Villain

by Shuichi Yoshida

  Mitsuyo listened as the words streamed out of Yuichi. She could feel his ear grow even hotter in her hand.

  “But you still have to go,” Mitsuyo said. She felt him shaking, and could barely get the words out. “You have to give yourself up, and pay for what you did.…”

  Yuichi nodded, as if all the energy had drained out of him. “I might get the death penalty.… Then I’ll never see you again.”

  The phrase death penalty simply didn’t register with Mitsuyo. She knew what it meant, of course, but all the meaning had drained out of the term, and she could only comprehend it as goodbye.

  Mitsuyo took his trembling hands. She wanted to say something but nothing came. The two of them were not simply saying goodbye, since goodbye still held the hope of a future. Mitsuyo felt she was making some huge mistake, and she desperately clutched Yuichi’s hands. Something was coming to an end, she knew. Right here, right now, something decisive was coming to an end.

  That’s when the memory of a scene came to her. It came so suddenly she couldn’t recall where and when she’d seen it. She closed her eyes and tried to conjure up the details. Desperately she squeezed her eyes shut, and finally a vague, unfocused scene floated before her.

  Where am I? she murmured. But what she pictured, like a single photograph, was a frozen scene, and when she tried to see the other parts they wouldn’t materialize.

  Two young girls were standing before her. Their backs were to her, and they were giggling happily together. Beyond them was an older woman, her back also turned, her face to a wall. She was talking. No, it wasn’t a wall. A kind of window. Beyond a transparent board there was man’s face, a man selling tickets.

  Where am I? she asked herself again. She kept her eyes shut and recalled a map of routes above the ticket window.

  “Oh!” Mitsuyo suddenly called out. It was a map of bus routes. She was standing at the ticket window for the long-distance buses from Saga to Hakata.

  The instant she realized this, the still scene came alive with sound and movement. From behind her was an announcement for the arriving bus. The girls were giggling. The old woman who’d just bought her ticket was putting away her purse as she left the ticket window, and was heading over to where the bus had just pulled in.

  It had to be. There was no doubt about it. This was the bus to Hakata, the one that was hijacked.

  Don’t get on that bus! In her mind, Mitsuyo yelled out to the old woman. But no one heard her.

  Don’t buy them! she screamed again, but no sound came out. Her legs began to move forward in the line, and she was trembling all over. If nothing stopped her, she was going to buy a ticket herself. My cell phone! she remembered. This was the moment that her friend called. When her friend informed her that her son was sick, could they reschedule?

  Mitsuyo rummaged frantically through her handbag, but couldn’t come up with her cell phone. The young girls had bought their tickets and were happily traipsing over toward the bus. I can’t find my cell phone. I can’t find it. The man at the window said, “Next!” calling out to Mitsuyo. She didn’t want to, but her legs carried her forward. She struggled to run away, but her face approached the counter and her mouth moved on its own.

  One adult for Tenjin.

  My cell phone’s gone. The one that’s supposed to ring right now.

  Almost ready to scream, Mitsuyo opened her eyes. In front of her was a rainy street, and beyond that a rainy police station. She looked over at Yuichi. And right then it happened. A patrol car was coming toward them from the opposite direction. It slowed down, put on its turn signal, then made a right turn into the grounds of the police station.

  “No way!” Mitsuyo shouted. “No way! I don’t want to get on that bus!”

  Her voice was loud enough to echo inside the car. Startled, Yuichi held his breath.

  “Start driving! Please. Just for a while, just for a while is okay. Get us out of here!” Yuichi stared at her, wide-eyed. “Please!”

  For a moment, Yuichi didn’t know what to do. Mitsuyo kept on shouting, and her panic finally infected him. He hurriedly released the parking brake and stepped on the gas.

  They roared past the police station, and soon turned left. The road ran along a concrete embankment. Ahead was the prefectural yacht harbor, its large sign dripping in the rain. Yuichi stopped the car there. The police station was still visible.

  As soon as they had started driving again, Mitsuyo began to sob. Having to say goodbye to Yuichi meant she had to get on that bus. Get on that bus and have that boy come at her with a knife.

  Yuichi kept the engine running, but switched off the wipers. In an instant the windshield was wet, the scenery before them a blur.

  “No! No way!” Mitsuyo shouted as she stared at the blurry windshield. “No way! If I have to leave you now, I have nothing left.… I thought I was going to be happy! After I met you I thought I was finally going to be happy! Please don’t take that away from me!”

  Yuichi wavered, then reached over to Mitsuyo, touching her shoulder, and swiftly pulled her close. Mitsuyo roughly tried to break free, but Yuichi held her even tighter, and all she could do was stay still and cry in his arms.

  “I’m so sorry … so very sorry.…” His voice sounded as if it were biting her neck. Mitsuyo shook her head as hard as she could. Her cheek struck his with each shake of her head. “I’m so sorry … so sorry I couldn’t do anything for you.…” Mitsuyo couldn’t tell if she was crying, or if it was Yuichi.

  “Please!” she pleaded into his shoulder. “Don’t leave me behind! Don’t ever leave me alone!” She knew they couldn’t run away, but still she shouted for them to do exactly that. “Let’s run away!” she cried. “Let’s run away together!” She knew she was never going to be happy now, but still she shouted out, “Stay with me! Don’t leave me behind—ever!”

  CHAPTER 5

  THE VILLAIN I MET

  Never before had Fusae cursed the passing of time. But it had been six days since she’d heard from Yuichi, and she suddenly noticed that the rest of the world was about to celebrate the end of the year.

  Fusae was born the third child of a tatami craftsman from the outskirts of Nagasaki City. When she was ten, her father—about to depart for the war front—died of tuberculosis, and that same year, her mother had given birth to her second son. Now she was left to care for four children: her fifteen-year-old elder daughter, ten-year-old Fusae, her four-year-old older son, and the newborn infant boy.

  Through some relatives, Fusae’s mother found a job working at a restaurant in the city called Seyokan. Her fifteen-year-old daughter was working in a factory as part of the wartime student work corps, so it fell to ten-year-old Fusae to take care of her two brothers.

  Occasionally her mother would steal eggs from the restaurant and bring them home. This was the best food they had. Late one evening, her mother still had not come home, so Fusae and her older sister went to the restaurant to find her. The head clerk had discovered her mother stealing eggs, and had tied her to a pillar in the kitchen. The two girls, in tears, apologized for their mother. When their mother saw them, she quietly sobbed, still tied to the pillar.

  The rationing system had started by then, and Fusae had to line up with the adults to get her family’s share, her four-year-old brother in hand, the baby on her back. When rations were plentiful, the adults would sometimes let her go to the front of the line, but when commodities were in short supply the frenzied housewives kept pushing her out of the way. The arrogant man in charge treated Fusae and her brothers like stray dogs. He’d shove them aside, tossing their ration of potatoes and corn at them. Fusae and her brother desperately scrambled in the dirt to pick up their potatoes.

  How dare you! How dare you make fun of me! Fusae wanted to scream, holding back tears as she grabbed for the potatoes.

  Life didn’t get any easier after the war. Miraculously, their family didn’t lose a single member to the atomic bombing, the one stroke of luck they had, her mother said. Fusae g
raduated from junior high and began working at a fish market. There she met Katsuji, and they were later married. It took her some time to have a child, and her mother-in-law occasionally abused her, but gradually life got easier, and before she knew it she had two daughters and they were able to take a yearly vacation at a hot-springs resort. Fusae kept on working at the fish market even after she got married.

  Until now she’d never wished for more time, but waiting in vain for the past few days for word from Yuichi, she’d felt a bitterness about the way time slowed down, something she’d never experienced.

  Usually Fusae was busy on New Year’s Eve preparing osechi ryori, the special New Year’s dishes, putting up festive decorations at their door, and getting the New Year’s rice cakes ready, but this year she sat alone in her kitchen.

  In the morning, Norio’s wife had brought over a small lacquered box of osechi ryori. “I thought you probably hadn’t done any cooking,” she said. “I noticed the detectives aren’t outside today,” she added.

  “The last few days the local patrolman’s been coming by to check on me, but that’s all,” said Fusae. Still, Norio’s wife just had a quick cup of tea and then left, perhaps concerned that the house was still under surveillance.

  Katsuji was still in the hospital, but initially he’d been given permission by his doctor to go home for the three-day New Year’s holiday. That was the plan until he complained of pain and nausea, so they decided he would stay in the hospital after all.

  Norio, not Fusae, was the one who updated Katsuji on Yuichi. Fusae didn’t know what Norio told him, but when she went to visit her husband there were times she was so uneasy that she started to cry. Katsuji didn’t ask her a thing. Instead, he just complained as usual. A few days before, though, after she’d given him his sponge bath and was getting ready to leave, Katsuji muttered, “Why, when I have one foot in the grave already, do I have to go through something like this?”

  Fusae left the hospital room without replying. She didn’t get right on the elevator, but went to a restroom, where she broke down. Katsuji had had a hard life, she thought. They’d both gone through a lot to get to where they were now as a couple.

  Fusae vaguely reached out for the box of osechi ryori that Norio’s wife had brought and slid it closer. When she opened the lid, the bright colors of the shrimp leaped out at her. She picked up one of them and realized she hadn’t eaten a thing since breakfast.

  It was already past twelve. Fusae planned to visit Katsuji in the afternoon, so she picked out some of the foods she knew he could eat and got a plastic container down from the shelf.

  She was just transferring the konbu to the container when the phone rang. For a second, she hoped it was Yuichi, though over the last few days she’d been let down dozens of times. Maybe, she thought, it was Norio, who was worried about her, or perhaps her elder daughter, always concerned about her own children’s future.

  Chopsticks still in hand, she answered the phone and heard a familiar young man’s voice.

  “May I speak with Mrs. Fusae Shimizu, please?”

  He spoke so politely that Fusae replied, “Yes, this is she.”

  “Mrs. Shimizu?”

  As soon as she said yes, the man turned haughty. Fusae had a bad feeling and clenched the chopsticks tightly.

  “Thank you for signing the contract with us the other day. I’m calling about next month’s delivery.”

  As the man rattled on, Fusae tried desperately to interject. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Excuse me? As you recall, Mrs. Shimizu, you signed a contract at our office for health foods.”

  The man’s words remained polite, though she could sense how irritated he was.

  “You do remember this, I hope.”

  Fusae was overwhelmed. “Yes, I suppose,” she said. Her knees were shaking. She remembered the young men at the office and how they threatened her. Her hand holding the phone was trembling, too, and the hard receiver banged against her ear several times.

  “The contract, as you know, is a yearly contract.”

  “A year—a yearly contract?” Fusae said in a low voice, trying to hide her trembling.

  “A yearly contract is exactly that. We received your first payment, so next month will be the second. The second payment doesn’t require a membership fee, so it comes to exactly two hundred and fifty thousand yen. How will you be paying? By bank transfer? Or shall we come to collect it? By the way, if you do a bank transfer, the fee for that is your responsibility.”

  It wasn’t the man’s voice that scared her. But as she listened, she had the illusion that she was back in that office, forced to sit there, surrounded by those agitated, intimidating men. They’d told her she had to sign and then they’d let her go home, and with a trembling hand she’d picked up the pen. In her mind now, this scene overlapped with the one from years ago, of scrambling to pick up her ration of potatoes that had been flung to the ground.

  In a small voice Fusae said, “I … I can’t do that.”

  “What? Old woman, what did you say?”

  Shaken, Fusae hung up. Almost as if to crush the receiver under her, she leaned into it as she hung up. Silence returned to the kitchen. Fusae collapsed into her chair. The instant she sat down, the phone rang again, shrilly. She didn’t pick up the receiver again, but it was as if she had. She could clearly hear the angry shouts of the man: “Listen, old woman! What the hell do you think you’re doing? You can’t run away! We’re gonna pay you a little visit right now!” Fusae put her hands over her ears, but no matter how much she tried to block out the sound, the phone kept on ringing.

  The phone kept on ringing, but at twenty-one rings it finally stopped.

  Mitsuyo looked over from the phone by the bedside to the restroom, where Yuichi was.

  It was way past checkout time, and if they didn’t hurry they’d have to pay a late fee. She knew this, but still couldn’t bring herself to get out of bed. Yuichi, shut up alone in the bathroom, no doubt felt the same way. The love hotel charged ¥4,200 per night, and they were supposed to be out by ten a.m. But when they did leave, there was nowhere else for them to go.

  She’d lost track of how many days she and Yuichi had been wandering, spending the nights in love hotels. In front of the Karatsu police station, when they’d decided to run away together, they’d planned to leave Kyushu as soon as they could. They never discussed it, but they didn’t head for Shimonoseki and the Kanmon Bridge that would take them to Honshu. Instead they spent the days driving back and forth across the border between Saga and Nagasaki, finding a cheap love hotel each night, hurried out every morning by a phone call informing them that their time was up.

  She suddenly remembered it was New Year’s Eve and felt oppressed, cornered. Did Yuichi remember what day it was? She knew they wouldn’t bring it up.

  This is impossible. We can’t go on running, she’d told herself over and over, but as she repeated the words she’d asked herself: But what’s so impossible? What can’t we run away from? Was this life going from one love hotel to the next really so impossible? Or was it the life she imagined after she lost Yuichi?

  She had to do something. But she had no idea what else to do, other than leave this love hotel and search for the next one. As long as she kept on looking for the hotel, another day would pass.

  Mitsuyo reluctantly pulled herself out of bed. “Yuichi,” she said in the direction of the toilet. “It’s about time we leave.” No answer, just the sound of running water.

  Yuichi was fastening his belt as he emerged from the bathroom and Mitsuyo passed him his socks. Last night she’d rinsed them with water and put them out to dry, but they still felt damp.

  “You didn’t sleep, did you?” Mitsuyo said as he tugged on the socks.

  “No, I did,” Yuichi said, shaking his head, but she noticed the dark circles under his eyes.

  As she watched him put on his socks he said, apologetically, “I woke up a few times, but I think you’re the one wh
o didn’t get much sleep, right?”

  “No,” Mitsuyo said, “I’m okay. We should park somewhere and take a nap,” she went on, trying to disperse the heavy feeling that had taken hold of them.

  They couldn’t sleep well in the beds in hotels, but strangely enough they slept soundly for an hour or so when they parked their car beside the road, or in a parking lot.

  As Yuichi got dressed, Mitsuyo casually opened the guest book on the table.

  Here I am again with Takashi. This is the third time for us—By the way, this was our two-month anniversary so we went to see a movie in Hakata and stopped here on the way back. I really like it here—it’s cheap, and clean. Oh, and I definitely recommend the chicken nuggets! They’re probably frozen, but real crunchy!

  Without really thinking about it, Mitsuyo continued to read through the girlish writing.

  On the next page, in pink fluorescent pen she saw this:

  Today Akkun and I did the dirty deed for the first time in a month. Since April we’ve lived far away from each other, which makes me soooo sad. Boo hoo!

  Beneath it there was a mangalike sketch of a guy, probably by the girl, and in the dialogue bubble over it, in a stronger hand—no doubt that of the man—were the words I’ll never cheat on you!

  Mitsuyo closed the guest book and placed it back on the table.

  Just as they were leaving, Mitsuyo turned and looked back at the room. The down comforter had been straightened, but the white sheets underneath were wrinkled and tossed about, a sign of last’s night’s insomnia. Mitsuyo was struck by a sudden thought. Which was bigger—this bed or Yuichi’s car? You can stretch out on the bed, but can’t go anywhere. The car’s more confining, but in it you can go anywhere you like.

  Yuichi looked concerned—Mitsuyo was just standing there, spacing out. He tugged her arm.

  They walked down the orange-carpeted hallway to the stairs, which were painted white. They put the key in the box at the front desk, and were heading for the half-underground parking lot when they saw a cleaning woman, broom in hand, staring at the license plate of Yuichi’s car. Yuichi came to an abrupt halt and his heels squeaked on the floor. The cleaning woman glanced over in their direction. But she turned right back to his car.