And there was a video as well, one I had taken as we were drinking beer on the summit.
“We hereby declare our intention to withdraw from the world and retreat into our hermitage!”
Red-faced Hitoshi raised his hand straight up as Nao edged his way in from the side, thrust out his can of Silk Yebisu, and exclaimed: “This we vow to Lord Yebisu!”
“Isn’t Lord Yebisu also retired? Aren’t all seven gods of good fortune wizened pensioners?” The voice was mine.
“Perhaps indeed,” Nao nodded. “There’s something about them that suggests that all they do is play and enjoy life.”
“Then we are the three lucky guys, who left it all behind while we are still young,” Hitoshi declared, thrusting out his own can of beer.
“Isn’t that amazing? Do you have the feeling that starting tomorrow every day will be the same?”
“Right you are! No longer shall we float along in this transient realm!”
“We shall sink into the bog of beer!” I chimed in.
“Let’s just have fun, crazy fun!” exclaimed Hitoshi, slapping his knee.
“Let’s do something grand and spectacular!” said Nao.
“No, you idiot! We’re retired, accomplish nothing, and render no useful service. We occupy a distant corner of the world, as an appendix without prospects in the book of life.”
“How terrible!”
“It isn’t in the least terrible. Hitoshi is simply saying that we won’t be doing anything. Even if those around us demand that we do this or that, we won’t.”
“What? Aren’t we going to have any goals?”
“No, no goals at all. We’ll simply drift about happily.”
“Does uselessness bring happiness? Fine then! Hurray for Our Mountain!”
Nao stood up and rotated his hips, the camera pointing at him. For a moment it fixed on his head, then aimed at the pastel-blue sky. His voice grew faint, as though coming from far away, while a rustling wind arose.
The video clip ended. Dry-eyed, I continued to stare at the still, pastel-blue sky.
I was alone. The three of us, our shared dream of building a prosperous abode atop Our Mountain now vanquished, had suddenly been reduced to one. We had been comrades, united by bonds of unsurpassed strength, and of our own volition we had broken them. It was not the fault of any single person; we had all willfully brought about our self-destruction.
I was quivering. I was sad. I was angry and vexed. Why had we behaved so stupidly, demeaning and shutting out one another, opening ever deeper wounds with no benefit to anyone?
I knew why. It was because since birth we MEs had experienced no other way of living. We had always thought of ourselves as scum. Constantly driven by the trepidation and desperation of our desire to rid ourselves of that affliction, we had poured all our energy into creating others even more wretched than we, just to prove that we were different. Ignorant of any other course, we had spiraled ever downward; Hitoshi was unable to believe in the reality that was the Our Mountain bond, so he had fled back to the only life he had known. The default settings with which MEs had been programmed had hitherto kept us automatically and powerfully in check.
Our Mountain would not return. On the contrary, the desire to “erase” had surged among all the MEs. Yes indeed. The intention was not to kill at random, but rather to exclude and purge, to consign the scum to oblivion. The only safe haven, the one that did not feed that impulse, was Our Mountain, and sadly it had collapsed.
I felt that I no longer knew a single human being. Who were my friends, my colleagues, my mother, my father, my siblings? I had no idea, and thus I was equally ignorant of my own identity. For all of them, their contours were composed of unconnected dotted lines. I was simply and wholeheartedly a ME. Outdoors, indoors, in a train, or in a car, all that I surveyed was ME, ME, ME. Among ourselves we were inflicting wounds, erasing each other. We who should be able to understand one another better than all others were engaged in mutual torment of the cruelest kind. We were plunging headlong toward extinction.
In the initial days of Our Mountain, I wanted to remember everything. But now that Our Mountain had collapsed, I just wanted to forget. I did not wish to become obsessed with extermination, or to acknowledge that it was real. I did not wish to see it. I wanted to be a totally disinterested party—even if, as long as I remained a ME, that would be impossible.
I did nothing more than turn off the lights and lock the door. There was no question of notifying the police. If I kept Nao’s death out of my mental view, if I went on living normally, I somehow thought that the body would disappear of its own accord.
* * *
Unable to shake off the feeling that I had long been under surveillance, I walked quickly to Ōkubo Station, but once on the train, I found myself surrounded by a throng of MEs, as thick as jungle vines. There was a twentyish female ME. Another was a kid pointing his finger at me as he called over to his mother. Sitting directly across from me was an old hag of a ME, groping at my feet with her eyes, and a geezerly ME glared down at me while clinging to a strap. I wished my eyes could turn them all to ash, but I kept them pointed at the floor.
As I walked down the stairs at Shibuya to change to the Tōyoko Line, I was pushed from behind and almost went tumbling down. Fearing that it might be Hitoshi, I turned and saw a male ME with cropped, grizzled hair.
“Takuya, you turd!” he whispered in my ear, before giving me another push and running past me down the stairs. I nearly tripped again but was able to grab the rail. As the man reached the bottom, he turned around and scowled at me before disappearing into the mass of MEs.
To my surprise, none of the other passersby paid me the slightest heed. Seemingly unconcerned that I had nearly fallen down the stairs, they continued along in an orderly fashion. There had been not so much as a pause in the flow; no one had noticed either him or me, let alone try to nab him or report him to a station official. It was as though we were invisible—was this so routine that no one would have any reaction?
I now understood how fifty-three people had died.
The man had called me Takuya when he pushed me, somehow confusing me for someone else. But no, there was no confusion: Takuya was no doubt also a ME, so that if I—that is, me—should die in place of that turd, it would make no difference. The man had probably been unable to distinguish us, just as Hitoshi had been unable to distinguish Nao and me. In any case, the intention was to erase and delete. It would make no difference which of us was eliminated—or, for that matter, not eliminated. It would all be as though nothing had occurred.
And so, with or without mistaken identity, WE would go on exterminating one other. All fifty-three of those who had perished the day before were MEs.
What a dangerous world—I had no idea when I might be mistaken for someone else and promptly deleted! If the newspaper statistics were to be believed, this phenomenon had been happening for at least two years. And though it made no sense to me then, back when I was still working part-time at Yoshinoya, I now remebered someone telling me that he knew I was a ME. And it had been eight years since I had had that job. So while MEs were quite old, their explosive proliferation must have been more recent. And that in turn gave rise to the mutual destruction in which we were now engaged.
I staggered back to my apartment feeling extremely tense, like a lost soldier who had made his way across enemy lines. Grateful to be home, I immediately went to sleep.
* * *
I was awakened by the chime of a new e-mail on my cell phone. I groggily picked it up and saw it was already 9:12.
I jumped up in a panic; I was late for work, horribly late. The morning meeting had already begun. I saw that I had forgotten to set the alarm, a terrible blunder with my job situation already so precarious.
This won’t do, I told myself. Calm down. I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and took a deep breath. To appear more professional, even if only slightly, I changed into a black suit I had only worn once for
a relative’s funeral, though I knew the effort was meaningless: I would in any case have to change into my work uniform. As I put my wallet, cell phone, and Walkman into my pockets, the blue light of the phone illuminated. And then I remembered the new e-mail and checked the messages.
The sender appeared as Nao.
I felt goose bumps spread across my body. Nao? How could that be? I had seen his corpse.
I opened the message. There was no text, just two attachments. The risk of a virus was the least of my fears. If I opened them, would I be summoned into the next world, never to return? Such was now the degree of my fantasies.
I nonetheless clicked on the files, which were both videos. The first began with me standing beside Nao’s body, then turning back to the camera and moving toward it.
I then finally realized: there had been a webcam attached to the laptop in Nao’s room, which had recorded everything. Someone had returned to the room after I left, checked the camera, and discovered that I had been there. That someone was, in fact, not Nao but rather Hitoshi, who, having made him a corpse, had contrived to send the videos from Nao’s cell phone.
I then played the second of them. A door appeared, seemingly a front door, belonging to what could be an ordinary ramshackle home. It was my door! I instinctively glanced to the entrance. Could he be waiting outside? I attached the chain. The camera panned from the entrance and lingered around the apartment building. It was noontime, the sunlight at its most intense.
The scene abruptly shifted to the lively interior of a store: Megaton in Hiyoshi. The digital cameras comprising my section came gliding into view, but I was not to be seen.
That was all.
I called Nao but just as before, the ring went unanswered. I considered responding over e-mail but could not think of what to say. And it seemed to me better not to react rashly or clumsily.
What should I do now? I thought desperately. Remaining in the apartment felt dangerous. It would be better to go into hiding somewhere. With that notion, I began by stuffing a duffel bag with underwear. Rummaging through my dresser, I found at the bottom of a drawer a fat envelope. I removed the contents and was astonished to discover a thick roll of bills. I counted the cash, which came to 850,000 yen. I had no recollection of where this might have come from, but I surely wouldn’t have forgotten withdrawing such a large sum of money. Could this be some sort of trap?
As I stared at the bills, a strange feeling came over me: might this money offer a way out? I felt a faint yearning. Though I had no recollection of the money, I sensed that if I discovered its source, I might be saved.
I put 50,000 yen into my wallet and slid the rest, still in the envelope, into the inside pocket of my suit coat. On a whim I also grabbed a Victorinox Swiss Army Knife that years ago I had been given as a present. Before opening the door, I looked through the peephole. There was no sign of anything unusual. I opened the door a crack. Again, all appeared normal. I stepped out and glanced around. With no sign of Hitoshi, I unlocked my bicycle and sped off, pedaling as fast as I could. I took side streets, sloping down toward Motosumiyoshi, trying to avoid being held up by any red lights. Turning from one byway into another, I proceeded northeast through a residential area. Then, sure that I wasn’t being followed by another bicycle, a motorcycle, car, or pedestrian, I left my bike at Musashi-Kosugi Station, dashed up the stairs, and boarded the first departing train on the Tokyo Metro Meguro Line, an express heading for Urawa-Misono.
The train was nearly empty. I sat down for a while but then, as we were approaching Ōokayama, I got up warily and moved two cars forward. At Ōokayama I stepped off the train and walked down the platform toward the exit, then at the last second I jumped back on again. Once more I took a seat; I had no destination in mind. I thought that as long as I still had money, I would stay on the run. Should I go far away? I thought that I might buy a used car but then realized that I couldn’t wait until all the paperwork was done and it was delivered. Could I prevail upon my father, himself a car dealer, to get me something right away? But that presupposed a reconciliation, and that was impossible. We’d been ignoring each other for years, so suddenly patching things up would not be feasible.
But what was I saying? My father was dead. Moreover, he’d run a foundry in Kawaguchi. When I was still in high school, he’d fallen into financial difficulties, taken out bank loans, and then resorted to loan sharks. Having piled up a mountain of debt, he had hanged himself in the factory . . .
No, no, I mustn’t remember. The more I did, the more dubious my life story would become. It was better for me not to know what had befallen me or what I had done to others. What I had forgotten I should remain forgotten. In any event, there was nothing there worth remembering or telling.
The only important thing now was the perilous present. To whatever extent possible, I had to economize. I would get away from here, only occasionally staying in hotels and otherwise relying on Internet cafés and gyms for sanctuary.
But my imagination led me to think of what I would do when I ran out of money: wander from place to place, finding part-time jobs, and then, when they ran out, go to seed on the road.
I remembered such a ME: Hitoshi’s older brother and the myriad MEs he interviewed at the municipal office. And I would be mixed with them, all of us MEs looking the same as we lay sprawled out on the sidewalk. The more I pictured myself like this, the more probable it seemed to me that I had been living just such a life. That I had been an employee at an electrical appliance store seemed like no more than the modest daydream of a hopeless loser.
Despite the danger, I felt a twinge of regret at not having shown up for work, albeit late. And yet the reason I had seized the opportunity to leave was that I had come to the end of my rope at the company. Already eager to escape from that hellhole, I’d told myself that I had no alternative. And now I had absolutely no intention of going back.
There were even more MEs on the train than the night before. The only other passengers were a few foreigners and a French bulldog in a cage. I observed a baby in a stroller, a pregnant woman, and an elderly auntie, all looking the same. And yet, as far as I could tell, few had any awareness of being such. Those who did were, as I was, holding their breath, averting their eyes, keeping to themselves, enduring the situation as best they could.
I took out my Walkman and inserted the earbuds. I wished that I were able to block out not only the outside noises but also the sights around me. I pushed play and heard the strains of “Nice Age” from the Yellow Magic Orchestra album X∞Multiplies. Katoken-san, who worked in the television department and who had extensive knowledge of Shōwa-era pop culture, had lent me the album. That was before I was branded a Yasoist, and now seemed even more remote than the Shōwa era. It was something that had happened in a happy time before I was born, when I did not exist. Minami-san, Nakamura-san, Miyatake-san, the manager, Ejiri-san . . . their faces appeared to me one after another. I knew that I had been with them just the day before. Now remote, they were all smiling.
There was no malice in them. Being a ME, I knew that perfectly well. Everything was simply a matter of the trend of the times, the environment, chance. Things merely happened as they did. There was nothing to choose. There was nothing that could be done through one’s own power. Thus, WE had no will; it had been taken away. No, WE had had none in the first place. WE were creatures without will.
* * *
I arrived at Urawa-Misono Station, the last stop, at eleven thirty. Seeing a kiosk directly in front of me, I thought of checking for death notices related to Our Mountain. I bought the Nichi Nichi Shimbun, but when I turned to the local pages, they, of course, covered Saitama, with nothing about incidents and accidents in Tokyo. But then the name Kasumi came flying at me from a page I happened to glance at:
At approximately 8 a.m. on the 25th, a fire broke out in the residence of Mr. Kensuke Ageha (36), a licensed tax accountant, in Ōnarichō, Ōmiya Ward, Saitama City. The 30-square-meter living room and part of the
kitchen were destroyed. Identified at the scene were the bodies of Mr. Ageha, his wife Kasumi-san (32), and their infant son Shō-chan (less than 1). A fourth body remains unidentified. There were traces of blood from Mr. Ageha’s neck. Marks on the necks of Kasumi-san, Shō-chan, and the unidentified body suggest strangulation. The Ōmiya Police Department suspects murder-suicide, with Mr. Ageha responsible for the fire.
So that luxurious, glass-enclosed living room had burned. I was shocked but nonetheless untouched by any feeling of either sadness or absurdity. I had no sense of reality. I had not been closely attached to Kasumi, to say nothing of Kensuke or Shō. Though she was my sister, our relationship had been perfunctory, as though we were distant relatives. Of course, I did have childhood memories of her, like our family trip to Disneyland when we fought over the camera.
Still, I wondered why I had learned of her death through the newspaper. Why hadn’t anyone told me personally? What were the police doing?
I took out my cell phone and called the number in my address book labeled Mother. There was no answer. Was she the still-unidentified victim?
I felt the need to have some kind of verification. I hopped in a cab and gave the driver the address of my sister’s house.
“That’s where there was a fire yesterday,” the driver remarked as I opened the newspaper. I could see her face in the rearview mirror; she was, of course, a ME.
I held up the newspaper to obstruct the mirror’s view and ignored her.
“That glass house was terribly tasteless, wasn’t it? It had such a nouveau-riche feel to it.”
I remained silent even as I became more anxious, reaching surreptitiously into my bag, gripping the Swiss Army Knife in my fist, and inserting it into my jacket pocket.
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