Villain

by Shuichi Yoshida

  He couldn’t remember her name, but even if he did, he was sure it was an alias.

  How have you been? Yuichi replied. You were talking about buying a car, so did you get one?

  No, I didn’t. I’m still commuting by bike. How about you? Anything nice happen lately?

  Nice?

  A new girlfriend, maybe?

  Nope. How about you?

  No such luck. Hey, have you gone to any new lighthouses since then?

  No, I haven’t gone at all. On the weekends I just hang out at home.

  No kidding? Hey, where was that lighthouse you recommended, the one you said was so pretty?

  Where did I say it was? In Nagasaki? Or Saga?

  Nagasaki. You said there’s a little island next to it you can walk to with a lookout platform. You said the sunset from there is so gorgeous it makes you almost cry.

  Oh, that’s Kabashima Lighthouse. It’s near where I live.

  How far is it?

  Fifteen, twenty minutes by car.

  Really? You live in such a nice place.

  I wouldn’t say that.

  But it’s near the sea, right?

  Yeah, the sea’s right nearby.

  Just then, as he e-mailed about the sea, Yuichi heard the sound of the waves against the breakwaters outside. The waves sounded louder at night. He could hear the waves the whole night long, washing over his body as he lay in his narrow bed.

  At those times Yuichi felt as though he were a piece of driftwood bobbing in the waves. The waves were about to wash over him, but never quite reached him; he was about to be washed up on the beach but never quite reached it, either. A piece of driftwood tumbling about at the shoreline.

  Is there one in Saga, too? A pretty lighthouse?

  Yuichi replied right away: Yeah, there’s one in Saga.

  But it must be around Karatsu, right? I live in Saga City.

  Yuichi had never heard this girl speak, but with each word he felt he could hear her voice.

  Yuichi had driven through Saga many times and tried to picture the scenery. Compared to Nagasaki, Saga was boringly flat, with the same monotonous roads wherever you went. No mountains anywhere. No steep slopes or little cobblestone alleys like in Nagasaki. Just newly paved, arrow-straight roads lined with big-box bookstores, pachinko parlors, and fast-food places. Each store’s massive parking lot was filled with cars, but somehow the only thing missing was people.

  It came to him all of a sudden, as he was exchanging messages with the girl, that she was a part of this scene, walking down the very streets he was picturing. It made perfect sense, but Yuichi, who only knew these streets from the window of his car, had no idea how this plodding scenery appeared to someone who actually lived there and walked down those streets. You walk and walk and nothing around you ever changes. A slow-motion kind of scenery.

  These days I haven’t talked to anybody.

  He looked down and saw these words on the screen. They weren’t words someone had e-mailed him. Without realizing it, he’d typed the message.

  He was about to erase the message, but added All I do is go back and forth between home and work—and after a moment’s hesitation, he sent it.

  He’d never felt lonely before. He hadn’t even known what it meant. But ever since that night he’d felt terribly lonely. Loneliness, he thought, must mean being anxious for somebody to listen to you. He’d never had anything he really wanted to tell someone else, before this. But now he did. And he wanted someone to tell it to.

  “Tamayo! I might be late tonight.”

  Mitsuyo was still on her futon as she heard Tamayo behind the sliding door getting ready to go to work. She listened to these sounds, and tried to decide whether to voice this thought. Finally, when Tamayo was at the front door pulling on her shoes, she did.

  “Inventory?” she heard Tamayo say from the front door.

  “Uh … yeah. No, that’s not it. I’m taking the day off.… I just have something I need to do, so I’ll be back late.”

  Mitsuyo crawled out of bed, slid open the sliding door, and peeked out toward the front door. Tamayo had her shoes on and was standing there, hand on the doorknob.

  “Something to do?” Tamayo asked. “What do you mean? And what time will you be back? You won’t need dinner?”

  Her flurry of questions was more perfunctory, and didn’t mean she was actually interested. She’d already turned the knob and had one foot out the door.

  “If you’re getting up, then I don’t have to lock the door, right? Jeez, why do I have to go to work on a Saturday?”

  Without waiting for a reply, Tamayo shut the door.

  “See you later,” Mitsuyo called out to the door.

  Tamayo had left the electric rug on, so as Mitsuyo crawled out of her futon her palms and knees felt the warmth. She held the calendar and traced the green 22 with her fingertips.

  The weekend was usually the busiest time at her store, and she hadn’t taken Saturday and Sunday off in a row like this since that time a year and a half ago.

  It had been Golden Week, the string of holidays at the end of April and beginning of May, and she’d taken off a few vacation days she’d accumulated so she could stay over at a former high school friend’s place in Hakata. Her friend’s husband was back in his hometown for a Buddhist memorial service for a relative, and the two young women were looking forward to a night of chatting. Mitsuyo also wanted to hold her friend’s two-year-old son.

  The bus for Tenjin left from in front of the Saga railway station. She’d bicycled to the station, arriving a little past twelve-thirty, ten minutes before the express bus to Hakata was scheduled to leave. She was in line to buy her ticket when her friend phoned. “My son has a fever,” she explained. It was kind of last minute, but if your child’s sick there’s nothing you can do about it. Without any fuss, Mitsuyo got out of the line and, sulking a bit, went home.

  She was back in her apartment, trying to figure out how she would spend these vacation days she’d wasted. The TV was on but Mitsuyo wasn’t paying much attention to it when a news flash came on the screen. At first she expected it to be about a girl who’d been kidnapped years ago, and was in the news lately, that they’d found her. The story had always frightened her, and a shiver ran through her.

  But the news flash was about a bus hijacking. For a second she was relieved, but then she couldn’t believe her eyes. On the screen flashed the name of the highway bus she’d been about to board.

  “What the—?” Mitsuyo yelled in the empty apartment. She hurriedly switched to another channel and there was a live report on the hijacking. “My God. I can’t believe this.…” She hadn’t planned to say this aloud, but the words just came out.

  The scene on TV was taken from a helicopter shadowing the bus, which was tearing down the Chugoku Highway. Above the clamor of the helicopter a reporter was excitedly shouting out, “Ah, that was a close one! It just passed a truck.”

  Mitsuyo’s cell phone, on her table, rang at that moment, the call from her friend in Hakata.

  “Where are you?” the friend suddenly asked.

  “I’m fine,” Mitsuyo replied. “I’m at home.”

  Her friend had just heard about the hijacking. She was sure Mitsuyo must have given up and gone home, but just in case she decided to call and check. Phone in hand, Mitsuyo couldn’t take her eyes off the screen. The bus sped up and barely slipped by several unsuspecting cars.

  “I … I was supposed to be on that bus. On that same bus,” Mitsuyo muttered as she stared at the screen.

  Her friend was relieved, and after hanging up Mitsuyo continued to stare at the TV. The announcer gave the bus’s time of departure and route. There was no doubt about it—this was the bus she had almost boarded. The bus she saw outside as she was waiting in line to buy a ticket. The bus the old lady in front of her took, the one the giddy high school girls behind were riding.

  She sat transfixed by the images. “We know nothing about the situation inside the bus,”
the announcer kept repeating, and Mitsuyo felt like shouting, “But the old lady in front of me is in there! And the girls in line behind me!”

  The TV kept showing the roof of the bus barreling down the highway. Mitsuyo started to feel as if she herself were in the bus. She could see the scenery rushing by the window. The old woman from the ticket line was seated across the aisle from her, her face ashen. A few seats in front were the two high school girls, pressed close to each other, sobbing.

  The bus didn’t look as if it was going to slow down. It blasted past one car after another filled with families out enjoying the Golden Week holidays.

  In her mind, Mitsuyo desperately wanted to move from her aisle seat to the window seat. She’d been ordered not to look toward the front, but her eyes drifted there. A young man holding a knife was standing next to the driver. Every once in a while he’d stab the foam rubber of a nearby seat, and shout out something unintelligible.

  “The bus … the bus is pulling into a rest area!” The reporter’s yell brought Mitsuyo back to reality.

  The bus had overshot its original destination, Tenjin, and had taken the Kyushu Expressway and now the Chugoku Highway. A patrol car had led the bus into the rest area, where it pulled to a stop. Mitsuyo was watching this scene on TV, but somehow she saw the scene from the interior of the bus, the police outside surrounding them.

  “Someone … someone appears to be injured inside! Stabbed and seriously wounded!” The reporter’s voice said over the scene of the spacious parking lot.

  If she looked to her side, Mitsuyo would see the old woman there, stabbed. Mitsuyo knew she was in her apartment watching all this on TV, but she was too frightened to look.

  Ever since she was a child, she’d felt unlucky. The world was filled with lots of different people, but if you divided them into two groups—the lucky and the unlucky—she was definitely one of the latter. And she was surely in the unluckiest cohort of all. It was a conviction she’d had her entire life.

  As if to shake off these memories of the hijacking Mitsuyo opened the window. The warm air inside the apartment rushed out, the cold winter wind flowing in and brushing against her body. Mitsuyo shivered once, stretched, and took a deep breath.

  When things got divided up into good and bad, she always ended up with the bad. She’d always been certain she was that kind of person. But I didn’t take that bus back then, she thought. I was just about to, but I didn’t, so for the first time in my life I got lucky.

  Mitsuyo looked up and saw the still rice fields in front of her. She glanced at her cell phone in the sunlight coming in the open window. When she checked for new e-mails, she found the dozens of messages she’d exchanged recently.

  Three days before, she’d gathered her courage and e-mailed this man named Yuichi Shimizu, and his response had been encouraging. Three months before that, she’d been drinking with her colleagues, something she rarely did, and, a bit tipsy, playfully looked into an online dating site. She wasn’t sure how it worked, but when she received the updated list of men, she’d chosen Yuichi.

  The reason she’d chosen someone from Nagasaki was simple. If it was someone from Saga she might know him; Fukuoka was too big a city for her; and Kagoshima and Oita were too far away.

  But three months ago when Yuichi had said, Let’s meet, she stopped e-mailing him right away.

  Three days ago, too, she didn’t feel like actually meeting him. Before going to bed she’d simply felt like talking to someone, even via e-mail. And that had led to a three-day exchange of messages. Now she wanted to see him, a desire that had grown more intense over the three days. She wasn’t sure what it was about him that made her feel this way, but when she exchanged messages with him she felt like the person she was back then, the one who didn’t get on that bus. Nothing was guaranteed, but if she screwed up her courage she felt as if she’d never have to get on that bus again.

  Mitsuyo held her cell phone in the sunlight and read last night’s final e-mail.

  Well, I’ll see you tomorrow at eleven in front of Saga station. Good night!

  Simple words, but to her they seemed to glow.

  Today I’m going for a drive with him, in his car, she thought. To see the lighthouse. The two of them, going to see this lovely lighthouse facing the sea.

  When it gets dark you turn on the fluorescent lights. He’d done it every day without thinking, but now, to Yoshio Ishibashi, it seemed like an unusual, special act.

  It gets dark and you turn on the light. Simple as that. But even in performing a simple act, a person runs through a series of feelings.

  First your eyes sense it’s grown dark. Darkness is inconvenient. If you make things lighter, the inconvenience vanishes. To make it light, you have to switch on the fluorescent lights. And to do that you have to stand up from the tatami and pull the cord. Just pull the cord, and this place is no longer dark and inconvenient.

  In the gloomy room Yoshio stared at the light cord above him. All he needed to do was stand up, but the cord was miles away.

  The room was dark. But he didn’t need to do anything about it. He didn’t mind a dark room. And if he didn’t mind, he didn’t need to turn on the light. If he didn’t need to turn on the light, he didn’t need to stand up.

  So Yoshio stayed lying on the tatami. The room was filled with the smell of incense. Just a few minutes before he’d asked Satoko, “Why don’t you open a window a little?”

  “Okay,” she’d replied. She was seated in front of the Buddhist altar, but over ten minutes passed with no sign that she was going to get up.

  Beyond the darkened room was the barbershop, also dark. Trucks roared past occasionally, just outside, rattling the thin front door. If he listened carefully, Yoshio could hear the faint sputter of the incense and candles burning at the altar.

  The wake and funeral for his daughter, Yoshino, were over, but how many days had passed since that? It felt as if it was a while ago that he’d brought Satoko back from the funeral home, sobbing. But it also felt as if he’d said goodbye to Yoshino a half a year ago.

  The funeral was at the memorial hall next to the Chikugo River. And lots of people came: relatives, neighbors, old friends of Yoshio and Satoko all jostling to help out. Some of Yoshino’s classmates and colleagues came as well. When the two colleagues who were with her on that last night came to offer flowers, they touched her cold face and sobbed uncontrollably, unconcerned about those around them: “We’re so sorry, so sorry. We’re sorry we let you go by yourself.” They were all gathered for Yoshino’s sake, but no one spoke about her. No one said a word about why this had happened.

  A couple of TV crews were gathered outside the memorial hall. The police were there, too, and what the reporters learned about the investigation from them filtered back to the mourners. The college student who was supposedly meeting Yoshino the night of her death was still missing. Can’t tell for sure, one policeman declared, but if it turns out the boy is on the run, then that must mean he’s the one who did it.

  “They can’t even find one college student? What the hell do the police think they’re doing!” Yoshio yelled in an angry, tearful voice. “What are you doing here offering incense? Go out and find the guy!” Totally at a loss, he spit out these angry words, his body shaking uncontrollably.

  His great-aunt and others hurried from Okayama and arrived on the night of the wake, and they tried to persuade him to get some sleep. “I know it’s hard,” they said, “but you have to try to rest,” and they laid out a futon for him in a waiting room of the memorial hall. He knew he couldn’t sleep, but maybe if he did he’d wake up and find out this was all a dream, so he closed his eyes and tried his best.

  Beyond the sliding door he could hear the hushed voices of his relatives mixed in with the occasional can of beer popping open, and crunching sounds as someone chewed crackers. From what he could make out of their conversation, his wife refused to leave the altar and Yoshino’s side, and whenever anyone spoke to her she broke down in tears
.

  Yoshio longed to fall asleep. Here he was, unable to do anything but wait for the young Buddhist priest to show up, the one whose hobby was collecting anime dolls, and he found it pitiful and frustrating. But no matter how hard he tried to close his eyes, he couldn’t filter out the muffled voices from the next room.

  “It would be better for Yoshino if it does turn out that the college student did it. Think about it—what if it turns out she’s involved with one of those dating sites, like the police said? On TV they said if that’s true, then she took money to sleep with men.”

  “Be quiet! Yoshio’s in the next room!”

  Someone shushed the great-aunt and the others. But after a few moments someone hesitantly brought it up again.

  “That college student has to be the one. Otherwise he wouldn’t run away, right?”

  “That makes sense. Maybe he found out about her getting money from other men and they had a fight. And things escalated after that.…”

  A draft of cold wind blew in from the kitchen, which was next to the barbershop. Still lying down on the tatami, Yoshio stretched out his legs and pushed the sliding door shut. The darkened room now lost every last bit of light.

  “Satoko …” he called out listlessly to his wife.

  “Yes?” she replied, sounding as though she were replying to a question from five minutes ago.

  “Shall we have something delivered for dinner?”

  “Okay.”

  “We could call Rairaiten.”

  “All right.”

  Satoko answered but made no move to get up. Still, Yoshio felt this was the first time he and his wife had actually had a conversation the whole day, which she’d spent frozen in place in front of the altar.

  Yoshio had no choice but to get up himself. He pulled the cord for the fluorescent light and it blinked a few times and came on, revealing the worn tatami and the cushion he’d been sitting on. On the low table was a stack of extra gift boxes for mourners, and on top of that a bill from the funeral home.

  “You’ll have people visiting you at home,” the funeral director had explained.