Villain

by Shuichi Yoshida

  Yoshio looked away from the table, dialed the number for Rairaiten, and ordered two bowls of vegetable ramen. The owner of the store answered, very awkwardly, “Ah, Mr. Ishibashi. Of course. We’ll bring it over right away.”

  After he hung up he could still hear Satoko sniffling. No matter how much she sobbed she couldn’t sob out all her pain.

  “Satoko.” Yoshio crouched down again on the tatami and called out to his wife’s back as she sat there, leaning toward the shelf on the altar. “Did you know that Yoshino was seeing this college student?”

  It felt like the first time since the murder that he’d used his daughter’s name. Satoko lay prostrate before the altar now and didn’t reply. She was no doubt sobbing again; the candle on the shelf was flickering as her body shook.

  “Yoshino isn’t the kind of girl they say she is. She wouldn’t go with guys and …”

  His voice started to shake and before he knew it, tears were running down his cheeks. His wife began sobbing aloud, crying with clenched teeth, just as Yoshino used to do as a child.

  “I won’t let him get away with it! I don’t care what anyone else says, I won’t allow it!” But his voice wouldn’t work. The words stuck in his throat and he gulped them back.

  Some time ago, he couldn’t remember exactly when, Yoshino had made her usual Sunday evening call to them and she and Satoko were on the phone for a long time. The call came in just before Yoshio was about to take a bath, and continued long after he finished, so they must have talked for over an hour.

  After his bath Yoshio was enjoying some shochu mixed with oolong tea, watching TV and half listening to their conversation. From Satoko’s answers Yoshio could surmise that Yoshino had been asking questions like “When you and Dad first met, who was the first to say ‘I love you’?” and “Since Dad was in a band and girls were really into him, how did you get him to fall for you?” To each of these Satoko gave an honest answer.

  Usually at this point Yoshio would yell at them for talking too long, but considering the topic he wasn’t sure what to say, and instead drank at a faster pace than normal.

  When Satoko finally hung up he asked, feigning ignorance, what they’d talked about, and Satoko, a happy look on her face, said, “Yoshino has somebody she likes.”

  For a second he was taken aback. Yoshino likes a man? But then he thought it was touching, cute even, that she’d phoned her parents asking about how they’d first met.

  “She’s going out with somebody?” Yoshio asked brusquely.

  “I don’t think they’re actually going out yet,” Satoko replied. “You know, she always tends to act sort of tough in front of boys. She’s kind of stubborn, not so open.… But it sounds like she’s really fallen for this guy. She was crying a bit. She’s still a little girl in a way, isn’t she, calling her parents about this instead of talking with her friends.”

  Yoshio didn’t say anything, but instead drained his cup of shochu, and Satoko added, “The boy is apparently the son of a family that owns an upscale inn in Yufuin or Beppu or someplace.”

  About a half a year ago Yoshio had taken a trip with the barber’s union to an inn at Yufuin and he was remembering what the town was like. The inn they stayed at was a cheap place, but when he went for a stroll he’d run across a famous old inn with a huge entranceway. The owner’s beautiful young wife just happened to be standing at the entrance, and though she recognized from the yukata they were wearing that they were staying at a different inn, she casually called out to them. When Yoshio and his group commented on how great the air was in Yufuin, the lovely young woman smiled and said, “Please come back and visit us again!”

  That night, as he stared at Satoko’s backside as she washed the dishes, he pictured Yoshino in a kimono standing in the threshold of that nice old inn and smiling at him. He grinned wryly at how his mind had leaped ahead a few steps, but actually it didn’t feel too bad to imagine a future like this for her.

  Staring at Satoko now, collapsed in tears in front of the altar, Yoshio again muttered, “He won’t get away with it.…” If he could go back in time, he’d go back to that night, grab the phone away from Satoko, and tell Yoshino, “I don’t want you to have anything to do with that guy!”

  It felt awful not to be able to do that. All he’d done was casually imagine his daughter standing there in a kimono, and he’d ended up feeling sad and impotent.

  Koki Tsuruta realized that Keigo Masuo had been on his mind for several days.

  There had been no word from the police since they came the day after the murder, so he’d relied on reports in the papers and on TV to follow events.

  A classmate he was friends with had murdered a woman and was on the run. Put it like this, and it sounded like he was involved in quite a drama, but actually his days were pretty ordinary, as he stayed holed up in his room overlooking Ohori Park, watching his favorite movies—Ascenseur pour l’échafaud and Citizen Kane. Before he went to sleep each night, he’d switch to porn and make sure to come.

  A classmate murdering someone and running away—it sounded like some lousy script he’d written himself. If it actually did become a film, it would be kind of boring. Still, the facts remained: Masuo really had killed a woman and was running from the police. This was no crummy script, but reality.

  Ever since the incident, and actually before the incident, Koki had stopped going to school. He was sure the school must be in an uproar over what Keigo had done. He could picture everyone running around, as if it were the night before the annual university festival.

  Keigo had been a well-known figure on campus, and those who liked him and those who didn’t were watching, all of them irritated with their selfish desire just to see how this would end up.

  Since the murder, Koki had called Keigo’s cell phone every day, but he never answered. Koki realized once again that Keigo was his one link with the outside world. He relied on Keigo for everything he heard about school, about other friends, about girls—information that made Koki feel that he was just like everybody else, living an ordinary college student’s life.

  Where was Keigo?

  Was he afraid? Was he going to keep on running?

  If he’s going to get caught, Koki thought, I don’t want any of this turning-himself-in stuff. He should keep on running as much as he can, until the cops have him completely surrounded, a blazing spotlight on him, and he shouts out some memorable line (which Koki knew he could never come up with), and then he takes his own life.

  Koki was watching porn as he thought this, and he looked up and saw a fellatio scene on the screen. Morning had come, the sunlight streaming in on the messy room. The chirping of birds from the nearby park mixed with the slurping sounds of the girl in the movie. Before the scene was over Koki came. He tossed the sticky tissue into the garbage can and yanked up his underwear.

  But why did he kill her?

  Koki couldn’t think of a good reason why Keigo would kill the girl. He could picture a girl killing Keigo, who could be pretty cold-hearted. That would be a kind of fitting end to his life.

  The girl on the screen was still performing fellatio, and Koki switched off the tape and went around the apartment, squinting in the sunlight, closing the curtains. He’d needled his parents into buying these special blackout curtains that even during the day turned the place as dark as night. Thinking of his parents’ money always upset him, but by taming those feelings, he’d been able to persuade them to buy these expensive curtains.

  As he sprawled on his bed he pictured the faces of his parents, always calculating how much money they had. How they’d sit there, tapping out figures on their calculators as if the more they stared at their bankbooks, the more money they’d have in their accounts. Koki knew the necessity of money, but he also knew there had to be something more in life. And unless he found it, he couldn’t escape this listlessness.

  After a while he began to doze, and was jerked awake when his cell phone on the glass table rang.

  “Hello
?” The man’s voice sounded familiar.

  “Uh, hello!” He instinctively sat up in bed.

  “Sorry, were you asleep?” It was without a doubt Keigo’s voice.

  “Keigo? Is that you?” Koki said loudly, and the phlegm in his throat made him cough. “Don’t—don’t hang up!” he managed to say, then coughed loudly and spit up the phlegm. It shot out and splattered on the DVD package of the porn film.

  “Keigo? Are you—okay?” Koki asked. There were a million things he wanted to ask, but that was all that came out.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” Keigo said, sounding tired.

  It was only six a.m. and he figured Koki must be asleep, but Koki picked up.

  Keigo hadn’t called with the intention of missing Koki—but the moment he heard Koki’s voice, he realized he’d been hoping there would be no answer.

  He was at a sauna in Nagoya. At the end of the red-carpeted hallway was a darkened room where guests could nap. The public phone was in one corner of the hallway. Next to it was a vending machine selling nutritional supplement drinks, three of the five buttons lit up indicating they were sold out.

  “You’re really okay?” he heard Koki ask. He sounded as if he’d just woken up, but his voice was tense and strained, and told Keigo in no uncertain terms the situation he was in.

  “So where are you?” Koki’s voice suddenly grew gentle. Keigo instinctively gripped the receiver more tightly.

  He figured they must be tapping the phones in his apartment and his parents’ home, but they couldn’t be tracing calls from Koki’s cell phone. Still, Koki sounded too gentle and nice, as if he was putting on an act in front of somebody.

  His hand was resting on the phone’s cradle and he pushed down hard on it. The call over, a few ten-yen coins plunked down into the coin return, clattering in the silent hallway. Keigo turned. Nobody else was around, just his own reflection in the mirror on a pillar, decked out in the light blue robe of a sauna patron. Keigo replaced the receiver on its cradle. He’d never noticed before how heavy a public phone receiver could be.

  He hadn’t called Koki because he wanted to tell him something, or to find out what was happening with the investigation. The last few days he hadn’t spoken to a soul. At the front desk of the sauna and the hotel, he’d merely nodded or shaken his head in response to their questions. A moment ago when he told Koki he was okay, it felt like the first time in a long time that he’d heard his own voice.

  Keigo walked back down the red-carpeted hallway to the nap room. Beyond the curtains he could hear a man snoring, the sound of which had bothered him all night long. The snoring man was sprawled out next to the chaise longue where Keigo had planted himself earlier and it made Keigo want to kick him. But he knew that he couldn’t—if he caused a problem here, that would be the end for him. About fifty chaise longues were lined up in the spacious room. These chairs—with their synthetic leather split open and foam rubber sticking out—were the only place where Keigo could now be free.

  It might have been his imagination, but as he entered the nap room of the sauna he smelled a feral, animal-like odor. Even after sweating in the sauna and scrubbing themselves clean in the bath, if you put this many men together in one room maybe this smell is unavoidable.

  Guided only by the exit light, Keigo made his way back to his chaise longue. The others contained sleeping men in a variety of poses. One man kept his glasses on as he slept. Another had skillfully arranged the tiny blanket provided them to cover himself completely. And then there was his next-door neighbor, gaping mouth emitting thunderous snores.

  Keigo cleared his throat loudly and lay down, wrapping the still warm blanket up around him. His throat-clearing only made the man beside him roll over, but did nothing to stop his awful snoring.

  When Keigo closed his eyes he could picture Koki’s face on the other end of the phone line.

  Why did he make the call? And why to Koki? Did he think that Koki would be able to rescue him from this predicament? The more he thought about it, the stupider it felt. In school and out, he had plenty of friends and acquaintances, but he couldn’t think of anyone else he could call at a time like this. People tended to flock to him, and Keigo was aware of this. But not one of them was worth a damn. He might hang out with them, but deep down he despised them.

  Keigo squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force himself to sleep despite the snores. But closing his eyes tightly only produced more memories, like juice oozing from a piece of fruit, and though he didn’t want to think about it, the memories of that night, and running across Yoshino Ishibashi by chance, at Higashi Park, all rushed back at him.

  Why do I have to run away, he thought, just because of a girl like that? And lie here listening to the snores of a stranger? The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.

  Why did he run across her again in a place like that? If only he’d waited until he got back to his apartment to go to the bathroom, none of this would have happened.

  He’d been in a crappy mood all that night. He’d gone out drinking in a bar in Tenjin, and then got in his car, which he’d parked on the road, planning to drive back to his apartment. It was just a five-minute drive back to his place, but somehow he was terribly on edge and decided to go for a longer drive instead.

  He was drunk. When he looked back on it now, he had no idea where he drove, or how he ended up at Higashi Park. At any rate he was in a bad mood. But he couldn’t pinpoint what was irritating him, which bothered him all the more.

  He knew any number of girls he could call who’d sleep with him, but the desire he felt tonight was for something more violent, something fierce, like himself and a girl biting each other’s skin, drawing blood. What he’d really wanted wasn’t to sleep with a girl, but to punch out a guy. But it was too late; he couldn’t go back to that night and undo what had happened.

  After he’d been driving around the streets of Hakata for two hours, the liquor he’d drunk got to him and he had to urinate. At the end of the street was Higashi Park, and he figured there had to be a public restroom, so he parked his car there. There was a sprinkling of cars in the parking lot alongside the park. After the long drive he was no longer drunk.

  He got out of his car and saw, at the end of the road, a young man standing there urinating. His dyed blond hair was visible in the streetlights. Keigo stepped over the low fence and went into the darkened park. He soon found the public restroom. He ran inside, and as he was peeing into the dirty urinal, his urine smelling of alcohol, he heard a strange snorting sound coming from one of the stalls. It gave him the creeps but he couldn’t very well stop in the middle of peeing.

  The door to the stall opened right then and he flinched, getting urine on his fingers. The guy coming out of the stall was the same age as he. The man cast him an ugly look. In a flash it came to him what kind of guy this was, and Keigo, the liquor helping, him along, called out to the man as he was leaving, “How ’bout sucking me off?” He laughed, and the man came to a halt and laughed, too. “How ’bout you suck me?”

  This enraged Keigo for an instant, but the piss was still coming out hard and he couldn’t make a move to hit the guy. He finally finished peeing and ran out in pursuit. The scattered streetlights made the park seem even gloomier. Keigo gazed around, checking the bushes and the walking path, but couldn’t spot him.

  Being made fun of by someone he’d made fun of—the frustration shot through him. His body should have shrunk back in the wintry wind, but it was filled with a blazing hot irritation. If he could only find the guy and pound him, this bitterness that had filled him all night would be blown away. If he could get hit back as hard as he hit the other guy, maybe even get a bloody nose, he could finally get rid of this pointless frustration.

  But he never did locate the guy, so instead he clicked his tongue in anger and stepped over the fence around the park again. The asphalt road was lit up by the orange streetlight. And that’s when he spied a woman walking toward him. The woman must have been meeting up
with somebody, for she checked each car as she walked by.

  Keigo straddled the fence and leaped out from the shrubbery. And at that instant one of the cars parked between him and the woman blew its horn. The horn pierced the air and echoed on the road along the park. Startled by the sound, the woman came to an abrupt halt. She recognized Keigo before he recognized her and he saw a smile spread on her partly shadowed face.

  The woman quickly ran over to the car, the clatter of her boots on the road absorbed into the darkened interior of the park. Halfway to the car she shot a quick glance inside, but didn’t slow down. Just as Keigo walked past the car he realized that this was that girl he’d met at a bar in Tenjin, the one who wouldn’t leave him alone with all her e-mails.

  “Keigo!” she called out.

  Keigo lifted a desultory hand in greeting. He was concerned about the parked car, and when he glanced over he caught a vague glimpse of a young man’s face in the dome light. He didn’t get a good look at him, but from the hair color it looked like the guy who’d been peeing outside a few minutes ago.

  Yoshino didn’t call out to the guy in the car, who was obviously waiting for her, but trotted over to Keigo.

  “What are you doing in a place like this?” she asked.

  Even in the darkened street Keigo could see how beaming and happy Yoshino looked.

  “I had to take a leak.”

  Yoshino looked about ready to hug him and he took a step back.

  “What a coincidence. Our apartment building is just behind here,” Yoshino volunteered, pointing to the dark park. “Did you come by car?” she asked, looking around.

  “Uh, yeah,” Keigo answered, concerned about the blond man in the parked car staring at them.

  “Is it okay?” Keigo asked, motioning with his chin toward the car. As if suddenly remembering, Yoshino turned around and shook her head. She frowned and said, unenthusiastically, “Yeah. Don’t worry about it.”

  “But weren’t you meeting him?”