Ring

by Kōji Suzuki

  Sometimes his fingers stopped over the keyboard. The printout containing Sadako's photo was sitting by the desk. He felt as if that terrify-ingly beautiful girl were watching him, and it ruined his concentration. He'd seen the same things she'd seen, through those beautiful eyes.

  He still had the feeling that part of her had entered into his body. Asakawa put the photo out of sight. He couldn't work with Sadako staring at him.

  He ate dinner at a local diner, and then he suddenly wondered what Ryuji was doing right now. He wasn't really worried-somehow he just remembered Ryuji's face. And as he went back to his room and continued working, that face floated at the edge of his consciousness, gradually becoming clearer.

  I wonder what he's up to right now?

  His mental image of Ryuji's face drifted in and out of focus. He felt strangely agitated, and reached out for the phone. After seven rings, he heard the receiver being picked up, and he felt relieved. But it was a woman's voice he heard.

  "… Hello?" The voice was faint and thin. Asakawa had heard it before.

  "Hello. This is Asakawa."

  "Yes?" came the faint reply.

  "Ah, you must be Mai Takano, right? I should thank you for the lunch you made the last time we met."

  "Don't mention it," she whispered, and waited.

  "Is Ryuji there?" Asakawa wondered why she didn't just turn the phone over to Ryuji right away.

  "Is Ryuji-"

  "The Professor is dead."

  "… What?" How long was he speechless? All he could say, stupidly, was, "What?" His eyes stared blankly at a point on the ceiling. Finally, when the phone felt ready to slip out of his hands, he managed to ask, "When?"

  "Last night, at around ten o'clock."

  Ryuji had finished watching the video at Asakawa's condominium last Friday night at 9:49. He'd died right on schedule.

  "What was the cause of death?" He didn't need to ask.

  "Sudden heart failure… but they haven't determined an exact cause of death."

  Asakawa barely managed to stay on his feet. This wasn't over. They'd just entered the second round.

  "Mai, are you going to be there for a while?"

  "Yes. I need to put the Professor's papers in order."

  "I'll be over right away. Wait for me."

  Asakawa hung up the phone and sank to the floor. His wife and daughter's deadline was tomorrow morning at eleven. Another race against time. And this time, he was alone in the fight. Ryuji was gone. He couldn't stay on the floor like this. He had to take action. Quickly. Right now.

  He stepped out onto the street and gauged the traffic situation. It looked like driving would be faster than taking the train. He crossed at the crossing and climbed into the rental car, parked at the curb. He was glad he'd extended the rental another day so he could pick up his family.

  What did this mean? Hands gripping the wheel, he tried to get his thoughts together. Scene after scene flashed back to him, but none of them made any sense. The more he thought, the less his mind could absorb, and the thread connecting events got more and more tangled until it seemed ready to snap. Calm down! Calm down and think! He lectured himself. Finally, he realized what he had to focus on.

  First of all, we didn't really figure out the charm- the way to escape death. Sadako didn't want her bones to be found and laid to rest with an appropriate memorial service. She wanted something entirely different. What? What is it? And why am I still alive like this if we didn't figure out the charm? What does that mean? Tell me that! Why did only I survive?

  At eleven o'clock next morning, Shizu and Yoko would face their deadline. It was already nine at night. If he didn't do something, he'd lose them.

  He'd been thinking of this from the perspective of a curse pronounced by Sadako, a woman who'd met an unexpected death, but he began to doubt that approach now. He had a premonition of a bottomless evil, sneering at human suffering.

  Mai was kneeling formally in the Japanese-style room with an unpublished manuscript of Ryuji's on her lap. She was turning the pages, casting her eyes over each one, but it was a difficult subject at the best of times, and now nothing was sinking in. The room felt cavernous. Ryuji's parents had picked up his body early this morning and taken it back home to Kawasaki. He was gone.

  "Tell me everything about last night."

  His friend was dead. Ryuji was like a brother-in-arms to him. He grieved. But he hadn't time now to wallow in sentiment. Asakawa sat next to Mai and bowed.

  "It was after nine-thirty at night. I got a call from the Professor…" She told him the details. The scream that had come from the phone, the silence that had followed. Then when she'd rushed to Ryuji's apartment she'd found him leaning against the bed, legs spread wide. She fixed her gaze on the spot where Ryuji's corpse had been, and as she described the scene tears came to her eyes.

  "I called and called, but the Professor didn't respond."

  Asakawa didn't give her time to cry. "Was there anything different about the room?"

  "No," she said shaking her head. "Only that the telephone was off the hook and making an ear-splitting sound."

  At the moment of death, Ryuji had called Mai.

  Why? Asakawa pressed further. "He didn't tell you anything there at the end? No last words? Nothing, say, about a videotape?"

  "A videotape?" Mai's expression showed that she couldn't see any possible connection between her professor's death and a videotape. There was no way for Asakawa to know whether or not Ryuji had figured out the true nature of the charm just before he'd died.

  But why did he call Mai? He must have done it knowing his death was at hand … Was it just that he wanted to hear a loved one's voice? Isn't it possible that he'd figured out the charm and needed her help in carrying it out? And that's why he called her? In which case, it takes another person to make the charm work.

  Asakawa started to leave. Mai walked him to the door.

  "Mai, will you be staying here tonight?"

  "Yes. I need to take care of his manuscript."

  "Well, I'm sorry to have bothered you when you're so busy." He went to leave.

  "Urn…"

  "Yes?"

  "Mr Asakawa, I'm afraid you have the wrong idea about the Professor and me."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You think we were having a relationship… as a man and a woman."

  "No, well, I mean…"

  Mai could spot a man who thought they were lovers-the way he looked at them. Asakawa looked at them that way. It bothered Mai.

  "The first time I met you, the Professor introduced you as his best friend. That surprised me. I had never heard the Professor talk like that about anyone before. I think you were very special to him. So…" She hesitated before continuing. "So, I wish you could understand him a little better, as his best friend. The Professor… as far as I know he never knew a woman." She lowered her eyes.

  You mean he died a virgin?

  Asakawa had nothing to say to that. He remained quiet. The Ryuji that Mai remembered sounded like a completely different person from the one he knew. Were they talking about the same man?

  "But…"

  But you don't know what he did as a junior in high school, was what he wanted to say, but he stopped himself. He had no desire to dredge up a dead man's crimes, and he didn't feel like destroying Mai's cherished image of Ryuji.

  Not only that, he found himself with new doubts. Asakawa believed in a woman's intuition. Mai seemed to have been pretty close to Ryuji, and if she said he was a virgin, he had to consider that a credible theory. In other words, maybe the whole thing about raping a college girl in his neighbourhood had been nothing more than fiction.

  "The Professor was like a child when he was with me. He told me everything. He didn't hide anything. I know almost everything there is to know about his youth. His pain."

  "Is that so?" was all Asakawa could say in response.

  "When he was with me he was as innocent as a ten-year-old boy. When there was a third
person around he was the gentleman, and with you I imagine he probably played the scoundrel. Am I right? If he hadn't…" Mai softly reached out for her white handbag, took out a handkerchief, and dabbed at her eyes. "If he hadn't put on an act like that, he would never have been able to get along in the world. Do you see what I'm saying? Can you understand that?"

  Asakawa was shocked, more than anything. But then something struck him. For a guy who'd been good at his studies and excelled at sports, Ryuji had been quite a loner. He hadn't had one close friend.

  "He was so pure… Not superficial, like those jerks I go to school with. They couldn't compare to him."

  Mai's handkerchief was soaked with tears by now.

  Standing in the doorway, Asakawa found that he had too much to think about to be able to come up with any suitable words to leave with Mai. The image of the Ryuji he'd known diverged completely from the one Mai had; his view of the man had become so unfocused now as to be unrecognizable. There was a darkness concealed within Ryuji. No matter how he struggled, Asakawa couldn't completely grasp his personality. Had he really raped that girl in high school? Asakawa had no way of knowing that, nor whether he'd continued doing things like that, as he'd said he had. And right now, with his family's deadline coming up tomorrow, Asakawa really didn't want to worry himself with anything else.

  So all he said was, "Ryuji was my best friend, too."

  The words must have pleased Mai. Her adorable face broke into an expression that could have been a smile or could have been more weeping, and she bowed ever so slightly. Asakawa shut the door and hurried down the stairs. As he emerged onto the street and put distance between himself and Ryuji's apartment, he was suddenly overwhelmed by the thought of this friend who'd thrown everything into this dangerous game, even sacrificing his life. Asakawa didn't bother to wipe away the tears.

  5

  October 21-Sunday

  Midnight passed, and Sunday finally arrived. Asakawa was making notes on a sheet of paper, trying to get his thoughts in order.

  Just before his death, Ryuji had figured out the charm. He telephoned Mai, possibly to summon her. Which means that he needed Mai's help to work the charm. Okay, the important question here is, why am I still alive? There's only one possible answer. At some point during the week, without even knowing it, I must have carried out the charm! What other explanation is there? The charm must be something anybody can easily do, with the help of another person.

  But that brought up another problem. Why did those four kids run out without performing the charm? If it was so easy, why couldn't at least one of them have played tough when they were together and then gone and done it in secret later? Think. What did I do this week? What did I do that Ryuji clearly didn't do?

  Asakawa let out a yell. "How the hell am I supposed to know? There must have been a thousand things I did this week that he didn't do! This isn't funny!"

  He punched Sadako's photo. "Damn you! How long are you going to keep torturing me?" He hit her in the face over and over. But Sadako's expression never changed; her beauty never diminished.

  He went into the kitchen and splashed some whiskey into a glass. All the blood had rushed to a single point in his head and he needed to disperse it. He went to knock it back at one gulp, but then stopped. He just might come up with the answer tonight and have to drive to Ashikaga in the middle of the night, so maybe he'd better not drink. He was mad at the way he always tried to rely on something outside himself. When he'd had to dig Sadako's bones out from under the cabin, he had given in to fear and nearly lost himself. It was only because he had Ryuji with him that he'd been able to do what he needed to do.

  "Ryuji! Hey, Ryuji! I'm begging you, help me out here!"

  He knew he'd never be able to go on without his wife and daughter. Never.

  "Ryuji! Lend me your strength! Why am I alive? Is it because I was the one to find Sadako's remains first? If so, then there's no saving my family. That can't be right, can it, Ryuji?"

  He was devastated. He knew it was no time to be wailing, but he'd lost his cool. After moaning to Ryuji for a while, his calm returned. He started making notes again on the paper. The old woman's prophecy. Did Sadako really have a baby? Just before her death she had sex with the last smallpox victim in Japan. Does that relate somehow? All of his notes ended with question marks. Nothing was certain. Was this going to lead him to the charm? He couldn't afford to fail.

  Several more hours elapsed. It was beginning to get light outside. Lying on the floor, Asakawa could hear the sound of a man's breathing. Birds chirped. He didn't know if he was awake or dreaming. Somehow he'd wound up on the floor, asleep. He squinted against the bright morning light. The figure of a man was slowly fading in the soft light. He wasn't scared. Asakawa came to himself with a start and stared hard in the direction of the figure.

  "Ryuji? Is that you?"

  The figure didn't reply, but suddenly the title of a book came to Asakawa, so vividly that it might have been branded into the wrinkles of his brain.

  Epidemics and Man.

  The title appeared in white on the back of his eyelids when he closed his eyes, then disappeared; but it still echoed in his head. That book should be in Asakawa's study. When he'd first started to investigate the case, Asakawa had wondered if it could have been a virus that had caused four people to die simultaneously. He'd bought the book then. He hadn't read it, but he remembered putting it away on a bookshelf.

  Sun was streaming in through the eastern windows, falling on him. He tried to stand up. His head throbbed.

  Was it a dream?

  He opened the door to his study. He took down the book that whoever-it-was had suggested to him: Epidemics and Man. Of course, Asakawa had a pretty good idea who it was that had made that suggestion. Ryuji. He'd returned just for a brief moment, to teach him the secret of the charm.

  So where in this three-hundred-page tome did the answer lie? Asakawa had another flash of intuition. Page 191! The number was insinuated into his brain, though not quite as searingly as the last time. He opened to that page. A single word jumped out at him, and pulsed bigger and bigger.

  Reproduction. Reproduction. Reproduction. Reproduction.

  A virus's instinct is to reproduce. A virus usurps living structures in order to reproduce itself

  "Ooooooohhhhh!" Asakawa groaned. He'd finally grasped the nature of the charm.

  It's obvious what I did this week and Ryuji didn't. I brought the tape home, made a copy, and showed it to Ryuji. The charm is simple. Anybody can do it. Make a copy and show it to somebody. Help it reproduce by showing it to somebody who hasn 't seen it. Those four kids were happy with their prank and stupidly left the tape in the cabin. Nobody went to the effort of going all the way back for it so they could actually perform the charm.

  No matter how he thought about it, that was the only possible interpretation. He picked up the phone and dialled Ashikaga. Shizu answered.

  "Listen to me. Listen carefully to what I'm going to tell you. There's something I need your mother and father to see. Right away. I'm on my way now, so don't let them go anywhere before I get there. Do you understand? This is incredibly important."

  Ah, am I selling my soul to the devil? In order to save my wife and daughter, I'm willing to put my wife's parents in danger, even if it's only temporary. But if it'll save their daughter and granddaughter, I'm sure they'll gladly cooperate. All they have to do is make copies and show them to somebody else, and they'll be out of danger. But after that.… what then?

  "What's this all about? I don't understand."

  "Just do as I say. I'm leaving right now. Oh, right-they have a video deck, don't they?"

  "Yes."

  "Beta or VHS?"

  "VHS."

  "Great, I'm on my way. Don't, I repeat, don't go anywhere."

  "Hold on a minute. What you want to show my mom and dad is that video, isn't it?"

  He didn't know what to say, so he shut up.

  "Right?"

 
"… Right."

  "It's not dangerous?"

  Dangerous? You and your daughter are going to be dead in five hours. Give me a break, damnit! Stop asking so many questions. I don't have time to explain it all to you from the beginning anymore. Asakawa wanted to shout at her, but he managed to restrain himself.

  "Just do as I say!"

  It was just before seven. If he raced there on the freeway, provided there were no traffic delays, he should get to his in-laws' house in Ashikaga by nine-thirty. Factoring in the time it would take to make a copy for his wife and another for his daughter, they should just make the eleven o'clock deadline. He hung up, opened the doors to the entertainment centre, and unplugged the video deck. They needed two decks to make copies, so he had to take one of his.

  As he left, he took one more look at the photo of Sadako.

  You sure gave birth to something nasty.

  He took the Oi ramp onto the freeway, deciding to skirt Tokyo Bay and get on the Tohoku Highway heading out of town. There wouldn't be much traffic on the Tohoku Highway. The problem was how to avoid congestion before that. As he paid the toll on the Oi on-ramp and peered at the traffic-information board, he realized for the first time that it was Sunday morning. As a result, there were hardly any cars in the tunnel under the bay, where they were usually lined up like beads on a rosary. There weren't even any jams in the big merging areas. At this rate he'd get to Ashikaga right on schedule, with plenty of time to start making copies of the video. Asakawa eased up on the accelerator. Now he was more afraid of going too fast and getting into an accident.

  He sped north along the Sumida River. Glancing down, he could see neighbourhoods just waking up on a Sunday morning. People were walking around with a different air than on weekday mornings. A peaceful Sunday morning.