by Otsuichi
I always saw the lies and deceit on people’s faces. I knew instantly if the person before me was putting on an act. I could see the secrets in their hearts, no matter how they snuggled up to me with doe eyes and warm smiles. People performed themselves. Lies ran rampant among parents, friends, lovers, no matter how great the love for each other might be. They were a plague, eating into the space around them, only to pass on by with an innocent look. They were inescapable. I myself lied. I gave voice to things I didn’t believe so as not to be hated. Fearing that someone would pull away from me, I smiled ingratiatingly. I was scared of being disconnected from society, and so I became a deceiver myself.
In general, people didn’t look back on every interaction to pick out each of these little distortions. For some reason, it seemed that I alone, my eyes alone, reacted to all these performances on the faces of other people. My mind was given no chance to rest. Each time I read a lie on the face of a loved one, my heart sank. The lone beings I could count on in a world like this. The ones who would face me honestly. The ones who would accept my gaze when I turned it upon them without putting up those walls. The ones who made me think it would be okay to give myself over and lean on them. That was precisely what these girls were to me, on the other side of my square frame, their faces devoid of pretense.
†
I snaked my way down the mountain road, turning the steering wheel back and forth. The sun was approaching the ground in the west, the sky dyed red. It was a clear red, as though the sky itself was radiating the color. As I went around a bend, the light pouring into the car changed, flowed like water. The shadows cast on the face of the girl in the backseat also shifted like a soft-bodied sea creature. In contrast with the burning sky, darkness began to permeate the withered trees. The spindly branches were a woman’s hair standing on end, painted in a shadow so black it was hard to make out the details. FM radio played inside the car. I couldn’t decide whether to put a CD on, and so I just left the radio murmuring its songs. I turned on my headlights to banish the gloom before the car.
I could see her in the rearview mirror. The girl with the name Morino took a sip of bottled water, put the cap back on, and turned her eyes wordlessly out the window. It was the water I had bought along the way. I had handed it to her when I started the car, with the remark that she was probably thirsty. After carefully checking there was no sign of it having been opened, she brought the lip of the bottle to her own lips. If there had been a vending machine on the mountain pass and thus another way for her to replenish her water levels, she likely wouldn’t have touched my offering.
I was unable to relax, imagining her face in death. My heart pounded like a schoolgirl in the presence of her first crush. Once I excised this girl from the land of the living and the heat of her body faded, leaving nothing but a soulless shell, a beautiful blank space—too beautiful for mere words to capture—would suddenly appear before me.
The girl had at some point started fiddling with her cell phone, her profile colored by the sunset. She was typing out an email with her unbandaged hand.
“You emailing a friend? Family?” I asked. Morino stayed silent. “A boyfriend then?”
“It’s a friend.” Her response came with a startled look.
“You have a lot of friends?”
“Only him.”
Her words contained no lie. Now that I was thinking of it, I still hadn’t gotten the feeling she was presenting lies or any sort of performance to me—talking to this girl had not made me unhappy. She did seem to be on guard, but she wasn’t doing those things that made me sick, like putting a hand to her mouth and laughing even though nothing was funny. Perhaps she was the type who didn’t hang out with friends simply to hang out or to keep the harmony in her relationships. I imagined she lived alone and didn’t talk with anyone in class. And she was very good at acting like a corpse. Maybe with her, I could find love. No, that was ridiculous. Rather than give myself up to love and its ilk, I had to capture her in a photo to live on forever. If I were going to make her my lover, it would be as a corpse.
At any rate, she had referred to the person she was emailing as “him.” The friend was a boy. Maybe someone in her grade? Or someone older, a university student? The two of us weren’t dating, but an interest rose up in me nonetheless at her relationship with this “friend.”
“Is this the same person you called before?”
No answer. Morino pinched her lips shut tightly and looked outside. Apparently, she wasn’t interested in continuing this conversation. I supposed I had pressed her too hard and made her angry. I knew it wasn’t good to ask too many questions. But once she was dead, she wouldn’t be able to give me any more answers. I simply had to ask now while I could.
The flowing silhouettes of the trees intermittently interrupted the mass of boiling blood that was the sunset and flickered inside the car where we sat. The road was a gentle downhill slope. Perhaps because of this, it seemed as though the car was diving into the darkness.
The Christmas song special on the radio continued with “Silent Night.”
“When I saw a picture of Rosalia Lombardo …” I began, and the girl cocked her head in the rearview mirror, turning her dark eyes on me. “You know those bisque dolls? I guess you’d call them ball-jointed dolls. I had the thought that maybe all those dolls are modeled after Rosalia.”
The most adorable corpse in the world. That was Rosalia Lombardo. She breathed her last a mere two years after she had breathed her first. Her grieving father asked a doctor to do something to preserve the girl’s body. For a long time, no one knew just what this doctor had actually done. Because he kept his methods to himself, right up to the end.
At a glance, you can see there is a strangeness to Rosalia’s corpse. Vibrant and fresh, it has not decayed. People are surprised and frightened by this. Perhaps they feel there might be an air of magic to it. Or the hand of God. Even now, more than ninety years after her death, the girl sleeps peacefully. She was enshrined by the Order of Capuchin Friars Minor in Italy, and a great number of people go there to see her. A modern investigation revealed that the reason she does not decay is because her body has, in fact, turned to grave wax. However, knowing the scientific principle behind it doesn’t change the solemn feeling that comes from seeing her restful face. The glossy hair tied with a ribbon. The cheek nestled into the blanket wrapping her body, as though she were testing its softness. She makes you imagine she might open her eyes even now and peek out with a sweet look. You expect her to perhaps open those tiny lips and start speaking the words she’s only just learned. Rosalia is alive. She is alive as a corpse.
“When I look at her sleeping face, I get the feeling I can almost see the dream she’s having.”
I waited a little, but Morino gave me no response. It seemed she wasn’t interested in talking, after all. The girl in the rearview mirror dropped her gaze to the cell phone in her hand. Maybe the answer to her email had arrived.
I was at the point where I wanted to hurry up and shoot her veins full of potassium chloride. However, before I got my needle out, I would have to give her the other medication to intoxicate her, just like always. Weakened like that, she wouldn’t fight back, and she wouldn’t be scared, either. If I was lucky, she might go to sleep for me. I had prescription sleeping pills in the car’s glove compartment. All I had to do was crush them up and put them into that bottle of water. Given that she had opened it herself, I was certain she would continue to drink from it unguardedly.
The bottle was sitting to the left of her in the backseat. I had to get the drugs in there without her noticing. It was a difficult task.
“You really are alike,” the girl said.
“What’s that?”
“Your eyes are like my friend’s.”
“My eyes?”
Morino dipped her head in the rearview mirror.
“Hmm. Well, anyway, I’m glad you’re in a better mood now.”
“Mood?” Morino cocked her head to th
e side.
“You weren’t mad before?”
“Not really. I was fine.”
“When I started talking to you, you didn’t answer, so …”
“It takes time for me to think of what to say. And by the time I thought of something, the moment had passed, so I just stayed quiet.”
Her face was almost entirely expressionless, but she didn’t appear to be lying. In fact, she seemed relieved she’d been able to say that much without stumbling at the length of it. The look that had seemed discouraging was not one of anger; rather, it was, apparently, her official uniform.
“Do our faces really look that much alike? Mine and your friend’s?”
“Your faces don’t look alike, but you have the same air about you.”
“What’s his name?”
“My friend’s?”
“Yes.”
“His name …”
The girl shifted her gaze onto the passing trees. I took in her profile in the mirror. A change in emotion appeared on her face, like water rippling. Sadness, a smile, and other feelings overlapped momentarily, and even now, I think she might have been about to cry. Or maybe her expression didn’t actually change that much at all, maybe I simply perceived it like that.
Ahead, I could see the train tracks and the crossing. The gates were just coming down. Warning bells clanged as red lights flashed. I stepped on the brakes to bring the car to a halt. There was no sign yet of the coming train.
“I’m going to get out and make a phone call,” Morino said, and with her cell phone in one hand, she opened the door and stepped out of the car. She probably didn’t want me to hear the conversation. I didn’t stop her. This was the chance I had been hoping for. In the backseat was her bag and the open bottle of water.
I checked on her in the rearview mirror. From where she was standing, she wouldn’t be able to see what I was doing even if she did turn around. The evening sun had sunk almost entirely out of sight. The interior of the car was dark, colored intermittently red with the flashing of the crossing lights.
I took the sleeping pills out of the glove compartment, dumped them out onto a landscape photo that was as good as garbage, and smashed them up with the pill bottle. I reached an arm back into the rear seat and grabbed the plastic water bottle. I took the cap off and dumped the pills in.
A train with few cars came clattering along on the tracks, about as loud as a bus passing before us. I put the water bottle back in the rear seat and turned to face forward again. The clanging of the bells stopped, and the area returned to its earlier dusk. The sky was no longer the least bit red. Rather, it was a blue as dark as the depths of the ocean.
I waited for Morino to get into the car. And I waited for her to put the water bottle to her lips.
But she didn’t come back.
I got out to look for her, but I could find no sign of that beautiful silhouette. The sun had already set. I used a flashlight from the trunk to shine a light on the area. Something white flashed in the bushes a little ways off on the side of the road. I parted them and turned the lamp that way, and the outline of light caught a bandage stuck on a branch at about chest height. The sparkling-white, brand-new bandage danced in the darkness. Evening ended, night began, and she was gone.
4
Hark, the glad sound! the Savior comes,
the Savior promised long;
let every heart prepare a throne,
and every voice a song.
He comes the prisoners to release,
in Satan’s bondage held;
the gates of brass before him burst,
the iron fetters yield.
I could hear the voices in song leaking out from the open driver’s side door. It was the Christmas music special on the radio. The saintly voices of boys and girls spoke to me as I gripped my flashlight.
The awaited savior has returned.
So let’s give him a big welcome.
I was fairly certain that’s what the lyrics meant. I felt a chill. Now that the sun had gone down, the temperature was dropping. Maybe I should go back to the car. I could look all I wanted to, but I wasn’t likely to find the girl. The trunks and branches of dead trees jumped to life in the illumination of the flashlight, gray like rocks. The car headlights shone into the space dead ahead. I should move the car to the shoulder of the road before another vehicle came along.
I regretted letting my subject get away. The girl had seen through to my real intentions, and so she had disappeared into the deciduous tree forest. She had run off, not paying any notice when the bandage she had so awkwardly wound around her hand got caught on a branch and was pulled off. The words I had spoken perhaps contained something to heighten her awareness of the danger I presented. Maybe it was the talk about Rosalia? At any rate, I had definitely failed somehow.
But I realized there was no need to be so defeatist. For two reasons. The first was that her bag was still there in the backseat. I opened the rear door and picked it up. An utterly ordinary black school bag. There might be something inside to tell me who she was. I checked the interior with excitement. There was almost nothing in it. A single paperback of Night on the Galactic Railroad. Perhaps right from the start, she had left the bag as camouflage. A little tool to make me think she wasn’t going to run off or anything—she had left her bag, she’d come back once the train passed. As proof of this hypothesis, I couldn’t find any sign of the digital camera that would have been tucked in there. It was clear she had taken the important items from the bag.
But that was fine. There was one more good reason not to lose heart. The black sailor-style uniform she wore. I had a clear memory of the school crest embroidered on it. I would find out what school she went to. As long as Morino wasn’t a fake name, finding her would be easy. And even if it was a fake name, if I knew the school she attended at least, I’d be able to find her someday.
This wasn’t the end yet. My tie with this girl Morino hadn’t been completely severed. I wanted the look on her face when she was dead. I didn’t need anything else. What experience could be more incredible than turning the lens on her deceased face and pressing the shutter? I would love this subject body and soul. My thirst had returned. A thirst that could only be quenched by a face in death, just like seven years earlier. A longing for water in the burning desert. Surprisingly, this feeling was not unpleasant.
I returned the girl’s bag to the backseat and went to slide into the driver’s seat. At that moment, I heard the vibration of a cell phone from somewhere. It wasn’t my phone. I pricked up my ears and sought out the origin of the sound. In the woods, not that far from the car. I found it soon enough when I went to look. Morino’s cell phone had fallen atop the dried leaves. A light-emitting diode flashed as the device vibrated.
Had she dropped it? I picked it up and peered at the LCD screen. A message indicating an incoming call. The caller was apparently set not to display, however; no name was shown. Someone was calling Morino. Maybe her family? Or that friend?
Phone in hand, I waited for the caller to hang up. But the vibration showed no sign of stopping.
I went back to the side of the car, leaned against it, and took several deep breaths. I felt like the temperature had dropped radically. I focused on moving my finger, sluggish because of the cold, and pressed the Accept Call button. I held my breath and put the cell phone to my ear.
“Hello?” A boy’s voice came through the receiver to me. It wasn’t as low as an adult’s, but it wasn’t high like a child either. Most likely, he was also in high school, like Morino.
“Who are you?”
“A friend of Morino’s.” His voice was calm. It didn’t waver at all, even when he heard my voice coming through the connection instead of the girl’s. The hand I gripped the phone with started to sweat.
“Morino? I just found this phone. I guess Morino would be its owner then?”
“Yes, that’s right. Earlier, I advised Morino to run away.”
“Run away?” My heart
beat faster.
“I was the one who suggested she leave her cell phone.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to speak with you.”
I felt as though the breath expelled by the boy was hitting my ear through the phone. Disturbed, I hung up.
I got into the driver’s seat and closed the door. Turning off the radio left only the sound of the engine. Darkness hung around the car, a gloom so black that one could be forgiven for wondering if someone had simply pasted drawing paper colored completely with black crayon over the windows. I was desperately thirsty. My mouth was sticky with thick saliva as though I had just woken up. I was assaulted by the absurd sensation that I was being swallowed up by some unknown something. My body was frozen from venturing out into the cold night.
I fiddled with Morino’s cell phone, opening up any number of menus. She might have information about the boy in her phone. Before I learned more about Morino, I first wanted to know about this boy. To get rid of this unfamiliar eeriness that had been planted in me when I spoke with him. I didn’t believe Morino had had enough time when she ran off to delete her messages. I poked around and there was the email, just as I expected.
Sent 16:20, December 6
I ended up getting a ride from that person before! (^_^;)
The time was immediately before sunset. This had to be the email she had written in the car. So she used emoji. Unexpected. The emoji was about a hundred times more emotionally expressive than her face.
Email received three minutes later: When the car stops, get out and call me. When you run, go in the direction of the setting sun. I checked a map. There should be houses that way.
That had probably been sent by the boy. The sender’s name and email were displayed. And these were the only email exchanges today. I checked her email from other days as well, but they were all one line, business-y. This one boy was the only person she emailed. The received call history was nothing but private numbers. Supposing that these originated from the boy’s cell phone, then this phone in my hand was essentially a completely private communication line for one individual.
