Real World (12 page)

Anybody
can do that. Terauchi might be a cadet or whatever, but I’m a soldier, so you better not underestimate me. Or discriminate against me. You’re so totally sneaky. If this is the kind of battle you’re fighting, then count me out! It’s just one awful thing after another.”
I hadn’t said these set phrases to Kirarin in order to recruit her into the army or anything. I’d just felt that way at the time. And now I just didn’t feel like that at all. It’s the truth, isn’t it? Sure, it’s a contradiction, but so what? I was tired and hungry, but still I tried to rack my poor brain to figure out how to quell this insurrection. Then all of a sudden she jumped on top of me and straddled me. She was heavy and I let out a gasp.
“Get off me, stupid.”
Kirarin pinned my two arms above my head and whispered in my ear.
“Or maybe I should take
you
to another world? You act all cool, but you’re just a virgin. Why don’t you come back in ten years.”
A slut. A real slut. Kirarin’s thin hip joints rubbed against my belly and even though I was pissed, I got hard right away. I had no clue what to do. Nobody’s ever told me how to do it with a woman. I mean, I wasn’t dealing here with some cute “li’l sis” who’d take her pants off at my command. Girls were guys’ playthings only in manga. I shoved away her arms and drew her close. Her soft body felt great. Her slim frame, her hair with a slight scent of sweat. So I was finally going to get laid. Maybe it’d be like in Mishima’s story “Patriotism,” all hot and heavy. I pictured that photo of Mishima, dressed only in a loincloth, brandishing a Japanese sword, and suddenly I froze. Wasn’t I supposed to be beyond needing a girl? How could I get the spirit and the flesh to work together here? I was off my guard, and Kirarin sent me flying and I banged my head on the headboard.
“Ow! What are you doing?”
“You’re pathetic. A soldier who’s terrible at sex is terrible in war, too.”
Damn. I grabbed her tight. I had to get on top, rip her clothes off, spread her legs, and put it inside. But how? If I ordered her to suck me, would she really put my cock in her mouth without a fight? Was this like a wartime rape or something? Ideas were spinning around in my brain, but none of the simulations I came up with were of any help. What a pain. Maybe I
should
go ahead and waste her. My brain was short-circuiting and all I could come up with was this simple solution. I was impatient. This was war.
War. Kill her!
In the gloom, I could tell that Kirarin was staring at me. Then she spoke in this cold-as-ice voice.
“Knock it off. Don’t touch me. I don’t feel like sleeping with a murderer.”
I let her go. I was afraid of this real enemy now, of Kirarin. The enemies I should be battling—the police, society—still hadn’t shown up. But right in front of me was another kind of enemy. A wall I couldn’t climb over. Kill!
Kill!!
Shut off the brain circuits.
“I was just too caught up in this whole thing about getting revenge on Wataru,” Kirarin was saying. “When you told me you’d show me another world, it got me all excited. But being with you isn’t going to lead to anything good. I can tell that now.”
She got out of bed and ran her fingers through her hair.
“I’m not interested in you anymore,” she said. “I’m going home.”
Was she serious? I was suddenly pulled back to reality.
“Give me the money for the room,” I said.
“No way. That’d make me an accomplice.”
My brain circuits went
poof!
and shorted out again. Smoke coming out and everything. I jumped into action. I grabbed the box in my backpack, the one with the butcher knife. When Kirarin saw this, she gave a little scream.
“Get down on your knees,” I commanded.
Kirarin knelt down on the floor and bowed in front of me. I stepped on her long hair. I could feel her shaking through my leg. That’s right—that’s how you surrender.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “
Really.
If you need money, I’ll give it to you.”
“I’ll requisition the money. You stay here. That’s an order.”

* * *

I stayed awake, keeping watch over the POW to make sure she didn’t escape. The prisoner was sobbing, but then she fell asleep. I occupied the sofa and went through her belongings that I’d confiscated. A purse with 18,600 yen. A student ID card. Her swollen purse was filled with cards from various stores, a library card, a commuter pass, and so on. I looked at the photo of her on the ID. In her school uniform she looked even more like a “li’l sis.” Long hair, slightly droopy eyes, and a perplexed look. Her lips pouty, pretending to be sweet and innocent. The exact kind of girl the perverts in my class would drool over. A small makeup bag was stuffed full of things—a handkerchief, tissue paper, lipstick, deodorant, oil-blotting tissue. Her cell phone. In the bottom of her bag was a movie theater ticket stub. It was just three days ago I was enjoying talking with the prisoner about movies. Seemed more like thirty years ago.
I was terribly lonely then, heading for the swimming pool my family used to go to, and I was upset, wondering if there was some way of reversing time. So the prisoner’s sweet voice made me happy at the moment. But not now—it just pisses me off like you wouldn’t believe. Not just the prisoner, but
all
of them piss me off—my old man, relatives, our house. You name it. Everything and everybody just got in the way now, and all I wanted was to go somewhere,
anywhere,
as long as it was far away from them.
I was getting closer to the real essence of who I am. A revelation was welling up from inside me. What that essence was, I had no idea, but I was getting more and more confused, my existence more pointless by the minute. Is that who I am? Is that all? I got awfully sad, and tears started to stream down my face. I wiped away my tears with the prisoner’s handkerchief, which smelled like perfume and detergent. From out of nowhere I felt like reality was going to crush me. The reality of having murdered my mother. Fight on! Fight on! I tried like crazy to stifle the tears. Just then the prisoner’s cell phone rang. It was Toshi. I felt rescued.
“Hi,” she said. “Sorry for calling back so late. I didn’t realize I had a message.”
“It’s me,” I said.
“Oh, I see. What about Kirarin?” Toshi wasn’t surprised at all. “Is she there?”
“She’s asleep.”
“Are you doing okay? Are you all right?” I didn’t know what to say. “It’s one o’clock already. Why aren’t you asleep? Can’t you sleep?”
I hate kind girls. They’re dangerous. A warning buzzer went off inside me.
Danger! Danger!
I had no clue why.
“Hey, did you hear me?”
“I’m listening,” I said.
“Yuzan said Kirarin got in touch with her. When she said she was with you, I couldn’t believe it. I guess I never thought she was interested in you.”
I’m not interested in you anymore.
The prisoner’s comment came back to me.
“Your dad stopped by our house today.”
“How come?”
“Just to apologize for all the trouble. Seems like he’s making the rounds of the neighbors. He said he can’t sleep at night, wondering where his son is, wandering somewhere. He’s miserable about losing his wife, but he said that all he can think of is saving his son’s soul. At night when he’s all alone in the house, he obsesses over what happened and blames himself. He said sometimes he wants to die. And when he feels like that, he says he keeps himself together by staring at straight lines for all he’s worth.”
“Straight lines?” I said in a loud voice. “What do you mean?”
“Objects that are straight. Like the frame of a shoji screen or a pillar. Staring at things that are straight, he said, makes him feel like there’s a world that’s still stable and solid. He said he can be more objective that way. He can objectively keep his act together and wait for his son to come home.”
What a load of crap. My old man was so full of it, I didn’t know what to say. A stable world this late in the game? The world had come undone and floated away long ago. The idiot.
Objective
—what sort of crap is that? That’s why all you can see is a totally flat world. I made up my mind right then and there—I might be confused, but I was going to forge ahead. Toward the even more incomprehensible, chaotic front lines. Confusion. If the old man looked at straight lines to keep his act together, I was going to stare at
curved
lines and go down in flames. My eyes flitted around the room, looking for curved lines. Wall, floor, ceiling, door, TV. Straight lines everywhere.
Then I looked over at the body of my prisoner, lying in the bed.
“Hey, Worm,” Toshi said. “Can you hear me?”
I switched off the cell phone.
CHAPTER SIX

TERAUCHI

T
here really are things that are irreparable.
I’m always wanting to tell people this. It doesn’t matter who I say it to. It could be a rainy day and I’m standing on the station platform of the Keio Line, waiting for an express train that’s late. Or I’m standing in line at a convenience store where a brand-new employee is slowly working the register. Either way, I see myself muttering this without thinking. Like the phrase has wormed its way into my unconscious so much that, when I’m irritated, I can’t help but blurt it out.
I don’t think I could blurt it out to Yuzan or Kirarin, though. They’d just say, “Hmm. You could be right,” their eyes dreamily looking around for a bit, but then, as soon as the subject changed, they’d forget all about it. They’d drop it so fast I’d be left there feeling stupid and embarrassed. I’d hate that, so that’s why I don’t bring it up with them. It’d be like a lighthouse, where the spotlight rotates and, for an instant, illuminates something. But once the light moves on, everything melts back into the dark. They couldn’t care less. Unless you actually experience something that can’t be undone, you can’t possibly understand it. People like that just think it’s some phrase and misinterpret it. To them, it’s some cheap truism.
Toshi alone might react differently. On the surface she acts all casual, but she’s a sensitive person and is very intuitive. I bet she’d look me in the eye and try to tease out what I’m getting at. But not finding anything, Toshi, too, would soon be disappointed and turn to other things.
By “things that are irreparable,” I don’t mean something like Worm’s killing his mother. It’s not that simple. And it’s not something like the guilt Yuzan has over avoiding her mother’s death. It’s actually the opposite. How can I put it? Once you’re dead you can’t come back to life—it’s final. But to my way of thinking, those are also events that aren’t entirely irreparable, because they are the easy way out. I mean, death is something everybody’s going to experience someday, so it’s an easy-to-understand ending Worm’s chosen, and in that sense something close to defeat. Killing somebody is just payback motivated by all your anger, humiliation, and desires, and since it doesn’t put an end to problems, it doesn’t fit in the category of an irreparable action. Something that’s really irreparable is more like this: a horribly frightening feeling that keeps building up inside you forever until your heart is devoured. People who carry around the burden of something that can’t be undone will one day be destroyed.
Are my ideas too complicated? I’m the kind of person who thinks about difficult things more than others. That’s why at home and at school I’m always joking around. The reason’s simple—even if I exposed the real me to other people, they wouldn’t understand. Toshi might pick up a little of what’s going on, but I’ve yet to meet a person—child or adult—who really
gets
me.
There’s this huge gap between me and other people—a gap in ability, experience, and feelings. I’m really emotional, and bright. When I say bright I don’t mean good at schoolwork. I mean I can think abstractly. Some adults might think a high school student can’t do this, but they’re wrong.
I feel above human relationships, so I’m constantly holding myself in check. Controlling myself like this zaps all my energy, so I gave up on studying and don’t take it seriously. I figured out long ago that studying for exams is nothing more than figuring out how to work the system.

* * *

When I became a senior in high school, we all took this psychological test. It was a multiple-choice test with two hundred totally stupid questions on it and you had to choose things like “I tend to go along with what other people are saying.” I decided to see how far I could fool people, so I deliberately made a total mess of it. Toshi, Yuzan, and Kirarin—all the bright ones in our class—did the same thing, but the only one called into the guidance counselor’s cubbyhole office afterward was me. Seems my homeroom teacher had quietly put in a call to my parents.
So I went, partly curious, partly disgusted, and as you can imagine this middle-aged woman in a navy blue suit, no makeup, was waiting for me. She told me her name—Suzuki or Sato, some totally banal name—and I forgot it right away.
“You would be Kazuko Terauchi? I’d like to meet with you a few times to talk over things.”
“What kind of things?” I asked.
“What you think about, and any worries you might have.”
What good’s going come from talking with the likes of you? Why do I have to do this? Trying to hold back my rising anger, I gave my usual silly laugh. My weapon is that I can hide my feelings and say something stupid to cover them up. Toshi’s weapon is her made-up name, Ninna Hori. For Kirarin, it’s always pretending to be cheerful. Yuzan’s the only one who painfully exposes herself to the world.
“I don’t have any worries,” I said. “Other than college entrance exams.”
Entrance exams,
the woman noted down on a sheet of white paper. I sneered inside. We met like that a total of three times. I made up a story about being afraid my friends might exclude me from their group and this seemed to satisfy her and no more summonses came to meet with her.
Each time I met her I became more and more frightened of adults. She just listened silently to my made-up stories, smiling. I was frightened by the optimism of adults, their stupid trust in science to treat a troubled heart. Afraid of their obsession with believing they
have
to treat troubled kids. I just wanted them to leave me alone, so how come they didn’t get it? But that’s the way it always is.
I’ve got to hand it to them, though—adults, that is. They’ve created this society where lies are uncovered. The woman told me proudly that these psych tests were able to ferret out any untruths you would tell. It turned out I’d scored the highest of anyone on the test. Higher than anyone in any other school or even school district. Which meant that they saw right through me, that I’m a person who wants to hide a lot of stuff. That much they definitely found out. But I don’t think they could pinpoint what it is I want to hide. There’s no way I want to get some treatment from the school, or a middle-aged guidance counselor with her know-it-all face. I mean, over these last five years, the only one who’s been thinking about all this is me. And the only one who really understands me is
me.
Like I did with the counselor, I always say stupid things in order to be vague and evasive. Toshi, though, sees right through my attempt to dodge other people and it seems to bother her. One time, I can’t remember exactly when, she and I were talking about the future, something we hardly ever do, and all of a sudden she totally lost it.
“You’re laughing but your eyes aren’t,” she said.
I put a happy look on my face and pretended to smile. I had a bunch of dumb gags I knew how to use. All of which disgusted people.
“I am too laughing!” I said.
“That’s a lie. You can’t fool me, joking around all the time.”
“Dude. That’s just me. I’m gonna grab me one of those Tokyo or Hitotsubashi University guys, get married, and be a full-time housewife.”
“How can you give up like that?”
Toshi could always guess exactly what I was feeling. I tried whispering in her ear:
Romance!
But after staring back at me, she said, like there were no two ways about it, “Terauchi, you’re a total mystery.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Knock it off, okay? I know for a fact that you’re hiding something.
Everybody
knows it.”
“I’m not hiding anything. Dude—it’s true.”
“Forget it,” Toshi said, looking hurt.
Toshi had just been telling me about her typical high school woes—how even if she went to college, she had no idea what she wanted to be. She added that this was something she hardly ever told people. And she was pissed because I didn’t show any interest and basically made no effort to take her seriously. Then, abruptly, she looked at me with this worried expression.
“Tell me,” she said, “did you have some awful experience in your past?”
“No, nothing.”
Think some seventeen-year-old kid’s gonna trap me like that? No way. Of course, I’d just barely turned eighteen myself, but I really had no sense of how old I was. Was I a child, an adult, or a senior citizen? Toshi is smart and kind, and growing up with nice parents like that there’s no way she’d end up as complicated as me. You want to try to be like me? Be my guest. It’s funny how sometimes I act like an ordinary high school girl, eating lunch with the girls—Toshi, Yuzan, Kirarin—going out to karaoke clubs with them. But this is me faking it, trying to show people I’m just having a trouble-free high school life like any other girl.
The truth is, I’m a disagreeable person who’s always observing my friends with a cool, detached eye. So no wonder Toshi’s pissed at me. I’m this sort of contrary person who thinks the only people worth knowing are those who get angry with me, but when they do get angry, I cleverly hide myself.
Yuzan pretends to be complicated like me, but she’s really pretty simple. Right now, she’s basically troubled over how to accept herself, whoever she is. Once she accepts that she’s a lesbian, then she should be able to live that sort of life peacefully. With Kirarin, I think someday a guy will change her. So in that sense the two of them are basically wholesome. Which is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. I’m not being sarcastic or anything. I really feel that way.