Death by Choice

^{Chapter 7} THURSDAY

Yashiro woke from a truly horrible dream, in which he’d been blindfolded, bound to a chair, had his mouth forced open, and been made to swallow salted and fermented squid. The slimy taste still lingered on his tongue. He needed water. But when he tried to sit up from where he lay on the sofa, he tumbled to the floor. His arms and legs had been bound with rope, he realized. For a moment he thought he was still in the dream, but the pain in his back and this raging thirst were most definitely real.

“Good morning.” The doctor’s face gazed down at him.

“What’re you doing here? Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Sure. I’ve been sent by Kita to kill you.”

“Stop messing around. Did you kill him? Shinobu’s safe, isn’t she?”

“You’d do better to worry about yourself.” The doctor rummaged around in his Boston bag and brought out a tennis ball and a phial of medicine.

“What did you eat last night?”

“You’re not serious about this, are you?”

“I never lie to my patients.”

“I never said I wanted to die. Are you planning on killing a patient who doesn’t want to die?”

“My duty as doctor is to save patients who want to die. And my job as killer is to kill people whose death will benefit the world.”

“What have you got against me? Tell me!”

“Nothing. I’m just helping the world become a better place.”

“Whaddya mean, ‘a better place’? You’re sick!”

“You’re sick, and so’s Kita. He’s going to die without any help from me. I’ll put an end to myself sooner or later too. But not you. You don’t want to die, so it has to be execution.”

“What the hell are you on about? You’re saying you’ve got a license to kill?”

The doctor wiped an area of the tennis ball with a fluid, and put it to Yashiro’s mouth. “Open your mouth,” he instructed. Yashiro locked his jaws together and glared up at the killer. Yashiro could see the plan. The crushed ball would be pushed into his mouth, where it would swell until it couldn’t be removed. The emetic on it would soon begin to work, and he’d vomit up last night’s food. The ball would block the vomit and send it down his windpipe, and he’d choke to death. Yashiro clamped his mouth shut – but this prevented him from begging for his life. The killer pressed the lethal gag down harder. Yashiro drew his lips into his mouth, and twisted his face away.

“You’re scared of dying?” The doctor waited patiently for an answer. But Yashiro just lay there rigid as stone, suffering the extremity of his situation. The doctor tried again. “You’re scared of dying?” Yashiro, his mouth still clenched tight, gave a little cough in response. The doctor persisted. “Is that a yes or a no?” This time, Yashiro coughed twice.

The nightmare was all too real, in fact. He’d woken too late. Who’d have thought that not locking the office door before he lay down for a snooze would cost him so dear? But no, his luck had run out when he had trusted this guy in the first place.

The doctor was rummaging in his bag again. Had he given up on the idea of choking him to death, and decided on some other way to kill him? He had to free himself from this rope as quickly as possible, and run out the door for help. Or better still, shout for help… But it wouldn’t do to startle the killer, he’d be sure to choose the quickest means to kill him off if he did. OK then, talk him out of it. Brute intimidation wouldn’t work. But what about money?

The doctor was preparing to leave. He zipped up his bag, and bowed deeply. “Please accept my apologies for being so rough with you,” he said, then added, “But you needed to be shown just how it feels to be murdered.”

“What the hell’re you on about?” The guy must be stark raving mad, thought Yashiro. Only someone in a dream could be as absurd as this. This guy shouldn’t be left to roam free in the world. He was dangerous. Get out of my sight, and make it quick! Yashiro prayed.

“How much do you want? Name your price.” What should have been a yell came out as a hoarse whisper. What wouldn’t he give for a glass of water!

“You want to buy your life back? No, my friend, you can have it for free. I’ll make sure Kita gives me back the two hundred thousand I fronted him, plus the two hundred fifty you still owe me. Right, I’m off.”

The doctor leaned close to Yashiro where he lay on the floor, gave a couple of derisive snorts through his nose, and left. Was the nightmare over at last? But if so, this was the worst waking Yashiro had ever had. It took him fifteen minutes to free himself from the rope, heaping curses all the while on this bumbling killer. Then he rushed to the refrigerator and gulped down a bottle of chilled Mt. Fuji spring water. Now he remembered why he was so thirsty. Last night’s meal. He’d dropped in to the Korean grilled meat joint next door and had salted tongue and grilled rib meat on the bone, plus two helpings of kimchi and a bottle of soju. But that alone couldn’t account for the thirst. Quite likely people’s throats went dry when faced with death. He’d been soundly beaten. How could he have let the guy sneak up and tie him up while he lay there asleep? And how could he have gone snoring on, believing it was a dream?

Yashiro couldn’t stand it any longer. He had to ring the yakuza boss who’d put him onto the doctor in the first place, and tell him the story.

“He’ll murder you in your sleep if you let him! Take my advice and rub him out ASAP, for your own safety.”

The boss was an early riser. “What’s this? He tried to kill you, eh?” His tone was mocking.

“The guy’s crazy. He was trying to throttle me!”

“Hmm. How’s your back? No pain there?”

Suddenly, Yashiro felt a sharp, pincer-like pain shoot from his side around to his back. Pain also stabbed his stomach. He’d been so focused on not getting himself killed that hadn’t been aware of the pain until this moment.

“I seem to have strained my back.”

“Really? Take a look at your back in the mirror. Check if there’s any sign of stitches there.

Still not comprehending, Yashiro put his hand to his left side. “Nope, just the usual flab there. What’s this about stitches?”

“Seems you’re lucky. That guy can steal your kidney while you’re asleep. But sounds like you’re OK.”

“Man, the guy’s got no scruples!”

“That’s a killer for you.”

After the phone call, Yashiro drank more water. His body felt so heavy he could barely stand, so he sank back onto the sofa again. His stomach churned, and his head swam. Surely the guy couldn’t have stolen a kidney while he slept? Surely the pain would have made him leap to his feet! But what if he’d put him under? Yashiro glanced at the time. Two o’clock. Was his watch mad as well? But the wall clock gave the same time. It’d been about four in the morning when he’d settled down for a doze. Surely he couldn’t have slept for ten hours.

With an effort he heaved himself from the sofa, and went and stood in front of the mirror. A grey-faced old man stared back at him with bloodshot eyes. That couldn’t be him! Had the killer poisoned him, or something? He rolled up his shirt and turned to check his back. There along his right side, the side he hadn’t checked before, he saw seven staples buried in the flesh.

“He got me!” he thought. Instantly the energy drained from his body and his head swam scarlet.

Yashiro had no memory of selling his own kidney. All he’d done was arrange for Kita to sell his organs. What kind of crazy mistake had this bastard made? It had to be just a continuation of the nightmare. He’d go back to sleep, he decided. When he woke up again, his usual plump red face would be restored, and he’d go off and have himself a breaded pork cutlet on rice for breakfast. There was just no way all this could be real.

Once back in Tokyo, Kita chose to return to the hotel where last Friday he had revelled in his first feast with Mitsuyo and Zombie, the place with the private pool and karaoke bar. It had an automatic check-in system and room service, the perfect set-up for a kidnapper and his victim to hide away in. Here he would spend his final hours with Shinobu. The moment he left this hotel would mark the end of the kidnapping escapade, and their final parting. They both knew it, and neither felt the need to speak of it. Tired out from the long drive with the killer at the wheel, they took a hot shower, then lay on the bed, and after necking a little, sank into a light sleep.

Kita dreamed that he was walking alone through an empty desert at dusk. There he came upon a little gourd-shaped mound of sand. In it was stuck a long, thin board reminiscent of a broken grave marker, with the name YOSHIO KITA written there in a child’s clumsy hand. So this is my grave, here of all places, thought Yoshio, clasping his hands before him. Then there was a cry of “Kitaaa!” and when he turned to look he saw in the distance Mizuho Nishi with a little boy. She was clad in a bikini, and smiling shyly. The child held her hand, while in his other hand he carried a little fish scoop. He ran up to Yoshio. “Papa!” he cried.

At this, Kita awoke. Perhaps he’d overindulged in the caviar or vodka, for his throat was terribly dry, and his breath rasped. He gulped down a can of Oolong tea. “Me too,” murmured Shinobu, holding out a naked arm. He propped her in his arms and fed the tea to her.

They turned on the television. Immediately, an image of Shinobu against a background shot of Niigata Port leapt from the screen. It seemed the police and the press had swarmed to Niigata on the evidence of an eyewitness there, and were busy scouring the place for them. They must have passed them going the other way on the expressway as they’d headed back to Tokyo. There was also a shot of the Russian ship where they’d hidden for a few hours the evening before. It felt like ages since they’d gone on board and negotiated with the captain. It was only three days ago that Shinobu had read the Bible to him, but the memory had receded like some distant event in the past. Everything was coming to an end.

“It’s twelve. I’ll leave here in another hour,” Kita said.

“And what will become of me I wonder?”

“You’ll have heaps to talk about, that’s for sure. Use your tongue as your shield. Don’t let things prey on your mind. Jesus is with you.”

“That’s true, but still…” Shinobu looked unhappy. She buried her face in the pillow. Kita took a handful of her hair to his nose, wanting to remember the scent of it. If this scent filled his nostrils at the moment of death, he’d die happy, he was sure of it.

“I don’t want to go anywhere,” Shinobu’s muffled voice emerged from the pillow.

“You have to. The show must go on, but it can’t unless you go out onto that stage, you know.”

“OK, I’ll retire then.”

“You don’t have to do a thing. Just go out into the crowd with your Bible in your hand.”

“What about you, Kita?”

“I’m leaving the crowd behind.”

Shinobu abruptly sat up and hugged him. Let me not forget the feel of these breasts either, thought Kita. He felt again that tingling he’d experienced as Shinobu held the pistol to his head while the killer drove. He longed to drown in the softness of her breasts and the scent of her hair.

“Hold me. Hard. This is the last time you’ll embrace a woman. Sear this feeling into me, as proof that I lived. Hurt me if you like. You can bite me if you want to. My body will be your grave, Kita.” Tears trickled from the corners of Shinobu’s eyes. Kita licked them gently with his tongue, took her two arms inside his and squeezed. He sucked at her neck, her nipples, then slipped into her. Shinobu was half sobbing, half moaning with pleasure, and shaking her head as if desperately resisting something.

The face Kita saw before him was one he’d never seen before, not on television or in photographs, nor in the four days they’d been together. She might be in pain, or trying to dispel her fear, or about to burst out laughing. Her eyebrows were drawn down either side, her brow was wrinkled, and her lips curled.

“Let’s die together.” The heat of sex was over and the sweat-soaked bed was beginning to grow chilly when Shinobu suddenly spoke. Her tone was casual.

“No,” Kita said flatly.

“Why not? You’re going to die, aren’t you? Why should you care whether I want to die too? I’ve got a pistol right here, after all.”

“Don’t you dare. Your parents would be devastated.”

“And what about yours?”

“My father died four years ago. My mother’s gone senile.”

“Well I’ll be sad if you die, Kita. I’ll be so sad I’ll die too. So come on, let’s die together.

“You’d regret it.”

“There’s no such thing as regret once you’re dead.”

“I’m saying this for your own good, so please just live a bit longer. Another ten years or so. If you do that, you’ll find you’ve changed your mind.”

“Don’t you understand, Kita? I love you. How can I just stand by and watch the man I love die?”

“It’s sheer fancy. Just watch this man go, and you’ll be sure to find another fine guy out there in the crowd. Once you’ve fallen in love with him, you’ll forget me in no time.”

“I’ll never forget you,” she muttered. Then she crawled out of bed, and pulled the Makarov out of the carrier bag.

Kita leapt to his feet. “Give me that,” he said, his hand extended, but Shinobu placed the butt between her breasts and glared at him. Maybe he should just get Shinobu to shoot him right now, Kita thought. It would save him a lot of trouble. And Shinobu’s sudden urge to die was really just because she didn’t want to face going out into the crowd again.

“You can kill me, but don’t kill yourself,” he told her. “If you die too, who’s going to remember me? Who can I visit in dreams?”

“Well stay alive, if that’s what worries you.”

“OK, say we die together. How do we do it? What’s your plan?”

“You lie on top of me, then I shoot you through the back. That way the bullet will get us both.”

“You’re the heroine of a tragedy right now, but this is going to be a joke later, you know. Come on, get dressed. I’m going out to bring this thing to an end.”

But for all his urging, Shinobu stayed put on the bed clutching the pistol, her finger poised over the trigger. Kita put out his hand and attempted to lift it from her grasp as if seizing a butterfly, but she continued to glare at him, and pointed the gun at her jaw. Her finger was still on the trigger.

“If you’re going to die, do it next Friday. You’ve still got lots more things you’ve got to do in this world. It won’t matter if you give yourself an extra week to do them. There must be things you’d love to do before you die. I’m into my seventh day here, and I’ve satisfied all my desires. But you haven’t yet.”

Shinobu heaved a deep sigh, took the barrel of the gun, and held it out to Kita. Then the corners of her mouth turned down and she fled weeping to the bathroom to take a shower.

Shinobu emerged in a better mood, with a smile ready for Kita, but he was no longer there. She searched under the bed, in the toilet, and out in the pool, but there was no sign of him. She stamped with vexation. Here she’d just decided to live a bit longer, and look what he’d gone and done! Fancy running off while she was in the shower! “I hate you Yoshio Kita!” she yelled, and began to throw whatever was to hand – pillow, towel, coffee cup. She came to her senses abruptly when the glass table shattered. Perhaps she would still be in time catch him, she thought. She flung on her clothes and rushed out of the room, her hair still wet. The moment the elevator doors opened onto street level, she dashed out into a street teeming with businessmen and office girls sauntering back from lunch.

People turned to watch, tittering as Shinobu flew along the street, drops flying from her hair and breasts flopping. Hadn’t they seen that face somewhere? Then a cry went up: “It’s her!”

Shinobu ran on. Kita had disappeared into the anonymous crowd. Still she ran. Her nipples rubbed painfully against her blouse. Her throat was so dry she felt it would split. She paused to buy a grapefruit juice from a drinks machine, tossed it down, then wiped her sweat with her sleeve and plumped herself down on a bench in front of a convenience store.

Three young men stood around her, eyeing her from a distance. They’d been on the lookout for a woman to chat up when they spotted her sitting there. A discussion followed. Now they stared blatantly, whispering her name among themselves, and to escape them Shinobu set off at a run once more. The men followed. As she ran, Shinobu remembered that she’d left her Bible in the hotel room. How could she have forgotten her protective talisman? She had to go back and get it! But she’d turned right and left and run up and down so many slopes in pursuit of Kita that she no longer had any idea where she was.

She dashed into a department store. The eyes of the girls at the cosmetics counter bored into her. Gasping for breath, she went up in the elevator. Now at last the effects of the vodka were beginning to hit her.

“Where do you sell Bibles?” she asked a lady shop assistant in the uniforms section.

“Bibles? You’ll find them in the bookstore on the fifth floor. Excuse me, er, are you the one who was kidna—”

“No. I’m free again.” Shinobu pushed the middle-aged woman out of the way and raced to the fifth floor. The sales floor heaved like a ship in a high sea. They were all looking. Gazes pierced her from everywhere, and she felt pursued by the whisper of her name. That’s Shinobu Yoimachi running past! She’s alive! What’s she doing in Shibuya? Is the kidnapper somewhere nearby? She should go straight to the police – was she raped by the kidnapper? Was she really abducted? Let’s save Shinobu Yoimachi! Chase her! What fun… Inaudible words echoed around her head. Help me, Kita! They’re trying to kidnap me!

“A Bible, please,” she said to the shop assistant.

“You want the New Testament? The Old Testament?”

“The one that has Jesus’ words in it,” Shinobu retorted irritably.

“They’re both on the Religion shelf,” the shop assistant said in a stupid voice.

Maybe, just maybe, she’d find Kita there browsing the Bible, she thought. But instead she found a close-cropped young man, turning the pages of a book with the ridiculous title Ten Steps to Happiness. Shinobu picked up a Bible with a yellow cover, and hurried back to the counter. Once more, everyone was looking at her. She had the urge to vomit. Bible clutched to her side, she fled to the toilet, rushed into the large Disabled Toilet, turned the lock, and vomited up a bitter black fluid.

If Kita were here he’d rub her back for her, he’d read the Bible to her, she thought. But here she was, alone once more. And all she had was a Bible. She idly opened it, and voicelessly spoke the words that met her eyes. These were the words from The Revelation of John that she read:

Written on her forehead was a name with a secret meaning: “Babylon the great, the mother of whores and of every obscenity on earth.”

Well if Tokyo was Babylon it could go up in flames for all she cared, thought Shinobu. Along with me, and all the men I’ve slept with. It wasn’t Tokyo’s fault, but that of its tainted people. No one spoke the truth. All were equally dyed deep with evil and corruption. That was why we needed God; a God who could make us all humble and ashamed of our sinfulness. But such a God could never appear on Earth in human form. If He did, all our envy and hatred would be hurled at Him.

Ah, she thought, I wish I could see Kita again. I don’t want to let him die. Even if we can’t meet again in this life, I just want to believe that there can exist on this Earth a man free of envy and hatred, like Jesus in the Bible.

A sudden thought flashed into her mind. That killer – she still had his cell phone number! She rushed out of the toilet and straight to a public telephone box. He answered on the fourth ring.

“Hi, it’s Shinobu. I’ve got something to ask of you. You can save people’s lives too, can’t you? If so, please stop Kita from killing himself. He absolutely mustn’t be allowed to die. I’ll pay you a million yen.”

“Right.”

“You can?”

“I’ll see what I can do. I was just about to come and get my fee for killing Yashiro, actually. Is Kita still with you? Oh, he’s escaped, has he? I see. But no need to worry. I’ll find him, have no fear. I put a transmitter in his backpack, see, so I can tell pretty much exactly where he is.”

And so Yoshio Kita was once again a followed man.

Kita intended to quit the capital again. He hadn’t fixed on where he should kill himself, but he could see that it would be useless to hang around the city with its high ratio of police.

Hot on Kita’s trail aided by the transmitter in his backpack, the doctor caught sight of him going into Tower Records. The doctor stood just beyond the periphery of Kita’s vision, watching his feet to see where they’d take him next. Kita walked past the Opera section three times and finally left without buying anything. Outside, he hailed a taxi.

His destination was the airport out on reclaimed land in the bay. With what must be close to the last of his money, Kita bought a ticket at the counter, and proceeded to check in for the flight to Sapporo. The doctor followed suit, allowing a two-minute interval. There were still forty minutes before boarding. Still wearing his backpack, Kita went into the bathroom, and didn’t emerge for some time. Maybe he was having trouble getting rid of the pistol, mused the doctor. Or busy plastering down his hair. Or did he want to be alone for a bit? Then the worrying thought flashed through his mind that Kita might actually commit suicide in there behind closed doors. He was just setting off to check when Kita emerged, looking cheerful. He went straight to the hand luggage inspection point, and passed through without any check being made of his backpack. Evidently he was no longer carrying the pistol. Well, that meant that at least he wouldn’t be able to shoot himself, and also that the doctor needn’t worry about being kidnapped again.

The doctor let five others pass ahead of him before he went through the hand luggage check. But then he was taken aside while his bag was inspected, and had to explain the presence of the syringes, medicine, and clinical examination equipment. In the end his bag was handed to one of the stewardesses to carry on board. The reputation of doctors must have taken a dive in recent times.

Kita wandered about the shops, but didn’t buy anything. Then he went in a snack bar and ordered a curry rice. Watching at a distance, the doctor tutted at the sight of Kita standing there at the counter hunched over his food. If his planned suicide was pointless, eating curry was even more horribly pointless. No man about to die should be eating curry, and no man eating curry should be set on suicide. The doctor felt he was spying on some illicit scene. For some reason, he was suddenly consumed with anger. Nevertheless, he continued to stare until Kita had run his spoon around the edge of the plate and licked up the last morsel, like some starving student. The fellow was still brimming with life, it seemed. Perhaps there was one more thing he was planning to do. Still, this kind of energy wasn’t necessarily just self-sustaining. It could easily shift to something destructive – of himself, or of others as well.

The doctor boarded ahead of Kita and settled down to doze as soon as he was seated. But his nerves were still tingling from all the running around of the last couple of days, and he was in no fit state to sleep. Before long, a recording of the three o’clock news began on the screen in front of him. The newscaster announced that at two that afternoon Shinobu Yoimachi had been found alive and well in a Shibuya department store. Her abductor was still on the run, and the police were on his trail. Shinobu was refusing to give any information about him, either his name or distinguishing features. In an interview with the press, she had said, “The man who kidnapped me is not a bad person. I want to save him. He’s taken our illness upon himself.”

What would the viewers make of this? Not knowing what had actually happened, and seeing her looking as fervent as her words, at best they’d probably assume she’d fallen in love with her kidnapper, or even that the whole story had been a fiction. But perhaps there’d be a tendency to try to see some logic in what she said after all. It was true, the kidnapper wasn’t a bad person. That in itself would probably elicit some public sympathy. Personally, the doctor was unmoved by Kita’s apparent goodness, but somehow he felt a tremendous pity for him nevertheless. He was surely wasting his time by shadowing Kita all the way to Hokkaido like this, but he had an urge to meddle in his fate.

Once the plane was airborne, the doctor suddenly recalled someone who somehow reminded him of Kita. He’d forgotten the guy’s name, but he’d known him at middle school. They’d been in the same class in the second grade for a mere three months. Rumour had it that the boy had lost his parents in an accident, and his grandparents were taking care of him. He had a hook-shaped scar on his head, and in class he was constantly either snivelling like something coming to the boil, or chuckling to himself. In the first week everyone avoided him and kept their distance. In the second week, someone came up with the nickname “Frankenstein,” and from that moment on he’d been tormented. He was the perfect target for the violence of his fellow students. He made no effort to resist, so even people who were physically weaker felt safe to hurl the name at him. He also had a habit that the others couldn’t understand. As he lay there snivelling while he was beaten and kicked, he would murmur to himself, a little smile on his face. You could never really catch what he was saying. When a bully asked him to say it again, he’d simply turn away with a little chuckle. This would incense the bully, of course. He’d register a momentary unease at not knowing what his victim was thinking, and he’d have to inflict a bit more pain on Frankenstein to dispel it.

The doctor had wanted to stay out of the gang who made this boy a scapegoat, but one day he began to feel he’d like to see the guy dead. The boy was silent in class, but all the time he spent alone seemed to have induced him to think things through and develop his own philosophy, which he seemed to long to share with someone. On the way home from school one day, the boy stopped him and told him something like, “The world’s forsaken me. But what this means is that I’ve been chosen by God. I must battle alone against the world. I’ll probably be defeated. In order to win, I must become the incarnation of the world’s evils. When I do this, the world will find it needs me.”

The doctor had forgotten his name, but he clearly remembered these words. It could just be that the guy had been a genius – there are countless unlucky geniuses like that in the world. But hearing these words back then by the bridge in middle school, the doctor had been just one more of those with common sense who side with the world.

About a month after he’d begun to wish this incomprehensible possible genius dead, the guy was transferred to another school. If he was still alive today, what would he be doing? There was no way to know whether he’d died or possibly even been killed in his teens. This was why the boy haunted him. Even all these years later, that face would pop into his head several times a year, and always it would leave him brooding over whether he should have just killed him back then, or become his friend, or whether he should employ a detective and search him out, or whether the fellow still hated him. He even dreamed sometimes that the guy could now be a doctor with a side job in killing. Every time he recalled him in the past twenty years or so, the doctor thought to himself now, he’d talked himself into believing he had nothing in common with the guy.

But now that he’d come across the peculiar make-up of this fellow Yoshio Kita, it struck the doctor that the middle-aged Frankenstein would undoubtedly decide to condemn himself to death, just like Kita. The point is, the doctor tried telling himself, these folk who wage a losing battle with the world set up some grand suicidal scheme really for the sake of their own little egos. Nevertheless, he still felt disturbed.

His brain was spinning along at terrific speed, but his tired eyes and body couldn’t keep up, and he felt oppressed by dizziness. The doctor closed his eyes and attempted to simply wait quietly for the plane to land. It was smoothly losing momentum now, but his dizziness made it feel as if it was going into a tail spin. He felt ill. It was always at such moments that images of bloody human organs came floating past under his closed lids. If only the damn plane would just go down, he thought, bury its nose in the middle of some hapless town below and burst into flames – anything rather than this.

Kita disembarked ahead of him. The doctor retrieved his bag from the stewardess and stepped briskly after him. He gained ground on the departing backpack, thinking that he could safely hail Kita now without risking him running off. Just then Kita turned suddenly right and ran into the toilet. The doctor was obliged to follow him, and he placed himself at the next urinal. Even this failed to alert Kita, however.

“I’d ask you not to go eating curry at airports,” the doctor said.

Kita turned to look at him with an expression of distaste, and heaved a deep sigh. “God, how unlucky can I get!”

In a few more hours, Friday would begin. Why should a guy who was due to die tomorrow have any need for luck?

“No need to worry. I’m not planning to get in your way.” The doctor smiled at him in friendly fashion, but Kita frowned.

“So what the hell’re you up to then?” he demanded fiercely, and turned to wash his hands.

The doctor held out his handkerchief for Kita to wipe his hands on. “I have something I’d like to discuss, you see.”

“How did you know I was going to Hokkaido?”

“Oh, sheer coincidence. I was after a holiday in Hokkaido myself.”

“That’s a lie.”

“You’re right, it is.”

“You’ve been asked to follow me, haven’t you?”

“No. I’m accompanying you out of mere personal curiosity.”

“I’m not some kind of exhibit, you know.”

“And I’m not here as audience, I assure you. If there’s anything I can do, I’d be glad to help.”

Kita drew a deep breath, then suddenly took off at a run. The doctor ran beside him. At the taxi stand, Kita turned to face him. “Stop meddling in other people’s business! Get lost!” he gasped desperately.

“I understand,” the doctor nodded expressionlessly.

“You! I’m talking about YOU!” yelled Kita, leaning threateningly over the doctor, but the doctor merely continued talking in a soothing tone.

“I’ve followed your instructions, and dispatched that man who tried to take advantage of you. You’re now quite free to be your own man. I won’t meddle, don’t you worry. But you know the saying, ‘Companions on the road.’ Just allow me to have dinner with you, that’s all I ask. I was wanting to discuss methods of payment with you. You’ll be setting off on a long journey tomorrow, Kita. Tonight’s the last time you’ll have a business conversation, you know.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot. I’m so sorry.”

“You’re headed for the city centre? I don’t know when you plan to die tomorrow, of course, but tonight’s your last night, isn’t it? I was wondering if you’d care to have a sympathetic ear for any last words you may have.”

The doctor was clever not only with his hands but with his tongue. Kita couldn’t very well turn him down, since he’d come for his promised payment, so he meekly followed the doctor’s beckoning hand and got into the taxi with him.

This last week felt like an endless series of changing vehicles. How many taxis had he taken by now, he wondered? Looked like it took a lot of changes to get you to the next world. Maybe in New York or Rio de Janeiro you could get a taxi that would take you straight there.

“So what are your plans for tonight? You must be rather weary,” the doctor said.

“Kidnapping’s an exhausting business. Is it all sorted now?”

“I’d guess Shinobu is being mobbed by the press right about now. It’s the rebirth of a star.”

“Did I do the right thing, then?”

“You did, I’m sure. And you got away without being caught, what’s more.”

“True. By the way, Mr Killer, you mentioned back there that you’d dispatched Yashiro. You actually killed him?”

“He’s still alive. But I’ve shortened his life considerably. He’ll go another three years at the outside, could be six months, then he’ll die.”

“What did you do?”

“I stole a kidney. You can’t sell a life if you steal it, after all, but you can get some money for a kidney.”

“And how is he?”

“I couldn’t really say. We exchanged greetings after the surgery, that’s all. I imagine he’s probably in hospital by now. I had to perform the surgery in that filthy office of his, so I’d guess quite a few bacteria got in. How he gets along will rather depend on how good his immune system is, but you can be sure he’ll be befriended by quite a variety of illnesses from now on, and forced to spend his days contemplating approaching death.” The doctor sounded positively gleeful.

“Does this count as murder?”

“I wonder. I could maybe be convicted of robbery and grievous bodily harm. Maybe negligence leading to death. Although it wasn’t negligence, it was intentional. The question comes down to whether there was any intent to kill. You ordered me to kill him, so I guess the answer is yes, but I didn’t in fact kill him at the time, so it would be hard to prove intent to kill. You’re going to die tomorrow, so you won’t be in a position to bear witness. Therefore, I can only conclude it can’t count as murder.”

“So what did you really want to do?”

“I couldn’t say. I simply chose the most rational approach.”

“You weren’t sure whether to kill him or save him, so you stole his kidney, is that it?”

“That’s what it amounts to, yes.”

“In that case, you can’t claim to have killed him, so I’m not obliged to pay you.”

“Ah, I see. That’s what you’re driving at. Never mind. I got a decent sum from selling his kidney on the black market.”

The taxi was stopped at a red light, and the driver was eyeing his two passengers in the rear view mirror. He met the doctor’s eye, hastily averted his gaze, and turned up the radio.

“We’re practicing our parts for a play,” the doctor informed him drolly.

“Truth is, I’ve got no money.” Kita opened his wallet and showed the doctor. He had less than three thousand yen there. There was money enough in the bank, of course, but no way of getting it out.

“OK then, we’ll have to steal some. You borrowed two hundred thousand from me, Kita. I still haven’t been paid the outstanding two hundred fifty thousand from Yashiro either, so something has to be done about that as well.”

“I’ll pay you with my organs. Organ extraction’s your specialty, after all.”

“I guess that’s all we can do then. I’ll need to accompany you to your execution ground. Will you permit me?” The doctor spoke as if he was reading from a score he already knew.

Kita pulled at his hair in despair. “Why the hell should it cost me all this money to die!” he cried.

“That’s capitalism for you,” murmured the doctor.

“Oh shut up,” said Kita crossly.

It seemed the doctor really was upset that Kita had eaten that curry. He was still harping on about it even once they were settled at the table for Kita’s last supper.

“Do you have something against curry, is that it?” asked Kita. “So what could I have eaten that would make you happy, eh?”

But the doctor only came back with the same thing, over and again. “Curry’s just the pits.”

“So I should confine myself to sashimi and crab, or something?”

“Well that’s better than curry, at any rate,” muttered the doctor. He stripped the shell from the horse crab that had just been delivered to their table, flipped it over, and set in on the ovaries and crab butter. Both suddenly grew taciturn as they settled down to commune with their crab. But neither had much of an appetite in fact. The doctor tipped some warm sake into his crab shell, mixed in some orange crab butter, and sat there sipping. Kita imitated him. This was called “crab shell sake,” he learned. “I’ve never come across it before,” he remarked. At this, the doctor launched into an enthusiastic lecture. Had he ever tried charfish bone sake? Or blowfish roe sake? You could also mix sake with salted sea-cucumber entrails… on he went.

“You’re some sort of gourmand, I see,” remarked Kita, sounding bored.

“You can’t have eaten any decent food in your whole life,” the doctor retorted firmly.

“I always had strong likes and dislikes as a kid.”

“Me too. Up until I was about twenty-seven.”

“So you turned around and became a gourmet at twenty-seven?”

“That’s right. My physical make-up changed with the death of someone I knew. He was a doctor, my teacher actually. The immediate cause of death was rupture of the heart, but his body was in such a bad way he could easily have died of any damn thing. Diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver, hypertension, bowel cancer, he had the lot. And how did he get that way? Overeating, nothing more nothing less. In the hospital he’d be handing out warnings on diet to the patients, but he exempted himself from his own rules.”

“You’re pretty weird yourself, but so was your teacher, eh?”

“Let me just finish. Patients generally come to hospital wanting to regain their health, right? But there’s no need for the doctors to be healthy. He was out to commit slow suicide, that’s my view. People who eat things they’re not supposed to eat, they’re shortening their life through a crime of conscience. That’s right, you can die by eating, you know.”

All along the doctor had acted like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, but suddenly all that changed and he now spoke in deadly earnest.

“He had an eating disorder, that’s what it comes down to. He recognized it himself, and he once told me it was related to his experience as an infant during the war. That fear of starvation never left him even in adulthood. He felt anxious and restless unless there was food nearby. As a result, there was always food in the refrigerator and cupboard. But once or twice a year, it would happen that stocks ran out. When he discovered this, he’d immediately go out and fill his belly somewhere or buy stuff in, no matter if it was past midnight, or in the middle of a typhoon. These days, of course, you’ve got twenty-four-hour convenience stores to take care of the anxiety of such people, but back then there were no convenient local food outlets. He’d have to get a taxi into the city centre to find one of those late-night shops.

“He used to play the gourmet and pretend it was an epicurean affectation that made him walk the streets in search of food. He defended a huge territory, and he was au fait with all manner of international foods and cuisine. When he travelled to conferences he’d make a point of hunting out the specialties and delicacies of the region, and astonish everyone with his appetite. He’d eat at least two dozen raw crabs, then demolish enough bouillabaisse for three. He could consume a two-pound T-bone steak, rare. He’d spend a long time at a sushi counter, ordering two rounds of everything they had on the menu.

“But all this is no more than you’d expect of your average glutton. He passed himself off as a suave, big-eating gastronome in company, but in fact he was the worst type of food eccentric. There’s nothing esoteric about being a food eccentric, no arcane knowledge or anything like that. He’d eat whatever he could get his hands on. Weird eating was his greatest pleasure in life. And one aspect of this discipline of his was food perversion.

“My teacher adored pigs’ ears. Now pigs’ ears are a staple item in Okinawa and Taiwan, where they eat them vinegared or jellied. Their gelatinous marrow and skin gives the dish a fabulous texture to the bite. You can turn a woman on by licking her ears, of course, but it’s not on to actually eat them. So you ease your frustration by eating pigs’ ears. My teacher never ate a single woman’s ear till the day he died, but he chewed up and digested the ears of no less than three hundred pigs to make up for it.

“He also had a passion for internal organs, brain and liver and kidneys, and so on, and he was a constant customer at the street stalls that specialized in offal dishes.

“Now freshness is everything when it comes to offal. He’d go to these places in Shinjuku in search of the organs of cattle killed that same day, and order up dishes of raw liver, heart, brains, and what have you. Raw brains have a richer taste than cod’s roe but they’re not as strong, and you can get quite addicted to the particular crisp texture of pink brainstem. Cattle have small brains relative to their overall bulk, so raw beef brain is quite costly. But that didn’t stop him. He’d order up three plates of it, until I found myself wishing I had four stomachs like a cow to hold it all. But this was just the hors d’oeuvres. The main course was beef offal stew. This went well with a heavy Bordeaux red, so he’d take a case along when he went. Offal may be a stamina food, the guy behind the counter would warn him, but it’s packed full of cholesterol remember. I’m a doctor, he’d say with a shrug, I know what I’m doing, and he’d order a second helping of stew.

“He was also a sucker for animal fat. Take thick noodles in a soup of back fat of pork, for instance. Or Chinese dumplings with a creamy stuffing made with heapings of that lard you use for heavy fry-ups. We’re still in the realm of fat that might be enjoyed by many people on a regular basis here, of course. But my teacher had what you might call a literal weakness for the stuff.

“Now we Japanese as a rule don’t go for fat, with the result that we have excellent longevity. You don’t die young just from eating the kind of fat you get in noodle soup or Chinese dumplings, for one thing. Let me just mention here that lard is a healthier kind of fat than butter or beef fat. Okinawans are long-lived, and Okinawa’s a lard paradise. Mind you, their impressive average life span is actually thanks to other causes. They have a balanced diet, and the climate and air are conducive to a long life. They’re not addicted to fat like some races.

“But as for my teacher, well he was on familiar terms with butter, beef fat, lard, you name it. Seal fat, duck fat, sheep’s fat, camel fat… The Provence region of France prides itself on a dish called cassoulet. You cook fatty duck in an earthenware casserole dish with white beans and sausage, so the beans absorb the duck fat, and the soup’s heavy with it. Apparently even the French have heartburn the day after they eat this dish. My teacher ate it three days running. He didn’t just eat it, he soaked up every last bit of fat at the bottom of the casserole dish with bread. I’d guess he shortened his life by about a week at each meal.

“Whenever he ate fat, he knew one thing for sure. Whether it was salted pork sirloin or chunks of beef fat in sukiyaki or stewed camel’s hump, or goose fat foie gras, he knew it was going to put pressure on his circulatory system, increase the adipose tissue around his liver, add wear and tear to his heart, diminish his vigour, and as a result take him one step closer to death.

“He would go into raptures over spicy and salty things. Now fat, of course, disguises much of the taste of hot or salty food. If you put salt on your tongue, you register the salty taste, and if you bite a chilli your tongue burns, but fat not only lessens the heat and the saltiness, it tames it right down. So of course his fat-soaked tongue craved food that was hotter and hotter, saltier and saltier.

“He kept the refrigerator permanently stocked with a number of salted and fermented foods. Sweet miso with fermentation starter, high-grade stuff with lime added, fermented cuttlefish blackened with its ink, he had the lot. He’d put salted fish innards and roe or salted sea-cucumber entrails in sake and drink it, he’d soak octopus or blowfish stomach or salt pickled sea squirt in green tea, or put salt-pickled baby rabbitfish on tofu, and he’d eat anchovies neat. He was a great fan of salt itself in all its guises. He’d of course use rock salt on meat dishes, and natural sea salt with fish, but he’d also blend different regional salts to create compounds for his personal delectation. This became a passion in his final years, the reason being that his body couldn’t cope with anything more than salt and water by this stage.

“Well if you’re a connoisseur of salt, you’ll also be a connoisseur of miso, soy sauce, and fish sauce. This man would serve himself dollops of finest Hatcho and Nishikyo miso washed down with sake, and slake the resultant thirst with drafts of Calpis. His pursuit of saltiness led him to start gulping down pure mineral spring water. His daily consumption of salts and sugars leapt, while his taste buds dulled. He craved ever stronger taste sensations. He took to having chilli, Tabasco sauce, or Chinese chilli paste with everything, which of course ate its way through not only his tongue and stomach but also his intestines.”

“You and your teacher make a fine perverted pair, I must say.” Just listening to him was giving Kita heartburn and a dreadful thirst. He ordered water.

“I’m just saying this is one more way of committing suicide. It takes a while, mind. Obviously, I’m not suggesting you try it yourself. I mean, you’re a man who’ll eat curry for almost his last meal, after all.”

“Just drop it, OK? You’re saying I should’ve eaten noodles? I don’t want to eat another thing.”

“Curry! Noodles! You’re a man with a sorry stomach, you are.”

“Don’t judge a man by his stomach.”

“Oh but I do. I hate Americans, for instance. This world isn’t such a simple place that you can conquer it with goddamn hamburgers.”

“Just what’re you trying to tell me?”

“I’m speaking of the sorrows of the flesh. That explosive appetite of this teacher of mine did its work and sure enough his organs fell apart. Food eccentricity is a kind of terrorism, when it comes down to it. But it was also the only way my teacher could slake his desires.

“We’re all starved of love, and tormented by the fear of losing love. From time to time we have to ease our fears and cravings by a bout of overeating. We search out food to replace the love we can’t chew and swallow – or in some cases we do the opposite, despair of finding love and thus cease to desire food. At any rate, love and food are fatally interconnected.

“I cannot live without love. Yet love evades me. This is our dilemma, and we’ve constructed two ways to ease the pain. One is fervent eating. The other is refusing to eat anything at all. Being starved of love both stimulates the appetite and removes it. Both these responses are destructive impulses that derive from a sense of love’s absence. The one leads to overeating, the other to anorexia. Either way, too much or too little, we die. We humans survive by maintaining a balance between the two, but overeating and anorexia don’t hurt others, so no one interferes. Of course your lover or your family might try to save you, but this involves love of some sort, and the result may well be that your destructive impulses subside. Anyone threatened with death through over- or undereating is actually in a crisis of love. Yet this is where someone who has no dealings with love steps in – the doctor. Where destructive impulses are directed at others the police and the legal profession step in, but they’re not in a position to interfere with self-harm. All that can be done is for a doctor to treat the problem as best he can. You may find a good one, and with luck you’ll survive.

“My teacher was lucky in that he himself was a doctor, but in some ways it was his downfall as well. At any rate, just before his sixtieth birthday he collapsed and died from overeating. It was a hideous death, but not a tragic one. His close family no doubt felt sorry for him, but those around him had no sympathy. In their astonishment they laughed rather than grieved, and at length the ironic smiles gave way to real reverence.

“What a lucky guy to die from overeating, one of his colleagues said. Meanwhile his students gossiped that he must have been aiming to get his name in the Guinness Book of Records with the readings on his cholesterol, gamma GTP, blood sugars and so on, all measures of his various ailments.

“The poor man could barely eat anything in his last years. He’d sit there lost in thought before a dish of plain broiled fatty eel and foie gras sauté, finally manage to carry a morsel to his mouth, then reach a trembling hand to a glass of water to wash it down. His flesh sagged and spilled out between his shirt and the top of his trousers. He’d developed a thick layer of fat everywhere beneath the skin, and a marbling of adipose tissue covered his muscles and organs. His breath stank and sweat constantly poured from him in all temperatures.

“At this point, he made up his mind and prepared for his last supper. The table was laid with an array of dishes devised over long years of eccentric eating. A beef brain and pork saddle fat salad, a jellied broth of pigs’ ears and fig, foie gras and Chinese chilli sauce ice cream, ravioli of fermented bonito intestine and washed cheese, green chilli stuffed with caviar, tuna eyeballs in champagne. He assembled a row of his favourite wines – Romanée-Conti, Château Latour, Tokay and so forth. It took him five hours to polish it all off, sieving off the fatty juices and injecting them into his system. He collapsed on the spot, was rushed to hospital in an ambulance, and died of a heart attack en route.”

“Why on earth would he go to that extreme? He must’ve been pretty desperate,” muttered Kita.

The doctor drew a deep breath through his nose, and gazed steadily at him. “That’s exactly how my teacher would breathe sometimes, flaring his nostrils. Like he found the world despicable.”

“This teacher of yours wouldn’t be your old man, by any chance?”

Still holding his gaze, the doctor raised his lip in a lopsided wry smile. “You’re pretty smart. I am the son of this eccentric eater, you’re right.”

“And are you one too?”

“I’m no match for my father when it comes to appetite. I hated even eating while he was alive. I despised people who were addicted to food. I virtually lived on thin air. I didn’t eat red meat or fish. I’d occasionally snack on a leaf of lettuce or cabbage, or eat a piece of unbuttered toast. When it came to meals, it was a bowl of white rice and some miso soup. I ate what you might call the absolute minimum to survive.”

“Your own form of rebellion against your father, eh?”

“I imagine so, yes. I was twenty-seven when he died. After that, my physical constitution changed radically. My repressed appetite was liberated, and I started eating meat and fish. On the anniversary of his death I went off to one of those offal specialty restaurants and had beef brain, and when I went to France I made a point of visiting Provence to have cassoulet. But I must admit my stomach isn’t as strong as his was.”

“You inherited his appetite, but not his stomach?”

“That’s right. But I did inherit his despair. He expressed his destructive impulses through perverse eating, but I—”

“Murder people?”

“No, I haven’t murdered anyone yet. I try to, but I end up saving them. I’m still caught between killing and rescuing. I chose to become a doctor in order to render my murderous impulses harmless. I hoped the urge to destroy could be satisfied by cutting people open and messing about with their organs. But I was wrong. Pa’s eating problems worsened with age, and it seems my destructive impulses are doing the same thing.”

Why had the doctor chosen him to confess to? Kita wondered. Was it because he thought Kita would understand the despair of this gluttonous father and his murderous son? The doctor had analysed himself, but now what?

“You’re sick. Go and see a doctor.” Kita was trying to throw him off with a casually dismissive remark.

“I’m asking you to stand in for a doctor here,” the doctor replied.

Kita smiled wryly. “This is turning out to be some last supper,” he muttered.

“Kita, why do you want to die?”

Everyone he met asked him the same question, and he didn’t have an answer. He simply made up some witty response on the spur of the moment to get the other person off his back.

Now he said the first thing that came to him. “A kind of self-sacrifice, I guess.”

“So you think your death is going to help the world?”

“Not really, no.”

“OK, why die then?”

“My instincts are telling me to. Just like your instincts tell you to kill people and then to save them.”

“I get the feeling we’ve got something in common, you and me. We can’t explain our impulses.”

“Why don’t you want to kill yourself? You can save someone else by dying yourself, you know.”

“No, being alive allows me to save you. But in any case, the world doesn’t give a damn whether I live or die, it doesn’t suffer either way. Even if nothing much happens in the world on any given day, a lot of people still die. And we’re both going to join the anonymous dead sooner or later. The world at large doesn’t have anything to do with each and every person who dies, now, does it? We’re part of the world, but once we go the gap’s soon filled. My, what a cold hard world it is, how easily it forgets! How many of the dead do we each personally remember, hey? Family, close friends, important people we’ve respected, famous artists – probably no more than ten or so, right? But just think of the millions who die during our lifetime.”

“What’re you trying to say?”

“The world will abandon you.”

“So?”

“So haven’t you felt that before you die you’d like to do something that would lodge you in people’s memory somehow?”

“Not really, no. I don’t give a damn whether I’m forgotten or not.”

“Do you believe in the next world?”

“There’s no such thing. What was it Shinobu said? The next world is just the worst place, or something.”

“Even so you want to die?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You have no regrets? Nothing to tie you to life?”

“Nothing.”

“You have some grudge against the world perhaps?”

“When I die, my world will disappear. I can’t destroy the world. No matter how many people you kill, the world will still keep going. Mao Tse-tung, Stalin, Hitler – they all massacred vast numbers, but the world kept going. So you see, you should give up murder and kill yourself instead. That way you can at least get rid of the world you personally live in.”

“You say this, Kita, but surely you’ve struggled with the world? You’re actually a hero in disguise. The fight begins now.”

“You have a strong will to live. That’s why you kill others instead of yourself. You must be motivated deep down by hatred and malice, even if you can’t really comprehend yourself, I think. This will of yours to live’ll get the better of you one day, and you’ll die. Just like your father died from over-eating.”

Kita yawned and stood up.

“Where are you going?” cried the doctor, leaping hastily to his feet.

Kita smiled at him. “My father died a bland, kindly man. He was used by others all his life, he had no friends, he was abandoned by the world, and he died quietly alone. No one remembers him now. My mother’s lost her marbles, his son’s about to die. All that will be left is his grave. But most people in the world live like him, and die like him. Mao Tse-tung and Stalin and Hitler killed anonymous millions just like him. They killed some famous folk too, of course, but they were in the minority. So at least where dying’s concerned, I’m one up on my Dad. I managed to get a bit of my own back on the world, and I met the woman of my dreams.”

Kita put on his coat, shouldered his backpack, and disappeared into the crowded streets of Susukino. The doctor in turn picked up his heavy bag and set off after him, maintaining a steady distance.

All that remained by now in Kita’s wallet was two thousand five hundred ninety yen. Whatever he did now, his range of choices would be pretty limited – a nap in some sauna, for instance, or a couple of cheap drinks in a bar. Perhaps he should set himself up to sleep the night in a park or doss down between a couple of high-rises. No doubt he could dip into the doctor’s pocket for expenses, of course, but it felt somehow right to spend his last night on earth sleeping out in the open. It was time to gaze up into the sky in this northern city, ask the doctor to keep his mouth shut, and make some final decisions about how to carry out his imminent execution.

He walked slowly north from Susukino along Minami Shijo, heading for Odori Koen. The benches around the fountain were all occupied by couples, but along the street under the trees was emptier. He chose a spot between two trees, and the two of them spread out some newspaper salvaged from a garbage bin, and settled down for the night. Kita closed his eyes and concentrated on the question of how to kill himself, dimly aware of the distant cacophony from passersby in the park and its surrounding streets. Then it suddenly struck him that he wanted to try ski jumping just once before he died. Well how about throwing himself off the Okurayama ski jump where Sasatani had performed his feats back in the Sapporo Olympics? With luck, he’d smash himself up badly enough to die. As luck would have it, though, he might manage a successful jump. Either way, it was worth a try. How about tossing back the remaining bottle of vodka from the Russian sailors and then speeding down the ski slope on a bicycle? Even his internal organs would squirm with excitement, for sure.

As Kita lay there grinning to himself, the doctor suddenly sat up. “Sorry, but there’s something I forgot,” he said. “As I understand it, Shinobu’s in love with you.”

What was the use of hearing this now? Kita had lost his love four hours before he flew to Sapporo. “I’m grateful to her. She’s managed to make my suicide into a kind of art.”

The doctor drew a deep breath through his nose. “An art, eh?” he said softly. “I finally get it, Kita. You, my father, even me – we’re all death artists.”

Kita lay there breathing in the fragrance of the damp stone in the night air. He took a swig from his last bottle of vodka, then got to his feet. “Well then,” he said to the doctor. “Shall we be off?”

“Where to?” asked the doctor, but Kita didn’t reply. He simply walked off through the park, as if carried on the wind. This park felt too comfortable. He wasn’t inclined to fall for the temptation of settling in to live here on the streets. Why not leave his backpack here for someone else to use? He only had a few more hours of life left, after all. He needed to get on with finding his execution ground and setting things up.

He tried vaguely to picture the place he was after. Somewhere completely undistinguished, he decided. Somewhere wild and natural. There’d be birds flying about in the clouds overhead, and no sign of anyone about; his scream would vanish in the wind, his corpse would be hidden in the deep grass. He’d set off in search of just such a place, and when he got there, he’d find a flat rock just the right size to lay himself down on. It would serve very nicely as an operating table.

The doctor followed him wordlessly, but his left shoe rubbed, and the limp slowed his pace. The fifteen-pound bag dragging on his shoulder felt more like thirty pounds. He wished he could have a good long soak in a bath and settle his exhausted body between some freshly starched sheets. Why oh why should it be so tiring to save someone’s life, while the guy he was saving could follow his every whim? It was one thing to save someone lying meekly on the operating table, but there wasn’t much he could do with this particular patient when he kept moving restlessly about, stubbornly intent on dying. He was only a surgeon, not a professional counsellor who could talk Kita out of suicide; the only thing left for him to do under the circumstances was to watch him kill himself, perform a swift operation to remove his organs, and deliver them to the organ market. Good grief, he thought, let me have a quick rest before we get on with it.

What kind of organ thief was he right now, anyhow? He had no desire to get himself caught, but exhaustion compounded his fear, and made him desperate. He was also a murderer, and there’s nothing scarier than a desperate killer. Yet Kita was using him as his manager, for Heaven’s sake.

Kita was headed for Sapporo station. As he walked, he eyed the cars parked along the road. Having scrutinized the makes, number plates, and interiors of each car he passed, he came to a halt in front of a BMW with a Tokyo license plate, and put his hand on the door. Needless to say, it wouldn’t open. He walked another ten yards, and tried a Nissan Skyline with a local Sapporo plate. No luck.

“You’re trying to steal a car?” the doctor asked irritably.

“They’re all locked,” muttered Kita. Well of course. Yet he doggedly went on trying one after another. He was sick of walking.

The doctor got ahead of him and paused at a Chevy Camaro with an Osaka plate. He beckoned Kita. “This one has ‘Please make free use of this vehicle’ written all over it. Let’s take it.” He took from his bag what looked like a metal ruler, inserted it between the doorframe and the window, and began to pump it gently up and down. Immediately there was the shriek of an alarm piercing enough to tear the flesh from one’s temples. The doctor frowned, but didn’t pause in his work. The lock broken, he slid into the car, opened the hood, briefly fiddled with the electronics, and the alarm stopped. He started the engine.

Kita had been standing there with his hands to his ears. The doctor motioned him into the driver’s seat, settled down beside him, put on his seat belt, and tutted in vexation.

“Come on, what’re you hanging around for? Get this car moving.”

Kita took a short breath. Then he wheeled the white Camaro around and set off in search of his execution ground.

The doctor didn’t ask where they were going. He settled back and closed his eyes, letting things take their course. He woke from his nap with the nasty feeling that Kita was clumsily up to something again.

The roads decided where the white Camaro went. It raced straight along whatever road it happened to be on until it had to turn, and then alternated right and left at each new junction. There’d be no going back from this journey.

Kita was pretty impressed with the doctor’s car thieving skills. It wasn’t just organs that the guy could steal, it seemed. In this man’s hands, his corpse would be quickly dispatched. Kita looked at the sleeping doctor with renewed awe and fear.

It was a fabulous car for speeding. It seemed almost made to be crashed. “Thanks for such a great gift,” whispered Kita, but the doctor pretended he hadn’t heard.

Now and then the road was momentarily illuminated by the stark light of a gas station or convenience store or drinks machine. It seemed so insubstantial it might disappear at the merest puff of breath. And sliding along it the white Camaro seemed it might melt into thin air if he closed his eyes for a moment, Kita thought. The steering wheel and accelerator were amazingly light to the touch, and his own body too could have been made of styrene foam it felt so weightless. Bearing down on this feather-light accelerator, he felt a thrill run right from his temples down his back. He pushed the speed up a bit further, past seventy-five miles per hour, and the thrill ran down over his knees. If he really put his foot down, the thrill would reach his heart and penetrate his pores and blood vessels, and he’d crash to instant death, laughing till he drooled. The white Camaro would be his coffin. And if a spark ignited the gas in the tank, that would deal with the cremation at the same time.

The speedometer now registered over ninety, and the street lights sped by like fighter planes. There were only a few inches separating him from death. Within his narrow field of vision, a stark white high-rise sprang up like a gravestone. Narrowing his eyes, he made out the word “Hospital.” He slammed on the brakes, and in the same instant his pulse started throbbing violently and the weight returned to his body.

Held firmly by his seat belt, the doctor gave a low groan. The tires squealed around a gentle curve in the road. The thrill that had been rushing through Kita’s body now subsided, replaced now by a stirring and hardening between his legs.

“You were going to take me with you there, weren’t you?” the doctor muttered hoarsely.

“I wouldn’t have minded just crashing the car back there, but then I saw that hospital.” Kita glanced sideways at the doctor, who was wiping the sweat from his hands, hollow-eyed.

“Goddamn hospitals everywhere you go,” the doctor spat.

“You don’t like hospitals?”

“They make my heart ache.”

Kita gave a laugh like a cough. Fancy that, this man who could dispose of people and bring them back to life as casually as he’d move chess pieces around a board actually had a heart. “You look done in,” he said sympathetically. “Don’t worry, you can rest easy. I don’t plan on killing you too.”

The doctor raised his hands, spread his fingers and yawned, trying to get his circulation going again. It was all very well to be told he could rest, but how could he possibly doze in this hearse with someone bent on dying at the wheel? Besides, the law stipulated there should be only one corpse per hearse.

Perhaps it was having just passed a hospital that had given the doctor his nightmare. He had been in a high-ceilinged hall, full of dazzling light. Around fifty people sat in the audience holding their breath, their eyes fixed on him. He was in the midst of a performance of heart massage. He climbed on top of the patient on the operating table and sat there, both hands to the inert heart, leaning his weight into the task of pumping it at varied rhythms and tempos. He was a percussionist, and the audience was appreciating his concert.

He went on massaging, working up a great sweat as he pumped. The muscles in his arms were jelly, and pain and exhaustion gripped his back. He wiped the drops of sweat from his brow with his white sleeve, and glanced at the audience. Some were dozing. Others were rising to leave. Still the doctor couldn’t end his performance. There would be no rest for him until the heart began to beat of its own accord again. But even that rest would be only brief, before he had to begin work on the next patient. More and more patients in cardiac arrest were being brought into the hall.

Even if he failed to resuscitate someone, the doctor thought, he wasn’t directly responsible for his death. It was now around two hours since the heart had stopped. The situation was hopeless. Continuing the heart massage was a mere formality.

He was tired. He longed to stop. There was no way the patient would revive. Yet the audience was poised to applaud the very moment the patient was resuscitated. If he got down from the table now, they’d not only boo him, they’d lynch him. A thought came to him: what if he fainted right now?

The next instant, the prone patient opened his eyes, and gave him a leer that seemed to see through to his very soul. The doctor felt his own heart squeeze tight, and at that moment the dream bumped him back into reality.

“Could you please go someplace where there isn’t a hospital?” he asked Kita confidingly.

“I don’t suppose you’ve been dreaming of all the patients you killed getting their own back on you, have you?”

The doctor sighed in response, and said, “Heart massage is a nightmare. I’ve had it up to here.”

“It really does make your heart ache, eh?”

The doctor could remember heart massages that had gone on for four hours straight. If there’s no response within thirty minutes, you can generally assume brain death, but the patient’s family still hadn’t shown up so he had to keep going. You have to show the relatives that you’re massaging the heart. The doctor will go on trying until he’s too exhausted to pump any more, so that the relatives will acknowledge that he’s done all he could. The family will use the doctor’s sweat as surety for the fact of their relative’s death. That’s the custom in hospitals.

“So what does it feel like to massage a corpse?” Kita suddenly asked.

“You have to like corpses. If you think it’s pointless, you can’t get your arms and back working strongly enough. You have to tell yourself it’s for humanity and the world as you press.”

“How do you do it?”

“You get on the corpse, shake your head around wildly, yell ‘Don’t die, you crazy fool!’ and go like this.” The doctor placed his hands against the dashboard and leaned into it, breathing heavily. The car swayed slightly.

“I guess it would feel pretty good to the guy being massaged.”

The doctor drew a deep breath through his nose, and irritably tutted again. The next time he makes a bad joke, he thought, I’ll give him a shot to put him to sleep.

He closed his eyes again, but he didn’t want to return to the dream, so he imagined music. The prelude to Mozart’s Don Giovanni. He used to listen to this opera a lot in his student days, so he thought he could remember most of the melody, but it began to repeat itself half way through and he couldn’t move it on. Oh well. To cheer himself up, he taunted Kita, “By the way, maybe it’s natural to get an erection when you’re close to death.” He’d apparently noted the shape of Kita’s pants of the corner of his eye. “I think it’s a normal reaction,” he went on, red-faced.

“It felt like having sex with a car back there. Literally car sex.”

“A car accident is sex with a car, you know. You don’t need a man and a woman for that. All you need to do is step on the accelerator. You reach climax in no time.”

It was four in the morning. Kita had no idea where he was going. There wasn’t a building to be seen along the roadsides. No hospitals, no graveyards. The road simply stretched ahead to carry them along. Kita pressed harder on the accelerator again. His forehead grew hot, and a thrill ran down to his thighs.

The doctor chuckled reminiscently, and murmured, “You know, after a car accident you sometimes find people with a blissful expression on their face. Just like they’ve come through wild sex.”

That young hot-rodder had been like that. He’d been playing tag with a motorcycle cop, failed to take a corner, and piled into a noodle shop. That was the first time the doctor had seen that ecstatic look. The accident happened right near the hospital where he worked, and the patrol car had taken him to the site. Three broken ribs appeared to have pierced his stomach. The helmet was smashed, but his head was unhurt, and he was conscious. When he was carried into the operating room, he was drooling and grinning, his eyes glazed. When they removed the bloody clothes and set about dealing with his injuries, they found his pants were wet with semen. He’d apparently ejaculated at the moment of impact. His penis was still engorged.

The boy had seized the nurse’s arm and said, “Suck me off.” She was appalled. He went on, “One more time, one more time before I die!”

“Pull yourself together!” the nurse scolded him. She took hold of his penis.

“Thank you,” he said, and lost consciousness.

It must have felt really good, for he developed a taste for it. He managed to crash his motorbike not once but three times, and get himself brought back to the same hospital. Each time, he had the blissful expression of Saint Sebastian. The third time he came in, however, the back of his brain had been gouged out, and he died three hours later.

“By the way, what happens to your penis if you die with an erection?”

“I’d say you’d lose it,” the doctor replied curtly.

“Wouldn’t it stay for a while?”

“Who knows. Why do you ask?”

“It’d be pretty amazing to have an erection when you’re already dead. How was it with that Saint Sebastian fellow?”

The doctor shook his head. “It didn’t work for him that third time,” he told Kita. “The guy’s brains had spilled out, after all. There wasn’t even any point in massaging his heart.”

After a brief silence, Kita announced, “I’ve decided how I’m going to kill myself.”

“In a crash?” The doctor frowned, and scratched his head. “You’d already made that decision when you stole the car, hadn’t you?”

“That thrill just drives me wild. I’m going to commit love suicide with my car, like your Saint Sebastian.”

“But dying in a crash won’t be good for your internal organs, you know. We can’t use a liver or kidney that’s been pierced by a rib.”

The doctor was still after his organs, it seemed. “I’ll make sure it’s OK,” Kita promised, but the doctor gazed steadily at him.

“Are you really sure you’ll succeed first time? It’s a question of probabilities, see.”

“You’re saying I might not die?”

“I once saved a young man’s life even though his heart was cut open. He was struck by a truck and brought in unconscious with dreadfully heavy bleeding. I was sure he was done for, but I opened his chest up then and there, without anaesthetic, pinched the wound in his heart together and stopped the flow of blood, and spent a long time sewing him up. Six months later he left hospital and went back to work.”

“Now you’re boasting. You’re saying if I get a hole in my heart, I should stick my finger in it and wait quietly for help? No way.”

“I also saved a man who tried to kill himself by sticking a pistol in his mouth. The bullet pierced his upper jaw, travelled up beside his nose, destroyed his right eye, and came to rest in the cerebrum. His face was a mess, but there wasn’t much damage to the brain, so his life was saved.”

“Goddamn stupid thing to do.”

“Well, in his case you might be right. As soon as he was back on his feet he took himself up to the roof of the hospital and jumped off. He landed head first in a flowerbed. Died instantly.”

“There’s nothing a doctor can do about instant death. I’m planning on having one myself. It’d be terrible not to quite manage the job. I’ve run through my money, see, and I’ve got no desire to go back into the world again. Come on, doc, promise me you won’t try and save me.”

The doctor was silent. It seemed pretty clear Kita was up to something really tricky again. Sure he could let him die, but he needed to be sure those pre-sold organs stayed unharmed. He might have to put his skills to work repairing any organ that happened to get damaged, then wait until Kita was well again and make sure he was there for his next suicide attempt.

“Is there some way I can do a thorough job when I crash the car, do you know? Tell me.”

“I’ve no experience there I’m afraid. I suggest you give up the idea. It’s pretty painful, you know.”

“No, I’ve made up my mind.”

“You’ll burn to death if the car bursts into flames. And in that case, your organs—”

“Would be roasted entrails, I should think,” Kita finished for him.

“We’d have to remove the gasoline so you don’t burn. I’ll get you a cremation later.”

Kita remarked that he didn’t mind the thought of cremation, but he quite fancied being left out for the birds to pick clean. Now it was finally Friday morning, he was having a few final wishes.

“There aren’t any vultures in Hokkaido. If you want a sky burial, you should go somewhere like Tibet. Have you ever heard of the Japanese who was given a sky burial? He didn’t actually want one, it’s just that he happened to die in a hospital way up in the mountains in Tibet so his burial followed the local custom. They don’t have the wood to fuel any furnaces for cremation in Tibet, see. But they do have vultures. There are specialists in sky burial funerals, you know. They have the body carried down into the valley and placed on a large flat rock, where they cut up the flesh and break the bones. They use a rock to smash it all up, cranium, knees, the lot, so the birds can feast on the brain and marrow as well.”

“I wonder how the guy felt. Maybe he felt all tingly when the birds were eating him.”

“Well he’d be dead, so he wouldn’t feel anything. But I wouldn’t like a sky burial myself.”

Kita looked at the doctor in surprise. “You got some special reason why you don’t like the idea? I had you down for the type of guy who didn’t care what happened after death,” he said.

“I just don’t like birds,” the doctor replied shortly.

“There’s that northern fox here in Hokkaido, isn’t there? I wonder if we could manage a fox burial. Would they eat me, do you think?”

“I doubt it.”

“How about I give it a try? Whatever happens, you’ll cut me up to take out the organs, won’t you? So how about dismembering my remains then like they do in sky burials so foxes can eat the rest?”

The doctor coldly rejected this proposal. “I’m not a funeral director or a butcher, you know. I’m a doctor.”

The guy dug in his heels over the oddest things. And here he was, harming his medical profession by turning killer and treating human life in this high-handed fashion, and he turns out to be afraid of birds!

“I’ll bet your father would’ve liked a sky burial, you know,” Kita remarked jokingly.

“Hmm, yes,” the doctor said, nodding thoughtfully. “He would have made a wonderfully nutritious corpse,” he added quietly.