Real World (7 page)

anything.
I grabbed a 1.5-liter bottle of water from the fridge and took it over to the register. Paid for it and impatiently drank it down. I was so parched I couldn’t stop. I gulped down over half before I put the cap back on. Then I turned to the woman behind the register, who was staring at me with a troubled look, hand over her nose.
“Could I use your restroom, please?” I asked.
The woman turned around to the middle-aged guy. He tossed the bentos aside and trotted over.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “We don’t have a restroom.”
“What’s that then?”
I know where the restrooms are in convenience stores, almost always next to the refrigerator. I pointed to a likely door.
“That’s a storage room.”
The man was holding his nose, too. Two out of three convenience stores turn me down when I ask to use the bathroom, so I wasn’t overly disappointed. Five other places in a row had said no, so all I thought was that the percentage was going down. The old guy, though, had to go and add this:
“I’m sorry, sir, but since it bothers other customers I’d appreciate it if you’d drink outside. And please use the restroom somewhere else. My apologies.”
I’m bothering other people? What did he mean? Was it my salt suit? I sniffed my T-shirt, and it did smell kind of gross—a kind of sour, weird smell. It had been two days since I left home. I hadn’t washed the shirt or taken a bath—was that all it took to get like this? I swam in a pool, but I guess that didn’t work. The blazing sun had turned me into this smelly guy people wanted to avoid. Just being at home meant I wouldn’t get smelly—the thought impressed me, somehow, in a weird sort of way. I’d washed my face and hands at a park, but couldn’t wash my T-shirt or jeans. I scratched my head.
“You’re telling me to get out?”
“No, it’s that we’d rather you didn’t drink here or use the bathroom. So if you don’t mind…”
So he was using the restroom as a pretext for getting me out of there. I ignored the old guy and, water bottle in hand, sauntered over to the magazine and book rack. When I got there a fat guy engrossed in a porno magazine gave me a strange look and tossed it aside. Two high school girls also grimaced and edged away. I blithely opened up the latest copy of
JUMP
and started leafing through it. The fat guy left the store, so I opened up the porno mag he’d been reading. It was full of pretty girls with their legs spread. I wanted the magazine but didn’t want to spend the money on it, so I stared hard at the photos, to burn the images into my brain. “He stinks,” some girl’s voice whispered from the next aisle over. The high school girls. In times like these I always want to say this: “Hey, I go to K High, just so you know!” I’m such an idiot. But the thought also hits me that the guys at K High who really
are
smart would never brag like that. They’re much too clever.
So in the final analysis the only use for the education my old lady so highly prizes is to brag about it in front of others. Nobody outside K High knows I’m at the bottom of the class, or that the teachers make fun of me. The whole thing’s crappy. But I had to stay there, stay put. Junior and senior high—six years! “You’ll be studying for college entrance exams soon,” my old lady always told me, “so you just have to hang in there a little longer.” Hang in there for
what
? She didn’t understand me at all. I’d run out of patience a long time ago.
I noticed something and turned around. The manager was standing there, timidly trying to figure out whether he should say something. Remembering I was on the run, I decided to get out. No good for me to stand out too much. My cell phone rang just when I got outside. It was from Yuzan, the girl who helped me.
“Hello. It’s me.”
I probably shouldn’t say this, but talking to her is just like talking to a guy. Doesn’t do a thing for me. Girls should have a higher, cuter voice. Why? ’Cause they’re a different life-form, that’s why. So when I talk to this Yuzan I always feel like complaining. But I guess that makes me just as bad as my old lady—always wanting things to go my way. Guess we share the same blood after all. I smiled bitterly.
“Hold on a sec,” I said.
I looked for a shady place, but there wasn’t any in front of the convenience store. Just the roar of trucks and the blazing sun. I was bowled over by the heat reflecting off the concrete. My salt suit was melting, dripping down my skin, and sticking to it. I found a truck parked in the parking lot and slumped down in its shade.
“What d’ya want?” I asked.
“Are you doing okay?”
“Yeah. I wound up sleeping in a convenience store parking lot last night. Too many mosquitoes when you sleep outdoors. Then I ate some rice balls from the store and have been riding since morning.”
“Where’re you at now?”
“I don’t know. Out in the sticks,” I said, glancing around me. Somewhere out in Saitama Prefecture. “Around Kumagaya, I think.”
“Supposed to be a really hot place. You okay?”
Yuzan spoke very fast. The heat must have been messing up my brain, ’cause I couldn’t talk right.
“I’m okay. But what’s happening with the cops?”
“Toshi says they’re coming by every day. But what’d you expect? I saw your old man a little while ago. They had your mom’s funeral this morning. It was terrible, your old man was bawling.”
He broke down? It felt like it had nothing to do with me. Killing my mom, wanting to kill my dad later, too—under this blazing sun it all felt unreal, like a myth from some far-off land. Were these people really my parents? I’d been thinking about this before, while pedaling my bike—the whole
before then, after then
thing. As I mulled over my hatred of my mom, it felt like I’d left
after then
way behind—and had crossed over to a completely different world. What the hell’s going to happen to me? With this salt suit on, am I no longer going to be human? For the first time, I started to feel worried.
“I wonder what’s going to happen to me.”
“Whatever happens, happens,” Yuzan said coolly. That part of her, I don’t like, I thought. I don’t know what her story is, but it’s like whenever I try to get a little closer she gets all cold and standoffish. Still, she’s curious about me. But I can’t figure her out, and I don’t like people I can’t figure out.
“Did anybody from my school come to the funeral?” I asked.
“No idea. I don’t think there were any high school students there.”
“To them I was just a piece of trash they never noticed.”
Yuzan chuckled. “Cooler to be a piece of trash.”
Her words rescued me, and I felt strong all of a sudden.
“So being on the run is cool?” I asked.
“Yeah. What I mean is—what are you going to do now?”
Her voice was filled with sympathy and curiosity. It was like she wanted me to be her stand-in in some great adventure.
“I just have to keep running.”
“Where?” she asked.
“I have no clue.”
I really didn’t. Yuzan gave this big sigh, like a little kid.
“I wanna go with you somewhere.”
“There’s nowhere I can go.”
This time it was my turn to be abrupt. Yuzan had helped me, but it didn’t feel like I was dealing with a girl. Besides, she was a complicated type, kind of unapproachable. A gloomy person who blamed herself ’cause she was convinced her mother’s illness and death were her fault. As I talked with her on the phone I was thinking, You and I are very different. I’m much colder.
“Guess you’re right,” she said. “Hey, is it okay if I tell my friends your cell number? They all want to call you.”
“No problem,” I said.
I don’t know why, but this idea got me excited. When I stole that girl Toshi’s bike and cell phone, what was most fun was being able to talk with all the girls whose numbers were in the contacts list. I’d like to meet the one named Kirarin.
Yuzan acted all cool, like she’d seen right through me. “I see—so you’re a regular guy after all. Okay, I’ll let ’em know.”
Damn, I thought, and was silent. If Yuzan tips off the cops I’m in a world of trouble. I hung up and took another swig of water. I was hungry but didn’t feel like going back to the convenience store. I plopped down next to one of the truck’s wheels. God, some
yakiniku
would taste great right about now.
“Hey, get outta the way.”
This voice came from above me and when I opened my eyes, there was a young man standing there. Blond hair and sunglasses, running shoes and shorts. The driver of the truck. A tough-looking guy.
“Sorry.”
As I stood up the guy grimaced.
“I think I’m gonna puke, you stink so much.”
“Sorry,” I said again. It pissed me off that I had to apologize to some guy I didn’t even know. I went over to the bike rack. I checked out an old lady’s bike, a black one, saw it was unlocked, and hopped aboard. Yuzan’s silver bike was cool-looking but stood out too much. Plus, it felt good to dump that pushy girl’s bike.
The old lady’s bike was heavy. I pedaled off on the main road again and thought that I’d better go over the day my world changed or else I’d get sleepy again. Just then the cell phone rang. I stopped the bike by the side of the road and answered it. First, though, I hid the bike in some bushes so nobody would spot it and crouched down there.
“It’s me. Toshi. From next door.”
Yuzan didn’t waste any time giving her my number.
“Oh, hey. Yuzan told me they had my old lady’s funeral today.”
“That’s right,” Toshi said, her voice kind of gloomy. “I’m calling from my cram school right now, but your father and relatives were all crying at the funeral. My parents, too, and I couldn’t help crying, either. Hey, I can understand your wanting to run away, but don’t cause any trouble for Yuzan, okay? That’d make her an accomplice.”
Who the hell does this girl think she is? Sounds exactly like my old lady. I was really disappointed. I mean, it’s like I murdered my mother for
her
sake. That’s why, right after I did it, when I ran across her outside it made me really happy. I offed my old lady for you, I wanted to laugh and say to her, so what’re you gonna do for
me
now? It was all for you, I wanted to tell her. But all I could get out was “Sure is hot today.” Pathetic.
“I’m sorry, but it’s really hot here, so could you call back later?”
“That’s pretty rude. And after I went to the trouble of calling you. See you.”
She hung up the phone. For a moment, I was afraid she’d rat on me, tell ’em what happened that day, but then I figured that by now everybody knew I’d whacked my old lady, so who cares. I sat there in the bushes, hugging my knees. It was strange, I thought, why all these weird girls like Yuzan and Toshi were interested in me. Was I their hero? That was enough to cheer me up.
A
matricidal murderer.
I knew I’d done something really huge, but thinking of it in those terms made me feel kind of strange. And the more I ran, the stranger it felt. I lay down on the grass and gazed up at the sky. While I was lying there, I wondered, What was Toshi up to at that cram school of hers? As I imagined her, I got an erection.
From the east side veranda of my room I can just barely see into Toshi’s room. Her desk is near the window and when I’m lucky I can catch a glimpse of her studying there through a gap in the lace curtains. When that happens, I turn off all the lights in my room and peek out. I can see her face in profile, lit by the lamp beside her. Sometimes, probably when she’s reading manga, she laughs out loud or else she frowns. You’re not so bright, I want to tell her, so why bother with studying? What’s the point? You’re a girl, so that’s plenty! That’s enough to see you through life, right? Who cares if you don’t do well in school? That’s what went through my head. I had a lot of mixed feelings toward girls for a long time. And why not? Girls don’t have to compete—just being a girl means guys will fall all over themselves for you.
Ever since I realized I’m not too bright, I couldn’t help but think that maybe girls are way smarter than me. And thinking about Toshi in particular gave me an inferiority complex, ’cause she wasn’t so bad-looking, and probably a whole lot happier than me. I can’t explain it, but I started to feel that way. Whenever I ran across her at the station, she’d nod a hello, but for some reason I couldn’t nod back. I know you might think that’s no big deal, but I started to feel inferior to her. A cleverer guy would be able to get to know her better, but every time I thought of talking to her she’d give me this indifferent look and then vanish.
I always heard people laughing in her house, like they were having fun. Whenever that happened I’d think that homes with young girls are the cheerful ones, and that’d make my complex even worse. I might go to a school like K High, but that means absolutely nothing to anybody else. Still, my old lady, the moron, is convinced it’s a big deal. The upshot is I’m crushed between the world’s opinion and the old lady’s. It’s like that’s the duty I have to perform.
Soon after we moved into our house I discovered that from the veranda of my old man’s study you can see into the bathroom in Toshi’s house. If the window is open you can see the bathtub. The time I first realized this, unfortunately it was her father who was in the bath. Her mother was always more cautious and made sure to shut the window tightly. Toshi, though, was a little slow on the uptake, and sometimes she’d take a bath without closing the window, especially if her father bathed first and left it open.
Once I found out all this, I started to look forward to watching her when she was studying, and whenever she went to take a bath I’d crouch down on the veranda, waiting. There was only a one-in-twenty chance of success. And it only worked in the summer, when the window was open, when her father had taken a bath before her. Even when everything fell into place, if my old man was in his study, forget about it.
On that particular day it must have been divine intervention, because everything went perfectly. Toshi turned out the light next to her desk and seemed to be heading off to the bath. I quickly went over to the window, stuck my face out, and peeked down at the bathroom. Steam was coming out, so I knew the window was open. Her father must have just taken his bath. Fantastic! Totally excited, I went out of the room and halfway down the stairs to check out what was going on below. Dad had come home already but I could hear him still eating dinner.
I slipped off quietly to his study and sneaked out to the veranda. Down below, Toshi was yelling something. Probably she was pissed ’cause her dad had left the bath a mess. I could hear water splashing. I sat there, waiting in anticipation, concerned a little about what my old man was doing. And the moment I’d been waiting for finally came. Toshi, naked, stepped into the tub, her legs momentarily spread wide.