I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like (17 page)

I sat down on the bed and looked away. Eventually Mieko walked over, her footsteps padding softly across the carpet. The next thing I felt was her sitting on my lap and embracing me. I rested my head on her shoulder and ran my hand through her long black hair.

—
Kenji, what’s wrong?

As I looked up to answer, the open window caught my eye. The drapes blew forward in the breeze, brushing the edges of the wall. From these drapes, usually so grey with dust from the open window, I received an impression of terrible whiteness.

A Design for Life

The W--- University Club Building was a four-storey brick tower at the edge of the main campus, led up to by a path lined with linden trees, their branches now empty in the bright winter air. As Chris Lau walked along the path he saw joggers coming towards him and, further along, a group of baseball players in their uniforms. He pulled his coat around him and kept his gaze focused on the tower ahead of him.

The Design Circle meeting had already started by the time he entered the room. Silently he seated himself in the back and listened as Norika addressed those present. Standing by the window, she wore a trim black cardigan and white jeans, a necklace of seashells around her neck. As she discussed plans for a fundraiser, speaking too quickly for him to make out anything but her general meaning, Chris wondered whether she had made this necklace herself.

Norika’s speech continued. Chris glanced around the room. Posters of models covered the walls, along with clothes designed by the Circle members: a flower-pattern handbag covered in beads, a coat stitched together from scraps of leather, a pair of multicolored sneakers with thick green laces. As Chris looked around, Daichi caught his eye and nodded. Some of the other members turned and noticed him: one, a first-year girl, smiled shyly before turning away. Chris glanced at Norika, but she continued her speech in a monotone, not meeting his eyes. Eventually she finished, and the Circle members began putting their things away. The meeting was only a preliminary to the night’s drinking party, held in an izakaya to welcome the new members.

As they left the building Chris glanced at Daichi, but the senior member was walking between two first-years, explaining something to them. Norika walked ahead of the group, flanked by two other senior members. The other first years formed into pairs. Chris walked by himself, trailing along at a distance.

He thought back to two weeks ago. He and the other exchange students had been walking around the campus, inspecting the various Circles handing out flyers. Only the International Circle made any attempt to approach him, although they seemed more interested in the Americans. Bored with the various media and sports-related Circles, Chris and a French exchange student broke off from the group. As they wandered the campus, a student handed them a flyer for the Design Circle and told them about an information session in the afternoon. The French girl, Séverine — tall and leanly muscled in the way Chris had noticed some European women were, with lank gold-blonde hair and a sharp nose — spoke little Japanese, and so Chris explained to her what the student had said.

—
It might be interesting, making clothes, he told her.

—
Let’s have a look then.

They had lunch in the refectory, then walked to the Club Building and wandered around until they found the Design Circle room. Inside, a dozen students sat on the floor, some talking in pairs, others paging through magazines and photobooks. When Chris and Séverine walked in, everyone turned and looked at them. The student who had handed them the flyer was not there, and their presence seemed, if not unwanted, certainly unexpected.

—
Is this the Design Circle? Chris asked.

A girl sitting in front of a table nodded and gestured for them to sit down.

—
Yes.

Chris held out the flyer he’d received.

—
We saw this and thought we’d check it out.

—
I’m the president, the girl said. My name is Norika.

They sat down in front of her. She looked at him very closely, almost with a kind of wariness.

—
Are you Chinese, or...?

—
Singaporean, yes.

—
I’m from France, Séverine said in her broken Japanese.

—
You’re together?

It took Chris a moment to understand what she meant

—
No, we’re just friends.

One of the other members asked Séverine a question, so that Chris found himself talking to Norika alone. The other members, initially interested, soon stopped listening.

—
So... you’re interested in design? she asked him.

—
Yeah. But I’m not good at drawing, really.

He gestured to the clothes hung up around the room.

—
You designed all this yourselves?

—
Yeah. And we do a fashion show every year.

She continued staring at him, so that he felt he had to say something. But he waited, and after another moment she spoke again.

—
What made you want to come to Japan?

—
I always liked Japanese music... anything electronic, trance and house pretty much... and Japanese literature. Mostly women writers. I don’t like the male ones.

—
Like who?

—
Well, Yumiko Kurahashi... Taeko Kono is all right.

—
I like Yumiko Kurahashi. Have you read ‘The Party’?

—
Yeah, it’s great... I didn’t think that many people read her.

Norika smiled.

—
Not many, no.

They talked for a while longer. He asked what she was studying, what she wanted to do after she graduated. He felt that he could have gone on talking to her longer, but Séverine was having difficulty understanding the Circle members’ questions. Sensing her discomfort, he suggested they go. Before leaving he exchanged phone details with Norika and took an information sheet that outlined the Circle’s upcoming events.

—
Are you going to join? Séverine asked him as they left the Club building and returned to the main campus.

—
I’m considering it.

That night he looked over the information sheet in his room. The structure of the Circle was similar to others he had heard about, and he noted its weekly meetings, drinking parties, annual field trip. At the bottom of the sheet was a thick block of text which he skimmed, noting the dates of the events it described. But he found it difficult to concentrate, and after a few moments he put the sheet aside and lay back on his bed.

He was thinking of Norika. Her body had a smooth flatness, neither curved nor angular, with small breasts and straight hips. Except for her long black hair and thin lips, her appearance was almost boyish. But he was more interested in her interests; he wanted to know why she had become the Circle’s president, why she liked Yumiko Kurahashi, what kind of clothes she designed. He was used to having nothing in common with anyone, and the idea of a sincere conversation based on interests appealed to him greatly.

He felt that he had to have her. He hadn’t felt anything like this for a while, and so he did not bother to think of a concrete plan, only held the feeling in reserve and floated along on its surface.

The next day at noon he went for lunch in the refectory. Since none of the other exchange students were around, he thought that he would have to sit by himself. But as he walked amongst the tables he noticed someone waving at him. He turned and saw a student he recognized from the Circle meeting. When he sat down, the student introduced himself as Daichi — one of the senior members. The students talked to him for a while, but Chris could think of little to say, and before long they resumed their conversation while he ate his lunch in silence. As they were about to leave, Daichi turned to him.

—
So are you going to join? he asked.

Chris said that he would.

•

The Circle members occupied two tables in the little izakaya, and Chris was seated at the same table as Norika, Daichi and one of the other senior members whose name he couldn’t recall. None of the new members were expected to pay, so Chris went on ordering drink after drink. The first-year students seemed too shy to talk to him, and he made little effort to insert himself into the conversations around him. Occasionally one of the senior members asked him a question, but mostly they talked amongst themselves.

Loud laughter filled the room. As soon as Chris’s glass emptied, Daichi ordered him another. After a while he felt a heaviness settling over his mind. His thoughts took on an abstract quality, and he lost track of time. Finally he saw a first-year sitting at the edge of the table stand and excuse himself. Over the next hour a few more students left to catch their last trains. Chris remained seated and lit a cigarette. He looked at Norika: her eyes seemed only half open. Daichi sat on one side of her, and the seat on her other side, which had been occupied by a first-year, was now empty. Chris went to the bathroom, and when he returned he sat in this empty seat.

By midnight all the first-years had left, and only six people remained at the table. Norika’s body swayed back and forth gently even as she continued to talk.

A silence descended, and at last Chris felt attention centering on him. He had said and done nothing the entire night, but simply by remaining at the table he had now become the focus of conversation. As he finished his beer, Daichi said:

—
You’ve got good Japanese, so I might need your help putting some things into English. I’ve got some projects going where we’ll need a translator...

—
How tall are you anyway? another senior member asked. You’re pretty tall — you could model some of our clothes.

Slowly Chris moved against Norika so that his leg rested gently against hers.

—
I’d like to try that, he said, deliberately not looking at her.

—
You’ll have to take part in the fashion show, she said.

Under the table he moved his hand on top of hers.

—
We want to eventually do some English-language publications, Daichi said. I’m sure you could help out with that.

Chris moved his hand under the table to Norika’s leg and began rubbing her through her pants. After a while he felt her hand move onto his. He finished his beer.

—
You drink really fast, a senior member said.

—
Have one more, Daichi said. He pressed the call button on the table and a waiter came over. Everyone ordered another drink. Norika leaned over the table, her long hair covering her eyes.

Another half hour passed.

—
I should get going, Chris said. He gripped Norika’s hand, then released it.

He got to his feet.

—
I’ll show you out, Norika said, and stood.

They held hands inside the elevator. When the doors opened he pulled her out with him. The doors closed. She took a step backward.

—
Thanks for coming, she said.

He pushed her against the wall and kissed her. For a moment she was still, held in place by his weight, and then he felt her hand come to rest on his shoulder. He bent down to kiss her again and felt her gripping him with unexpected force. Her teeth pressed against his lips.

—
I love you, I love you, she said in English.

He took her hand and pulled her towards the street, but she moved back and pressed the button for the elevator. He pushed her against the wall again and pulled at her clothes. The fluorescent light above the elevator illuminated her bare white shoulder.

—
I have to go, she said.

—
Come back with me.

—
I can’t, they’re waiting for me.

—
They won’t care.

He pushed his hand down her pants, kissed her again, and at last let go of her hand as she pulled away and slipped inside the elevator. The doors closed after her.

•

In the early afternoon he left the refectory and sat down on one of the benches outside. Sipping from a can of green tea, he watched the students walking to class. W--- was an upper-tier university, and a residual childishness clung to most of the students, who, having spent their high school years attending cram schools and studying late into the night, had had little time for what Chris considered usual teenage experiences. At twenty-three he was a year older than the oldest of them, and he felt this distance every time he spoke to them. Occasionally someone would approach him, but apart from the Circle members he never went out of his way to make friends. Instead, he enjoyed the solitude and idleness. Everything seemed dreamlike and faintly absurd. When he returned home he would have to take up business, but for now it was enough to wander the campus by himself.

He thought over his schedule for the week. The next Design Circle meeting was two days away. He had sent Norika a message but received no reply.

His phone rang. He looked down at the number and answered. A high-pitched man’s voice spoke rapidly in English.

—
Chris? How are you? Takeshi asked.

—
I’m fine.

—
How are your classes?

—
I only have one today.

—
Oh? What are you doing in the evening?

—
No plans really.