Slum Online (11 page)

A search of the Internet had revealed that there was a notorious black cat known to lurk in Ikebukuro—four stops from Shinjuku on the Yamanote Line—but not our blue one. Apparently someone had been drawing this black cat in obscure places along walls or on lampposts.

When I suggested that Shinjuku’s blue cat might be the same sort of prank, Fumiko exploded. Not mysterious enough, I guess. To me, the notion of someone secretly painting black cats all over the city seemed far more romantic, but I didn’t want to think how Fumiko might have reacted to that opinion.

After that, I fell into a new routine. Each day I rode a packed train to school and listened to endless lectures that for the most part went in one ear and out the other. Then after class ended and the sun began to sink behind the buildings, I set off into the streets of Shinjuku. To be honest, I could have done without the lectures, but it pissed Fumiko off when I didn’t show up for class.

The humid June wind sapped my health like a crouching punch, while the crowded trains were a midair combo that finished the job. I was walking around on empty. Summer was knocking on Shinjuku’s door in earnest now. When the front currently lingering over western Japan finally blew through, it would be upon us. The weather man on NHK said that the summer was going to be a particularly hot one. A real scorcher. The warm air pressed down on my exposed skin as though to wring out what little energy I had left.

With a map I’d downloaded off the net in one hand, Fumiko and I walked Shinjuku’s streets. A treasure hunt was pretty much the same in the virtual world and the real one. All you had to do was print out a map on graph paper and mark off the squares you’d already checked. Only a thorough search would turn up every last hidden passageway and secret treasure chest. Unlike the virtual world, there were lots of places you couldn’t go in RL, at least not legally, and there was no guarantee of finding the key that would let you in. On the upside, there were no illusory walls that could only be breached by finding hidden magic passages, and you wouldn’t end up walking in place because you were snagged by a wayward polygon. RL had some things going for it still.

If you believed the ghost theory, we were on a wild goose chase. Avoiding Fumiko’s eye, I even checked the bases of lampposts and the corners of walls for painted blue cats, but found nothing. I was nearing the point where I would have snuck out early one morning while the city was still sleeping and drawn one myself if I’d only had a single artistic bone in my body.

We had been walking more than three hours straight when we finally took a break at a coffee shop. I was exhausted.

Fumiko was wearing a Naples yellow blouse, the same one she’d had on the day we first met. She wore stretch pants a shade darker. Her silver-rimmed glasses were perched on her nose. Fumiko examined my face. “You look like the Hustler.”

“The what?”

“You know, the movie? Haven’t you seen it?”

I searched my memory. It sounded familiar. I think I caught it on some Saturday night television special. The lead was a good-looking guy who played a mean game of pool. “Was that the one with Tom Cruise?”

“No, that was the sequel,
The Color of Money
. I was talking about Paul Newman in
The Hustler
.”

“Who’s Paul Newman?”

“The guy who taught Tom Cruise how to play pool. Don’t you remember?”

“Not ringing any bells.”

“So you know all about some CEO who has a train running through his office, but you’ve never heard of Paul Newman?” She shook her head. “You should watch it. It’s really good.”

“Maybe I will.” I took a swallow of black Guatemalan coffee.

“What made you think of
The Hustler
, anyway?”

“You look like him.” She shrugged.

The Hustler
was a story about a young pool player named Fast Eddie whose dream was to beat pool legend Minnesota Fats. He didn’t care about anything else. His friends, his girlfriend… he sacrificed everything for pool. And apparently this was who I reminded Fumiko of.

“It’s all in your head.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Whatever.”

I didn’t know what Paul Newman looked like, but I figured it was a safe bet he was a pretty boy like Tom Cruise. I was no movie star, so whatever it was we had in common, it couldn’t have been good looks.

“You like that blouse?”

Fumiko gulped down a swallow of coffee. “What, you don’t think it looks good on me?”

“No, it looks great. It’s the one you were wearing the day we met, isn’t it?”

A smile rose to her lips. That hamburger-shop smile. The artificial light shining through the window brought out the outline of her bra beneath the yellow fabric. I blinked.

“It’s finally summer,” Fumiko mused.

“You can say that again.”

“You mind coming shopping with me?” She had finished all but the last centimeter of her iced coffee.

“Sure. When?”

“Now.”

“What happened to the cat hunt?”

“I never thought I’d hear you worrying about what happened to the cat hunt.”

“It’s never good to lose sight of your goals.”

“You know this from experience?”

“I do.”

I took a deep breath—the air was as thick as cotton candy— and cast a questioning glance in Fumiko’s direction. She feigned a moment of introspection.

“Don’t think this means we’re done searching for that cat. Once my mind is made up, it’s made up.” She grabbed the strap on my bag and started walking. “One other thing,” she said without looking back. “This isn’t the blouse I was wearing the day we met.”

After an exhaustive search, the only purchase Fumiko had to show for her efforts were five gray-striped wooden buttons. We made plans to go see a movie together. I even promised to treat her to dinner in Ebisu. Since she lived in Gotanda, she knew her way around Shinjuku a little better than I did. By the time we went our separate ways at the station, it had been four hours since the sun had set.

Without a soundtrack playing in the background, the world bustled with sound FX, but they were distant and muffled in my ears. The voices rising from the sea of people breaking around us, Fumiko’s voice, my own—they all had the same raspy quality, like recordings made on old analog tape.

It was Tuesday, twelve past ten in the morning.

Fumiko and I were in our sociology class. The skies above Shinjuku were overcast again. There was an undercurrent of chill on the damp air. A thousand motes of dust danced in bands of light that shone through gaps in the clouds.

We sat side by side in the seventh row from the front of the lecture theater. A professor with thinning hair passed down the aisle beside our desk. He didn’t have a comb-over, but there was a distinct seaweed quality to his hair. I recognized that seaweed.

“What’s his name?”

“Uemura,” she whispered, opening her college-ruled notebook. I didn’t even have loose-leaf paper or writing implements in front of me.

“I thought Uemura taught logic?”

“They’re brothers.”

“No way.”

“They are.”

I took another look. He was a little shorter than me. The early stages of a pot belly were making themselves known, and his hair was thinning. He wore dark brown sandals and a drab olive necktie. Chalk dust marred his navy blue suit, threadbare from years of harsh dry-cleaning chemicals. In
Versus Town
, he’d be a middleweight. He didn’t look all that dissimilar from logic’s Professor Uemura.

“He the older brother?”

“Try again.”

“The years have not been kind.”

“He’s had it rough. His brother’s a full professor, but he’s still just an associate.”

“Well, you’re certainly up on your trivia.”

“You’re probably the only person in the room who doesn’t know.” Fumiko took out her silver-rimmed glasses.

Once the lecture started, Fumiko didn’t say a word. I divided my attention between Uemura the Younger and the fluorescent lights. Today he was off on another topic that seemed inappropriate for a college lecture.

According to Uemura the Younger, cults and con men had merged to create an entirely new business model. Traditionally, cults were exclusive groups that espoused heretical faiths, but there was no particular reason to limit the term to religious groups. You could have a small group of people who believed in the protective powers of rabbits’ feet, and the dynamics would remain the same. The members of these tight groups bonded and their interactions with each other became less complicated. In short order, this fostered a sense of fulfillment and solidarity. Con men running pyramid schemes used this solidarity to dupe young, impressionable kids into joining. That was how they got members.

Since younger members of society have no responsibility for their own materialistic lifestyles, they tend to be uniquely idealistic. They represent the societal and political values of the age in which they live.

Following the war, the student movement of the 1960s and ’70s was closely related to Japan’s economic growth. During the reconstruction, they called for peace, independence, and democracy. At the height of the Cold War, they argued back and forth over communism and capitalism. In the social upheaval that followed, the student movement collapsed due to infighting.

Today’s youth, continued Uemura the Younger, had been born into a world without heroes. In the past, heroes gave the young generations something to look up to, to emulate. Now common men stood in their place, and while some among us might approach the status of a hero, there were no more living legends, and thus the young grew up knowing they would never become heroes themselves.

Ironic, then, that man was a creature that inherently aspired toward heroism. A creature that searched for some greater purpose to give meaning to his life. A creature that formed social groups to share their common aspirations. In a developed society, the success of cultlike groups was a foregone conclusion.

There was a cult element even to the companies that created virtual worlds. They provided a shared secret language that outsiders couldn’t understand, a place where the young could experience a sense of safety. That was the way of the world. The fads of today’s youth were the end product of a society that demanded a cult culture. So sayeth Uemura the Younger.

I shifted my gaze from the blackboard to my side. Fumiko was taking notes. She might have been doing it just to get a rise out of me.

I scratched my head. There was no theory to explain gaming. There was no set of principles, no moral stance that drove you to practice difficult moves. No one stepped into a virtual world for a sense of solidarity. Your opponent on the other end of the network wasn’t your friend, your lover, or comrade-in-arms. The only part of them I saw was the character on the screen, and that was all they saw of me. If virtual worlds weren’t like that, my friend would never have disappeared into the north.

I learned something from Uemura the Younger that day. University was nothing but talk. I also remembered something very important. Whatever my loss to Ricky had knocked loose snapped back into place with a click so loud I was surprised half the class didn’t turn around to look at me. I could feel wheels starting to turn in my head. At that moment, university was not the place I needed to be.

Nor was it any time to be searching for blue cats. Sure, that still had its place. There was no reason I couldn’t keep seeing Fumiko in RL. But that was just a distraction to my true purpose. I had a snake boxer to hunt. If I let him slip through my fingers, finding the blue cat wouldn’t bring him back. I had a score to settle in the virtual world, and there was nowhere else to do it.

There were people who gave themselves over to addiction, who let themselves lose contact with RL. A risk I was willing to take. I had to go back.

The sound FX died away.

A veil lowered over my field of vision. Fumiko was still taking notes. I stood, noisily hefting my bag onto my shoulder.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I just remembered something I have to do. Gotta run.”

“It’s the middle of the lecture.”

“Sorry.”

My legs carried me quickly out of the room. At home, a virtual world was waiting for me.