Death by Choice

^{Chapter 1} FRIDAY

You have got to be joking, thought the traveller, his head bowed before the judge’s sentence. The “courtroom” was exactly like the little oden restaurant he dropped into a couple of times a month, and a haze of steam obscured the faces of both the public prosecutor and the lawyers. The judge who had delivered his sentence of Death by Choice was riding piggyback on a woman in a denim skirt. In fact, there was no getting around it: the judge was actually a baby. So what did this baby think it was up to, treating him in this high-handed fashion? The traveller felt half inclined to retaliate with a bit of sarcasm, but he felt constrained by the presence of the woman and held his tongue. He somehow felt he knew her, but he couldn’t put his finger on who she was. He’d met her quite a while ago; that much he was certain of. As for this smart-arse baby, he’d never laid eyes on him before. Babies were absolutely anonymous creatures to him. Whoever it might be, it was only someone’s baby as far as he was concerned. He guessed this particular baby must plan on being a judge some time around the mid-twenty-first century. But why did this poor traveller have to find himself being sentenced by a baby?

“Mumma! Milky!” the baby shouted suddenly. The woman carrying him on her back brought down her gavel with a thud, upon which the traveller was summarily ejected from the courtroom.

He found that the aeroplane had taken off, and had already levelled out. The traveller always grew drowsy just before takeoff. That gavel hitting the desk had actually been the sound of a baby’s bottle hitting the floor, fallen from the hand of the young mother in the seat across the aisle from him.

Fresh from his dream, the traveller had the feeling that the baby judge had somehow resembled his dead father. Come to think of it, the woman carrying him seemed to be one of his classmates from middle school days.

He examined the mother and baby across the aisle out of the corner of his eye. The baby gazed back at him. “Abama oodleoodle,” it remarked. “Eh?” said the traveller, caught off guard. The mother, becoming aware that her little darling was talking to some unknown man, murmured, “Yes dear, I’ll give you your milky now sweetheart,” throwing the man a tense, warning smile as she did so. In an attempt to dispel her fears, he responded by relaxing his frown and attempting to entertain the baby by blowing out his cheeks and crossing his eyes. Breathing noisily through its nose as it sucked away at the bottle clutched in its hands, the baby glared back. It looked as if it was about to give him a stern piece of its mind. The traveller gave a little sigh, and settled back to flip through the magazine from the seat pocket in front of him. The baby sighed too. From then on, the traveller found their eyes meeting again and again. Whenever their gaze locked, the baby would try to engage him in conversation. It seemed to be speaking in words that only the dream world could make sense of. Unfortunately, however, the traveller knew neither the grammar nor the pronunciation of dream language, and it didn’t look like the mother could interpret for him either. From time to time, the baby sighed, and gave a derisive snort of laughter. The traveller too had once been a baby. More than thirty years ago it was now. He had no way of recalling the sort of things he’d thought as a baby, but it seemed to him the world of time had been different back then. Yesterday and tomorrow had been all jumbled up together, a year would pass in the space of a day, and he could slip easily in and out of past and future lives – that was the kind of dream world he imagined he’d inhabited as an infant.

Sure, it would be enough to make anyone snort with derision, or heave a sigh or two, if a man turned into a baby and looked back over his own life.

Dreams were the sort of thing that seemed at first glance to have some meaning, but in fact you could interpret them any way you wanted. With the one he’d just had, though, he’d certainly feel a lot better if he treated it as completely meaningless. Being able to interpret dreams any way you wanted meant in effect that you could rewrite them as much as you liked. In the hands of someone who had a way with words, a nightmare could become a harbinger of good luck, while a pleasant dream might turn out to be simply the flip side of harsh reality. Dreams get used according to the needs of the moment. If something’s preying on your mind, take a look at your dreams and you’ll discover what it is. If the future’s weighing on you, ask your dreams for the answer. It will help you prepare yourself, if nothing else.

The traveller had never been psychoanalysed. Nor did he have any particular worries. He never remembered his dreams. Trying to recall them only made you feel anxious, after all. As to the question of where he came from and where he’d go when he died, well the answer had always been perfectly clear. The fact was, there was nothing he could do about it. What his dreams told him was: you yourself are quite meaningless.

On a sudden impulse, the traveller had just been to visit the grave of his father, who had died four years ago. His father’s name was inscribed on a gravestone in Dazaifu, his birthplace. At the age of sixteen he’d left Kyushu for Tokyo in search of fame or fortune, and for the following forty years he’d moved from one suburb of Tokyo to another, working virtually without a break all that time. He’d gone to his final rest still dreaming of returning home in triumph. He’d requested that he be buried back home in the family tomb, but there were no longer any family members left in Dazaifu to look after the ancestors, just the lonely grave. The priest in charge of the cemetery had intended to make the plot over to another family, and this new addition foiled his plans. The traveller and his mother had also come up with a plan to move the grave to a new site in the suburbs of Tokyo so that they could look after it, but his father had stuck to his guns. I may have nothing else in the world to call my own, he declared, but that grave is home and I want to go back there. Nothing had gone his way in life, thought his son, so the least they could do was follow his wishes in death.

It was four years since he’d visited the ancestral grave, and it was an overgrown wilderness. The traveller weeded it, cleaned up the gravestone with a scrubbing brush, and placed fresh flowers and sake before it. As he worked, he had to smile. What on earth had his father been thinking to want to come back to his birthplace, even if it was as a corpse? Did he believe that the soul should return to its place of origin? Or was it that forty years after he’d left home, forty long years of Rip Van Winkle existence, he still wanted to go to his eternal rest in the bosom of his ancestors?

His father had gone through life a good-natured dupe, too spendthrift ever to make his fortune and too gullible ever to make his mark on the world. And his son had quite a lot in common with him. His father had named him Yoshio, “good man,” and his own foolish good nature had come down to the boy. Yoshio Kita was thus at the mercy of genes that inclined him to serve others. In reaction, he longed to try a life devoted to the impulse of the moment, to follow his instincts, to give way to explosive emotions.

Since about the age of thirteen, Yoshio Kita had developed a tendency to despair of the future, and from time to time he had the recurring thought that he may as well just throw it all in and die. Nevertheless, he’d made it this far without putting the idea into action, just mooching along through an uneventful life, relying on his own good nature to get him by. But, as sometimes happens, he suddenly became possessed by the idea.

Still, when he came to think of it, dying wasn’t all that easy. That French philosopher who died of an autoimmune disease had advocated the idea of suicide as a death as pleasant as making love to your sweetheart in some hotel room. But he had actually latched onto the idea after his visit to Japan. Here in Japan, suicide had traditionally been a matter of form, without necessarily any need for a motive or a reason or a crime to justify it. It was the same for the mourners who saw you off to the other world – they mourned you according to custom, without feeling they had to get to the bottom of just why you killed yourself. Sure, there were people who enjoyed tossing round ideas about death and suicide, but then they weren’t the ones who did it. They stayed alive, which meant they got to say whatever they liked about it. They could bewail its absurdity or investigate its true nature all they liked. But the dead are mute. The living can choose to take that silence as ironic or see it as some kind of joke if they want. Nevertheless, the person who dies gets to choose his own death. That’s essentially what suicide’s been about in Japan all along. You may be forced to commit suicide by society or other people, but the act itself is completely meaningless. What’s without any meaning can sometimes make people laugh. And since the dead can’t laugh, the living have to make up for it by getting the joke he intended and laughing for him. How ironic it would be for the poor guy if they didn’t get it!

There’s a story about the comic storyteller who liked to make his audience groan by being intentionally unfunny. Apparently, as he lay in the hospital bed about to breathe his last, he stretched out his hand toward the family members gathered round him. But when his wife and children went to seize it, he waved them feebly away.

“No, no,” he said, “I’m after money.”

There he is, about to die at any moment, surrounded by people weeping at this parting from their beloved husband and father, and he goes and makes a tired old gag like that. This was the man who liked to scandalize his audiences as a matter of principle. That was his art, his very essence, so even on his deathbed he was still at it. People found this moving. Even at the very doors of heaven or bound for hell, they said, it looks like he couldn’t resist one more stab at getting a laugh.

This way of dying is revered in Japan, you might say. It sticks in people’s memory. The one dying and the ones seeing him off are both essentially following the old traditions.

In the airport restroom, Yoshio Kita threw away the Boston bag he’d been carrying, and emerged empty-handed. The bag held a change of clothes, a couple of magazines, and a packet of Dazaifu rice cakes. There was no need to carry any of this stuff around any more now.

Swaying along in the carriage of the monorail into the city, he pondered where to start, but his mind was a complete blank, and nothing came to him. Finally, as he arrived at the last stop in Hamamatsucho, he came up with a few ideas – he’d withdraw money from the bank, he’d indulge in luxury and debauchery, and he’d do something for the world and humanity. He had 1,116,715 yen in his bank account. It was quite a hefty amount to take out all at once, and he may well want to make some purchases on the credit card, so he settled for withdrawing 300,000 yen, which he divided up and stuffed into his pockets.

OK, he thought to himself as he stepped out into the main street, let’s use my remaining time on earth meaningfully and efficiently. He set about trying to hail a cab, but not a single one that passed him had a “vacant” light posted. Not a good start. But as he was standing there, eyes peeled for cabs, he was startled to catch a sudden glimpse of a figure out of the corner of his eye. Just two yards back down the road, a middle-aged man, of medium height and medium weight, in a grey three-button suit, was standing with an innocent air, trying to sneak in ahead of him to nab the first vacant cab. He looked like he’d only just managed to haul his heavy-looking aluminium briefcase as far as the street and was anxious to get to his next destination by the shortest possible route as soon as he’d caught his breath. In short, he looked like the sort of guy a policeman would immediately be inclined to ask a few questions. Kita simply wanted to be somewhere else – anywhere else, he’d decide where once the wheels were rolling – and had no reason to compete with this fellow, but on the other hand he didn’t want his adventures to get off on the wrong foot. And so, keeping a careful check on the man’s back, he moved five yards down ahead of him, and stood there squirming about with his hand raised like an elementary school student with the right answer, trying to draw attention to himself, as if to say to the world “I got here first.” The man, however, ignored him completely. He just moved himself two yards down beyond Kita. There he slipped a cigarette into his mouth and set about searching for his lighter, slapping his pockets up and down both sides of his suit, then glanced at his watch, and even clucked his tongue in mild impatience. A taxi drew in, its indicator flashing. The middle-aged man turned to Kita. “Got a light?” he said. Kita pretended not to hear him. Determined to be heard, the man went on, “It’s difficult to catch a cab right now, so why don’t you join me and we can ride together?” No longer able to ignore him, Kita asked, “Where are you going?”

Guys off to the cycle races might share a cab, but Kita didn’t think this was the sort of town where two men completely unknown to each other could nonchalantly just hop in together like that. As for himself, of course, he was quite prepared. If the guy turned out to be a murderer, he’d simply resign himself to the fact that his fate had caught up with him. But wasn’t the other man at all concerned whether he himself might be a killer?

The taxi was sitting idling beside them with the door open. The other man climbed in, hugging his case, and beckoned Kita to get in after him. He hadn’t even asked where Kita was going, probably to forestall any refusal. So this was his justification for sneaking in ahead for a cab – he’d simply planned to share it, eh? Kita settled down beside him without a word, annoyed that he was tacitly allowing the man to get away with his tactic. The man gave a destination to the driver, then turned to Kita. “What about you?” he asked. “That’ll do fine,” Kita said casually. His old teacher would have told him not to let things sweep him passively along like this, to assert himself. Too bad, though. The other guy was too pushy to resist.

The taxi set off for downtown Shibuya. Shibuya’s actually not a bad idea, he thought, immediately setting about justifying having let himself be swept along by events. A good place to relax what goes on above the neck, and liven things up below the waist. After all, I’m going to die in a week’s time, so why not go easy on the resentment and hatred side of life? He found himself feeling more magnanimous and openhearted than he had in years.

The cab radio was tuned to the news broadcast. The announcer’s even, detached style of reading had a way of making any murder, air raid, terrorist bomb attack, robbery, or collapse of the share market sound like a matter of no personal concern. After all, things were all going all right as far as you yourself were concerned, so you could get a mild kick out of tales of terrorist attack, or feel happy that you weren’t among the victims of a murderer, without ever registering despair or hope or indulging in self-reflection as you listened. Sure, there were moments when you felt envy, but five minutes later it was gone.

“Another convenience store robbery, eh? There’s been a lot of that lately. Never out of a job in that line of work – and pretty easy work in Japan at that, with all those drink machines packed full of money standing around on the streets.”

The man was holding forth with the aim of getting Kita and the driver to chime in.

“Those vending machines are real moneyboxes, aren’t they?” said the driver, with a trace of a northern accent. He seemed to relish talk. At times when he had no passenger, he’d probably amuse himself by talking back to the radio announcer as if they were on air together.

“Japan’s a dangerous place these days, that’s for sure. There are plenty who’ll understand you when you talk, mind you, but nowadays we’ve got a lot of foreign types who can’t follow a word you say. Get mixed up with those guys and bang, you’re done for. We cab drivers who got to work with our backs to folks are always feeling danger right behind us.”

“So what would you do if I turned out to be a robber?” murmured the man, tapping a finger against his aluminium case.

“Stop the bad jokes, won’t you?” responded the driver.

“Well there you are saying you’re always sensing danger behind you, aren’t you?”

“Ah well,” said the driver with a laugh. “Your life’s in my hands, after all.”

“OK, you got me there. But when you think about it, the guy that robbed that store will be listening to the news somewhere right now, won’t he? What’s he going to feel when he sees his own image caught on security cameras, if he’s watching the TV news?”

The man now turned to Kita. “I’ll bet you go to convenience stores quite a lot,” he said meaningfully.

Oh, Kita realized at last, so there’s been news of a store robbery has there?

“I sometimes go to them to buy dinner. And students go to read magazines, labourers go to buy drinks, gangsters go to buy ice or cat food, office girls go to buy a quick stew or some cookies.”

“OK. I wasn’t really asking what you went for. Me, I go to use their bathrooms from time to time. Sorry, I should have introduced myself.”

The man abruptly held out a name card. “Heita Yashiro, Executive Director, Thanatos Movie Productions,” Kita read. Checking the man’s face again, he had the impression it was shining with eager curiosity.

“I don’t have a name card.”

“Free men like you don’t need name cards or luggage I guess. It’s good to have your hands free for everything that comes along. Your own self is the biggest piece of baggage you own. Still, you can’t get on with the job if you leave yourself behind, can you? What’s your name, by the way?”

Kita had had no intention of indulging in mutual introductions. On the other hand, he wasn’t prepared to be the butt of this busybody’s suspicions, so he said, “Yoshio Kita.” The man then wanted to know what characters he wrote his name with, so Kita found himself having to write his name in the man’s notebook. The man stared hard at what he’d written and seemed about to speak, so Kita cut in quickly.

“Is that a camera you’ve got in that case?”

Yashiro nodded as though he’d been waiting for the question. “I’ll get anything on film,” he said.

“You’re talking adult videos and stuff like that?”

“Porn, news, documentaries, personal stories… like I say, anything. I shoot whatever there is to shoot.”

“And what do you do with it?”

“I sell it. There are video cameras all over the world now. The world’s full of peepholes wherever you care to look. And there are people who can’t wait to be peeped on, what’s more.”

“So I guess that means you’re pretty busy.”

“My problem is I spend my life being busy and never making much money at it. The competition’s fierce. But everyone wants to believe these days that whatever’s on camera’s got to be the truth. That’s what keeps me doing it.”

“You’re a man of conviction in your work, then.”

Kita couldn’t bring himself to simply let the man know he had no interest in what he did for a living. He kept up the flow of casual responses while he waited for the man to realize there was no point in talking.

“Conviction’s an important thing, you know. There’s a big difference between someone with conviction and someone without it. Your customer is moved by your conviction, see. Even a criminal, he’ll find supporters just so long as he’s got good strong convictions.”

“Do you have anything to do with crime yourself?”

“Good God no. Do I look like that sort of guy?”

Kita shrank at the sudden roughness in Yashiro’s voice, and said softly, keeping a wary eye on him as he spoke, “Well, no, but you can’t always judge by appearances, can you?”

After a moment’s pause, Yashiro let out a rather forced chuckle.

“True enough, true enough. It’s the guy who wears a nice-guy mask who’ll turn around and commit the most cold-blooded crime. That’s the kind of perfectly average face you get the feeling you’ve seen somewhere before. It’s the same with evil these days, you don’t even notice it any more. It happens absolutely naturally. But the good, well that’s often artificial. If you shoot real evil on camera, you can’t really tell what it is you’re seeing. But good comes across real pretty. It’s made itself up to look great, see. Same as a naked woman. But real good’s a thing you don’t even notice. That’s why you won’t catch it on camera. That’s what I want to shoot.”

Kita could see what Yashiro was saying. He nodded with a sigh. “I’m a serious guy too, though I don’t put on any solemn airs,” he said. It wasn’t just a joke or some kind of excuse; in his own way he meant it. But he wondered if it would make sense to his sermonizing companion.

Heading up Dôgenzaka, just after the traffic lights Yashiro announced he’d stop there. He asked Kita whether he was going on, so Kita said this was fine with him too. He sat back and waited for Yashiro to pay and get out. When he proffered a couple of notes as his share of the fare, Yashiro waved them away, then glanced at his watch.

“Well then, what do you say to a cold beer?” Yashiro pointed towards a drinking place that had just opened its doors.

Kita hesitated. There was no reason why he should keep this man company, but on the other hand he couldn’t think how to excuse himself.

“Sorry, but would you mind carrying the camera for me?” Yashiro continued. “My neck’s kinda sore.” And so Kita found himself acting as porter, and following Yashiro in. The place was completely empty. They sat at the counter, and as the cook was busy writing up the day’s menu on the blackboard before them, Yashiro set about ordering. He asked for one dish after another – flounder sashimi, deep-fried tofu, salted squid, boiled potato and mincemeat, and finally beer.

Well, thought Kita, it wouldn’t matter if he put off carrying out his plan until he’d had two or three beers and evening had come. His impulses would be able to flow unchecked with alcohol and darkness on his side, after all. But was Heita Yashiro the right companion to give him the boost he needed? A company director is generally the kind of guy who’s brimming with self-confidence, who can dupe you all too easily. They put all the failures down to the other guy, and the successes down to their own foresight. Kita had worked for three directors in his life, and it was due to his own foresight that he’d managed to leave the company before it folded. He couldn’t claim to have been lucky exactly, but he did manage to get through it all without giving in to despair. He’d managed this by telling himself this was what happened to everyone else too. Gangsters, office girls, students, housewives, directors, labourers, foreigners – they all felt the same hopelessness, he told himself. It soothed him. Sure there must be labourers who wondered where the joy was in having to slave away on the roads under a broiling midsummer sun, but after ten bottles of beer they’d have forgotten all about their problems. A student who failed to get a job at the end of his studies would feel pretty depressed about the future, but he could always comfort a friend who was even worse off than him. Kita believed his own limited experience had taught him how to come to terms with despair. He also had a fair understanding of how to deal with the despair of others. You listened to their woes with warmth and concern. The death of a relative, the death of a child, a friend’s betrayal, a broken heart, illness – if you’d had a similar experience yourself, you could exchange stories at least. A kind of bartering on the troubles market. Then in the end you could both laugh together, united by your sorrows. That laughter was the special prerogative of people in that situation, the reward for having managed to produce some sort of comfort and friendship from the dregs of despair.

He’d done all this from time to time, but now he found he’d somehow grown sick of getting along so well with despair. He’d begun to feel that even that special humour that despair breeds was kind of empty. It was in fact quite scary to cross over to the far shore and leave despair behind, and Kita was disturbingly aware of feeling himself tumbling into the muddy depths of his own unconscious. Perhaps Yashiro intuited this, or perhaps it was just a passing remark, but as he wiped his face with the warm towel provided by the establishment, Yashiro said, “You’re a weird sort of guy, I must say.”

“I don’t mean that negatively,” he went on. “Hey, I make my living with the camera after all, and I’m used to relying on my own intuition. I’m pretty good at guessing right. I can at least look at a face and guess whether this is just an average guy or not.”

“I’m an average guy.”

“Anyone who says that about themselves has got to be weird.”

Kita twisted his head around and smiled. “Sure enough, we’re not going to get along, are we? It was a funny kind of meeting,” he said.

At this, Yashiro brought his prying face up so close that Kita could feel his breath, and said, “Look here. I’m not letting on what’s on my mind, you know.”

When Kita failed to take the bait, Yashiro tried to call his bluff. “You looked away just then, you know. See, you can’t meet my eyes.”

“Well anyone would want to look away if they were being stared at by your goggly deep-sea fish eyes.”

“Deep-sea fish eyes, that’s a good one,” Yashiro said jauntily, backing off, and he offered to pour Kita another beer. “Hey, companionship on the journey, kindness in life, as the saying goes. Let’s treat this like a once-in-a-lifetime chance, hey? They say that’s what keeps two people connected into the next life, after all.”

People who like proverbs and sermonizing will talk just the same whoever they’re speaking to. They probably talk the same way to themselves too. Yashiro opened his notebook and stared at the page where Kita had written his name. “Yoshio Kita, eh?” he murmured.

“I’ve gone pretty deeply into the science of names,” he said, “and yours is a really fine one, I must say. You’re a good man and full of joy, these characters say, right? You can sense the way your parents felt when they gave you this. Mind you, you’ll often find someone betrays the meaning of their name. All you have to do is just change your way of thinking a bit, and you’d have the life your name suggests, mind you.”

“I’d prefer you not to go messing about with my name please.”

“Oh come on, don’t be like that. If you don’t like it I’ll happily apologise. No, the fact is, I can’t help being interested in you. Besides, you’re a handsome guy.”

Yashiro seemed about to add, “I could be looking at my younger self.” Kita felt quite sickened. He clenched his stomach muscles to control himself.

“I can just tell. You’ve taken the sins of the world on yourself. But you don’t let on, do you? No, you sit there pretending nothing’s going on, and worrying about what crazy thing the other guy might suddenly spring on you. How old are you, by the way? You’d be around twenty-five I’d say. You can still pull the girls. Older ones, younger ones. Once you’re past fifty you don’t want older ones, you know. But at your age, you’ll still find some good women even fifteen years older. Life can change for you if you go around with a mature woman. And you can hang out with a girl in her teens without having to pay for the pleasure too. Boy, I envy you.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re envying.”

“Sure you do. You go at it hammer and tongs while you’re young and still have the books balance out in the end. Go ahead and have the time of your life, no regrets, that’s my advice.”

Did he really look like someone who wanted to be preached at like this? Surely all this amounted to a form of sexual harassment. An embarrassing memory from his high school years began to surface in his mind like a dead fish. Riding the train to school, he’d regularly had his bottom fondled by a middle-aged man with gold-rimmed spectacles who reeked of nicotine. The man had greying hair parted in the middle and pasted down with pomade, and always carried a briefcase tucked under his arm. He had the habit of sniffing his own fingers. He’d rub his fingers against Kita’s dusty school uniform, then greedily devour the faint scent left on his fingertips. He was never deterred by rush hour platform crowds or packed carriages. He’d push his way through the polite commuters, in dedicated pursuit of the bottom he was after, then press up close behind and use the train’s swaying to let his hand caress the bottom of his chosen darling as he thrust his half-erect penis against him. Young Kita had changed carriages to escape him, and taken later trains or earlier ones, but the man had always sniffed him out and was already there in wait for him, grinning. Kita had agonized over the problem. It was shameful enough for a girl to come out and accuse a man of feeling her up, but far worse for a boy to go looking for help because some parasitic middle-aged guy was getting off on your backside. But one day he finally made up his mind. He borrowed from the school’s Flower Arranging Club a little metal plate covered in spikes, used for pinning flowers in place at the bottom of vases, and bound it firmly onto his palm with a bandage. Then he lured the guy over. It turned out to be a more powerful weapon than he’d anticipated. “Urgh!” said the guy, giving a quick groan. Then, clutching his briefcase to his crotch, he scuttled off in defeat, glaring bitterly up at the gloating Kita.

There was something about Yashiro that reminded him of this guy. Whenever he spoke he touched Kita’s shoulder, or grabbed his arm, breathing heavily at him. Was he after Kita’s ass too? Or maybe he just liked being physical. True, men in Korea or Pakistan often went round together arm in arm or hand in hand. Brazilians and Russians went so far as to kiss each other. Maybe this was just their way of swapping unhappy stories and forging comfort and friendship between them.

Kita turned to face Yashiro, and asked with calculated bluntness, “Are you gay?” Beer in hand, Yashiro froze, his mouth open. Bingo, thought Kita, suppressing a grin and glaring at him.

“Well, I guess that’s one way to see things,” Yashiro replied with an innocent air. “If that’s what you’re after.”

“Are you crazy? No way!”

“Well in that case, don’t try to come on to me.”

“I’m not coming on to you. I was just a bit worried, so I thought I’d check.”

“What’s the point of worrying over stupid stuff like that? Anything’s possible in this world, after all.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“If some guy told you he’d kill you if you refused, you’d sleep with him, wouldn’t you?”

Kita was about to indignantly deny he’d do any such thing, but Yashiro silenced him and went on, “What I mean is, you won’t achieve anything in life unless you can act as resolutely as that.” He’d neatly shifted the conversation back to sermonizing again.

“By the way, what are you doing right now?”

Kita didn’t feel inclined to let Yashiro in on the answer to that. The fact was, he was planning to commit suicide. Round about next Friday. He’d made the final decision the evening before last. There was still a week to go before Friday. After all, the world had been created in seven days with one off for rest, so he calculated most things could surely be achieved in the same amount of time. There must be all sorts of things he wanted to do before he died. But when he settled down to really put his mind to the question, all he could think of was the usual stuff – sleeping with two gorgeous girls at once, spending all his money on delicious food in a three-day orgy of eating, doing something so monstrous it would make everyone gape, that sort of thing. He ended up simply depressed by the obvious poverty of his imagination. With a certain amount of courage and money he could do all that anyway, without the excuse of dying. Mind you, though, most people usually indulged such delusions by reading popular novels and comics, or watching television, and hardly ever so much as dreamed of being the star of the action themselves.

But come to think of it, they weren’t planning on suicide, were they?

This was a pretty convincing rationale, but Kita still felt somehow cheated. The usual order of things was that first of all you decided to die. Next came the plan to do all you could before you killed yourself. Even if your dreams of debauchery were impossible, there was no need to despair. You still got to die. In other words, it didn’t matter if you did nothing, and simply died without any particular motive. You’d be hard put for an answer if asked why you were killing yourself, of course. The simple fact was, you were doing it because you wanted to die.

When Kita remained mute, Yashiro pushed the sashimi and potato mincemeat dishes over towards him, and said quietly, “You should eat.” Suddenly, with the aroma of deep fry oil, Kita found his old teacher’s voice echoing in his head.

“Choose your own pace of life.”

Well he was half taking her advice at least, by choosing to die at his own pace, Kita told himself. There was no need to be afraid of other people’s prying questions, no one could change his mind about dying in a week’s time. Suddenly he laughed.

“Actually,” he said, “I was planning on throwing everything to the winds even before your advice. But it’s no good simply deciding. I haven’t had any experience, so I’m not quite sure just how to go about it.”

“Ah yes, I can see that would be so. The most important question is, what do you want to do? Is it sex you’re after?”

“Among other things.”

“Murder? You must have someone you’d like to murder.”

“I don’t like murder. And I don’t have anyone I want to kill.”

“You’ve got money?”

“Not a whole lot…”

“Are you prepared to go to jail?”

“No, I don’t think that will be necessary.”

Yashiro seemed a little downcast by this news. “I see,” he murmured. He shovelled in the deep fried tofu, then went on with his mouth full, “Well anyway. You’re after a huge shot of adrenaline, hey? If you don’t have that, you could suddenly find yourself dead, after all. I really let my hair down when I was young, but I survived thanks to my nerves.”

“Oh I don’t mind if I die.”

Startled, Yashiro looked him up and down from head to toe, then took a swig of beer and, in a low, menacing voice, asked, “Why?”

“I’m planning to kill myself next Friday, thanks.”

“Thanks? Are you asking me to do something?”

“No, nothing. Well, I’ll be off now.”

“Hold on a minute. You’ve made me suddenly sad, telling me you’re going to kill yourself.”

“We’ve only just met. You’ll soon get over it.”

Kita got to his feet, but Yashiro seized his arm. He went through the motions of pondering something, then he suddenly declared in a low voice, “Let me introduce you to a great girl – Mitsuyo Kusakari, the porn star who took the world by storm five years ago. You must remember her? She’s working in my office these days. She’s the kinda girl who likes sex more than money. How about it? You’d like her to give you a good time, eh? Look at this.”

Yashiro produced a piece of paper with the contact number for the former porn star. “I’ll do the talking,” he added.

“How much?” Kita asked.

“Depends on the guy, but a token amount will do,” Yashiro replied. He was assuming Kita was talking about payment for the porn star’s services, so Kita reframed the question.

“I mean, what do I owe you for the beer?”

Yashiro shook his head, and instead of answering he launched into a bizarre business discussion.

“You know, it’s a poor show to just commit suicide. Can’t you come up with a kind of suicide that’s some benefit to others? There’s no shortage of folks like you that want to kill themselves these days, But the fact is, you just die a dog’s death as far as the world’s concerned. Every life’s got to have a certain worth to it. It’s too bad to go handing it over for nothing. Think of the people out there who’d be grateful for your life. That’s the reality. But you just need to use your head a bit and you can sell that life of yours for quite a bit. Life insurance, now there’s a profession that talks in terms of how much a life’s worth.”

“You’re telling me to take out life insurance before I die?”

“Now don’t go being petty-minded and putting me down as someone who’s after your life insurance. But hey, let me give you some money. You’ll need it so as you don’t leave any regrets behind when you die. And in return, like, how about letting me in on things?” Watching Kita carefully, Yashiro tapped his aluminium case.

“If you’re suggesting shooting a record of me going through the whole process of committing suicide, you’re wasting your time.”

Yashiro made a great show of hanging his head despondently, as if to say that Kita had caught him out there. “Too bad!” he murmured. Then he immediately perked up again, and pulled out his wallet. “Not that I’m forcing you or anything,” he remarked with a smile, as he thrust thirty thousand yen into Kita’s coat pocket.

“Hey, what’re you up to?”

Kita hated the idea of any money tied up with someone else’s schemes finding its way into his pocket even for an instant, and he shoved the notes back almost violently. Instantly, Yashiro’s face grew grave. Gazing up at him earnestly from under his brows, he whispered in a surprisingly gentle voice, “You must accept people’s goodwill with gratitude.”

“Not if it’s a deposit or advance I won’t. I don’t intend to let myself become a spectacle.”

“You’ve got me wrong. There’s no need to feel any obligation just because you’ve accepted thirty thousand yen, you know. This is my funeral offering, see. It’s a bit odd to be giving it to you before you die, I’ll admit, but you could get yourself something good to eat with it.”

Kita simply wasn’t up to parrying this with some smart joke, so he decided to accept the money meekly. He bowed his head deeply in thanks, and attempted to leave, but Yashiro only increased his urgent attempts to detain this prospective suicide. “Just one more minute,” he said, opening his case. He produced a Polaroid camera, and quickly caught a snap of Kita’s bewildered face. Then he called over the man behind the counter to take a photo of both of them to remember the occasion by. He kept back the first photograph of Kita, and handed him the other together with the camera. “You’ll see a different world if you look through the viewfinder,” he said. “Sorry to burden you, but do take it.”

“Thank you for everything. May I go now?” said Kita.

Yashiro gave him a parting wave. “Be seeing you,” he smirked, with the apparent implication that he planned to meet Kita again soon.

He was the sort of guy that Kita suspected had had to do with prospective suicides before. He seemed to know how to deal with them, to have some special knowhow. The funeral money, the gift…did he mean for Kita to use this camera to record his final week? He’d taken the funeral money, so maybe he had to return the favour somehow. But why should someone who’s planning to die have to distract himself with this sort of thing? This Heita Yashiro fellow was no ordinary guy. Kita realized he’d been putty in the man’s hands ever since the moment the guy had tried to steal a taxi on him. Everything Yashiro said and did had a peculiar persuasive power to it – he couldn’t resist him, even though he was aware there was something odd going on. He was insolent, but at the same time oddly polite. He came on strong with the moralizing sermons and proverbs, but on the other hand he made no attempt to talk Kita out of suicide. Maybe he’d just been part of the evening’s entertainment for Yashiro, a tasty morsel to snack on over a beer? He’d believed Tokyo was full of nothing but simple folks, but no sooner did he make the decision to kill himself than up had popped this bizarre fellow. Anyway, Kita told himself as he set off down the hill, let’s do something positive and get him out of my mind.

Kita counted up how many meals he had left before next Friday. Even allowing for the full three meals a day, he made it only twenty-two. He suddenly felt somehow bereft and sorrowful. At any rate, he decided, he’d set off to find himself a place where he could warm his heart and his belly. He was reasonably hungry, but he felt what he needed was the kind of food that satisfied the heart as much as the stomach, and that would relieve him of this empty sadness that had overtaken him. Up until now, Kita had only ever been interested in filling his belly, and had been content to eat just about any rubbish. He was on a different wavelength from the types who worried themselves about chemical food additives, and took special pains over which brand of sake or miso to use, or the precise thickness of dough in a piece of pasta or a meat dumpling. Although all food probably did have an appropriate season and a particular taste, as well as different effects on the body. The reason why labourers liked to eat offal roasted in salt after a day’s work, after all, was because their body needed energy and salt. Yoga practitioners didn’t eat onion or chives because these dulled the lower half of the body. Well then, what kind of food was good for getting rid of the blues?

Ice cream? Potato chips? Oolong tea and rice balls? These were all things he often ate. Kita realized suddenly that he was a guy who’d lived his life on convenience shop meals and fast food. People who don’t worry over food have strong stomachs. Still, it certainly wouldn’t do to die with heartburn. If there was one time in your life when you should cleanse your body, it was surely before death. There was no need to be stingy about food, of course. The reason why he hadn’t eaten any of the dishes at the drinking place just now was because he was planning on cleansing his body with something a bit tastier, but here he was thirty minutes later, still puzzling over what to eat. There were all sorts of things he’d like to have, but then he only had twenty-two more meals. He mustn’t eat just any stupid thing, he decided. He wouldn’t go for the usual packed meal from a convenience store, for instance, or a hamburger.

He’d wandered into the Maruyamacho love hotel area, and as he went up and down the hilly roads he passed seven couples walking along in search of the best place to have sex. He momentarily met the eyes of several lovers who were strolling along discussing the pros and cons of various establishments – this one didn’t have karaoke, that one offered a free bag of toiletries like they do in airplanes, another allowed extended stays for the same price. One couple he locked eyes with was a pair of high school girls, another was a bald cameraman sporting a moustache and round sunglasses with a tall girl on his arm. It was dinnertime, but quite a few of the hotels had red lamps indicating the rooms were full. In these parts, people had sex the way they had a cup of tea or a meal.

Sure they might come back to a hotel later, but what Kita was interested in right now was someone to eat with. On his own, his feet naturally set off in the direction of a convenience store or a curry house or noodle stand. He intended to give this habit up, so he stepped into a telephone booth with the idea of starting by getting in touch with the porn star that Yashiro had told him about. He dialled the number on the piece of paper, and after two rings her voice came on the phone. “Er, I’ve just—” Kita began, when she cut him off.

“You’re quick,” she said in a high-pitched voice. “It’s only fifteen minutes since I heard from Yashiro.”

Kita asked her to show him somewhere to eat, with the offer to treat her to anything she wanted there. Mitsuyo giggled flirtatiously into the receiver. “Hey, let’s party!”

There was a jazz coffee shop in a street leading from Maruyamacho into Hyakkendana, she said. She’d meet him there. He sat down obediently on one of its wooden benches to sip a tequila and wait. He didn’t recognise the piece they were playing, but it was a combination of a rush of wild sax, accompanied by trumpet and piano. A man was sitting alone in a dim corner, jiggling his hand and feet in time to the music, like someone on the verge of having some kind of fit. He looked like it would cheer him up to have someone there with him, beating out the rhythm together, but he was used to this lonesome feeling of not quite knowing what to do with his own body. Normally, Kita would have dismissed him as one of those gloomy, slightly weird types, but tonight he felt as if they were in the same boat.

Come to think of it, there’d been someone just like this guy back when he was in college. He hailed from somewhere like Oita down in Kyushu, a shabby fellow who talked in a low, monotonous voice. But he had amazing powers of concentration, and he could get right inside a piece of music. What his name now? Nikaido was the family name, maybe, and his other name was something like those rough spirits they drink down in Kyushu, Shochu or something of the sort. He was a fan of classical music. He used to listen to Dvorak and Tchaikovsky on his Walkman, conducting with his hand, although he’d get a bit embarrassed at being caught doing it. Next door to the jazz coffee shop where Kita was sitting there was one called Lion that played the classics. He imagined Nikaido sitting there with a bowl of green tea, eagerly awaiting the Bruckner’s fifth symphony he’d put in a request for. As soon as Knappersbusch’s performance began, he’d be deep inside wartime Vienna.

Where was he and what was he up to now? Kita wondered.

He hadn’t known Nikaido that well, but now he tried imagining a likely scenario for him in the present. He’d have joined some respectable company, and be striving earnestly to increase the pieces he could conduct. If he did hang out in Lion, maybe Kita would run into him on the third day. Even if he realized Kita was there, he wouldn’t greet him – he’d just sit there with his eyes closed and go on conducting. In amongst his repertoire he must have a few funeral marches and requiems. Maybe he conducted them for the dead occasionally. When he passed on, Kita thought, he’d rather like to have Nikaido conduct something for him too.

Through the pauses in the music, a bittersweet scent of perfume sidled into his nostrils. Before his eyes stood a woman, wearing an expression that suggested she was about to burst into laughter. “Miss Kusakari?” he asked, and she sat down beside him with a simpering little laugh.

“I hear you want to kill yourself.”

She moved right in without going through the conversational formalities. Kita was annoyed. He’d have a stern word to that Yashiro about this. “I’d rather you didn’t spread the news, thanks,” he replied.

“Oh come on, what’s the problem? You’re not the only one, after all. I know someone who’s failed to kill herself four times – she’s normally perfectly cheerful. I’ll introduce you if you like.”

“I’m not looking for anyone to share the experience with, thanks. Anyway, what would you like to eat?”

“Mmm, I guess I’m in the mood for Chinese today. But we wouldn’t be able to order many dishes with just the two of us, would we? Come on, let’s call in some others.”

“Whatever you like,” replied Kita, whereupon Mitsuyo informed him with a shamefaced little pout that she’d already invited them. It was a good thing she was so well prepared. Kita was eager to get on with things.

Mitsuyo’s friends turned up at the Chinese restaurant in Udagawacho, three women and two men. All seven of them settled themselves around the big circular table. Without pausing a moment to establish who they were and how they were connected, they all broke into various conversations together, glancing occasionally in Kita’s direction to check whether he seemed to be enjoying himself. They ordered a large number of dishes – assorted hors d’oeuvres, fish fin and crab soup, abalone in cream, whole carp dressed with thick starchy sauce, beef sautéed with chives, Dongpo pork, fried rice with seafood, prawns in chilli sauce, tofu and bamboo shoots in a black soy sauce, noodles with mustard greens, Xiaolongbao, fried rice with fish and vegetables, and almond jelly.

Kita seemed to be the oldest among them. The youngest-looking was a lad of sixteen or seventeen, and his appetite was quite intimidating. He didn’t have a spare ounce of flesh on him, however. His face was childlike, and smooth and white as a boiled egg. Mitsuyo referred to him as Calpis. In reply, he referred to her with casual deference by her first name, in a voice still hoarse from having only just broken. Kita later learned they were cousins.

“Why are you called Calpis?” Kita asked him casually. “That’s the name of a milky soft drink, right?” All four girls promptly burst into laughter.

Calpis was a shy lad who seldom spoke, just ate, and occasionally nodded to others with a face innocent of any wrongdoing. But the other man both ate a lot and talked a lot. He wasn’t as good-looking as Calpis, but his dexterous way of seeing to the needs of the girls with talk and attention was a great hit. Still, they sometimes ignored him. Whenever this happened he looked hugely put out, and did his best to get in on their conversation at every opportunity with a constant flow of “Why?” or “I see,” or “Really?” As if this wasn’t annoying enough, his cell phone would ring every half hour or so. The girls called him Daikichi. Daikichi was obviously senior to Calpis in the way they related. As for the girls, one by the name of Takako was Calpis’s girlfriend, while another, who they called Poo, a girl barely five feet high with a thirty-six-inch bust, evidently worked part-time in the same place as Takako did. Then there was a rather unassuming girl who lurked in the background, who had the name Zombie. This was apparently the girl of the four failed suicide attempts that Mitsuyo had mentioned, who was usually so cheerful. She was fine-boned and her voice was frail, but she looked at people with a calm gaze.

It seemed odd to Kita to find himself in among this bunch of people, but it was only for tonight, he told himself, so he sat letting the conversation flow on around him, watching and comparing faces.

Daikichi: I went along to one of those cheap Osho restaurants that do Chinese dumplings the other day, and ordered up a great big dish of noodle stew. Usually those Chanpon stews cost around seven hundred yen, yeah? But this one was only three sixty!

Poo: Wow, that’s cheap!

Daikichi: Usually you get lots of shellfish in Chanpon, but this one had pork and bean sprouts and meat dumplings and all sorts of things. It was kinda fun fishing around in it to see what you pulled out. There was even some fried chicken in there. It had tooth marks in it.

Takako: What? You mean to say they topped it up with other people’s leftovers?

Poo: Cheap can be pretty nasty.

Takako: Good thing there weren’t any cigarette butts, at least.

Daikichi: You hear of gangsters bringing along a cockroach and popping it in the food they’re eating, you know.

Poo: Yeah, one did that in the bar where I work. Hey, he says, what kinda place is this? You put cockroaches in the food here or something? Trying to make trouble.

Daikichi: To hell with ’em. They must breed the things at home.

Zombie: I never saw a cockroach till I came to Tokyo. We never had them in Hokkaido.

Daikichi: That so? You get them in ramen noodle shops, I heard.

Takako: Talking of ramen, I heard there are lots of Iranians that just love pork. They can’t believe how delicious it is, apparently.

Daikichi: But Moslems aren’t allowed to eat pork, surely?

Poo: Yeah, but the more you’re not supposed to eat something the more you want to eat it, see? Like me, whenever I’m on a diet I dream of ice cream.

Daikichi: I wonder if there’s some religion where you’re not allowed to eat cucumbers or aubergines.

Mitsuyo: Some girls just go all wet as soon as they see a cucumber or one of those long aubergines. And there are guys who come just looking at an oyster or a shellfish, or konyaku jelly.

Calpis: Not me!

Daikichi: But when you want a shit you always get a hard-on, don’t you?

Takako: Hey come on guys, we’re eating!

Calpis: Well it’s not that I…hey, you’re having me on. And anyway, who was it who dropped all his spare cash in Kinshicho the other day?

Mitsuyo: Daikichi! You may not be a hit with the girls, but that doesn’t mean you should go living it up in cabarets you know.

Daikichi: Well if that’s how you’re going to be, come on and scout me for one of your movies then. You promised you’d use me as the male star in one of those clips of yours, didn’t you?

Mitsuyo: Hey, what do you think of Poo?

Poo: Eh? I’m an out and out people hater, you know.

Zombie: Oh wow, you guys are all really living hard, aren’t you?

Takako: Seems like there’s something wrong with living hard.

Zombie: You don’t want me around?

Takako: I didn’t say that. You were behind Mitsuyo in the same high school, weren’t you Zombie?

Zombie: Yeah. I wrote to her when I saw her in one of her videos. And she really looked after me when I came to Tokyo.

Daikichi: But you’re smart, Zombie. Didn’t you do literature or something at Keio University?

Takako: There were lots of really unusual, talented people at Mitsuyo’s school.

Zombie: There’s also this really sharp-tongued guy who you see on discussion programs, he’s from our school too.

Mitsuyo: And there’s that actress who used to be in one of those morning drama series on TV a while back, who does whiskey commercials now – she was about five years ahead of me at school. And I heard of another girl about fifteen years older, she attacked the American embassy with a stick of dynamite.

Takako: That’s the kind of place Hokkaido is.

Mitsuyo: Whaddya mean?

Takako: I mean there are actresses and critics, and literary types like Zombie, and I guess terrorists… you get a lot of people who throw dynamite at the American embassy up that way?

Mitsuyo: What school were you at?

Takako: I was at a mission school in Yokohama.

Mitsuyo: You mean like Felaccio Girls School? Well then, I guess you’d only find office girls and housewives from there.

Takako: No way. You ever heard of the manga artist Hiyoko Kannazuki?

Zombie: I know her! She did that story about the girl who had one hundred eight disastrous love affairs.

Takako: You read Kannazuki’s latest?

Zombie: Sure. The girl starves to death from anorexia.

Daikichi: You could find one or two odd guys who graduated from my school too, if you looked.

Calpis: We had that weird headmaster, didn’t we?

Daikichi: Oh yeah, old Jomon. Named after that prehistoric Japanese period. He was really weird.

Poo: What kinda guy was he?

Daikichi: He graduated from the Nakano Military College.

Poo: Eh? What kinda school is that?

Daikichi: The place Onoda went to.

Takako: Onoda? Who’s Onoda?

Daikichi: That soldier who didn’t know the war had ended and stayed holed up in the jungle in Sumatra for thirty years.

Calpis: It wasn’t Sumatra, it was Lubang.

Poo: You mean he went on fighting all by himself for thirty years?

Daikichi: He lived like they did back in the Jomon Period. The Nakano Military College is the kinda place where you’re taught to survive anywhere, even in the jungle. Our headmaster was like a Jomon guy too.

Calpis: He used to teach his students weird stuff. Like how to dig a tunnel just with a stick, or how to make a house by cutting down a single tree, or how to get water from grass, or how to tell which herbs and stuff you can eat.

Daikichi: It’s called “survival technique”. He always said it would come in handy some time.

Mitsuyo: You’ll probably find it useful when you turn into tramps on the street.

Zombie: Or when your house is destroyed in an earthquake.

Calpis: But there isn’t any jungle round here.

Daikichi: There’s grass and trees, at least.

Mitsuyo: “Survival” means knowing how to live all alone without anything, yeah?

Daikichi: You can do that just by using that lovely body of yours, can’t you Mitsuyo?

Mitsuyo: And as for you, you’re so scruffy you don’t know what to do with yourself. Anyway, there are people like Zombie here who don’t care about survival. What about you, Kita?”

Twelve eyeballs turned as one to stare at him. Kita hadn’t said a word about himself so far. Now their attention turned at last to the fellow who’d been sitting there all along, simply taking in the conversation as it bounced back and forth over the round table. A vague uneasiness hovered in the air – would he suddenly come out with some deep remark under his breath? Would he lose his temper over how boring they were all being?

“Well I don’t really understand about life…” Kita protested with a wry little self-deprecating grin.

“Come on now,” said Daikichi.

“Kita wants to die, see,” Mitsuyo said, looking at him gently, and after the tiniest pause the rest of them nodded gravely. Only Zombie sat looking down at her lap, somehow shy.

“Why do you want to die?” Takako asked, helping Kita to some Lao-chu. “You’re still young.” Beside her, Poo had tucked her chin in and was gazing earnestly at Kita from under her brows. When their eyes met, for some reason she clapped her hand to her mouth and burst out laughing. When she realized no one else was joining in, she blushed and murmured “Sorry.”

“No, no, you can laugh if you like,” said Kita. “It’s funny enough, after all,” and at this everyone obligingly laughed.

“Seems a bit dangerous to me,” Poo remarked lightly.

“Now listen, girl,” said Takako in a reproving voice.

“What’s the danger? I feel like I’m acting perfectly normally,” said Kita.

“I mean, once you’ve decided to die, you can do pretty much anything you want, right?” Poo flapped her hands about to illustrate her point.

“I don’t think deciding to die makes you all that free to act. After all, it’s tough work dying. You don’t have much leeway to think about other things,” muttered Zombie. For once, she spoke in a tone of deep conviction. Kita had to take his hat off to her – failing to kill yourself four times was no mean feat. “It’s just not that easy to do it at your own pace,” she went on. “You’ve got to have your act together or you get half way and it all fizzles out.”

The two of them were cool as cucumbers. You’d think the topic of dying was the thing of the moment.

“And how do you want to die, Kita?” Takako cut in.

“Well I haven’t quite decided. What do you think’s the best way?” said Kita, falling in with the general tone.

“I’d go for hara kiri myself,” said Daikichi.

“What, with that belly of yours?” Mitsuyo shot back mockingly. “You’d better tone up the muscles first.”

A sunny laughter filled the table again. Through the hilarity, Calpis shouted, “I’d like to just drop dead suddenly.”

“Me too,” said Takako.

Poo thought for a moment. “I think I’d go for double suicide with a guy,” she said.

“I’m not wild about the idea of dying, myself,” Mitsuyo threw in.

Everyone was waiting with interest for what Zombie would say, but she threw everyone completely by ducking the issue and casually remarking, “I wonder what I’ll try next time?”

Takako gazed into her eyes with a serious expression, and inquired about suicide methods. At this, Zombie gleefully replied, “I was still in sixth form at elementary school the first time I tried it, so I hadn’t done much research on methods. I didn’t really think about it, I just jumped into a freezing swimming pool in winter. I thought the shock would stop my heart, but I guess my heart was pretty strong, so all I got from it was a cold.”

“Why did you want to kill yourself?”

“When I thought about how I was going to have to leave all my friends when we went off to new schools, suddenly there just didn’t seem any point in living.”

“Did you write some kind of a will?”

“Uh-huh. I kept a diary back then, and the day before I committed suicide I wrote ‘I’m so sorry Mum and Dad, I can’t face going on living so I have to go to heaven ahead of you.’ But no one believed I’d committed suicide, so afterwards I tore it up and threw it away. Everyone had the idea I’d fallen in by mistake, see. There was a big fuss at the PTA meeting about how the school was negligent over safety, and it just wasn’t a situation where it would’ve felt right to explain I was trying to kill myself.”

“You always did have bad timing,” Mitsuyo remarked. “So what about the second time?”

“Well that was in third grade at Middle School. I had this good friend, and we used to exchange diaries. When that rock singer Ozaki died she got real depressed, and said a world without Ozaki was like Japan without the emperor, and there was no point being alive. And then she started talking about following him into death like the loyal retainers used to do in the old days. Well of course I already had experience from the time I tried to kill myself when I was twelve, so we started getting excited about dying together, and ended up deciding to hang ourselves in the store room of the school gym. We were just about to put our heads through the noose when the gym teacher walks in naked from the waist up and yells ‘Hey you two, what’re you doing messing about in here at this hour? Go on home this minute!’ so the whole thing went kinda flat for us.”

“You gave up, huh? Suicide was just a kind of fooling about.”

“But third time lucky in third year high school. I meant business that time. I cut my wrists and there was blood everywhere. It was quite a shock, so I panicked and dialled the 110 emergency number, but they said ‘Wrong number miss. Ambulance is 119.” Anyhow, the blood was still pouring out and my brand new dress was all red with it, and I was just feeling like I was going to faint from lack of blood when my boyfriend called up. ‘Get an ambulance and come quick!’ I yelled, and that’s the last I remember. Next thing I was in the hospital, and my boyfriend was being grilled by a policeman. He said he was dead scared about what I might come out with when I woke up. We’d had a quarrel, see.”

“So how did you explain it? They must’ve asked what the motive was?” Everyone was listening agog. Zombie simply went on calmly with her story.

“I said I’d just felt it was all kind of pointless somehow, and the policeman really told me off. I only thought that if I said it was disappointment in love, it would’ve made things tricky for my boyfriend, see. But we split up anyway. He said he didn’t want to hang out with a girl who committed suicide at the drop of a hat.”

“That was honest of him.”

“Really was. And what about the fourth time?” Mitsuyo demanded, urging her on with the story.

“There’s more?” muttered Kita, with a wry smile.

“This time I was determined I wouldn’t cause anyone trouble and no one would get in my way, so I decided to give my heart an electric shock. I cut the lamp cord, and stuck one end onto my back with sticking plaster and the other between my breasts, and attached it up to a timer I’d bought at the electrical shop and set it to go off and kill me while I was asleep. I thought I’d be so tense I wouldn’t be able to sleep, so I drank lots of that stuff you take to avoid motion sickness, and off I went. I left a will on my desk. I was sure the electric current would hit my heart just as dawn broke and I’d die, but I woke up again near noon next day. I just lay there for a while in some kind of stupor, then I finally realized I’d left the plug out of the socket, so I’d failed again.”

“You forgot to plug it in before you went to bed?”

“No, I distinctly remembered plugging it in. But I guess I must’ve pulled it out without knowing. I toss and turn a lot in my sleep.”

“And when was that?”

“Last year maybe. When I was twenty-one.”

“So you’ve failed to kill yourself every three years since you were twelve, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess it’s just turned out like that.”

“So if you keep to pattern, the next time’s the year after next.”

“I can’t wait.”

Daikichi and Mitsuyo and Poo all turned to look at each other and grinned. Zombie smiled shyly too. “You’re putting a lot of pressure on me with all this anticipating,” she said, and she smiled over at Kita as if looking for support. At this, everyone’s smiling faces turned to him again, as if waiting for him to add the final word on the subject.

“You did well to get through death four times,” said Kita with a straight face. “No matter how you look at it, seems like you’re made to survive.”

“Mm, could be,” Zombie answered, blushing and covering her face with her hands.

His cheeks bulging with fried rice, Daikichi broke in, “But it’s a real waste to go using up your luck like that you know. Come on Zombie, let’s go to the races together. If you use up your luck at the races, you’ll actually get to die next time, you know.”

“Listen Daikichi,” Mitsuyo pointed out. “That name of yours already means ‘excellent luck’ if you think of how it’s written. I’d say your name’s swallowed all your luck.”

Daikichi nodded deeply. “Hisao Daikichi,” he commented. “That’s me. ‘Man of long life and excellent luck.’ I was born on New Year’s Day, see.”

Kita turned to Zombie, and casually asked how her real name was written. “Maybe you’ve got a name that’s unlucky for future suicide attempts,” he added. “Let’s see what the characters reveal.”

“Izumi Mizusawa,” she said. “Watery Stream Fountain.” The wet connotations struck Kita as just right for her.

The food on the table had largely disappeared by now. Occasional garlicky burps and sighs scented the air. Everyone was in need of a little light exercise after the meal. Kita glanced over at Mitsuyo. Would he be able to share her bed tonight? She sent him back a little smile.

“Death is ridiculous.”

Her abrupt remark startled Kita. “Eh?” he said. Gripping Zombie’s hand, Mitsuyo went on.

“Here she is, almost died four times, and she’s learned nothing. She doesn’t understand a thing. You feel a fool for listening to her. It turns you right off any idea of suicide, there’s that to be grateful for. Thanks for saving me, Zombie! Now how about saving Kita while you’re at it?”

Zombie seemed suddenly uncomfortable. Her eyes skimmed here and there around the room like a couple of flies. The others were grinning vaguely, having no idea what Mitsuyo was really trying to say. It suddenly struck Kita that he wanted to avoid being left alone with Zombie tonight. He agreed that death was ridiculous, and he could see just how bad Zombie’s luck was. Whether she managed to kill herself or not, others would only treat it as a farce. This was perfectly clear to him. And… and that’s precisely what he couldn’t stand. Death isn’t absolute. It doesn’t even teach you the nature of infinity. Zombie probably knew this, and that’s why she was putting it on.

“What’ll we do next?” Daikichi looked inquiringly at Kita to see how he was feeling. “How about heading off to a karaoke joint and really hitting it? Or maybe you got some other plan?”

Daikichi sure knew how to suck up. Kita picked up the bill that had been placed before him, and stood up. The others all thanked him and set off to follow, assuming there’d be more to the evening. After he’d paid, Kita lined them all up in front of the entrance, and took a commemorative photo with the camera Yashiro had given him.

After they’d done the rounds of a few game centres, shot dead a gang of forty-five, crashed seventeen cars, rescued two stuffed toys, and battled twenty-three combatants into unconsciousness, they polished off three games of bowls, and finally all tumbled into a love hotel that had a pool and karaoke machine.

They weren’t wasting a moment. No sooner were they in than they’d flung themselves into a singing competition. They divided up into two mixed sex teams and took turns to sing, using the electronic grading system to see who won. Losing meant taking off an item of clothing – not just the singer but everyone on the team. The plan was that the game would go on until everyone on one team lost all their clothes. Then they’d be flung in the pool. When Kita’s turn came, he sang ‘Cape Erimo,’ but he lost to Zombie’s rendition of ‘My Way’ so he and Calpis had to take off their trousers, while Mitsuyo was already faced with having to remove her bra. The competition was reaching its climax and Calpis had a bulge in his underpants, when Takako refused to take off her skirt and suddenly declared she had to go home before her curfew.

“I’ll see you home,” cried Calpis, struggling quickly back into the trousers he’d recently taken off, but the crotch was too tight and he couldn’t do up the zipper. Everyone laughed.

“What’s this? You’re off already? Before you’ve had a swim?” Daikichi stood there feet apart, the mike firmly gripped in his hand.

Then Poo also reached for her skirt, declaring she had to leave. Daikichi clicked his tongue reprovingly. “Why?” he demanded obstinately.

“But my boyfriend’s coming back tomorrow. From Mt. Fuji.”

“That’s tomorrow. You’re still free tonight.”

“But if we lose one more time I’ll have to take off my slip. I’d feel guilty about him.”

“You don’t know what he’s up to at Mt. Fuji, do you?”

“He’s on army exercises. He’s in the Self Defence Force. I want to be a good girl for him. He’s protecting our nation, right? If I serve him well, that means I’m serving the nation, see.”

As she spoke, Poo was getting back into her clothes with the speed of a soldier under orders.

“Self Defence Force, eh? Oh well, too bad,” sighed Daikichi, without any clear idea of just what was too bad. He gave up trying to hold her back, and turned to Mitsuyo. A chill had descended on the entertainment, and Mitsuyo had also slipped her breasts back into her bra.

“Come on, let’s keep hitting it!” Daikichi said to her, tossing back his beer.

“You oughta head down and hit it at Mt. Fuji yourself, Daikichi.”

“But they say Self Defence Force guys don’t make it with the girls.”

“Well you certainly wouldn’t. But the SDF are pretty cool, you know. They’re great when there’s an earthquake or a typhoon. If it’s a toss-up between an SDF guy and a policeman, I’d take the SDF guy. There are a lot of creepy policemen, and they use dirty tactics. And I’ve had run-ins with them before. You take good care of that man, Poo.”

“Sure thing.”

Poo, Calpis, and Takako checked to see they had everything on, then all turned to Kita and thanked him politely. “It’s been fun,” said Kita. He stayed sitting on the bed to see them off, but for some reason they didn’t go straight out. Poo and Takako glanced at each other and grinned. Kita waited, wondering if he ought to say something more.

“Would you have the fare?’ said Mitsuyo. The three of them immediately shook their heads as if by agreement, and smiled at him.

Kita realized they were after money. “How much?” he said. Takako said four thousand yen, and Poo asked for six thousand.

“I see,” said Kita, “two thousand more if you take off your skirt.” Then he followed up by asking how much a taxi cost if you’d taken off your bra.

Takako turned to Poo for confirmation, and held up one finger, indicating a ten thousand yen note. Poo nodded. “And panties is twelve,” she said.

Calpis instantly turned to his girlfriend, Takako. “You’re talking about selling your body?” he asked.

“Don’t be stupid,” Takako said, and Poo went on, “Being naked is different from having sex.”

“Women have it good, don’t they. There’s a price on breasts and a price on pubic hair.” Daikichi spoke into the echo on the mike.

Mitsuyo seized the mike from him. “There are guys who like guys like you! Five hundred yen a go,” she yelled.

“Yuck! I’d rather join the SDF than sell myself to a man.”

“Idiot. Selling yourself to the nation’s just the same as selling yourself to a man.” Mitsuyo knocked Daikichi on the head with the mike. The echo filled the room. Daikichi grabbed the mike back from her, held it to his mouth, and did a skilful imitation of a helicopter, a bazooka and a pistol shot.

“Hey, when did you learn that? Teach me how to do it,” said Calpis, in genuine admiration of Daikichi’s talents. The praise went to Daikichi’s head, and he proceeded to grip the mike and produce a further rendition of a wild battle.

“Hey Daikichi, you look like you’re performing fellatio.” Zombie had been silent all this while, but now she held her hand to her mouth and giggled.

“No way! Right, I’m off too. I’ll head on home on the last train, all on my ownsome.” Daikichi flung the mike onto the bed, thrust his fat legs back into his baggy jeans, and slung his sweater round his shoulders.

Kita passed a ten thousand yen note to Poo. “Divide it between you,” he said.

“Thanks,” said Poo. “Well Kita, let’s do it again some time,” and she put out her hand. The other three did likewise, adding things like “Stay alive till we meet again, won’t you,” and “Hope you have a really cool death,” and “Give us another meal some time please,” and out they went.

The second hand was just a fraction past eleven. During the time it took for the gap to widen to an inch or so, the sudden silence oppressed Kita, thrust by others into the position of being left alone with two women in their underwear. He climbed back into the black wool trousers he’d carefully folded to avoid wrinkles and lay down on the bed. Zombie followed his lead, and reached for her checked wrap-around skirt.

“You going home?” Kita looked from Zombie’s face to Mitsuyo’s.

“You won’t kill yourself tonight, will you? You’re just going to sleep, aren’t you?” Zombie inquired in a bright, breezy voice.

“Yep, that’s the plan. Quite a bit’s happened today. That first guy I met was the problem. He goes and spreads the news around, and then he goes and introduces me to Mitsuyo.”

“What, you mean that was bad? But you’re the one who rang me, remember. I just came along because it was work, you know.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad I met everyone. You in particular, Mitsuyo. And you too, Zombie. That story of the four failed suicide attempts was very useful, thanks.”

“I see. You mean, you haven’t tried to kill yourself before?” Zombie spoke casually. She wasn’t setting herself up as superior.

“Given that I’m going to do it, I don’t want to make a mess of it,” Kita said meekly.

Zombie nodded deeply. “Good luck,” she said encouragingly.

“OK, all those rowdy ones have gone, so why don’t we take a bath?” suggested Mitsuyo. Zombie and Kita both assented. All three found themselves looking forward to soaking in a warm spa bath and relaxing. The two girls showed no sign of planning to leave. Did this mean he had to buy them both for the night? Both of them suddenly looked like prostitutes to Kita. Without hesitating, both Zombie and Mitsuyo stripped to nothing, and began by jumping into the pool—though this “pool” was actually about the size of a storage closet. Kita watched them through the transparent synthetic glass screen as they joked about, playing at synchronized swimming together. Mitsuyo waved to him from the water, so Kita took off his clothes, climbed the diving ladder, and plunged in between the two mermaid heads.

The mermaids had pale skin, and appeared considerably slimmer under water than they did on land. Their hair and their public hair rocked gently like waterweed. Their four breasts floated about like jellyfish, flattening, swelling, twisting.

Mitsuyo suggested they have a competition to see who could stay underwater longest. They all sank together. Beneath the surface all was quiet. Breath held, Kita looked at the two pale, meditative faces of the girls, their cheeks bulging like squirrels. From time to time a few bubbles would go dancing up to the surface. The sound seemed to Kita like the mermaids’ murmuring voices, chattering on about this and that. The sudden humour of this made Kita suddenly expel his breath in a laugh, and pop out of the water. Mitsuyo and Zombie both poked their faces up after him.

“OK, let’s bet something this time,” said Mitsuyo breathlessly, looking around for agreement. She apparently assumed she’d be likely to win at holding her breath.

“What will you two bet?” asked Kita. Zombie replied she didn’t have anything to bet.

“How about your body?” This development struck Kita as only natural, considering that he was cavorting in the water with two stark naked girls.

“You’ve got great tits, Mitsuyo, and you’ve been in films and everything, but I’m pretty much flat-chested, and, well, I’ve never done it for money before… Poo would’ve been good. She’s prepared to sell herself for her SDF guy, after all.”

“She can be full-on once she gets an idea into her head. And she’s so rebellious. She’s anti-school, anti-society. She really hates the way it’s just irresponsible dirty old men who lead our society. Says she sells herself to these lechers and pays what she gets as tribute money to the SDF. It’s helping protect the nation, is what she tells herself. It’s pretty weird, but the way Poo sees things I guess there’s some justice in the idea.”

Kita agreed it was pretty weird, but still, he didn’t think it was such a bad thing really, to be naive enough to believe you were selling yourself for the sake of the nation, or society, or the disadvantaged. He’d lost that kind of naivety many moons ago. But did it mean that Poo saw him as one of those dirty old men? If that was the case, it would be too bad if he couldn’t meet her again before he died and really put on a display of being the lecher. He’d love to be able to help her in her mission of justice.

“OK, let’s try this. If I lose, I’ll be Kita’s secretary for a day. You’ve got lots of things you want to do before you die, haven’t you? I’ll help you do them. If there’s someone you want to meet, I’ll telephone and make the appointment, or if there’s a book you want to read or a CD you want to hear, I’ll get it for you. How about it?” said Zombie.

“Yeah, great idea.” Kita was all for it. In return, he sounded her out on the possibility of buying her one hundred tickets in the Dream Jumbo Lottery. She liked the idea.

“I don’t really have anything I long for,” said Mitsuyo a little morosely.

“What about betting your own body like we were saying?” said Kita.

Mitsuyo responded that she’d undertake to be Kita’s slave for a day if she lost. “You can do a lot more with a slave than you can with a secretary,” she added.

“Right. I’ll get you three hundred Dream Jumbo tickets, then.”

“I’m not interested in lotteries. What I want is for you to promise the same thing, you’ll be my slave for a day.”

She sure seemed like she’d be a rough master, but hey, why not?

They’d have one go. If Kita stayed under longest, he’d get twenty-four hours with Zombie as his secretary and Mitsuyo as his slave. If he lost to Zombie but won against Mitsuyo, he’d have to buy a hundred lottery tickets but he’d get a slave. If he won against Zombie and lost to Mitsuyo, he’d be a slave with sidekick secretary.

They took a series of deep breaths, calmed themselves, and emptied their mind of thought. When the second hand on the clock moved to upright, they were to all dive together. Five, four, three, two, one. Kita held his breath and sank, checked that his two opponents were down there with him, then closed his eyes.

Occasional bubbles broke the stillness. At last they all signalled to each other that they were at the end of their tether, and all broke surface with a burst of bubbles, barely a moment apart.

The mermaids gasped for air. “God, that was scary!” “I thought I was going to die!” they declared in shaky voices. The first up had been Zombie, next Kita, and last Mitsuyo. Kita found himself slave-with-sidekick.

As they warmed their chilled bodies in the 40°C Jacuzzi tub, the three of them discussed how things should begin. It was already past midnight, so there was no avoiding their various roles. Mitsuyo, whose breathtaking skills had won her the crown, immediately began by ordering a beer and an oil massage after the bath. Kita told his secretary Zombie she needn’t do anything until morning. Both the queen and the secretary were exhausted. The secretary curled up on the sofa with a blanket and fell asleep, and the queen began to snore as Kita massaged her. Left to his own devices, Kita became turned on, and found his little feller suddenly standing up. He hesitated to take the prone queen from behind in case she got mad, but there was insubordination in the ranks below, so he slipped on a condom and thrust in his cock. The queen curled away from him for a moment and said, “Don’t,” but once she’d established that he was wearing a condom she turned lazily over, opened her legs, and let her slave do as he would. Zombie was peeking from under her blanket while Kita used Mitsuyo’s body to masturbate. He stretched his hand out beyond the pillow, and turned off the light.

Kita woke to the sound of splashing water. Secretary Zombie was lying in the bottom of the pool. Fearing that she was up to her old suicide tricks again, Kita rushed to the poolside, beat on the transparent screen, and shouted, “Are you alive?”

She was. The now wet Secretary Zombie announced that it was Saturday and enquired what she could begin by doing for him.

“Let’s go out somewhere,” he replied. First, however, he must learn the opinions of the queen. There was still no sign of Mitsuyo waking. Still wet, Secretary Zombie went over to her and hugged her. “Ergh!” moaned the queen in a pathetic voice, evidently dreaming that a snake was twining itself round her. Her eyes opened. Secretary Zombie leaned close to her ear and whispered, “I was a bit lonely last night. Don’t leave me alone too much.”

Mitsuyo placed a light kiss on Zombie’s lips. “Right,” she said, and rose to her feet. “Let’s go to the seaside.”

At the word from Mitsuyo, both the others hurriedly set about getting things ready. Kita remembered that he had a camera, and took a picture of the two naked girls snuggling up together.

They paid at the desk and stepped outside to find a light rain was falling. Kita had used about one hundred thousand yen the previous evening. The three ten thousand yen notes that Yashiro had given him as funeral money were still in his pocket. Just outside the hotel there happened to be a lottery ticket booth, so he bought thirty thousand yen worth of tickets and presented half each to the secretary and the queen. He tried to give Queen Mitsuyo an extra thirty thousand on the grounds that he’d slept with her the night before, but she shook her head. “No charge,” she told him with a smile.