently and raised the handle as far as it could go. The woman let out a deep cry, and suddenly stopped moving. She was still breathing. She must have passed out.

  “What a wonderful self-introduction. Don’t you think?”

  Kizaki was next to me, smiling.