by Kōji Suzuki
Noticing Ando, Junichiro seemed to flinch slightly in shock.
"Well, nice to see you again…" Ando bowed, thinking to thank the man again for his assistance as well as utter a proper New Year's greeting. But Junichiro averted his eyes and spoke almost before Ando could get a word out.
"Excuse me."
With that he sidestepped Ando and ushered the writer and the director to an empty table. Ando could tell when he was being given the brush-off. He glanced again at Junichiro, now seated at the table, but the man was deep in conversation with the director now and didn't look his way. He was blatantly ignoring Ando.
He searched his memory for an explanation of Junichiro's rude behavior. Ando thought he'd observed the man well enough in their previous contacts. He couldn't remember having done anything to merit this treatment. He didn't get it. Shaking his head at the man's unnatural attitude, Ando followed Kimura out of the lounge.
8
That evening when he got back to his apartment, Ando filled the tub for the first time in ages. While his boy had been alive, they'd taken a bath together every night. Since he'd been on his own, drawing a bath seemed too much trouble, and he'd gotten in the habit of showering instead.
After his bath, Ando took his copies of the photos from the electron microscope and hung them on the wall. He stepped back and had a good look at them.
One wall of his apartment was taken up with bookcases, but the wall over his bed was bare and white, like a screen. He'd hung the photos there like X-rays on a light box, in ascending order of magnification: xl7000, x21000, xl00000. The photos were of the virus isolated from Mai's blood. Without taking his eyes off them, Ando stood back a few steps. In one area the ring viruses were piled up on top of each other and looked like a spiral staircase. He concentrated, trying to notice something, anything he might have missed before.
He turned off the overhead light and shone a lamp directly on the photos. Under illumination, it looked as though huge specimens of the virus were crawling around on the white wall. He turned the lamp on a x42000 photo showing broken rings that were stretched out like threads. These showed up in great numbers in Asakawa's and Mai's blood, but hardly at all in Ryuji and the others. In Mai's case, there were no signs of any narrowing in the internal membrane of the coronary artery. In Asakawa's case, however, the beginning of a lump had been observed. In other words, even Mai and Asakawa showed slightly different symptoms.
Why was her artery undamaged?
Ando turned his attention to this problem. The thread-shaped virus he was looking at now had not attacked Mai's coronary artery, the main target in everybody else. Why was she an exception?
Something tugged at his memory. He opened his planner to where he'd jotted down Mai's movements for late October and November and held it under the light. He'd first met her on October 20th at the M.E.'s office, just before Ryuji's autopsy. Mai hadn't looked well that day. Ando had formed a guess as to why: she was menstruating. It was just an intuition, but he was confident.
He returned his gaze to the photos on the wall. He looked at a x100000 shot of the virus in thread form. He tried to remember his first impression upon seeing it at the university.
Hadn't it reminded him of something, with its oval-shaped head and wiggling flagellum? Swarms of them had been swimming around in Mai's veins, but they hadn't attacked her coronary artery.
What did they attack?
His head felt hot. A tiny hole slowly opened, letting in light. It was one of those moments when something previously hidden suddenly begins to heave into view. Ando looked at his planner again, at the date on which he supposed Mai had watched the videotape. The evening of November 1st. The twelfth or thirteenth day after her period.
He took one step closer to the wall, and then another. Toward the ring viruses lashing their flagella.
That's it. They look exactly like sperm swimming toward the cervix.
"Sperm?" he said aloud.
She 'd have been ovulating that day.
A woman usually ovulates roughly two weeks after her period, and the egg only stays in the oviduct a maximum of twenty-four hours. If Mai had had an egg in her oviduct the night she watched the video…
The ring virus must have abruptly found another outlet and switched its target from her coronary artery to her egg. Gasping for breath, Ando sat down on the edge of the bed. He no longer needed to look at his planner or the photos. It was just possible that Mai had been ovulating when she watched the videotape. It had been her luck-misfortune, rather-to watch it on the one day of the month. And that was why she was the exception. Of all the females who had watched the tape, she'd been the only one ovulating.
And…
When he tried to deduce what must have happened, Ando's spine froze. But he couldn't prevent himself from arriving at the obvious conclusion.
Countless particles of the ring virus would have invaded Mai's egg and been incorporated into its DNA.
They fertilized her egg.
Although it had evolved, the ring virus's basic nature had not changed. In exactly a week, the fertilized egg would have reached its full growth and been expelled from Mai's body. That had to be why the autopsy found evidence that Mai had just given birth.
But what did she give birth to?
Ando was trembling violently now. He was remembering a certain touch on his foot.
Whatever it was… it touched me.
When he'd visited Mai's apartment, her supposedly empty room, he was sure he'd felt the breath of a living being. Hunched over at an unnatural angle to examine her toilet, he'd felt something soft caress his Achilles tendon where his sock had slipped down. He was sure that whatever had touched him was what Mai had given birth to. Something small enough to escape his notice when he looked around. Maybe it was early enough in its growth stage then to hide in her wardrobe. Whatever it was, he could still feel its touch as it swept across his skin.
Ando's shivering didn't stop. Feeling the need for another soak in the tub, he took off his clothes. He hadn't pulled the plug, so the tub was still full of water. He ran the hot water until the bath temperature was higher than it had been for his first soak. After lowering himself into the tub, he poked his foot above the waterline and twisted it so he could see his Achilles tendon. He rubbed it. It felt perfectly normal, but that didn't comfort him any.
He brought his foot back into the water and just sat there hugging his knees. After a while, a question came to him. He now knew why Mai hadn't gotten a heart attack, but what about Asakawa?
"He was male," Ando murmured.
But maybe he'd given birth to something after all.
Perhaps the water was too hot. Ando suddenly felt thirsty.
PART FIVE - FORESHADOWING
1
January 15th, Coming of Age Day, was a holiday, which made it a three-day weekend. On the first day of the long weekend, Ando got a call from Miyashita asking if he wanted to go for a drive. The invitation was like a port in a storm for Ando, who'd been wondering how he was going to get through three workless days all alone. He wasn't sure if he liked the way Miyashita asked him- like he was hiding something-but Ando had no reason not to go along. He said yes, then asked, "Where are we going?"
"There's something I want to show you," was all Miyashita would say. Ando figured his colleague had his reasons, and so refrained from pressing the matter. He'd get the answer out of Miyashita when he saw him.
Miyashita picked Ando up at home. As soon as he climbed in the car, Ando asked again where they were going.
"I can't tell you. Now stop asking questions." And so even as they departed, their destination was unknown to Ando.
The car left the No. 3 Tokyo-Yokohama Freeway for the Yokohama New Road. They seemed to be heading for Fujisawa. They couldn't go too far and still expect to keep it a day trip. Maybe as far as Odawara or Hakone, possibly the Izu peninsula, but no farther than Atami or Ito. After several guesses at the destination of the mystery tour, Ando decided to just si
t back and enjoy the ride.
Just before they were to merge with traffic, they came to a halt. The entrance to the Yokohama New Road was always jammed, and was especially so today, at the start of the long weekend. In an effort to keep Miyashita from getting too bored at the wheel, Ando decided to tell him the hypothesis he'd come up with a few days ago as to why Mai alone had displayed no abnormalities in her coronary artery. It was Ando's theory that Mai had been ovulating the day she watched the video, and that the ring virus had shifted the focus of its attack to her egg. Then, just before falling into the rooftop exhaust shaft, Mai had given birth to some unknown life form. Something that had only gestated for a week. If she'd just given birth, that explained why Mai hadn't been wearing any panties.
Miyashita heard him out and then was silent for a time. His striking round eyes seemed to be staring straight ahead, but then he changed lanes with an agility that belied his lax expression, poking his way into the passing lane.
"I thought more or less the same thing when we looked at Mai's virus under the electron microscope," said Miyashita, paying no attention to the blaring horns behind him.
"What do you mean?"
"The broken viruses looked familiar. After a while it hit me that they looked like spermatozoa."
"You too?"
"Nemoto said the same thing."
"So all three of us got the same impression."
"Yes. Sometimes you have to pay attention to intuition." Miyashita flashed Ando a grin, turning his attention from the road ahead.
"Watch where you're going!" As the brake lights of the car ahead drew closer, Ando clenched his leg muscles.
"Don't worry, we're not going to end up like Asakawa," Miyashita said, trying to look unconcerned as he stepped on the brake. But his front bumper was almost touching the car in front of them. Wiping away a cold sweat, Ando wondered if there was something wrong with Miyashita's depth perception. Driving like that they were sure to get in an accident sooner or later.
"Speaking of Asakawa, it's still a mystery as to why he didn't die of a heart attack."
"Right. Men don't ovulate."
"But maybe there was something physically different about him, just as with Mai."
"The virus probably found another exit."
"Exit?"
"A better way to spread and flourish."
Once they passed the exit for the Hodogaya bypass, the traffic snarl eased somewhat, and they made better time. No doubt the road signs had inspired Miyashita to use the word "exit" as he had. He continued.
"You know, it's up to us to figure this out." All trace of his customary nonchalance was gone from his voice.
"Believe me, I'm trying."
Miyashita changed the subject. "What did you do over New Year's break?"
"Nothing. Just lay around the apartment."
"Hmph. I took my family down to a fishing village at the southern tip of the Izu peninsula. We stayed at a little B&B that wasn't even listed on the travel brochures. Guess why I picked such a remote place? Well, one of my favorite novels is set in the village, and I'd always wanted to visit it. In the book it said that if you gaze out over the ocean at the horizon from that village, you see a mirage. I believed it."
Ando couldn't figure out where Miyashita was headed. He just nodded and listened.
"I know it's insensitive to say this to you, but family's a really wonderful thing. We could hear the surf from that inn, see, and it woke me up in the middle of the night. And as I gazed at the faces of my wife and daughter, it sank in just how dear they are to me."
Ando knew all too well the dearness of family. He tried to imagine a New Year's holiday with family in a southern Izu fishing village, where one could see mirages… Alone, the loneliness would be overwhelming, but the presence of loved ones would make the experience heartwarming. Ando began to wallow in thoughts of his own broken home, but Miyashita wouldn't give him time.
"My wife's a real looker, isn't she?"
When Ando replied, though, he wasn't recalling Miyashita's wife, but his own. "Absolutely," he nodded, thinking of how guileless and fresh she'd looked when they'd first met.
"Me, I'm short, fat, and ugly. And her! She's beautiful, and she's got a great personality. I'm a lucky man, and I know it."
Miyashita's wife was taller than him, and she looked just like a very popular actress. Next to her, Miyashita definitely seemed some inferior breed. But he was talented, and if he just kept it up, there was no way he wouldn't get tenure at their med school. Ando laughed ruefully. There was nothing inferior about that.
"So I don't want to die. I think I've been too optimistic. See, all along I've been at this case as a disinterested observer. In fact, I've enjoyed wondering where it might all lead."
Ando had been taking things a bit more seriously. Still, his, too, was the standpoint of the disinterested observer. Even if he failed to solve the case, he wasn't afraid of coming to any particular harm as a result. In that, his situation was fundamentally different from Asakawa and Ryuji's.
"Me, too."
"But I realized that maybe I've been underestimating the danger."
"Realized when?"
"After the holiday, when we got back from Izu."
"Did something happen there?"
"There was no mirage."
Ando frowned. Miyashita wasn't making sense.
"Just because of that?"
"Have you ever visited the setting of a novel?"
"Yeah, I guess." Ando figured that most people felt, at least once, the urge to visit the setting of a favorite book.
"How did it go?"
"Like, 'Well, I suppose this is it.'"
"Was it different from what you'd expected?"
"Most of the time you're bound to feel let down."
"The setting as you'd imagined it from reading the novel was different from the way the place looked in reality."
"I don't imagine it could ever really be the same."
"It was the same for me in Izu. That's the thing. I recognized the place from the descriptions in the book. But it didn't feel right and finally wasn't what I'd imagined. I didn't get to see the mirage."
He didn't say so aloud, but Ando thought that Miyashita's grievance was incredibly juvenile. A novelist inevitably sees things through his own filter and describes them accordingly. That filter is unique to that author, and when readers imagine a landscape for themselves based on it, the result can't help but be at odds with reality. There's no way to accurately convey a scene to another person without a camera or a video camera. Language has its limits.
Suddenly bringing his face close to Ando's, Miyashita said, "On the other hand, what if…"
"You can talk and watch the road at the same time, can't you?" Ando pointed straight ahead, and Miyashita slowed down and moved over into the other lane.
"Do you remember when you read Ring?"
Ando could recall the exact date. It was the day after he'd borrowed the disk from Asakawa's brother, Junichiro. Ando had snatched each page up out of the printer and read it eagerly.
"I can even tell you the day. November 19th."
"I only read it through once."
The same was true for Ando. He'd read it once through and hadn't looked at it again. "So what?"
"In spite of that, I remember the scenes, vividly. I still think about them sometimes."
Ando found himself agreeing with this, too. The events and places described in Ring were extremely vivid; it was as if they'd burrowed into the folds of his brain. If he tried, he could recall each scene with great clarity. It was a highly graphic report. But then again, what of it?
Clueless as to what Miyashita was getting at, Ando didn't respond.
"I suddenly wondered how accurately the report was communicating the scenes it describes."
Miyashita's expression was still strangely peaceful, given the gravity of what he'd just uttered.
Now Ando grasped the nature of Miyashita's concern. What if the settings
they had imagined while reading Ring differed not in the slightest from reality? Was that even possible?
"What if it was…" Ando's throat was dry as he uttered the words. The heater kept the car at a comfortable temperature, but it also dried out the air.
"Well, I thought we'd better check and see."
"I get it. So that's why you've dragged me along."
Ando finally knew their destination. They were headed for the South Hakone-Atami area, where many of the events narrated in Ring had taken place. They were going to see if the appearance of the various locations matched what they'd seen in their minds' eyes. And of course, two people were better than one for this. Ando and Miyashita could both have a look, discuss the sight, and hopefully come to a precise assessment.
"At first, I wasn't going to tell you until we got there. I didn't want you to be prejudiced."
"I'll be alright."
"I forgot to ask. You don't happen to have been to South Hakone Pacific Land before, right?"
"Of course not. I mean, have you?"
"I'd never even heard of the place until I read that thing."
So neither of them had been there. But when he closed his eyes, Ando could see in his mind the cabins that comprised Villa Log Cabin, scattered across a gentle slope. It was in cabin B-4 that this astonishing chain of events had begun. Beneath the porch was a hole that led to an old well that sank five or six yards into the ground. Twenty-five years ago a woman named Sadako Yamamura had been raped and thrown into the well-the dungeon in which Sadako's vengeful will mingled with the smallpox virus's will to propagate.
That was where Miyashita proposed they go.
Keeping Mt Hakone, shrouded in clouds, on their right, Miyashita drove through Manazuru toward Atami. According to Ring, they were to see signs for South Hakone Pacific Land as soon as they left Atami on the Atami-Kannami Highway. That was the route Miyashita and Ando were taking.
It was the first time either of them had been on the highway. Yet Ando had the illusion that he'd come this way before. Kazuyuki Asakawa had taken this route on October 11th. He'd gone on up a mountain road not knowing what awaited him in cabin B-4, though not without a sense of foreboding, either. It was almost noon, and the sky was clear and bright. On October 1lth it had been raining off and on, and Asakawa's windshield wipers had been on. Ando remembered reading that in Ring. Asakawa had stared uneasily through the windshield as the wipers scraped back and forth. Both the time of day and the weather were different, but Ando felt like he was suffering flashbacks. He saw the sign on the mountainside for Pacific Land. It looked familiar, the unusual script, in black on a white background. Miyashita unhesitatingly turned left and got on the steep mountain road as though he knew the way well.
