“I see,” I said in reply. With my ballpoint pen I wrote down the words single and virgin (?). “What does your son want, most of all?”
She seemed perturbed.
“Is that a serious question, Mr Haruhito?”
I nodded.
She closed her eyes. “I think he wants to be loved.”
I noted it down. “I see,” I said again. “Has your son ever gone on any trips? Excursions? Has he ever travelled abroad?”
She cleared her throat. “The both of us try to go on holiday once a year. After his father passed away, we went to Kunming, the province in China where his father’s family came from. Before his enlistment in 2010, we went to Rome and Venice, followed by Paris. During his block leave in 2011, we went to California.”
“Is that all?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Soon after his National Service ended, he and his platoon mates went to Japan.”
My interested was piqued. “Japan?” I said.
“In December, yes,” said Madam Lim. “It was the month between his ORD and his internship. There were seven of them, and they had all decided to go on a tour to celebrate their release from the army.”
“Which parts of Japan did he go to?”
“I’m not exactly sure. I know he went to Tokyo. Osaka? I’m not quite clear on that. Somewhere in between they stopped by Mount Fuji, I believe.”
“So you’re saying they went to Yamanashi prefecture?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure,” she said again. “Admittedly I’m not too familiar with Japan.”
I smiled. “I don’t blame you,” I said to her. “My father is from Tokyo, but my mother was from Saga prefecture. I’m sure you’ve never heard of it. It’s near the very end of the country, within the southwest region. The prefecture is particularly famous for its ceramics.”
“Is that so?” said Madam Lim. “That’s nice.”
I sensed she didn’t appreciate the detour in our conversation, and so went back to the matter at hand. I asked her when she first noticed any changes in her son.
“About a fortnight ago, I suppose—towards the middle of the month,” she said. “It was a Saturday, around four thirty in the afternoon. I had a faint feeling that something was amiss since the start of the week, but I didn’t fully come to realise it till the weekend.”
“Why?” I asked. “What did you realise?”
She took in a deep breath, and exhaled through her nose. “It was something about the air in the house,” she said. “Something lighter. It reminded me of the time the both of us had gone to Kunming. It was springtime, then, and I remember how light the air had felt, and yet how heavy it was with pollen, the scent of nature. It was like being in a florist’s.”
“How peculiar,” I commented.
She shrugged again. “Maybe it’s part of being Singaporean. Things like humidity, especially—we sense very keenly those kinds of things.”
“I see.” By then there were already a number of new words scrawled across my pad: Yamanashi, Saturday, 4.30, before Saturday, spring, Kunming. The air. “What else did you notice?” I asked.
“I realised the same feeling had applied to him.”
“To your son?”
She nodded. “He felt like the air in the house: heavy, and yet light somehow. As though he was and wasn’t there. Call it a mother’s instinct, or a woman’s intuition, but I knew that something was wrong. And so I called a friend, and then that friend referred me to, um—”
“A specialist?”
“Yes, yes. Ms Neo. She came round to the house, a few days after my friend had made the call. Just before Ms Neo left, however, she said that there was nothing she could do about the situation. I asked her to help me think of a solution nevertheless. And so she resorted to calling you.”
“Yes,” I said. “And so she called me.”
Madam Lim gave me a smile. “As an atheist, I was rather grateful when Ms Neo said her work had no religious affiliations whatsoever. Is that the same for you?”
“Yes,” I said. “We only deal with living things, Madam Lim. I suppose that’s the most anybody can ever do.”
“Right,” she said. “And I understand you are a specialist as well? From Tokyo?”
“Yes,” I said. “In Japanese, the word for specialist is ‘senmon-ka’.”
Her lips moved: senmon-ka.
I looked down at my notes. “Tokyo is a remarkably strange city, Madam Lim. It is stranger than most. But even then, it’s been a while since I’ve seen a case like your son’s.”
“Well,” she said. “You sound very experienced, Mr Haruhito. You must be a very busy man.”
“I wasn’t, actually. Not really.” I gave her a smile in return, in the hope it might comfort her. “I am now,” I said.
Her own smile faltered, by just a little.
I made a move to pack up my things. It had been a fruitful interview, I thought, but I felt that there was something more I needed to know. After I was done packing, I turned to Madam Lim and shook her hand.
“Can I ask you one final question before I go?” I asked. “What do you want the most, Madam Lim? If you could have anything in the world.”
She looked at me, uncertainly. She began running a finger down her collarbone. It seemed she was trying to gauge how serious I was again, and how honest she should be in turn. Eventually she said to me: “The life that I had before.”
“Before what?” I asked. Madam Lim cast her gaze downwards.
“Before everything, Mr Haruhito. Before any of this ever happened.” She paused. “That is what I want the most.”
•
Nothing really remarkable had happened on the morning of the twenty-fourth of April. Mr Lim assumed it was the same as every other morning, because he didn’t really remember much of it. He had gotten up at eight, taken a shower and dressed for work. He took his breakfast, and then rode the subway to Braddell MRT station. He arrived at his office a few minutes past ten. He had just arrived at his desk when his editor quickly informed him of the situation: a taxi had caught fire on the CTE.
“CTE?” I asked.
“The Central Expressway,” said Mr Lim. “On the way to the AYE. It caught fire in the Kampong Java tunnel.”
I shook my head. “My apologies.”
“No worries,” he said. He then spelt it out for me: Ayer Rajah, Kampong Java. The tunnel so happened to be rather close to his home, added Mr Lim; it was approximately ten minutes away by car. As I scribbled down the details, he then asked if I had to make a note on everything he said.
“As much as possible,” I replied. “It’s not up to me to decide if every detail counts.”
Mr Lim nodded. “I get that.”
After a quick debrief by the editor, it was decided that the photographer assigned to the story would drive them both to the site of the accident. The photographer went by the name of Rahul, and drove a Nissan saloon in a bright shade of yellow. In spite of its loud exterior, however, Mr Lim had noticed that there was nothing in the car except for a small water bottle, tossed onto the backseat. A tripod lay across the car floor.
Elton John’s “Rocket Man” played loudly from the speakers as they made their way towards Cairnhill. There they parked the car, gathered their essentials, and trekked their way towards one of the smaller exits of the tunnel. According to Rahul, they had to enter the tunnel via one of the exits, which entailed climbing down a grass-covered incline. It was a pretty steep incline, and the grass was fairly shorn but thick. It normally would have been dangerous, thought Mr Lim, if either of them had lost their footing and tumbled down the slope, straight into passing traffic. But the roads were completely empty that day; not a single vehicle had driven along those lanes.
“They really closed off the entire tunnel,” Mr Lim had remarked. The combination of heat and nervousness made him sweat rather profusely at this point. If he’d known better, he wouldn’t have worn loafers to work that day.
“Yeah,” said
Rahul, his sideburns slick with perspiration. “They really did.” Mr Lim saw he already had his camera at the ready, his right index finger positioned and steady on the shutter button. The only thing he had was his pen and paper, tossed into his satchel. Mr Lim refocused his attention, and concentrated on climbing down the rest of the slope.
The two of them got onto the road. Mr Lim looked at Rahul, observing the scene before them. He then looked at the Kampong Java tunnel and its ceiling looming over their heads.
“Walk to the side,” came Rahul’s voice from behind. “You’re in the middle of my shot.”
The exit they had walked through was Exit 5. Mr Lim had to calm the inexplicable pounding of his heart, as he situated his self within the vastness of the space. If it had been any other day, they would have been facing oncoming traffic, travelling at thirty-five kilometres per hour—but all they were met with that morning was the constant buffeting of a hot and sticky wind. It pressed itself against their bodies, causing their shirts to flap wildly like flags in the wind. How many lanes did the tunnel have? Was it four, or five? And how high was the ceiling? The facts seemed to have escaped him as the wind volleyed down the walls of the concrete chamber, filling his ears with a deep, sonorous groan. In reality the tunnel was only seven hundred metres long, and yet it felt as though they had walked for much longer.
Eventually Rahul had spotted a small white motorcycle, parked by the side of the lanes. “We’re nearing the scene,” he said. And then they found the taxi, or what was left of it, about twenty metres or so from the entrance of the tunnel.
“It was a total heap,” said Mr Lim to me. “A complete wreck. I could just about make out the structure of the taxi itself: the hood, the bumper, and the wheels. You could still tell where the seats were, although that wasn’t very clear either. The frame was charred and black and ruined, but it was also coated with this grey-white substance. It was a taxi by all means, but it had become so utterly reduced to, to—to whatever it had become. It was a taxi without being a taxi. Do you know what I mean?” he asked.
I took down everything he had said. “Were you reminded of anything in particular, Mr Lim? Any memories or recollections of past events?”
“Not really,” he said.
“And did you linger long, Mr Lim?”
“We couldn’t. There were the police, the fire department, the ambulances. LTA officials as well. They were all wearing these vests, you see—but either way they spotted us coming from quite a distance. It was a tunnel, after all, so you couldn’t not see us. By the time we got close enough to take pictures, they told us to go. I left them with my details so they could give me their official statements later.”
“And then?”
“And then we left,” said Mr Lim. He shrugged. “We walked back out of the tunnel, climbed up the grassy slope. We returned to our car and drove back to the office. This time, however, Rahul took the CTE, and you could see this incredibly long traffic jam, stretching on for ages on the other side of the road, while it was completely clear on ours. It looked like one of those scenes in a movie—when the world is ending and everybody’s trying to leave the country—but really, no one’s getting anywhere.”
No one’s getting anywhere, I wrote. “What did you do at the office?”
He scratched his head. “I spent the rest of the day conducting interviews from my phone and typing up the article.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else.”
“I see,” I said. “Around what time did you get back home, Mr Lim?”
“Around nine thirty, possibly ten.”
“And what did you do then?”
“I took a shit, had a shower and went straight to bed.”
Shit, shower, bed. “What about dinner?” I asked.
“We had pizza sent to the office. It happens from time to time.” He sighed. “It was very uneventful, after the whole thing in the tunnel. I can’t say anything particularly special happened after that. All I did was sit on a chair, conduct a few interviews over the phone. And then I took the train back home.”
“I see.” Chair, calls, the train. “And yet somehow you managed to lose your soul, somewhere in between all of these events.”
“Apparently I did,” he said. “What else is new?”
I looked up from my pad. I clicked my ballpoint pen and set it aside.
“Do you not believe you’ve lost your soul, Mr Lim?” I asked.
He looked at me, with an unreadable look in his eyes. “I don’t even know if it was ever there to begin with, Mr Haruhito,” he said. “But something in me says I might have lost it on that day.”
“As opposed to any other day?”
He nodded. He stuck out his lower lip as he did so. “As opposed to any other day.”
•
It was towards the end of May when I next saw Madam Lim. It was a couple of days after I had conducted my interview with her son, a pre-arranged meeting to be held at the Guthrie House on Fifth Avenue, during which I was to update her on any progress I might have made in my investigations. It was also agreed that Ms Neo should join us during this meeting, to provide a third opinion on my findings, if necessary.
I suppose the main question on my mind since the start of the case was why it had been referred to me. I was by all means an ordinary man of no extraordinary talent. There was nothing very particular about me, aside from the admittedly peculiar nature of my work—but this is something I shared with my esteemed colleagues from around the world, Ms Neo included. So why, then, did Ms Neo’s colleague recommend my services to her? And why, then, did Ms Neo agree that my help was necessary in a situation like this? It was something I resolved to find out from Ms Neo herself by the end of our meeting.
We met at six thirty on a Wednesday evening, in one of the bakeries located on the ground floor of Guthrie House. It was a rather homey yet posh setting, with white tables and chairs laid out around a counter, beside long shelves of artisanal bread. I was the first to arrive at the bakery, followed shortly by Madam Lim and Ms Neo. My first thought upon seeing them was that they couldn’t have dressed more differently. Madam Lim was suited in a tailored blazer and skirt, in bold, fashionable colours, while Ms Neo wore a plaid shirt and faded denim jeans. And yet from a distance, they managed to look like two sisters, leading two very different lives of their own.
They promptly sat on the other side of the table. In order to get the conversation started, I asked Madam Lim how her son had been faring over the past few days. When she answered, I noticed that her voice sounded considerably wearier than before. There were also these dark circles beneath her eyes that her light layer of foundation couldn’t hide.
“To be perfectly honest,” said Madam Lim, “I don’t know.”
She paused. I leant back in my chair and waited for her to continue. Ms Neo rested her left shoulder against the wall and looked at the corner of the table.
“It’s the nature of his job, I suppose.”
“As an intern?” I asked.
“As a journalist,” she said. “There’s not much difference between being an intern and a full-timer over there. An intern gets low pay and more slack for his mistakes. That’s all. Other than that, an intern has to work just as hard. He works the same shifts and stays for the same number of hours.”
“What kind of hours are we talking about?” I asked.
“On a good day, ten to six. On a really ‘good day’, he might not leave the office till ten o’ clock, or even after midnight. That means he has a story to file.”
I took out my memo pad and began taking note of the details. “Has he had a lot of stories to file lately?”
“I don’t know,” said Madam Lim. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Unfortunately I don’t read the paper he works for.”
“I see,” I said. “What you do know, however, is that he’s not been home much.”
She nodded. “That’s right. I barely see him, let alone bump into him in the house. I leave
home at seven in the morning, and come back around six in the evening; he leaves at eight forty-five and comes back after I do. He even had to work over the past weekend. The only time I saw him was an hour after I had my dinner, about two nights ago.”
“How was he?”
“Pale, sickly,” she said. “I asked him if he was fine, and he told me he was. He acted the way he always did—lively, a bit snarky—but the complexion of his skin really worried me.”
“I understand,” I said. “Any other updates, Madam Lim?”
“No. That’s all from me. And you, Mr Haruhito?”
I snapped my memo pad shut, and tucked it back into the pocket of my suit.
“I’ve made some progress, Madam Lim. But unfortunately I still don’t have any answers for you, or for your son.”
“I see,” she said. “Nevertheless, Mr Haruhito—I’d still like to hear about what you’ve been up to, so far.”
“By all means,” I said. I thought back to the first step I took after Mr Lim’s interview. Like opening a drawer full of folders, I ran over my memories until, finally, I came upon the right one. “The first thing I did, Madam Lim, was to investigate why the taxi had caught fire on the twenty-fourth of April.”
Ms Neo leant forward on her chair at this point. “The taxi?” she asked. “Are you talking about the incident on the CTE?”
“Yes,” I replied. “When I asked Mr Lim when he thought he might have lost his soul, he didn’t know how to answer at first, which, of course, is a most natural response. Nobody immediately knows the answer to that question. But when I pushed him to provide me a date, any date that first came to mind, he told me about the taxi that caught fire that day: on the twenty-fourth of April.”
“And you trust him?”
“Of course,” I told Ms Neo. “There’s no better source to trust than the source itself. That is my belief.”
“So did you find out anything about the taxi?”
“Not much, in truth,” I said. “Mr Lim showed me his notes on the story, as well as the statement he had received from the company that managed the taxi. They said it was a fuel leak, exacerbated by the heat of the morning.”
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