ME

by Tomoyuki Hoshino

  I sighed and went back to getting ready for work. Her misery was my misery, and since she too was a ME, such was only to be expected.

  * * *

  The moment I was plunged into the stream of pedestrians heading toward Hiyoshi Station, I had a most unpleasant premonition. I was walking with my eyes to the ground, but even so, I could recognize among the men and women in suits who came into view a large number of MEs.

  Just as I feared, the Megaton staff—workmates both junior and senior—was riddled with MEs. At the morning meeting I could see, as I glanced between the faces there, that roughly half were US. I could sense that they were gossiping and laughing about me. I continued to hold my head down.

  Only when we broke up for our section meetings did I realize that Tajima was missing. It was announced that Ejiri-san, head of the air-conditioner department, would temporarily take on the extra duty of leading the camera and timepiece department. Needless to say, she was a ME. Ejiri-san had joined the company a year before Minami-san, who had often told me that though she had been very helpful to him when he first arrived, she had changed when she saw his inherent talent emerging. She had promoted others who had joined with him and even those who were his junior, men who though not his equal in ability were popular among the higher-ups. Minami-san, as he often told me, had wound up universally loathed. When she told him that his task was to help dependent fledglings become fully fledged, he had apparently responded: “Why don’t you help them yourself??”

  When the meeting was over, I gloomily braced myself for accusations of Yasoism, as I asked Ejiri-san: “Why was Tajima-san so abruptly transferred?”

  “Lighten up. Now that your archenemy is gone, shouldn’t this be the Land of Yaso?”

  Yaso? I wanted to shudder so violently that my head would drop to the floor, but instead I stared my double in the face and coolly replied: “I don’t see him that way. It’s merely the sudden personnel change that unnerves me.”

  “What? Are you telling me that you wish he’d stayed, that you quarreled because you are such good buddies?”

  “No, but where has he been sent?”

  “To help run a building-management subsidiary.”

  Stunned, I silently wondered how someone of his abilities could be shipped off to such a place.

  “Appearances aside, that subsidiary has been in the red for some time. Perhaps the shrewd and capable Tajima will help get it back on its feet.”

  I felt my spirits sink, as if I myself had been transferred there. No matter what anyone did, its performance would surely remain the same. Perhaps Tajima would quit. An audacious character like that would have no trouble carving out his own path.

  But no . . . If I was going to worry about anyone, it should be myself and not Tajima. After all, how was I to know when I too might receive some absurd transfer?

  I don’t remember what sort of customers I dealt with that morning. Before I knew it, it was lunchtime. As I wished to be alone, I headed for McDonald’s and put in my standard order: a Big Mac, a side salad, and oolong tea. I took my tray up to the no-smoking seats on the second floor, where I found a band of fellow workers, wearing our distinctive orange vests. The two women and three men, including Minami-san, were in a boisterous mood. The five, all relatively young, were MEs.

  As much as I wanted to retreat, they had surely seen me standing there, leaving me no choice but to take an empty seat close by. Now that they had become US, I inwardly raged: even McDonald’s, my one-time sanctuary, had been invaded.

  From where I was sitting I could clearly hear what they were saying. All of them were apparently members of a recently formed company softball team.

  “Yasuyo, you were doing an Ichirō imitation, right?”

  “Yeah, actually . . .”

  “Was that what you were trying to do?”

  “You’re one to talk, Nabe-chan, having clowned around with the ball like Nagashima.”

  “Was it that obvious?”

  “At least you could do Minami-san’s Yukiko Ueno.”

  “So he’s, like, totally hooked on her, I guess.”

  “I was zero for four.”

  “I’ve been bench-pressing at the Keiō gym to beef up my shoulder muscles.”

  “Do they have a batting machine there? If they do, I might join the team.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Have the details been set for the newcomer welcoming party?”

  “It looks like everyone will be participating, including temps and part-timers.”

  “Good.”

  “We should be able to field a three-woman, six-man team.”

  I had heard about the rising popularity of amateur baseball in the wake of Japan’s victories in the World Baseball Classic tournaments, but I hadn’t realized that our company had formed a team. I wondered whether the idea of playing softball had come from Minami-san. He and I, along with a colleague who later quit, had sat in a bar in Hiyoshi and watched the final WBC game on television. Minami-san kept bringing up the subject of softball, saying that by far the most compelling contest was between Japan and the US at the Beijing Olympics. He praised Japan’s female halberd-wielding softball warriors, saying that when Ichirō saves the day by batting in a winning run, he joins their ranks in demonstrating the same sort of pluck.

  Only two months had passed since then, but already it seemed distant, indeed so remote that I was not sure whether the event had really occurred. My memory had grown hazy: Where was the bar? What was the name of the guy who was always with us, the one who had subsequently quit? It was in that same bar, I was certain, that late into the night some years before the three of us had watched the World Cup final. I had long been a fan of Zinedine Zidane, so that when he was thrown out of the game for head-butting an opponent, I had wept and then been comforted by those two friends.

  Was I so intent on sidestepping my current predicament that I had sealed away that joyful memory? Was I treating the present as normal and behaving as though there had never been a happier time in my life?

  I was moved to tears by my own fortitude. I thought I had carried out my job normally and had cordial relations with my colleagues. So why had things come to such a pass? No matter how much I pondered the question, I could not answer it. I was not a bad person—not in the least. I had every reason to stand tall—as I had back then, a time of fullness that I should now revive and in whose spirit I should live once more. Was I not a ME among my fellow MEs? And as they could understand my heart as I did their own, I ought to be able to approach them, proudly and not obsequiously, and be accepted. After all, though some of my initial encounters with Hitoshi and Nao had been hostile, we had become the most intimate of friends.

  Charged with positive feelings, I got up when my five fellow workers finished their lunch and walked out with them. As we left McDonald’s, I approached Minami-san and boldly inquired: “Could I join your softball team? Might I play in the upcoming tournament?”

  Minami-san looked at me with a blank expression on his face. The other four glanced first at him, then at me. He then spoke: “No thanks, you wannabe one-day wonder! Anyhow, you’re a soccer fan.”

  Having given me his blunt reply, he immediately turned around and walked with his companions in a single file across the traffic circle. I could hear them exclaiming in loud voices: “Now there for the first time I’ve finally seen Yasoism in the flesh!” “Yes, seeing it in person is shocking, isn’t it?”

  These were MEs talking about me. And they had made those remarks precisely because they were MEs. In sum, people who said such things were MEs. And I was one of them, the embodiment of them. I was part of that meaninglessness, living but useless rabble.

  For the first time I felt the urge to kill them.

  * * *

  I couldn’t forgive myself for having been such a wimp with Minami-san and his following. It was despicable and shameful for me to have wanted to return to my old habitat just because Our Mountain had abruptly and disappointing
ly collapsed and vanished. Even as I felt my anger rising, a slight wave of scorn and ridicule swept back over me; I thought that to be despicable was itself proof that one was a ME. As a last hope, I sent an e-mail to Nao. Just like I feared, I received no response. During my break, I called him on the phone but again got no answer, and after work it was the same. With an ever-greater sense of gloomy certainty that all was lost, I fortified myself with dinner at the local Hidakaya and then headed for Shin-Ōkubo.

  It was the peak of the return rush. The train as far as Shibuya was relatively empty, but the cars on the Yamanote Line were packed. I absentmindedly looked up at the advertisements, when suddenly the slack faces of myriad MEs came surging into view. They were all around me. I found myself smack up against of an old fatso of a ME, buttocks to buttocks, who let off a fart that reeked horribly of garlic. In front of me was a ME about my own age. He boarded the now-crowded train wearing a large square backpack. Every time he fiddled with his cell phone, he would ram his burden into me. To my right was another ME, tall, slender, and prematurely bald, who was pretending to read his newspaper as he held onto the strap while in fact ogling the open blouse of a ME in her midthirties, who was standing in front of him and looking off to the side. His atrociously foul breath enveloped me. The woman was listening to music, with the volume loud enough to allow me to make out the words of the songs, sung by Yutaka Ozaki. It was all quite unbearable. To my left was a small middle-aged ME, who would brush up against me whenever the train lurched, whereupon she would glare at me.

  My murderous mood from when I left McDonald’s was returning. I contemplated how I might exterminate all of those horrible MEs, and once and for all be free of them. Dynamite or poison would do.

  To distract myself from such thoughts, I glanced at the balding ME’s newspaper. It was the regional section of the Nichi Nichi Shimbun, morning edition. On the left side, below the News of the Twenty-Three Metropolitan Wards logo, were the latest mortality statistics: Deaths reported for the 24th. In finer letters the numbers ran: Traffic accident fatalities: 17; autocide: 28; allocide: 53.

  What did autocide and allocide mean? Suicide? Homicide? If the day before twenty-eight people had killed themselves and fifty-three had been murdered—all within the twenty-three wards—such high figures surely ought to have caused quite a stir. I was utterly perplexed.

  My eyes shifted to the right-hand page, where buried below the Mini-News Record were densely packed lines covering supposedly minor stories. I assumed that these would be about traffic accidents and the like, but as I started to read, I was dumbstruck to find that they covered the entire range: along with vehicle mishaps and suicides were homicide cases.

  At approximately 4:30 a.m. of the 24th, company employee Mr. Takashi Kimura (56) of Mishuku in Setagaya Ward was strangled to death by an unknown intruder.

  At approximately 5:40 a.m. of the 24th, Ms. Sakae Yoshikawa (18), an unemployed vocational school student, Mr. Hanam Kim (20), a university student, and Ms. Nijimi Kiyohara (19) were beaten to death by a bat-wielding male in the parking lot of a convenience store located in Akatsuka, Itabashi Ward. The suspect fled the scene in a car. According to the Takashimadaira Police Bureau, he is approximately 175 centimeters tall, of medium build, was dressed in a dark windbreaker and dark pants, and was wearing sunglasses and a flu mask.

  At approximately 6:15 a.m. of the 24th, company employee Mr. Tetsunori Tajima (36) was fatally wounded in the neck by a knife-wielding assailant while jogging in the flood plain of the Tama River, Nishi-rokugō, Ōta Ward.

  At approximately 7:05 a.m. of the 24th, a 44-year-old male jumped onto the tracks of the Chūō Line at the JR Nishi-Ogikubo Station and was fatally struck by a train coming from Tokyo.

  At approximately 7:30 a.m. of the 24th, Ms. Chie Mori (68), unemployed, was struck by an automobile at a street crossing in Senjū, Adachi Ward, suffering fatal injuries to the head. The driver, Yoshinori Kido (33), a part-time worker, is now in custody.

  At approximately 7:40 a.m. of the 24th, company worker Ms. Yoshie Akasaka (27) was walking down Bunkamura-dōri in Dōgenzaka, Shibuya Ward, when she passed Tōru Sakota (29), who is now under arrest on suspicion of having fatally struck her in the face and head with a concrete block.

  I looked away from the newspaper and lowered my eyes, suddenly feeling nauseous. Was this Sakota that Sakota? Was this Tajima that Tajima?

  I didn’t want to know anything. I would let everything go by without knowing a thing. I told myself not to think, to forget every printed word I had seen. That way there would be no problem. After all, up until now I had been blissfully ignorant. I hadn’t known how many people are killed every day or commit suicide or die in traffic accidents. I hadn’t even been aware that this is how the media report such news. And as none of that had had the least effect on my life, I could happily go on in that same state of unknowing. Yes indeed.

  I took a deep breath and now felt somehow relieved.

  I wondered whether the newspaper was following up in the same way on all fifty-three homicide cases. They surely could not cover them all. And since when, in the first place, were murders reported like this? I hadn’t read the papers in a long time, but to judge from what I had seen on the Internet, a disproportionate amount of attention was given to particularly spectacular incidents: those involving multiple victims, some bizarre angle, or celebrities. So was this simply a matter of case overload? The greater the number, it would seem, the deeper relatively ordinary murders would be buried at the bottom of the page.

  If I were to pursue the matter further, that would be one of my considerations. I was about to be thrown into emotional turmoil. Again I took a deep breath.

  * * *

  The train came into Shin-Ōkubo Station. Mindful that I was hardly immune from the possibility of bumping into Hitoshi sometime, somewhere, I felt goose bumps as I made my way along Ōkubo-dōri, walking toward Ōkubo Station. Though taking pains to avoid passersby, I noticed that except for foreigners, almost everyone was a ME. Clearly the proliferation was accelerating. And now that my eyes had become accustomed to seeing them, I seemed to be able to detect quasi-MEs as well. I imagined it was somewhat like the once popular Magic Eye 3-D books, hailed as contributing to improved eyesight: perhaps I was seeing in a three-dimensional perspective what had previously been invisible to me.

  I was still walking when my cell phone began to vibrate. I trembled as I glanced at the display and saw that the call was from Nao. After a moment’s hesitation, I pushed the answer button, but the line went dead. I stopped, looked around, and immediately set off again. I did not dare return the call.

  Reaching the house, I rang the bell, but there was no one there. Turning the knob, I found the door locked and so resorted to my spare key.

  Inside all was pitch black; it smelled like an outhouse.

  I turned on the light, my hand trembling on the switch.

  I had fallen and was lying immobile on my back, my glazed eyes staring upward, my mouth slightly open with my tongue protruding. My face had turned to wax, though I was black around my neck. I had lost control of my bladder and bowel functions.

  It was not Nao. It was me; that is, the physical substance that was me. The subtle physical differences between us while I was still alive had disappeared, so that it was I myself who was lying there. For the ME gazing at the cadaveric ME, it was nothing other than an out-of-body experience. I did not feel alive, and it was not that I had been seized by a paralyzing, deadening sense of terror. It was rather that I had the visceral sensation of being that corpse, the remains of my own vanished being. The self lying there was the me I ought to be; the so-called ME component had been turned off and was now a nonentity; it was merely me there. I could no longer be manipulated; I was stubbornly immovable.

  I do not know how long I stood there staring. At last I turned my eyes away, afraid that I would melt into the air and not return to flesh and blood. I felt that I was being watched—perhaps by the cadaveric me. I wanted to
close Nao’s eyes, but I was quite unable to touch him.

  I turned around and saw for the first time that Nao’s laptop was on. All sorts of programs were open. Thinking that there might be messages to me from Nao or Hitoshi, I checked the e-mail, but there were none later than noon of the day before.

  I turned to the Internet for news, but obviously there would not yet be any notice of Nao’s death. Just to be sure, I looked up Naohisa Motoyama but found nothing.

  Then on an impulse I googled today, deaths, and numbers. There were homicide statistics published by various local police precincts going back two years. It seemed there were enough cases of murder and mayhem as to become routine, making it impossible for the media to cover each incident in detail, though they could hardly let them slip by unreported. In any event, the numbers appeared to be there. Suicide and homicide were being referred to with euphemisms like erasure.

  Absentmindedly I reviewed the day’s statistics as the actual names of the victims, one by one, appeared on the screen. Just as I had stolen a glimpse of the Nichi Nichi Shimbun pages on the train some minutes before, I was again catching the sight of familiar names. From the depths of my being I shuddered. I did not wish to know any more and switched off the computer.

  As I got up to leave, I noticed a red backpack—the brand-new backpack that Hitoshi had brought on the excursion the three of us had taken to Mount Takao. I rummaged through it and found the GR digital camera.

  I sat down on the floor and examined the various photographs. With the trees in the background, half-enveloped in the pale green of their leaves, Hitoshi and Nao cavorted innocently against the light. These were the shots I had taken at Mount Takao, displaying soft light and shadows at the beginning of May; the images touched my heart. The happiness of that time brimmed over as though from a fountain. From Hitoshi and Nao’s words of praise for the shots, I had recovered the joy I had once had in photography. In that moment I had understood who I was and that it was all right for me to be me.