Paprika (26 page)

“All right. All right!” She slapped Osanai’s back as he lay sprawled on top of her. “I’ll let you do it. You don’t have to be so rough. I’ll let you do it.”

“Ah!” The look of desperation on Osanai’s face changed to one of relief and tearful joy. “At last you understand!”

“Yes. But you’ll have to do it properly. You’ll have to satisfy me.”

“No problem.” Actually, Osanai looked less than willing.

Atsuko resisted the temptation to laugh. It surely wasn’t that he lacked the confidence.

It had been some years since she’d had sex with a man. Having intercourse inside a patient’s dream didn’t count. She was of course preoccupied with her research and treatment, but even then, she’d occasionally noticed an unnatural flow in her libido and a sense of unfulfilled desire. Though not of her own choosing, this would be the perfect chance to satisfy that desire.

Atsuko stood up, stepped out of her ripped dress and stripped off her underwear. She was starting to feel as if it were she who’d taken the initiative, lured this man into her apartment and seduced him. Of course, it did help that Osanai was so absurdly handsome, a fine gigolo indeed. And he’d professed his love for her, notwithstanding the means he’d chosen to express it. In fact, Osanai seemed quite happy to let Atsuko take command.

In full compliance with Atsuko’s demands, Osanai did his best to create the atmosphere of a wholly pleasurable sexual experience for her. Atsuko had no reason to doubt his sincerity, even if it was the kind of sincerity that would only last until he’d ejaculated.

But now, with Atsuko’s submissive body awaiting his pleasure on the sofa, the reality of the situation hit home. Osanai had so often imagined the thrill of making love to her, and now those imaginings were about to be realized. His buttocks started to quiver with an expectation that felt like a chill running up his spine. He wanted to see himself as a warrior trembling with courage before the battle, but then he realized the ghastly truth. He was still limp. Those great white thighs of hers, yielding such a sense of coldness, were opened wide before him.
Oh no
, Osanai thought as he started to panic. He thrust himself up to her crotch. Perhaps some friction would do the trick. It didn’t. Knowing the game was up, he embraced her. He didn’t kiss her, as he thought his manhood would shrink even more if he saw her face. He even tried calling her name repeatedly.
Atsuko. Atsuko
. There was another voice, a voice he couldn’t possibly have been hearing, but he heard it all the same. It was Inui’s voice, berating him, encouraging him. Inui was probably using his DC Mini to capture the moment.

“
What are you playing at?! Pull yourself together, man! Pull yourself together!
”

Moments passed. Nothing worked. The only thing that flowed was his pre-ejaculate. Even that was going cold, matting their pubic hair together in a most distasteful way.

Atsuko was getting irritated. She knew exactly what had happened to her young beau. She’d heard that men sometimes became impotent on their first sexual encounter with a woman they adore too much, or when their partner is overpoweringly attractive. Osanai probably did adore her, but felt overawed by her as a person. That was ample proof that he recognized her as a human being, at least. On the other hand, Atsuko’s libido had now been awoken. If Osanai couldn’t do anything to satisfy her, it would be a disaster.

“What is this?!” she screamed. “Do it if you’re going to do it! You could at least have prepared yourself!”

“I’m sorry,” Osanai said feebly. “Your aura’s too strong.”

Atsuko pushed him to one side and started to put her clothes back on. She would shower later. “The only thing you can make love to is a doll. You’re pathetic.”

Osanai, momentarily crestfallen, soon recovered his vanity and angrily returned the jibe. “It’s your fault. You’re such a bossy cow. You think you can give instructions to me?!”

“You’re useless. You couldn’t even make one small part of your body bend to your will. You’re useless as a therapist, and now as a man.”

“Ha! You can talk!” Osanai shrieked wildly. “Call yourself a woman?! You may be beautiful, but you’re no woman. The only men you can love are freaks and mental patients who let you do what you like! That’s not what I call a woman!”

Atsuko was beginning to tire of trading childish insults. It was quite unbecoming of a psychotherapist. She started to clear away the cups and other things that lay scattered about. Osanai continued to hurl abuse even as she did, before eventually leaving.

Atsuko filled her bath deep and soaked her aching body in its steaming hot water. Now she could think coolly, calmly. As a psychotherapist, certainly, she had failed. She should have shown more sympathy with Osanai for his impotence. Not that it had anything to do with philanthropy. It was a question of interests. She could have made him her ally in the process. Even so, she refused to blame herself for giving way to her emotions and insulting him.

Atsuko was troubled by the thought that she couldn’t satisfy her passion now that it was ignited. She could of course regulate her bodily functions with her mind, but all she wanted now was an outlet for her lust, as if a valve had been unblocked inside her. Her body felt like one of those exotic plants that explode with seeds when touched by human hand. The plant possessed an energy that could never be satisfied by the self-pleasuring of any woman – let alone an intelligent woman who was always denying or suppressing the calls of physical pleasure. Atsuko thought of Kosaku Tokita.

If she’d had sex with Osanai that evening, she would probably have felt bad that she’d never enjoyed such an experience with Tokita. She wanted to see him now. She wanted to see him, beg him to make love to her. She’d been sickened by the inner ugliness of Osanai, a man who looked like a Greek statue and was even beautiful when angry. Now, the pure simplicity of an ugly man suddenly felt very dear to her.

She would call him. If his mother still wasn’t back from the funeral, she would go to his apartment. Or he could come to hers. And she would ask him to make love to her. He would have no doubts or misgivings about her sudden request, but would happily oblige. Residents of the building were not allowed to visit each other at this hour, but she wouldn’t be the first to break that rule. Osanai was guilty of that charge. He was responsible for everything. Atsuko smiled on realizing that her anticipation of sex with Tokita was making her think so illogically. She was still smiling as she reached out of the bath to lift the telephone from the wall beside her.

“Yes? Hello? Who is it?” It was Tokita’s mother who answered the call. She sounded extremely agitated.

Atsuko hid her disappointment. “This is Atsuko Chiba. Are you all right?”

“Oh! Doctor Chiba! Doctor Chiba!” The relief at hearing Atsuko’s voice seemed to put the woman into even greater turmoil. “It’s Kosaku! My little boy! Something’s wrong with him, Doctor Chiba! He’s not right!”

The woman was crying. Atsuko stood up in the bath. “What is it?”

“He’s not right! He’s not right, I say!”

It sounded much worse than an illness or an injury, but rather something that was impossible to explain.

“I’ll be right there.” A chill covered Atsuko’s skin with goose pimples as she stepped out of the bath. She tried to remain calm, but couldn’t prevent a series of ghastly images from appearing in her mind’s eye.

On entering Tokita’s apartment, Atsuko found her worst fears realized. Tokita’s mother, Makiko, was still in her traveling clothes, having just returned from the country. She led Atsuko to Tokita’s room. It was in the same state of disarray as his room at the Institute, the only difference being a gigantic bed to fit his massive frame. Tokita was sitting on the bed in his pajamas, staring blankly into space in front of him. He showed no reaction when Atsuko called his name.

Atsuko laid the expressionless Tokita down on the bed, then went into the living room to hear all about it from his mother.

“I only came back half an hour ago,” the woman said, still crying. “He sat there just as you saw him now. Who knows how long he’s been like that? My poor little boy!” She wiped tears from her face. In stark contrast to her son, Makiko Tokita was unnaturally thin; the only feature they had in common was the kind, unaggressive look in their eyes.

“Was the door locked?”

“Yes. I rang the bell, but seeing as he didn’t answer I used my own key to get in.”

“So the door wasn’t latched from the inside?”

“No. The door locks automatically, so we hardly ever use the latch, either of us.”

So both mother and son were equally careless. When Tokita was alone there were even times when he didn’t fully close his door. Someone had sneaked into his apartment, Atsuko was sure of it. But Tokita’s mother had already jumped to her own, quite different conclusions.

“That research was too much for him,” she wailed. “He was always thinking about difficult things. Who wouldn’t go funny in the head, thinking about things like that all the time?! And he’s so naive!”

Atsuko went back to Tokita’s room. She couldn’t examine him there, as there were no PT devices in the room. Or rather, there were no PT devices as Atsuko knew them, as another person might recognize them from their shape. The objects in the room may have been destined to become the very latest PT devices at some time in the future. But for now, they were nothing but tools and components of electronic devices in mid-assembly, together with design drawings and three-dimensional models projected on flickering screens of varying sizes; it was impossible to be certain what they were.

In that case, thought Atsuko, whoever had done this to Tokita had not used PT devices, at least not in this room. They had done it with a DC Mini. It had to be Osanai, whether or not at Inui’s instigation. Atsuko checked Tokita’s hair. There was no sign of the DC Mini; it had obviously been removed. Osanai must have entered the apartment at will, attached the DC Mini to Tokita’s head as he slept, then removed it. Osanai could easily have put Tokita’s mind into this vegetative state by accessing the DC Mini from PT devices in his own apartment.

What an unspeakably horrible thing to have done to the sweet, angelic Kosaku Tokita. Still burning with rage at Osanai, Atsuko checked Tokita’s head more closely. A small quantity of congealed blood covered a wound on his crown. His scalp seemed to have been pierced by something. Atsuko’s suspicions multiplied. Could the wound have been made by the tip of the DC Mini? The device would need to have been thrust into his scalp with considerable force to leave such a wound. In that case, he would surely have woken up, however deeply he’d been sleeping at the time. Wouldn’t he?

28

Atsuko finished examining Tokita the following morning.

Atsuko had warned his mother to keep her front door locked at all times, and had then taken Tokita back to her own apartment. That was certainly no mean feat; despite his mental vacancy, it was still beyond the means of any woman to carry his gargantuan body. Instead, she’d led him along with a combination of gentle cajoling and crude persuasion. Once he was asleep, she had attached the gorgon to his head and started to analyze his dreams with the collector.

To Atsuko’s immense relief, Tokita’s personality hadn’t completely disintegrated. His condition might have been best described as acute schizophrenia, but not that of the acute phase immediately after onset. Rather, Tokita’s mind had been suddenly and violently fed with delusions that were quite unnatural for him, as a person not inherently of a schizoid disposition. His condition would definitely be cured in time, even if it seemed serious now. Atsuko was confident of that. She only needed to make sure there could be no recurrence, and that the condition would not become chronic once he’d entered the remission phase.

The images projected into Tokita’s subconscious seemed to have been taken from Himuro’s dreams after the onset of schizophrenia. That was perfectly clear from the images appearing in Tokita’s dreams: a cute bob-haired Japanese doll, intensely sugary sweets and chocolate bars, infantile TV games. Somehow, somewhere, Himuro had already been infected with schizophrenia. His condition had been induced by having the dreams of a severely schizophrenic patient fed directly into his mind. Atsuko had come to know this particular patient’s subconscious world in the process of her treatment. She recognized the patient because the doll kept saying things in German, like “
In den sechziger Jahren schien die Sonne auch nachts
,” “
Wegen des Vietnam-Kriegs wurde ich von meinem Vater in ein hochwertiges Restaurant gebracht, und habe da eine sexueller Atmosphäre erlebt
,” and “
Während des Ise-Buchts-Taifuns besuchte ich ein öffentliches Badehaus mit Premierminister Nakasone und konnte ganz einfach im Wasser schweben
.” Even when awake, Tokita seemed mesmerized by the doll’s incoherent babbling.

The perpetrator of this obscenity had first driven Himuro mad by implanting the dreams of a severely schizophrenic patient into his mind. The content of Himuro’s dreams had been recorded at some stage of this schizophrenia, and then projected into Tokita’s subconscious. Though their intellectual levels were different, it must have been relatively simple to contaminate Tokita with the latent content of Himuro’s dreams, since the two were both equally geekish in nature. Judging from the genius behind this act of cunning, Atsuko had no trouble in identifying the culprit as Seijiro Inui.