Nan-Core

by Mahokaru Numata

  Had he known from the beginning?

  Of course he had, there was no way he couldn’t have. Whatever clandestine dealings had taken place, Mom could never have replaced my real mother and act like it had never happened without first conspiring with Dad.

  For the first time ever, I felt pure and absolute terror. Was this reality? Despite having lived with them for such a long time I suddenly felt like I couldn’t remember either of their faces. I concentrated my thoughts but only saw a couple of masks, featureless, expressionless, pure white. Who were these people I had always called “Mom” and “Dad”? I shrank in the face of such doubts.

  I knew time was short. I checked my watch and saw it was already after five. Assuming he didn’t stop anywhere after helping Gran with her dinner, Dad would be home by seven at the latest. Yohei was scheduled to give me a warning call from the station at Yamato Koriyama, so I would be okay until then.

  I had finished two of the four notebooks, so I was halfway through. I picked up the notebook marked number three and flicked nervously through the pages. From the first lines, it was evident that some time had passed since the events of the second book. Perhaps because of this, I thought I could make out subtle differences in the penmanship. The writing clearly belonged to the same person but the characters had firmed up somewhat, making them easier to follow.

  Maybe it was just the filter of my new preconceptions, but the handwriting didn’t look dissimilar to Mom’s.

  7

  I haven’t done this for a long time, but I must write again. I had only started out of a need to put Mitsuko’s story into words and had considered the task complete. But now I have to tell you about everything that came afterwards. It’s too painful to keep up the lies. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to go through everything, slowly, from square one. It’s difficult for me to pick out just the relevant points and summarize.

  A few years after Mitsuko died, I took an office job at a construction company. I continued with my attempts to blend in, wearing a mask and hoping no one would see it for what it was, but I found office life more lonesome and odd than school. Gone was the freedom I’d had as a student to do nothing, the freedom to pull away from my surroundings when I needed to. I was trading myself for money so I knew there was nothing I could do about having to perform my work, but the way things were structured meant I was forced to interact with people I didn’t understand and do things unrelated to the job just to get anything done.

  One time we gathered to offer our condolences to a young colleague who had just lost his baby son to cancer. Some said they were too upset to sleep, some said they’d lost their desire to work from dwelling on thoughts about the impermanence of life, others gripped his shoulders and said we were all by his side to help him hang in there. They all wore dark expressions with their brows drawn, and a few of the women had tears in their eyes.

  I hid my face behind a handkerchief held over my eyes. This was only because I knew my mask was about to start cracking apart.

  I didn’t feel like it was strange for them to be so grief-stricken over a child they had never met or for this colleague they weren’t particularly close to. What I found odd was the fact that both the consolers and the consoled were all perfectly aware that the whole thing was merely a form of acting. I couldn’t see why they would take part in such an unpleasant charade. It wasn’t long after the group disbanded that the women gathered in the bathroom, already giggling as they reapplied their mascara.

  I made a name for myself as a crybaby. This was because I was so quick to cover my face behind my handkerchief. I used it when one of the female employees was leaving to get married, when everyone was saying things like, “Congratulations! I’m so happy it’s like I’m the one who’s getting married!” or, “We’ll still be best friends after you’re married. That’ll never change!” I used it whenever there was a work-related conflict and I didn’t know whose side to take. I used it when I was simply tired and didn’t want anyone to talk to me.

  About a year into the job I was forced out.

  I loved to spend each day just idling around. I especially enjoyed sitting in the windows of fast-food restaurants or on park benches, getting lost in watching people come and go. I would be aware of everything around me, but it felt like the core part of my mind had fallen asleep. It was like a waking dream, and I would see all sorts of things.

  The Nan-Core that was Mitsuko stayed with me, the vividness not fading in the slightest. Her ruby blood flowed eternally from the cut on her wrist, her eyes gazing eternally into mine. The others were all there inside her: Nana, Michiru, the dead boy with his neck trapped in the park grate.

  Ramen wasn’t there at first. I think that was probably because I hadn’t felt any kind of attachment to him. Because I’d hated him. Then, one day, I was sitting near the flow of people, the core of my mind having just fallen into its usual trance when, even though I’d forgotten all about him, he popped into my head. I can’t say why. My dreams were free creatures. They did what they wanted, living according to their own free will.

  Ramen was in his white overalls as he came over on his moped, the apparatus to carry deliveries hanging over the luggage rack.

  “Hey there, lady,” he said, riding up next to me as he put a foot on the ground. “So, what’s the deal? Why am I the only one you don’t let in? That’s so mean, leaving me out like that.”

  It came back to me then, how he’d smelled of ramen broth when he turned to give me a piggyback. And, just like that, he became a part of Mitsuko, too.

  I sometimes wished I’d been arrested for murder. Not because I felt guilt. I never felt anything like that at all. But I don’t think I could tell you why, even if you asked me.

  I still don’t know why Mitsuko and Ramen’s deaths were settled so easily. I wondered what the police were doing. Had they done the proper checks for fingerprints or searched for other evidence? Had they even realized they were dealing with murder cases in the first place?

  I had tampered with things in Mitsuko’s case, that was true. I, too, have instincts for self-preservation. More so than the death penalty, it was the thought of being locked up in a tiny, cage-like room that really scared me. It was so terrifying I feared just thinking about it would drive me crazy.

  That was why I took the used blade and plastic bag home with me, and why I chose a different blade from her collection and left it in the puddle of blood. Even then I knew my attempt at a cover-up was nothing more than a gesture to ease my mind. My prints were all over the rest of her apartment, and a good number of people knew Mitsuko and I were close. If the police had been serious, their investigations would have turned up any number of anomalies.

  I read something recently that said only a tiny percent of unnatural deaths get court-ordered autopsies. That made me wonder if the police were actually trying to avoid admitting that a murder was a murder. Perhaps homicide rates in most cities are actually much higher, but as with Mitsuko and Ramen, many of the cases are taken care of without ever surfacing.

  Every day I walked aimlessly through the crowds and even then I felt distant and separate from everyone else. In the city you can get by for a whole week or two without having to say a single word to anyone. When I wasn’t using my voice I would get wrapped up in this sensation of peace and feel like my vocal cords were quietly atrophying.

  I don’t remember exactly when it was, but one day I sat down on a park bench in the middle of the day and found myself still sitting there after it was dark out. It was well into the night when I at last got to my feet and started to amble towards the road. That was when an older-looking man leaning against a car called out from beyond the exit.

  “I’ve seen you hanging around here a lot recently. How much?” he asked. When I didn’t respond he said, “Right, whatever, hop in,” climbing into the car before me. He was acting and talking very naturally and didn’t seem anything like my old work colleagues.

  I knew the man had misread the situation, but
I didn’t mind since he said he would pay me for it. It had been a while since I’d quit my old job, and I was having a hard time getting by.

  He took me to a room, and no matter what he did to me I simply figured that was the way these things worked, and stayed quiet the whole time. He said it was the first time he’d slept with a virgin prostitute and gave me lots of money. I decided then that I was a fit for that sort of job, more so than some sort of office work. Both types of jobs involved me trading myself for money—the only difference was which part I put on sale. I found the sensation of flesh bumping into flesh unpleasant, but it beat the agony of having to hide behind a handkerchief because I couldn’t pretend to be a normal person.

  I soon found myself getting used to what to do. When I needed money, I just walked up to men in the street at night and said, “What time is it?” Many just ignored me, and some refused to pay even after they’d become clients. Still, the great thing about the work was how it didn’t set limits on my time. I only worked when I wanted and was otherwise free to laze around like before.

  The sex … Well, it felt almost like I was being taken apart. Basically, it felt like the flesh I put on sale was being disassembled while I was still alive. I got used to it over time, but the sense that the act was bizarre and grotesque never went away. But I never really suffered.

  It reminds me now of how I’d done much the same thing with my doll Nana years earlier, opening her up in whichever way I’d wanted.

  I also learned that all men are failures. They have such powerful, potentially self-destructive lust all for the tiny moment of pleasure during ejaculation. It’s completely out of proportion. Don’t they ever realize the contradiction and feel it’s totally absurd? Yet it’s because men are the way they are that people are able to get by as prostitutes.

  I continued to trade my body, switching districts now and then to avoid bumping into the same client more than a few times. My work was out of public view, conducted alone with each client, so it wouldn’t have been hard to kill one of them if I’d wanted to, but they were failed people who had nothing but my contempt and I knew killing them wouldn’t do anything for me.

  Even so, a lot happened during the few years I worked as a prostitute.

  One night in winter, I had just asked a passerby for the time, and the pregnant silence that followed made it evident he’d understood my meaning. I took another look and realized he was one of the subsection chiefs from my old job. It was the man that had grabbed his bereaved colleague’s shoulder and shaken it, telling him to keep on going.

  “Oh, wow, what happened? You’ve lost so much weight I almost didn’t recognize you,” he said.

  I hadn’t been feeling very well since starting sex work, so I surely had lost weight. I was always covered in bruises and small cuts, like a gymnast, even though my clients never actively abused me. Still, none of that shook my conviction that the job was better than anything else out there.

  I said, “Well, what’ll it be? Are we going someplace, or have you changed your mind?”

  “Erm, I … This is what you’re really doing now? Yikes.” He used the tip of his index finger to scratch at the hairline above his forehead. On his face was a soft, very human expression of the sort he would never have shown at work. “Right, it’s cold so we should at least get you out of here. Let’s grab a cab.”

  When we were inside the taxi he pulled out three 10,000-yen notes, and when I took them he reached down and pushed his hand up my skirt. I put the money in my bag and spread my legs.

  “Looks like things have been hard for you, too,” he said.

  I had expected him to take me to some low-rent hotel, but when we got out of the taxi we were outside the multi-use building that housed my old office.

  “I can’t imagine anyone’s still working at this hour.”

  The office was on the second floor and the windows were all dark, the lights off inside. We walked up the stairwell and our footsteps echoed over the sound of our damp breath.

  “I’ve wanted to try it for a while. On one of the desks in here.”

  The subsection chief opened the door and I stepped into the deserted office that smelled of dust and plastic. The glow of the streetlights poked through gaps in the blinds, setting off the interior of the office with a pallid glow.

  “As cramped as ever, huh? Right, which of the girl’s desks to do it on …”

  I followed him from behind, picking my way through the rows of desks, when I saw a cylindrical wastepaper bin next to someone’s chair. I grabbed it with no particular plan or purpose.

  That was when the thought of killing him flashed into my head for the first time.

  I swung the bin over my head, ignoring everything spilling out, and swung it down into the head of the man in front of me. I felt resistance, hard then soft, and the man crumpled noiselessly to the floor, his hands trapped behind his back as he had just begun to remove his coat.

  I stood there in a daze. I knew I’d done it, but it had happened too quickly. Of course there was no Nan-Core, not from killing like that. Instead I just felt terrible, like I’d betrayed myself and somehow disgraced Mitsuko’s death. I’m sure nothing would have happened if it wasn’t for that garbage bin; the subsection chief would have taken me to a desk and disassembled me, as always.

  Before leaving I drove the base of the bin into his head a couple more times, wanting to make sure he wouldn’t start breathing again. I stopped halfway down the stairwell, then, after a moment’s deliberation, returned to the office and used the scarf I’d worn over my hair to clean my prints from the bin and the door handle.

  There was another time when I killed someone like this, on the spur of the moment. That night I was with a first-time client. For no particular reason I took up a plaster statue of Venus in the room and smashed it into the man’s head as he slept. I can’t really think of anything I need to write about him, since I don’t even remember his face.

  What I really hated was that I had gotten into the habit of killing people even when it had nothing to do with a sense of Nan-Core.

  I still have the thought each time the media reports the arrest of a serial killer: another one who is possessed by the habit of killing. I wondered if the various issues listed in the papers like parental neglect during youth or physical or mental handicaps had really caused them to make a habit of murder.

  They all received death sentences.

  It would have been better for us—these people, myself—if we had been born during Japan’s Warring States period. It was a time when being a hero meant becoming addicted to murder, to killing as many people as you could; it was your duty to kill the enemy even if they were people you’d never seen before. I’m sure it was the same during the two World Wars and other times like that. Nations with conflicting interests encouraged murder and awarded medals to those who would normally receive the death penalty.

  After I hit the man with the figure of Venus I didn’t bother wiping off my prints, and I was sure the hotel cameras had images of me even though I had done my best to hide my face, a habit I’d developed because of the type of work I did. But I was never arrested, and I really can’t say why. It would have been right for me to have been caught. I didn’t feel guilt, but I knew it was wrong for people like me to be left alive. Not in this time and place.

  I only had vague feelings on the above issues, though, since I didn’t give them any real thought.

  There was another night, just like the others, when I called out to a man, also like the others. It was near the entrance to the park where the elderly man had first mistaken me for a prostitute.

  “Do you have the time?”

  He’d been walking with his eyes trained on the ground but stopped and checked his watch, answering straightaway, “Uhm, it’s quarter past nine.”

  A response like that usually signaled a lack of interest. On any other day I would have backed off silently, but I had just been shooed away by two other men I’d approached.


  “Do you have the time?” I repeated, ignoring his first reply.

  “Uh, like I said, it’s quarter past—” He stopped mid-sentence, his face stiffening with surprise. He had finally worked out what was happening. He clamped his lips shut and tried to walk past me.

  “I need money,” I said to his retreating back.

  It was the truth. I was all but out of money to cover my living costs. To my surprise the man stopped and turned to walk back towards me, a hand rummaging through his pockets. He checked through a tired-looking wallet, then pulled out a single 5,000-yen note.

  “I don’t have much myself. This is all I can really manage.”

  He held out the bill and looked at me properly for the first time. A look of surprise crossed his features. I think it was because of how gaunt I had become. I certainly wasn’t as far gone as Mitsuko had been, but I was getting thinner by the day despite the fact that I wasn’t ill. Because I was so thin I was finding it hard to get clients and had started to really struggle with money.

  “So, uhm, are you … okay? You look pretty pale.” He stared hesitantly into my face. “Are you maybe … really hungry?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Oh, damn. Okay, let’s see. Uhm … There’s this restaurant I go to all the time, just down the road. It’s cheap. Would you like to go?”

  I could tell from his demeanor that he hadn’t thought it through before speaking and that he immediately regretted his words. But I thanked him anyways and started to follow him. I didn’t actually feel hungry, but I went along because I figured I might be able to turn him into a client if I played things right after we’d eaten. I was so desperate for cash I would have let him disassemble me for another 5,000 yen.

  The man seemed to be in low spirits, but he introduced himself as he walked and turned back every now and then to check I was still there. He offered small encouragements like, “Not long now,” or, “Just around the next corner,” and began to walk a touch more briskly.