Death by Choice

^{Chapter 9} SOMEDAY

Some time before night fell, the doctor discovered the broken guardrail on a curve of Route 336 between Ogifushi and Sakaimachi, where the road ran along a cliff above the sea. He informed the local police and requested an investigation, and early Saturday morning the diving team arrived, donned aqualungs, and dived to the bottom. There they discovered the white Camaro, but the body of the driver wasn’t in it. A three-hour search was conducted with two boats and a crew of six divers, but there was no sign of the body. The most convincing theory was that it had been washed far out to sea. If he had by any chance managed to survive he would surely have sought help from a passing car or someone living nearby, but no one had seen him, and there was no way of confirming the death.

The doctor returned to the capital. There was nothing more he could do.

He was deeply exhausted. No sooner was he flat on his back at last than the ceiling began to spin. He shut his eyes and pressed his fingers to them, then looked at the ceiling again. The window, the wall, the door, the chair, all looked like spinning fragments of crystal. It was as if he was gazing down a kaleidoscope.

Could this be some message from his brain telling him to stop staring at things? Now he came to think of it, these eyes had spent too much time recently looking at bloodied organs, corpses that had just breathed their last, and flat ECGs on a screen.

He held his eyes tightly shut, but now it was his own body that was beginning to spin on the bed. He’d spent the last few days hurtling from place to place, playing both doctor and killer, he told himself. If he didn’t rest, he’d burn out, but the impetus from all this frenetic activity kept his body spinning even after he’d hit the bed.

He swallowed a sleeping pill to force the spin to a halt, and slept the sleep of the dead. He planned to dream away these last few days of utterly futile effort, then to proceed to forget all about the dream and get back to good ol’ lazy, uneventful everyday life again.

He was woken by the sound of the telephone.

A woman’s voice informed him it was checkout time. He had no memory of having slept so long, but the clock told him it was noon. What? he thought. He suddenly couldn’t believe that he’d been wandering in the realm of dreams for thirteen solid hours. What day is it? he asked her.

“It’s Sunday.”

Oh yeah, Easter Sunday, Resurrection day. Yesterday was Saturday, and the day before was Friday thirteenth.

The doctor booked himself in for another day, ordered up a room service brunch, and ran the water for a bath.

As the hot water began to soak into his parched skin, a heartfelt sigh escaped him. His blood vessels expanded, a sweat broke out on his forehead – and then suddenly the bathtub he was lying in began to spin down a whirling hole.

Here we go again, thought the doctor. He tried ducking his head under water and massaging his temples, but things went on spinning. He felt seasick, as if he was in a boat on rough seas. This just didn’t make sense. He jumped out of the bath, grabbed his bathrobe, and began to pace the room.

As long as he was moving, he discovered, he didn’t feel dizzy, but as soon as he lay down it was back again. Maybe a good stiff drink would improve things a little. He tossed back a beer from the minibar and tried a few warm-up exercises. Soon after, his room service clubhouse sandwiches arrived, so he set to and sated his appetite in hopes that would work. But once he leaned back on the sofa it wasn’t long before the room began to heave up and down and tilt from side to side on a rough sea, and then it was back spinning again. He drank another beer, then emptied two mini bottles of whisky, but the goddamn spinning just went on. He felt he would vomit unless he got up and started pacing the room again.

This was all Kita’s fault!

There was no question. It was Yoshio Kita, the man who’d disappeared into the North Pacific on Friday, who was behind this dizziness. The doctor had no idea if he’d really died or not, since he hadn’t personally managed to check the corpse. This was what was getting to him, and making his middle ear act so strangely.

As a general rule, if someone smashes through a guardrail and plunges fifty feet into the sea inside his car, he’d have an eighty percent chance of dying. What’s more, since this particular man chose to do this as an act of suicide, the odds would surely be higher than usual. But no body had been found. The doctor had failed to lay his hands on the cornea and organs he’d paid for. He had been ejected from the story without a chance to ascertain anything for himself, and there was nothing he could do about it. Except somehow get through this dizziness.

Rest was denied him. He was forced to keep on going, round and round, pointlessly. He was being ordered to keep going, keep trying, or else he’d just spin in place. And who was doing the ordering?

The doctor pulled back a few days. Just who was it that had given him his orders and involved him in this chain of events? Heita Yashiro, that’s who. But he’d settled things with that guy already. If you made your living dealing in other people’s lives, you could only say it served you right to have a kidney stolen. And it was a safe bet that Yashiro, though he was probably still alive for a while yet, wouldn’t want to lay eyes on the doctor again. It was too late to get that kidney back now. It was tucked away inside someone else’s belly, busy filtering out the poisons. Yashiro had done quite a bit to poison the world, but at least his kidney would be helping someone else get rid of some. Meantime, some of his own poisonous dealings had caught up with him and shortened his life considerably.

So who had ordered the doctor to try to save Kita, then? Shinobu, of course. He had no idea whether he’d managed to do as she’d asked or not, in the end. Still, he felt he had to report in to his employer. He picked up the phone and rang her. He found on his cell phone a message from her, almost a prayer for Kita’s safety.

They hadn’t found Kita’s body, he informed her. She wanted to meet right away, she said. She added, however, that wherever she went she was inevitably trailed by gangsters, gawkers, and cops. Could he come to her place, in the guise of a consulting doctor? And make sure to dress the part as obviously as possible, please.

Well at any rate, now that he’d been given the task of making his final report he was at least freed from his dizziness for a while.

He shaved, carefully parted his hair, put on a tie, picked up the Boston bag of medical equipment he’d been carting everywhere, and hailed a taxi. Upon arrival, he swept ostentatiously into the flat, white coat fluttering, before the eyes of the doubtless lurking onlookers crouched in their cars or hidden in the shadows.

Shinobu had undergone a change in the last two or three days. She had a new poise and dignity about her. Yet there was also an air of unswerving determination, quite unlike the single-minded devotion of those few days. Could it be that this over-the-hill idol was suddenly drawing fresh breath now that the eyes of the world were on her again?

“You’ve changed,” the doctor observed bluntly.

“I’ve lost three kilos in the last five days,” she replied, gazing at him levelly. The doctor flinched a little before the strength in her eyes. This was not the look of a girly idol who flirts and fawns.

“I imagine they’ve grilled you to death over it all. You’re the only one who knows the details of the abduction, after all.”

“The cops have kept the pressure up. They’re trying to claim the abductor and I were in cahoots, and it was all a put-up job. I spent another five hours being questioned yesterday. And once the cops were done, it was the turn of the reporters. I’m worn out, let me tell you. Then the production manager’s been fleeced of all that money, so he’s going to use me to the hilt to make up for his losses. I have a half-day off today, then tomorrow I’m back on the treadmill again – magazine interviews, appearance on a talk show, recording discussions, discussions about appearing in some TV drama. In the next few months I have to decide about my future, so I’m being as nice as I can to everyone.”

“You sure no one’s eavesdropping?” the doctor murmured nervously.

“No, we’re fine in here. This is Daddy’s flat. I can’t go back to my own, it’s too dangerous. But they’ll be turning their attention to this place, too, before long.”

She wouldn’t be sleeping properly, he guessed. There was no way she could call a halt to this show-in-a-million she’d set in motion. She’d have to keep up the lies till the day she died. If they ever learned the truth about that abduction, they’d arrest her as an accessory to fraud. If she ever did get the urge to confess, the safest way would be to use a public broadcast. She’d be arrested, true, but at least she’d be free of the harassments of the production manager and the gangsters and politicians. They were bound to smell something fishy about this whole abduction story. And if they started following up their hunch, all they had to do was ask at the inn at that hot springs resort where the two had stayed, and the answer would be clear. Then it would be only a matter of time before they figured out that it was Shinobu herself who was behind all their problems. They’d wipe her career, for sure. Mind you, God knows what kind of career she had to look forward to anyway.

The cops weren’t completely satisfied that she was a victim, yet there was no way they could really set her up as an accomplice either. How could they find a motive that would stick? The only theory that would hold water was that she had been driven by her ambition to get back into the public eye. The mass media were playing up the claim that this former idol was using her misfortune to her own advantage. Meanwhile, the public was on the side of Shinobu and her unknown abductor. Many were saying that even if the whole story proved a farce, they should be let off lightly because, after all, they had helped sick children. Some sympathizers were even saying that thirty million yen was cheap at the price, while fans claimed Shinobu had grown up thanks to her abduction, and cynics spoke of “the starlet whose comeback cost a bomb.”

The names of the production manager, the gangsters, and the politicians who’d put up the ransom money had been publicized. They’d been made to squirm by being asked to explain themselves and clarify whether they intended to recover their money. In response, they had been forced to unanimously declare that Shinobu Yoimachi had their unwavering support and that they were delighted that she had come back safe and sound. This being the case, they were happy to have been able to help those unfortunate children with their donation.

They’d been forced to act charitably, and it made them hopping mad.

“Do you plan on keeping up the lie, then?” the doctor asked, just to remind her.

“Sure, no problem,” she replied. “Just so long as I can keep the money flowing. Those guys are just dogs that will follow along wherever the money runs. If they rubbed me out now, it would be their loss.”

“But sooner or later everyone’ll forget this thing, you know.”

“Sure. And I have lots to do before that happens. The battle’s just begun.” Her eyes held neither uncertainty nor loneliness.

Kita had looked just this way on Friday, the doctor thought. Though he made bad jokes, though he got giggly and stoned on marijuana, the determination in his eyes never wavered. Like her, he had had the will to fight.

Meeting Kita had changed Shinobu. What was it that had brought them together? That’s right, he’d been a fan of hers. He’d paid a hundred thousand yen to meet her, thus fulfilling one of his last wishes before he died. Shinobu must have sensed something at that meeting. She must have understood that within this man dwelled a proud and noble will.

When Kita had decided to end his life on Friday, his feelings must have been those of a soldier headed for the front – a tangle of tension, elation, and an exalted sense of purity. Shinobu’s keen senses would have picked up on this. And it was Kita, yes Kita, who had coaxed her from her cocoon and encouraged her to spread her wings. And Kita who had sent the doctor his dizzy spell.

“Just what is it you plan to battle, Shinobu?”

Neither she nor Kita would really have a clear enemy they needed to fight, after all. Surely there was an element of random willfulness in all this. The doctor couldn’t imagine a battle without an enemy in any terms other than as sheer hard work. But Shinobu had her reply ready.

“It’s simple. Kita and I fight freedom.”

“Freedom? You mean you’re a slave and you’re fighting to be free?”

“No, no. It’s just that I can’t any longer believe in sham freedom. Everyone keeps using the word, but all it amounts to is some limited freedom they’re grateful for being given by someone. Everyone’s ‘free’ on someone else’s terms. Freedom of expression, freedom of occupation, freedom of religion, freedom of living, freedom of movement – it’s all just about the rules of society really, not something I personally have won for myself, see? Look at it this way. No one’s going to give you the freedom to kill others, or to steal, or to commit arson, or to dispose of a corpse, or dig a grave wherever you want, or live on the street. So you may as well stop wanting to do any of those things. No one can actually be ‘free’ without being given the nod to do it. No one can even understand what freedom is. I get the feeling I’ve been deceived into thinking I was free all this time. So from now on, I intend to fight the lie of freedom.”

The doctor listened entranced. He could never have imagined that such an argument could have come from the mouth of this pouty-lipped star with fabulous breasts.

Maybe this realization of hers was due to the experience of having abducted herself along with the kidnapper, and given her own ransom money to sick kids instead of using it in some way connected with herself. It was the old Shinobu, the one who hadn’t yet met Kita, who’d sulked about how she was just a means for other people to make money. But having been abducted from her former self, she had learned the value and use of treating herself as property.

And so – eureka! Shinobu had discovered that she could change in all sorts of ways depending on who used her for what. And that she could change herself, any way she wanted.

She’d arrived at pretty much the same place that Kita had after his week-long travels – hadn’t she? Kita had thrown everything to the winds, and she’d taken on his colors and changed too. Or so it seemed.

“I guess you’re not afraid of dying now, eh?”

Shinobu snorted at this. “By the way, what’s become of my friend? If no one’s found his corpse, that would mean he’s still alive somewhere, surely?”

How was he to answer this? Kita appeared to have killed himself. The doctor had personally witnessed the wreckage. He hadn’t managed to prevent it, so he couldn’t claim payment from her. Miraculously, however, the suicide attempt might have failed. Perhaps Kita hadn’t died. The rest was groundless speculation, but he guessed Kita may have stubbornly tried to kill himself again, by some other means. Or perhaps he’d forgiven himself, given up on the suicide, and was back to his everyday life again?

“If he were alive now, what do you think he’d be doing?”

Shinobu thought for a while. Then she lowered her eyes to the floor, for all the world like a rejected child, and murmured, “I don’t think there’d be anything he could do.”

The doctor agreed. After all, there was nothing he could do himself, and he was beset by dizziness.

“I’d guess he’d be much more miserable to be in the world than he was before he tried to kill himself,” Shinobu continued.

“True enough. After all, if he’s still alive he’ll be wanted for abduction, theft, attempted murder, drug offences, and fraud. He’d be an overnight sensation, like you. I’m an accomplice, after all, so I know what I’m talking about…”

“No,” she broke in, “that’s not what I’m saying.” Then she went on, twisting her fingers as if to weave together into a coherent whole the words that floated insubstantially in her mind. “What I mean is… Kita, well he rejected all the lies about freedom. All he did was plan to kill himself without anyone ordering him about or meddling. But then all these people gathered like flies and tried to use him. Even suicide isn’t a free act. But I think that Kita ended up confronting society without ever intending to; he just let things take their course. It’s just that when he encountered an enemy bent on obstructing his freedom, he could only turn and fight. It’s backbreaking work, maintaining real freedom. If his suicide attempt really did fail, he’d be left living a life that was a hundred times as cruel as his old one. And he’d really and truly be alone this time. No one who’s had a near-death experience can ever return to a world and a life of lies, see.”

It was as if someone from some other existence were borrowing Shinobu’s voice to speak.

“Freedom is lonely. Jesus Christ has taught me that. If you want to be truly free, you have to resist all the temptations of money and fame and nation and society. As long as all you want is your own happiness and the pleasure of the moment, you’ll remain a slave, whoever you are. Christ cut himself off from the world for the sake of those who’d come after him. I want to follow him. If Kita really is alive, I want to be a comfort for his loneliness. I believe that if people who’ve discovered what real freedom is can join hands and work to create the future, the evils of the world will slowly improve. If I didn’t believe that, I could never survive this cruel present.”

This meant that Yoshio Kita had in effect given Shinobu the courage to live in true freedom, didn’t it? He’d shown her that even when there’s nothing more you can do, you have to bear it. The doctor wasn’t inclined to hear any more of her religious confession. She could choose to become her own version of a saint or Joan of Arc if she wished. He guessed she wanted to save her soul from the depressing reality she lived in. But as for the doctor, he’d never had any truck with Freedom, or The Future, or The Soul. He’d lived his life simply in terms of biological life and death. He’d been too busy cutting up others’ bodies, putting them back together again, and sewing them up, to spare a moment’s thought for such deep questions. From Shinobu’s point of view, he’d be classed among the people who go about madly conning and deceiving others.

“I doubt we’ll meet again,” he said, and put out his hand.

She took it in a weak grip. “What will you do?” she asked.

What indeed? He wasn’t cut out either for doctoring or for killing, but he’d realized this a bit late. Yet he too had been given a kind of cruel freedom, and he had to bear the painful reality of it. “I think I might try working in a convenience store.” For some reason, it seemed to him that this would be what he was most suited for. A bright, white space that somewhat resembled a hospital ward, providing “convenience” to a series of transient, anonymous clients. A quick word of thanks directed at their departing backs. A presence neither hated nor loved, merely considered convenient… could it be that he’d spent all these years unconsciously wishing to fulfil just such a role? If only his path had crossed with Kita’s and Yashiro’s and Shinobu’s simply through the fleeting exchange of employee and customers, he’d have been spared all the hassle and misdeeds of this past week. At this thought, the doctor suddenly found himself imagining the expressionless convenience store employee as a kind of priest of infinite wisdom, quietly living his life in accordance with the laws of nature.

“If you really do plan on working in a convenience store, we may meet again in fact.”

The doctor nodded. Then he bowed, and left the room almost certainly never to come back. Why not head straight for a convenience store? he thought. But three steps on, he had a sudden thought. Just possibly, if Kita hadn’t died, he’d suddenly turn up there wanting a packet of instant curry.

The sky was a pale pink. He’d never seen such a sky. There ought to be sea below it, but everything was dyed such a pink that there was no distinguishing one from the other.

His skin was so goose-pimpled with cold that you could have grated cheese on it. The cold was fierce, but there was no point in worrying over it. His body didn’t register the cold.

He wished someone would explain to him what he was doing here. Why was he lying here sodden, on this rocky beach? Why was he so horribly thirsty? Why was blood running from his hairline? Was there any reason why he wasn’t wearing shoes?

When he drew in a breath, his chest wheezed like an ocarina, and he coughed and spluttered. No one was there, yet he felt as if someone was gently patting his back. Trying to tell him to stop? Someone was beside him, but he couldn’t see anyone. Or was it a rock? A rock that bore a strong resemblance to his mother. When had his mother become a rock? But when he looked more carefully, it looked rather like the grumpy face of that killer, who shared his mother’s Alzheimerish puzzled look about where and who he was. Kita had forgotten whether the killer had died or was still alive. And what had happened to his mother after she lost her memory?

It was cold. He wanted to go somewhere a bit warmer. If he prayed for it, no doubt he’d find he was lying on a paradisiacal summer beach. Here goes – one, two, three.

There must be some mistake here. He couldn’t remember how things were supposed to be. Before he’d got here… yes, he could remember swimming. Underwater, in his clothes, through the swaying seaweed, deep down in the salty water with bubbles racing upward. While someone was making him tingle.

Had he been dreaming? And if so, did that mean that this gooseflesh and his sodden trousers and socks were part of the same dream? Was blood red in dreams just like in real life? Maybe the sky and sea were this pink colour because it was a dream. There was a certain special way to behave in dreams. He didn’t need to do anything. The dream would do it all for him. But whose dream was this? The stone’s dream? The sea’s?

How he longed to get into a good hot bath. OK, let’s try a bath dream. And he’d love to eat some noodles or curry. Right, let’s have a curry dream while he was at it.

The sky had turned a dark brown. The sea was dark red. Time was constantly slipping forward somewhere at the edges of his consciousness. The blood on his forehead had apparently dried now, and his clothes were barely damp. Well at any rate, he thought, let’s chase time.

He set off to walk along the water’s edge, picking up a driftwood stick to use as a crutch. He must have walked for close to an hour, his easy tempo following the rhythm of the waves, yet still time seemed to be racing ahead of him. His toe had been cut up on shell fragments, and he could walk no further. But when he sat down, he found himself looking at a shoe like a weather-beaten old fisherman’s face, washed up on the shore. He put his wounded foot into this and walked on some way further, and then he came across a sneaker that looked like some fat kid just woken from sleep. With two shoes, he could now walk at a pace that kept up with the passage of time – but now the wind had changed direction and was blowing in from the sea, catching him like wind in a sail and pushing him up towards the mountains.

He listened attentively. Sometimes the wind sounded like the cry of a bird, sometimes like the moan of a discontented woman, and then again like an electronic hum, or like clothing being ripped. It paused for a second, and then he found himself enclosed by trees with brown, scaly trunks, far from the sound of the sea. Softly, a muddy darkness began to descend over the wood. His nostrils drew in the scent of pine resin and night dampness.

He curled up in a hollow made by the roots of a great pine, snuggled down like a bagworm under a layer of leafy branches and grass he’d gathered, and closed his eyes.

His eyes were prized open by a shaft of light shining down through the branches. “Wake up!” someone seemed to be saying. He looked about him. A skylark was singing madly, and to his ears it seemed to be shouting hysterically “Die! Die!” But another skylark that shot across the tree above him from a different direction was wailing “Free!”

He’d spent the night in his curled position, and now pain like a needle shot through his back. And with the pain, his consciousness of himself returned.

What the hell am I doing here? Kita shivered. A combination of cold and fear raced along his dulled and frazzled nerves into every corner of his body.

Sure enough, the thing he most feared had become reality. His plan to reach the other world had somehow misfired, and he’d been denied entry. Had he chosen the wrong method? Was death itself turning its back on him? Or was it that the other world was actually much more distant than he’d imagined, and he had to cross endless mountains, rivers, valleys and seas to reach it?

He’d assumed humans died more easily than this, but this had obviously been a fatal error. Here he was, it turned out, unable to become a corpse, dragging around this useless garbage of a body. Did he have to recycle himself, was that it? If only he’d managed to transform himself neatly into a drowned corpse, this self and its shame, memories, words, and despair would all long since have evaporated, and he’d be floating gracefully upon the waves, with everything given over to nature’s hands. But no, it seemed becoming a corpse wasn’t anything like so easy. That’s what someone was trying to tell him.

Think of all the men and women who’d tried to stand in the way of his suicide. There was no question they’d all been sent as messengers from beyond that mysterious curtain. They’d appeared because, from the moment Kita had decided to commit Death by Choice and kill himself the following Friday, he’d been minutely observed from beyond this inhuman curtain of death. He’d had the death part of his sentence excised and been left simply with the choice, the freedom. In other words, he’d been ordered to be free even from death.

But what on earth could he do? How was he supposed to use this freedom? It was precisely because there was nothing else he could do that he’d given his stupid laugh and decided to die. But his play had been parried. And now here he was, unable to act again. He was back to where he’d started eight days ago.

Still, that Friday eight days ago he’d still had things to do – the visit to his Dad’s grave, the feasting, abducting an idol, donating to the Red Cross, seeing his old lover again. He’d had a certain amount of money, not to mention physical strength, and the urge to act. A short life and a merry death, that’s how it should have gone. But look at him now. The two thousand yen in notes he’d had in his pocket had apparently gone as an offering to the sea, and all that remained in his pocket was forty yen. His physical and mental strength were both at an all-time low, and he was left gaping at this apparently endless nightmare unfolding around him.

What would happen if he simply waited and did nothing now? Kita summoned what little imaginative powers remained to him, and tried to think.

He’d spent too much effort in fruitless resistance of one sort or another, that was the trouble. That’s why he’d been left hanging onto life like this. Enough. No more resisting. He was as good as through the door into the other world, after all, so why not simply accept whatever may happen now? Everything except meddling from other people, that was. Luckily, there was no sign of a soul around here. Still, you never knew when some curious hiker might come striding along, or someone out after wild herbs, so he’d be better off hiding deeper in the forest. He should look for some sheltered spot out of the rain, make himself enough space to lie down, and gather some wild coltsfoot leaves for a roof. This would be his grave. If he stuck it out for two weeks or so, surely he’d manage to turn into a mummy as he lay there.

It took him half a day to climb the narrow mountain track, cross a stream, push his way through thickets of dwarf bamboo, and walk around till he found a suitable gravesite, a cave between two great rocks. He set about stamping down the dwarf bamboo on the floor, then he laid down the coltsfoot leaves he’d picked along the way, and plugged the gaps in the walls with wet clay. By the time he’d made himself the kind of den where a bear would happily settle in to hibernate, the woods were growing dark. He’d worked hard.

It was quite a pleasant coffin to lie in. The coltsfoot and bamboo blanket kept up a constant rustle, but they held the warmth. Strangely free of hunger, he slept deeply. The silence of the forest at night was so complete that his ears rang and his heart beat loudly, but the soft rustle of the bamboo leaves helped calm his fears.

He dreamed of eating curry. With each mouthful he found more curry on the plate, till it had grown to a small mountain before his eyes, which spilled over and engulfed him.

When he woke, he was seized with a fierce thirst and a desire to vomit. He struggled out of his coffin and made his way through the dwarf bamboo in search of the stream. It seemed he’d be making this thirty-minute trip there and back every day from now on. The nausea subsided once he’d drunk, but it was now replaced by fierce stomach cramps. At last, around noon, he managed to shit.

The nausea and headache were a little better while the sun was shining, but as soon as night came on the darkness clamped painfully around his stomach and his head. There seemed to be a kind of tidal rhythm to the pain.

As he lay there in the darkness, he felt the boundary between life and death grow blurred. His body would eventually return to the soil, but he felt that his consciousness too was shifting, and growing more intimate with the earth. The only problem was, the suffering got in the way.

You’re still alive. The pain is the proof of it.

He decided to pick up a small stone every time he went for water, and make a pile in front of his grave.

He was growing more sensitive to pain and fear. The enemy was obviously urging him to become increasingly aware of approaching death. Well then, he’d make himself insensitive, he decided. But though he managed to do this to some extent, time stretched out and drove him mad. It was easiest to sleep, but he was terrified of being seized by insomnia when night came, so he lay there with his eyes open while it was light, looking at the trees and shrubs and clouds, and listening to the sounds of the forest. There was a shrub nearby that, like a trompe l’oeil, became now a plump woman’s face, now a malicious-looking rabbit face, now the backside of a squatting sumo wrestler. And then there were the endless, meaningful whisperings of the forest.

Groaning, he rolled about in his rock shelter, sweating profusely, his stomach stabbed by fierce pains like a sword piercing his guts. It was literally a battle with death. Even if he admitted defeat and surrendered, though, his merciless ordeal would continue. Why such pains in his stomach, when he’d eaten nothing? He’d had no idea until this moment just what suffering was involved in not eating. It seemed he had chosen the very opposite of an easy death.

Not only his stomach but his head was wracked with pain, and now the pains cycled more and more swiftly through him. Almost like the pangs of childbirth. There was pain in the birth of new life and the relinquishing of old life alike.

Even when the agony weakened a little, he now knew to anticipate the cycle, and was braced against its next onslaught. Then, just a little later than he’d anticipated, fresh pain would surge through him.

Today, it took twice as long to make his way down to drink water and return. He had all the time in the world, but how much longer would his strength hold? When all that was left was his bones, time would still flow gently along in the stream and forest.

His cheeks were sunken, his trousers were loose on his frame. The loss of flesh meant that the cold penetrated more fiercely. He sought out the sunlight as much as he could, and lay curled in it.

It was terrible not to sleep at night. The darkness and the silence doubled his suffering. The only tiny salvation was in the soft burr of the crickets. It sounded in his ears like music, like song. Then a cicada began, its rhythmic rasping call seeming to say “eat and sleep, eat and sleep,” or “life or death, life or death.”

For the insects, what lay here was a huge and marvellous lump of potential prey. They must be gathering round to check him out. After all, it would be their job to return him to the earth.

Rain fell. He settled his head so that his open mouth could catch the drops, and lay there for a while. This allowed him to forego the exhausting business of making his way down to the stream and back.

The rain brought a faint scent of herbs. Forest tea, he thought as he drank. He feverishly counted the drops that entered his mouth – a total of 5,411.

It must be poor circulation that made him feel so cold. But his body was frail now, and walking was a huge effort. His legs in particular felt terribly weak. Once he could no longer go for water, death would no doubt come quite swiftly.

He began to suffer fierce palpitations. His heart was racing uncontrollably, pumping blood around the body, desperately trying to keep his body temperature up. Kita was doing his best to die, but his heart was bravely trying to keep him alive. This pain that flowed into every corner of his body must be his organs and nerves rising up in protest at his death. But he was by now less than half alive.

His skin was parched, and flaking off in raised scales. Smelly pus oozed from the wound in his forehead.

Hey, worms, be glad and rejoice! You’ll soon be served a lovely big lump of meat jerky.

The pebbles he piled up one by one even on the days he didn’t go for a drink had now reached more than twenty. By now, his body no longer responded to orders. And yet he wanted water.

The torment went on, in a blur of day and night. He managed to piss a tiny trickle of urine once a day, but each time with more pain.

He thought perhaps an escape into the world of dreams would lessen the suffering a little, but the dreams were never pleasant. He was tired of dreaming. He wanted to become a figure in someone else’s dream for a change. That way he’d feel neither pain nor cold, even if he were beaten, abused, even killed.

This was horrible. All he was doing was not eating, so why should he be suffering such pain and cold?

Christ underwent a fast of forty days in the wilderness in his thirtieth year. Buddha attained enlightenment after a forty-day fast, and Moses was given the Ten Commandments after fasting forty days. So all the great religious founders had undergone this horrible suffering. They must have had exceptional powers of endurance. More than likely, though, these saints were either extreme masochists, or people with an exceptional physical make-up.

He hadn’t had the slightest intention of getting pally with the saints, or of understanding how they’d felt. He’d only wanted to die a light-hearted death. If he’d realized what a cruel ordeal those men had been through, he’d have bowed in heartfelt reverence before both God and the Buddha.

The saintly hermits of old would have tasted the extremes of loneliness, hallucination, and suffering as they underwent their experiences of life and death, light and dark, good and evil, freedom and restraint. Those fierce oppositions would have registered along their nerves as aching head, aching stomach, cold, nausea, paralysis, dream, hallucination, and fear. Half dead, their thoughts came with the half-life left to them. They saw no one, ate nothing, made no attempt to escape or hide; they relinquished the self, and existed simply in this in-between state. The unbearable pain of fasting would have driven them again and again to almost yield to the temptation to flee to either life or death. Life up till now wasn’t all that bad, they’d have thought. Now that I’ve withstood all this suffering, the old life will feel wonderfully easy after this. They may have felt that it was better after all to resign yourself to the constraints of normal life rather than endure this brutal freedom. Or maybe they felt more inclined to give up trying to think with the life that remained to them, and instead simply hasten their death.

Yet they resisted. They stood firm in this limbo state, learned the art of enduring the cruel extremes of freedom, and in the end walked back among the people again. No doubt what awaited them there were misunderstandings and oppression by the authorities. No one would be able to think like them, or have the strength to endure as they had. They had nothing more to fear. It was the people and the authorities that now feared them.

And he had mistakenly entered that same limbo, where misunderstanding, persuasion, discrimination, and persecution meant nothing.

Having understood so late in the day, Kita felt the urge to pray to something. He had defiled holy ground, and he feared that still crueller torments awaited him. And now, for the first time since chasing himself into this forest, he felt that it would be better to escape.

This was the worst day so far. Pain stabbed at him constantly, and he was assailed by a nausea so strong it threatened to turn his guts inside out. Twisting his now useless body about he struggled to endure, lost consciousness when the pain became too great, regained it again to continue his suffering.

He had forfeited all chance of escape now. In a few more days he’d surely be dead.

Rain fell, and for the first time in three days water touched his mouth. The clouds were bringing water for the dying.

If he had a phone handy, he’d like to get onto the god of death and say Quick, kill me! I’m waiting!

He wasn’t fasting. No, it’s just that there wasn’t any food, nor any appetite. The thought made him want to laugh. Food has escaped me. And there’s no way I can escape.

He no longer knew whether he felt pain, or cold, or indeed anything.

He’d grown very thin and light. Shrivelled as a slice of dried squid. Put him over a flame and he’d curl.

Water, he wanted water. Once the messenger of death came for him, he’d be taken to the River Styx. Then he could drink his fill.

Rain. He’d thought he’d be dead by morning, but there was still some life in him after all. Lots of rain today. He’d drunk a bit too much. Pissing was painful. Once he’d managed to piss, his body was attacked by sharp pains like being packed in needles of ice. Maybe he’d die of cold before he died of starvation.

If only the forest would burst into flames, he prayed. It would release him from this cold, and give him a cremation.

A beautiful day. Same pain, but less excruciating if he stopped focusing on it. Come what may, he’d try going for water today he decided. His legs had completely given in by now, but he could roll down the slope, and crawling was still possible. But he wouldn’t be able to get back to the cave, would he? He didn’t have the strength to make himself a new bed sheltered from the rain and wind. Well, he was nine tenths dead by now, so what did it matter? He could choose to stay in this coffin till he shrivelled to a mummy, or return to earth somewhere out there among the dwarf bamboo, or set off to meet the River Styx halfway – at any rate, he’d die faster by moving.

So out he crawled. OK, he thought, let’s see if I can walk. He tried standing with the support of the rock face. His legs no longer had anything to do with him. His will set off to walk, but his legs refused to do as they were told. He staggered three steps, his body carried unwillingly along above the tottering legs, then collapsed.

He tried again and again, crawling along on all fours in short bursts, but he’d only gone barely thirty yards from the cave when his strength gave out.

He rolled over and looked at the sky. The clouds were laughing. Ah, he thought with a sigh, how stupid I’ve been to struggle, and he made his way back to the cave with the same repetition of crawl and stagger. He’d finally given in now. It was just that it was such a beautiful day he couldn’t bear to stay still.

He’d now become part of this nameless forest.

His cells were cannibalizing each other, it seemed to him. The law of strong eats weak was being displayed right here in his own body. And cannibalism hurt.

Still being dismembered? Not over yet?

He really should have drowned. Compared to starvation, all those other deaths – drowning, hanging, electrocution, falling off a cliff, poisoning, shock – were just a roller-coaster ride.

Still not dead? Oh come on, stop joking.

I’ll be there soon. Just have to cut the thread.

Even after all this, still dreaming. Still a bit left in the battery, eh? The doctor was serving in a convenience store, and he complained when Kita turned up to buy a packet of instant curry.

“I’m supposed to get your organs when you die, you know.” Good God, he was still on about that. Forget the organs, just remove the pain in here, will you?

He really should be dead by now, but the pain was still there.

What’s that? A helicopter? Has a war begun, maybe?

Hey, looks like someone’s out there. Come to fetch me across the river at last, is that it?

Nausea. Come on, spew me out onto the far shore for God’s sake.

Where am I? Still in limbo, it seems…