S

by Kōji Suzuki

  Without realizing it, Asakawa had fulfilled its desire. He’d taken the videotape from Villa Log Cabin, made a copy, and shown it to Ryuji.

  The moment he realized that the way to break the curse of the video was to copy it, he came up with a concrete means of rescuing his wife and daughter. The only thing he could do was to beseech his wife’s parents to sacrifice themselves. Her parents would surely give their own lives and assume the danger for themselves to save their daughter and grandchild. And if they were to copy the videotape and show it to someone else, they could avoid their own deaths as well.

  And thus, to save his wife and daughter, Asakawa elected to unleash the cursed videotape upon the world.

  The story known as Ring ended with Asakawa heading to Ashikaga where his wife’s parents lived.

  When Takanori finished reading, his back was drenched in cold sweat. It had soaked through his shirt and reached his seat rest, making the leather fabric of his chair stick to his back unpleasantly.

  His breathing was shallow and painful. He could hear his own heartbeat.

  Asakawa’s final choice weighed heavily on his mind.

  Was it better to release a cursed videotape into the world or to sacrifice your family and minimize the damage likely to spread through society?

  Faced with such a momentous decision, Takanori’s imagination was on the verge of folding.

  He was reminded of something his father always said.

  “Those who are born into privilege have a duty to give back to society.”

  If he were abused by someone close to him, and his heart were filled with hatred toward the world, he might very well unleash evil upon it without hesitation. Even worse, he might become evil incarnate and take revenge on a world that had created him.

  He balked at the very idea of choosing between such alternatives. He felt inordinately afraid because that predicament perhaps wasn’t a figment of his imagination.

  Asakawa had obtained the cursed videotape at South Hakone Pacific Land, copied it, and given it to Ryuji.

  Takanori had copied the video on the USB stick he’d received from Yoneda and given it to Kihara.

  Asakawa’s wife and daughter had viewed the video inadvertently while it was in the tape deck.

  Akane had ended up seeing the video saved on his computer, and Takanori’s child was now growing in her womb.

  What was he supposed to make of those similarities?

  As if he were being strangulated little by little, the circumstances in Ring were gradually coming to haunt him.

  7

  It was 11 a.m. all three times that he visited Kihara’s office.

  Perhaps because of the time of day, the everyday scenery he saw on his walk over there was largely unchanged. Moreover, when the apartment building with Kihara’s office came into view, Takanori tended to do the same thing.

  He halted somewhere along the bridge in front of the building and cast his eyes down at the river’s surface.

  Standing still, Takanori attempted a little analysis on how his conscious mind worked. The time before last, he’d come earlier than his appointment and had needed to kill time. Why was he doing it now?

  When he put both hands on the bridge balustrade and leaned over, he thought he saw dark river water gushing towards him. Though it hadn’t rained the day before, the volume of water seemed to be greater somehow.

  In fact, Takanori was sure that the quantity of water hadn’t changed. The image of dirty water accumulating at the bottom of a well, as depicted in Ring, was overlapping with the actual scenery and intensifying it. A dark, mysterious reality was now bulging before him.

  Every time he met and listened to Kihara, he received valuable info. No doubt, yesterday, the writer had put to use his special knack for gathering facts and looked into the circumstances surrounding Ring.

  Contemplating what sort of developments he might become privy to just moments later, Takanori suddenly felt that he’d rather not find out, and his eagerness to visit the office diminished.

  Tsuyoshi Kihara was to him what Ryuji Takayama had been to Asakawa. Ryuji had been bold and fearless, and compared to him, Kihara was quite a bit older but also calmer, more judicious, and gentler in appearance. While their personalities differed greatly, if not for Kihara’s aid, Takanori wouldn’t have been unable to make even the slightest progress, and thus he was in the same position as Asakawa.

  His reality was very similar to the circumstances recorded in Ring. The only difference was that the video of the hanging saved on the USB stick—while abundantly creepy—in no way constituted a lethal warning.

  With his hands still on the balustrade, Takanori felt no inclination at all to start moving again, fixated on that point.

  If the information I’m about to get from Kihara does involve some warning of impending death, will I be able to stay sane?

  If he could leave things in a nebulous state, it’d be so much easier. If possible, he wanted to retrace his steps and go right back home. He wanted to toss the whole creeping, supernatural weirdness into a well and cover it up with concrete.

  Takanori gave the base of the balustrade a kick, sending pain through his toes. The physical response brought him to his senses.

  Unless he accurately grasped the true nature of the peril that lay in store, he’d be unable to target his enemy. If he tried to escape into vagueness without gaining any clarity, he might end up courting tragedy, with the lives of his loved ones slipping through his fingers and vanishing.

  Decisions born of cowardice tended to worsen your situation. Even if a dire warning was in store for him, he could only tackle it head-on and think carefully about how to evade it. Ryuji Takayama had tried to do just that.

  Looking at his wristwatch and confirming that it was five minutes past 11 a.m., his appointment time, Takanori started walking.

  He crossed the bridge and entered the lobby of the building, and when he was face to face with the door of Kihara’s office, he pressed the intercom.

  The previous time, and the time before that, Kihara had responded quickly from inside, but this time the tiny speaker didn’t let out a single peep.

  A disturbing premonition came over Takanori. If Ryuji Takayama from Ring corresponded to Kihara, the writer would meet an unexpected end.

  Takanori rang the intercom again, holding his breath.

  There was still no response. Pressing his ear to the door, he tried to perceive what was happening in the office, but there was no sign whatsoever that anybody was present. With a gulp, he placed a hand on the doorknob. As the door hadn’t been locked from the other side, the knob turned easily, producing a small gap.

  “Oh, Takanori. Sorry about that.”

  The voice came not from the office interior but from behind him. The shock nearly drained the strength from Takanori, who clutched the doorknob. He twisted his body around to keep from falling over, and only inches away there was Kihara, holding two bottles of oolong tea.

  “My refrigerator was empty,” Kihara said. Apparently, he’d just bought the bottles of tea from the vending machine in front of the building.

  Not wanting Kihara to see him shaking, Takanori adopted a cheery tone.

  “Good morning!”

  Yet the shivering of his legs reverberated in his voice, and the last syllable came out hoarse.

  He wanted to kick himself for allowing something so trivial to make him lose his composure.

  “Well then, please, come on in.”

  At Kihara’s urging, Takanori entered the office and practically tore off his shoes.

  After speaking at length about their impressions of Ring, the two of them reached out for a bottle of oolong tea simultaneously and slaked their thirst. The bottles of the now lukewarm tea left behind little ring-like pools thanks to the droplets streaming down their surfaces.

  “It’s kind of a waste of time to wonder whether the events in Ring really happened,” Kihara said. “After looking into it a bit, I realized the people who app
ear in the story are all real, and real names were used for nearly all of them.”

  Takanori let out an involuntary sigh. Things were not proceeding in a good direction. If characters that actually existed had taken the specific actions portrayed in the book, no elements of fiction entered into the narrative.

  “So Kazuyuki Asakawa and Ryuji Takayama were real people,” Takanori paraphrased rather pointlessly.

  “They were. But since these events happened twenty-five years ago, a lot of the people in the story have passed away. Even Asakawa’s brother Junichiro who published the book died of cancer six years ago, I’m afraid. I’d hoped to talk to him, as the only person I could ask about the details…”

  Takanori could tell where this was headed from Kihara’s tone. Not wanting to ask, but unable to afford staying in the dark, Takanori made up his mind and posed a question.

  “Afterwards, what happened to Asakawa and his wife and daughter?”

  At the end of Ring, Asakawa was driving toward Ashikaga where his parents-in-law lived, to save his wife and daughter. It was unclear whether things turned out as he’d hoped and if his family had been saved.

  “They died,” came the pitiless answer.

  “Died…” rasped Takanori, leaning forward.

  “Asakawa’s wife and daughter suffered acute myocardial infarctions at the same time, due to an aortic aneurysm, and they didn’t make it. Asakawa himself died due to a traffic accident. He was seriously injured and slipped into a coma and breathed his last without ever waking up again.”

  Takanori held his head in his hands. Reading Ring, he’d identified with Asakawa the most. No, it was more than identification—he felt as if Asakawa were his alter ego. Spurred by his sense of duty as a husband and father, he’d accomplished an extraordinary feat, descending into that old well and retrieving Sadako’s bones. Despite all that, his struggles had come to naught?

  “What a cruel end…”

  Sensing what Takanori was thinking, Kihara remained silent for a moment. It wasn’t somebody else’s problem for the writer, either. Going by the calculus that Takanori and Asakawa were counterparts, Kihara, not Takanori, would feel the first physical effects.

  “The people involved with Ring who’ve passed away can be divided into two major groups,” Kihara said. “The first consists of everyone who clearly died thanks to watching the videotape. Everyone in this group had a sarcoma in their coronary arteries and suffered an acute myocardial infarction. The four teenagers with whom it all started, Ryuji Takayama, Asakawa’s wife and daughter…all of them had the same symptoms. Conversely, Kazuyuki Asakawa, his brother Junichiro, and Mai Takano all died of illnesses or in accidents, and their deaths seem unrelated to the influence of the videotape.”

  “Mai Takano…”

  It was a name Takanori had seen somewhere before, but he couldn’t recall from where.

  “She was a student in the philosophy department at K University and a pupil of Takayama’s. She was also the first person to find Ryuji’s body.”

  Getting up as he said this, Kihara retrieved a bundle of files from his cabinet.

  Takanori picked up each one and checked the materials inside. The data on the persons connected to Ring were sorted into two main categories, the living and the dead, and further subcategories. There were two sets of each file, one of them evidently copied for Takanori.

  The five files were labeled: “Family / Friends and Acquaintances,” “Publishing-Related,” “Medical-Related,” “Film-Related,” and “Other.” Takanori wondered why one of them had the “Film-Related” label.

  “What does ‘Film-Related’ refer to?”

  “Twenty-five years ago, plans were drawn up to make a movie based on Ring, and they even decided on a cast, but for some reason the project ended up getting shelved. What you see here in that file is data on the staff and cast. Since your job is related to film, Takanori, it’s a perfect fit for you. Why don’t you get in touch with some of these people and ask them about the events from that time? All of their contact info is included. Starting tomorrow, let’s split up the work and get some intel.”

  Taking advantage of his production connections, Takanori could surely get in touch with the director and producer who’d been attached to the project.

  “Understood. I’ll get right on it. Now, about this one…”

  There was one more category with which he was familiar. It was the file labeled “Medical-Related.”

  “Obviously,” Kihara said, “autopsies would have been performed for those who died unnatural deaths as a result of watching the videotape. It may say ‘Medical-Related,’ but it has nothing to do with curing diseases. It deals with the forensic specialists and medical examiners who performed the autopsies on the victims, and the pathologists who biopsied the tissue. I’m planning to follow up on this myself tomorrow.”

  Reacting to the mention of medical examiners, Takanori removed the materials from the file and flipped through the loose documents. In the upper part of one printout, he found a familiar name. Placing a finger on it, he looked up.

  “This name…”

  “Mitsuo Ando. A lecturer in forensics at K University’s Department of Medicine. He was the surgeon who performed the autopsy on Ryuji Takayama. I was thinking I’d get in touch with him tomorrow…”

  It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. That much was certain. The images projected from the mind of Sadako twenty-five years earlier and the suicide video on the USB stick were connected by a single line.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Takanori said. “I can do it.”

  Perhaps Kihara was just surprised by the offer, but he looked confused. He was clearly doubtful that an untested rookie could get an appointment with such a prominent figure as the director of a major hospital.

  “But he’s…”

  “No need to worry. He’s my father.”

  “What?!”

  Kihara opened his eyes almost comically wide. To be sure, twenty-five years ago, Takanori’s father Mitsuo had belonged to the forensic medicine department at K University. Since there weren’t that many university medical examiners in the metropolitan area, forensic specialists often doubled as medical examiners, and it wouldn’t have been at all unusual for Mitsuo to perform Ryuji Takayama’s autopsy.

  This case may have originated with a video saved on a USB stick, but its roots were deep and extensive. Parts of the roots, which had spread deep underground, were poking through the surface at last.

  The mystery of the family register recording Takanori as dead for two whole years was perhaps about to be solved, too.

  The clock on the wall indicated that it was ten minutes to noon. Not tomorrow—Takanori needed to move on this right away. He decided to get lunch in front of the station and to rush over to the director’s office at the hospital.

  Last time, he’d compromised and pretended to believe his father’s little fairy tale, but this time, he’d do no such thing.

  Father or not, I’m not going to go easy on him.

  Takanori intended to keep up the pressure until he had proof that his father was speaking the plain and honest truth…

  Determined, he bid Kihara farewell.

  CHAPTER FOUR Nightmare

  1

  “Please have a seat on the sofa while you wait.”

  Disregarding the secretary’s words, Takanori walked over by the window and put his cheeks against the glass. Having a location that let one look down upon one of the greatest parks in Tokyo as if it were a private garden was magnificent—there was no other word for it, and he could definitely understand why his father had taken a liking to this office.

  “The director will be here in five minutes,” the secretary said before bowing and taking her leave.

  It seemed the wind had intensified in the afternoon, which was quite unusual during the rainy season.

  A few leaves flittered across the massive windowpane. Seeing the wind forming ripples in the park pond brought to mind images of
Lake Haruna, which Takanori had visited just after entering elementary school. He recalled children on skates going around the surface, which was covered in ice, as the cold winter winds blew.

  The surface of the pond that he was viewing now through the thick glass reminded him of that unseasonably cold lake.

  Takanori’s father had made good use of his leisure time taking his son out to all kinds of places. After going around and seeing the scenic beauty of Japan’s national parks, he’d expanded their ventures to overseas locales and shown Takanori around world heritage sites to broaden his knowledge. Takanori treasured the many experiences afforded him by his father and mother, but when he looked back on his past, for some reason, one scene after another involving water came to mind.

  Hearing the door open without a knock, Takanori reflexively looked behind him.

  Mitsuo slowly entered the room, a hint of dissatisfaction in his eyes.

  Why do you always come to the office instead of the house? he seemed to be saying. And without getting in touch first.

  Seeing his father’s displeasure, Takanori likewise communicated with his eyes only: You do get it, right? I can’t have mom hear this kind of conversation.

  Following this wordless exchange, Mitsuo went around behind the sofa and invited Takanori to take a seat. Takanori did so but chose a spot where he’d be seeing his father’s face not directly from the front but obliquely to his right.

  “Dad, I want you to be honest with me. Or else your nightmare from twenty-five years ago might come back to haunt you.”

  By this, he meant that his father would lose someone dear to him, and of course Takanori was referring to himself.

  Having warned his father to be frank and forthcoming, Takanori started relating the series of events thus far. He was trapped in a serious predicament, and once his father saw that, Takanori hoped, covering up the truth with a patently fake story would no longer be an option.