Villain

by Shuichi Yoshida

  “Yoshino …,” he said without thinking. The faint voice turned into white breath and left his lips.

  “Daddy’s here, honey.… I’m so sorry it took me so long. Daddy’s come to see you. You must be cold. And lonely. But Daddy’s here.”

  He couldn’t stop. Once his mouth opened, the words just kept pouring out.

  The rain slapped against his vinyl umbrella and flowed to his feet. As it struck near his feet it soaked his dirty sneakers.

  “Daddy …”

  Suddenly he heard Yoshino’s voice. It wasn’t an illusion, she was clearly calling to him. He spun around. His umbrella slanted to one side but he didn’t care that he was getting soaked.

  The headlights of his car shone on the fog. And standing there was Yoshino. She didn’t have an umbrella, but wasn’t wet at all.

  “Daddy, you came to see me?” Yoshino was smiling.

  “Yeah, I did.” Yoshio nodded.

  The downpour was striking his hands and cheeks, but Yoshio no longer felt the cold. The freezing wind blowing down the road, too, went around the light.

  “What are you … doing in a place like this?” Yoshio asked. Tears and his dripping nose combined with the rain to flow into his mouth and he could barely get the words out.

  “Daddy, you came to see me.…” Yoshino, enveloped in light, smiled.

  “What … what happened here? What did they do to you? Who did this to you? Who? … Who? …” Unable to bear it any longer, Yoshio broke down and sobbed.

  “Daddy …”

  “Hmm? … What is it?” Yoshio wiped his tears and runny nose with his wet jacket sleeve.

  “Forgive me, Daddy.” In the light, Yoshino looked apologetic. Ever since she was a child this was the sort of look she gave him when she apologized.

  “You don’t need to apologize for anything!”

  “Daddy … I’m so sorry. I’m sorry you had to go through this.…”

  “You don’t need to apologize. No matter what, I’m your father. And no matter what, I’ll protect you.… I’ll always protect you.”

  The sound of the rain whipping against the trees grew louder. As the sound grew, his daughter looked about to disappear, and he yelled out her name. “Yoshino!” Sobbing, he stretched out a hand toward the light and his daughter, fading from view.

  In an instant Yoshino had vanished. All that was left was the headlights illuminating the downpour. Calling out her name, Yoshio frantically looked around him. The wet guardrail stretched out around a curve and disappeared, and beyond that was a dense, dripping forest.

  He no longer cared that he was drenched. Yoshio ran to where he’d seen Yoshino standing. But the rain-soaked cliffs stood in his way, and the wet grasses brushed his cheeks. Yoshio touched the cold rock face with his hands and called out Yoshino’s name twice. His voice pierced the rocks.

  He turned and saw that his umbrella was lying in front of the flower offerings. He hadn’t noticed that it had fallen, but now it was upside down and filled with rain.

  Just then it started to get a bit lighter out. He looked up and saw a small patch of blue sky, far off, barely peeking through the thick clouds. Rain continued to spatter at his feet, and his trousers were soaked to the knee with muddy water.

  “Yoshino …”

  His soaked body was frozen, his breath white.

  “You didn’t put Daddy through anything bad. I can put up with anything if it’s for you, honey. If it’s for your sake, Mom and Dad can put up with anything.…”

  His voice gave out and he knelt down on the soaked pavement.

  “Yoshino!” he cried out one last time to the sky. But no matter how long he waited, she did not appear again on the foggy mountain road.

  It kept on raining and his wet clothes were heavy.

  Daddy, I’m so sorry.

  Trembling now in the cold, Yoshio heard his daughter’s voice again in his ear. “Yoshino …” he murmured once more. The name fell to the wet pavement and formed a ripple in a puddle.

  “I’ll never forgive him! Never!” Yoshio pounded the wet pavement a few times with his fist. Blood oozed out from his hand, into the freezing rain.

  Finally, he stood up in the rain and with his bloody hand picked up one of the wilted bouquets of flowers someone had left by the roadside.

  “I’m telling you there’s no way. Me a murderer? Kill that kind of woman? You gotta be kidding!”

  Victoriously, Keigo Masuo went to the counter to get his second beer, then happily began to gulp it down. He’d been questioned by the police for just one night, but was acting as if he’d been released from jail after many years.

  Seated on the sofa were a dozen or so of Keigo’s friends, including Koki Tsuruta. As Keigo stood there downing his beer, they looked up at him almost reverently.

  Koki had barely touched his beer, but now he took a sip. As the group discussed what they had thought when they heard that Keigo had disappeared, they were so loud they drowned out the late afternoon music in the café, and even the clatter when a waitress dropped a plate.

  It was after two that afternoon when they’d received an e-mail from Keigo. Koki had been in his apartment, asleep as usual, when the e-mail came in saying that anybody who wanted to hear what had happened should drop everything and come to the Monsoon Café in Tenjin. Koki was sure it was a practical joke, but a few minutes later Keigo phoned him. “Did ja see the message?” he said in a carefree voice. “You gotta come. I’ll tell you all about life on the run.” Koki had a million things he wanted to ask him, but Keigo just laughed. “Too much trouble to repeat the story to everyone individually, so I’d like to just tell it once to everyone.” And then he abruptly hung up.

  The Monsoon was the kind of upscale café college students liked, where they served alcohol during the day, and the food and prices were reasonable enough. The kind of place where the management spent all its money on the interior design.

  When Koki got there, ten or so people were already waiting for Keigo, but the guest of honor had yet to arrive. They all knew Keigo had been arrested in Nagoya, and were loudly speculating about how he had to be innocent, since the police had let him go.

  When Keigo showed up outside the glass-enclosed café, a shout rose from among his friends. Some young girls, bent over their uninspired lunches, looked up to see what the commotion was about.

  As Keigo came in, he winked at a waitress he apparently knew, and announced, “I, Keigo Masuo, have now been freed!” and spread wide his arms and bowed. Some of his friends clapped, others burst out laughing.

  Keigo started off by telling his impatient fans why he was late. Earlier that morning, he’d been completely cleared of all charges by the police and released, and had gone back to his condo to take a shower. Which perhaps explained why he didn’t have the pathetic look of a runaway criminal that his friends had pictured.

  As soon as Keigo sat down among them, they peppered him with questions: “Okay, so what really happened?” “You really didn’t kill her, right?” “If you didn’t, then why run away?” Keigo stopped them and turned to the vacant-looking waitress standing there and ordered a Belgian beer.

  “One at a time, guys.… I guess you could say it was simply a misunderstanding on my part.”

  “A misunderstanding?” everyone around the table asked.

  “Yeah, you could say that. I don’t know where to start. Hey, did they redecorate this place?”

  Keigo was the one who’d called them all together, but he seemed to find the conversation kind of boring. Koki, sitting beside him, tried to get the story back on track. “Why don’t you start by telling us what happened that night,” he asked.

  “Yeah, right, that night …” Keigo glanced up at the ceiling fan, then looked back at them. “Well, it’s true I was with that girl that night,” he began. “I was feeling kind of irritated. You guys get that way sometimes, right? There’s no real reason for it, but you feel kind of disgusted by things, and then you can’t sit still.”

&n
bsp; The young men all nodded.

  “It happens, am I right? Well, that night I was feeling like that, so I decided to get in my car and race around. I was driving around and had to piss, so I stopped at the Higashi Park, and that’s where I ran into her.”

  “Did you know her?” the man seated farthest from Keigo asked, leaning out over the table.

  “Uh, yeah, I did. Koki, you knew her, too, right? Remember those three girls who worked for an insurance company we met at a bar in Tenjin? The ones who were like fresh off the farm? Some of you must have been there that night?”

  Several of his friends finally remembered. “Yeah, that’s right,” they said.

  “It was one of them. After that, she wouldn’t let up with the e-mails. Oh, yeah—that’s right! The police checked out my phone and there were still a few of her messages on it. You want to see them?”

  Want to see some e-mail from that girl who was murdered at Mitsuse Pass? Keigo was proudly asking them, and the group of men leaned forward expectantly. For a second, Koki had a creepy, bad feeling about it, but he was carried along by the enthusiasm of the others, so he felt he couldn’t object.

  Keigo pulled out his cell phone and scrolled through his e-mails. “So anyway, I happened to run across that girl that night and gave her a ride. That was my first mistake.…”

  He paused, then continued. “She was looking at me with these dreamy, please-take-me-somewhere eyes. Like I said, I was in a bad mood, so I just thought, Why not take this slutty girl somewhere, get it on, and that might make me feel better. So I gave her a ride. But she’d apparently had gyoza and her breath stank, and that sort of made me lose interest. So anyway, after we drove up to Mitsuse Pass I couldn’t stand being with her anymore and left her there.”

  Keigo was roughly scrolling through the messages on his phone, apparently having trouble locating the older ones. His friends grew impatient watching his fingers move.

  “If you just left her there, then why run away?” somebody asked, and Keigo’s fingers stopped. He looked up and grinned.

  “The girl didn’t want to get out, so finally I got physical. I wasn’t really thinking. And she hit her neck and it wound up like I was strangling her.”

  As one, the men surrounding him gulped.

  “No, that isn’t why she died. I was just pushing her out the door and accidentally pushed against her neck, that’s all. But when I heard that that girl had died there, at the pass, and there wasn’t anyone else around at the time, I jumped to the wrong conclusion and thought, Wow, what if that was why she died.…”

  Keigo laughed, trying to ease the tension, and gradually his laughter spread to the others. Koki, however, felt disgusted. He looked around, but he was the only one with a grimace on his face.

  “So that’s why you went on the lam for a couple of weeks?” someone asked, and Keigo nodded sheepishly.

  “As the girl was getting out of the car, I gave her a huge shove with my foot and she fell out and hit her head on the guardrail.… But she didn’t really get hurt or anything.”

  As Keigo nonchalantly continued, Koki felt as if he was going to vomit. Just as Koki was about to stand up, Keigo finally located the old e-mails.

  “Oh, I got it! Here they are.”

  He placed the cell phone on the table and someone stood up behind Koki and bent forward eagerly, leaning against him. Koki lost his balance and nearly hit his forehead against the table.

  “Here, check it out!”

  Hands went in all directions, in an attempt to grab the cell phone. Finally the guy seated across from Keigo grabbed it, and pushing away everyone else, he started to read the messages aloud in a high-pitched, girlish whine.

  Just then they heard some loud girls’ voices near the café entrance. The men turned to look at the commotion and found three girls from their college, the core of a flashy group that hung out with Keigo—Keigo’s entourage, as others referred to them.

  “Keigo!” one of the girls shouted and the three of them ran over to him in a group.

  “What’re you girls doing here?”

  The men scrunched over on the sofa to make room and the girls squeezed in. As soon as they sat down, they peppered Keigo with the same questions the men had earlier, and Keigo, being Keigo, gave them the same answers as before.

  While Keigo and the girls were talking, the men passed around Keigo’s cell. Koki could tell from their expressions what sort of messages the dead girl had sent him. To him it felt as if the murdered girl’s body itself were being passed around from one pair of hands to the next.

  A girl who’d sent one e-mail after another to a guy with no interest in her had been murdered at Mitsuse Pass. Keigo, sitting next to him, hadn’t murdered her. Still, if Keigo hadn’t met her that night—even if was just coincidence—the girl would never have wound up at the pass.

  It was Koki’s turn to see the phone. Beside him, Keigo was entertaining the girls with the story of how he was interrogated by the police, and it was hard to tell how much was true and how much was being embellished for their benefit. Like, did they really shine a bright light on Keigo as they interrogated him, just like in a TV drama?

  “A drama,” Koki muttered to himself. He looked down and saw the e-mail from the murdered girl. He didn’t want to read it, but he couldn’t pull his eyes away.

  Universal Studios sounds like so much fun!

  The words leaped out at him.

  There was a patch of blue sky off in the distance, but raindrops were still striking the windshield. Drops mixed together and silently flowed down the glass, followed by more.

  The car was stopped by the road that ran along the coast. The wet asphalt had changed color, making the surrounding scenery look dark. The inside of the car where Mitsuyo and Yuichi sat was as dark as if it were twilight.

  Down this road was the police station. Just a few dozen yards more and they would enter its grounds.

  They had no idea how long they’d been sitting there. Had they parked just a moment ago, or sat there the whole night? Mitsuyo reached out to touch the rain on the windshield. She was inside the car and of course couldn’t really touch it, but her fingertips felt as if they were wet. It was hard to see very far beyond the car.

  For the last few minutes she’d noticed Yuichi’s ragged breathing beside her. If she turned, she would see him, but she couldn’t bring herself to look. She was seized by the fear that if she did look over, it would all be over.

  At the Yobuko pier Mitsuyo had told Yuichi she’d go with him to the police. I can’t let you do that. You’ll get in trouble, he’d insisted, but she’d almost forced her way into the car.

  She was with a murderer, but Mitsuyo didn’t feel afraid. It felt less like she’d met a murderer than like somebody she already knew had committed a crime. It had happened before she’d even met him, but still she felt frustrated and exasperated, as if she could have done something to prevent it.

  They’d driven away from the parking lot in Yobuko and headed toward the center of Tosu. Until they hit the city, they didn’t say a word to each other. The roads were empty, and they soon neared the city center. As they did, a sign for the Tosu Police Department appeared by the side of the road. Yuichi shook the steering wheel nervously and slowed down.

  A few dozen yards ahead was a cream-colored building standing alone in a large lot. A traffic-safety banner hung from the building, billowing in the strong wind from the nearby sea.

  There were no other cars on the street.

  “I think … you’d better get out here, Mitsuyo,” Yuichi said, hands on the wheel, eyes avoiding hers.

  That’s when it started raining. The sky had become cloudy, and now raindrops were drumming against the windshield. A young mother pushing a baby carriage down the street hurriedly pulled on its plastic hood.

  “You’d better get out here, Mitsuyo,” Yuichi repeated, and fell silent.

  She was silent, too. “So that’s it?” she finally muttered.

  Yuichi kept
his eyes down, staring at his feet. She didn’t know what she hoped to have him say by asking that, but simply being told to get out here was too sad to bear.

  They were silent again. The rain on the windshield began running down the glass in rivulets.

  “If they see you with me you’ll get in trouble,” Yuichi murmured, his hands tightly clasping the wheel.

  “You mean if I get out here, I won’t get in any more trouble?” Mitsuyo said roughly.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  She had no idea at all why she’d said that. The last thing she wanted to do at this stage was to abuse him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice.

  In the side mirror she could see the young mother from behind as she pushed the baby carriage. The young woman was walking along at a normal speed, though she must have wanted to sprint to get out of the rain. Mitsuyo let out a huge sigh. She felt as if she’d forgotten to breathe for the past few minutes.

  “After you go to the police, then what?” This came out of her mouth before she’d thought it through. Yuichi stared at his hands on the wheel, then looked up and shook his head as if he hadn’t a clue.

  “If you give yourself up, then they won’t punish you as much, right?” Mitsuyo said.

  Yuichi shook his head again as if he had no idea.

  “Someday we’ll see each other again, won’t we?”

  He looked toward her and she saw the tears welling up in his eyes.

  “I’ll wait for you,” Mitsuyo said. “No matter how many years it takes.”

  Yuichi’s shoulders began to shake, and he kept on violently shaking his head. Mitsuyo reached out and touched his cheek. She could feel his shaking through her fingers.

  “I’m … scared. I might get the death penalty.”

  Mitsuyo gently held his ear. It was burning up.

  “If I hadn’t met you, Mitsuyo, I wouldn’t be this scared. I was kind of nervous before, thinking they’d arrest me, but I couldn’t give myself up. But I wasn’t this scared. I knew my grandparents would cry about it, and I’d feel sorry for all they’d done for me, raising me, but it didn’t hurt as bad as it does now. If I hadn’t met you …”