Piercing

10

‘I’M AYA,’ THE GIRL said when Kawashima opened the door. He noticed that she turned her head to look down the corridor before stepping inside.

‘Hello.’ Using his handkerchief, he shut the door and set the chain lock. He’d already hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outer knob. The girl apologised for being late and asked in the same breath if she could use the phone.

Chiaki sized up the room as she called the office to report her arrival. It was a twin, but surprisingly spacious. Wearing a cheap suit like that but staying in an expensive room like this, she thought — weird. But his face was all right; in fact he was more or less her type, really. Not fat, and not a slob. Why was he holding that stupid handkerchief, though?

‘May I ask for something to drink?’ she said after hanging up.

Kawashima found it unsettling that the girl kept looking back at the door. He used the handkerchief to open the minibar and remove a slim can of Cola, his mind racing with anxious thoughts. What if someone was waiting outside for her? Or if a security guard had stopped her and asked a lot of questions?

He nodded towards the door as he handed her the Cola and said: ‘Is anything wrong?’

‘Wrong?’ Chiaki said, thinking: Why don’t you mind your own business, Mister? She took a long drink, draining half of the slender can.

‘You seem to be watching the door,’ he said. ‘Did something happen out there?’

She was certainly petite enough, and her skin could scarcely have been whiter.

‘No. Just. .’ Chiaki didn’t want to risk remembering the man in the overcoat, so she decided to make something up. ‘I went to the restroom? Downstairs? And there were these two ladies talking to each other in sign language, and I’ve always thought sign language was really pretty to watch, so I was watching them, and after that we were in the elevator together, too, and they were still talking, I mean signing. It makes a big impression on you, though, don’t you think, when you see people talking without their voices? So, I don’t know, I guess I was thinking about them still out there, you know, chatting away without saying anything?’

She was proud of herself for coming up with this lie on the spur of the moment. It was based on a real incident, too. Eighteen days ago she really had watched two women communicating in sign language, at her local supermarket, and it really had made a big impression on her. The supermarket had been crowded and noisy, but a peaceful bubble of silence seemed to surround the two women. A beautiful lie, she thought — maybe even too good for a man in a cheap suit and shoes to match.

‘Sign language, eh?’ Kawashima muttered. He looked the girl over, wondering why she’d invent such a ridiculous story.

She was well-groomed, at least, with nice hair and decent taste in clothing. Petite but well-proportioned. Small face, symmetrical features. Softly spoken and courteous enough. But her eyes were restless, and a little glassy. Near-sighted, maybe? It wasn’t that she avoided his gaze exactly, but that her eyes didn’t seem to stay focused on anything. As if they were disconnected from her consciousness. She might have been sitting in a room by herself, talking to a chair.

She’s scared, Kawashima suddenly realised. But what was she afraid of? And why did she need to lie? In any case, it would be best to get her immobilised as quickly as possible.

‘I’ve never tried S&M before,’ he said, ‘so I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do exactly, but. . I can ask you to take off your clothes and let me tie you up, right?’

Chiaki had been relieved that his face seemed all right, but now her guard went up. For all she knew he might turn out to be the worst possible sort. What if, far from stimulating her libido, he ended up waking those memories, like the man in the overcoat? The thought frightened her. And what was with that handkerchief? He seemed manly enough otherwise — why was he holding a hanky like some old lady at a funeral?

‘It helps if we sit and talk awhile first,’ she said. ‘To break the ice? And find out, you know, what we both like and everything?’

‘Fine. What shall we talk about?’

Kawashima glanced impatiently at his watch. It was nearly seven. Considering all there would be to take care of when the ritual was over, he was eager to get things rolling as soon as possible. But he had to avoid making her uneasy or suspicious.

‘Anything, really. Tell me what you like. Or, for example, what’s the nastiest thing you’ve ever done?’

She’d have to teach the man in the cheap suit how to get her hot, and how exciting it could be for both of them if they used an elastic band down there, with just her clitoris sticking out for him to look at and lick and touch.

The nastiest thing you’ve ever done — Kawashima felt queasy just hearing the words, which immediately evoked a picture of the woman he’d stabbed with the ice pick. Beating the stuffing out of each other, to the point of exhaustion, then crying and begging each other’s forgiveness, caressing and kissing the sores and scratches and bumps and bruises as they peeled off each other’s clothes — that was the way she liked it. Sometimes, when she connected with a solid punch, he’d think: In a minute she’ll be licking that very same spot. He looked at the girl’s smooth, unwrinkled hands. He couldn’t wait to cut her Achilles tendons.

‘Have you ever watched a woman masturbate?’

Chiaki smiled as she said this, then ran her tongue over her lips. She imagined that the cheap suit had never done anything nasty outside of a strip club or ‘soapland’ or whatever. The first thing she had to do was put him in the mood. Peering steadily at his face, she shifted on the sofa, lifting the skirt of her Junko Shimada and hanging one knee over the armrest, showing him the purple panties beneath her black stockings. She touched a finger to her tongue, as if to lubricate it with saliva, then lightly stroked her inner thighs. He’s probably never seen anything like this before, she thought. I’ll get you so worked up, Mister, that juice will ooze out of your willy and stain your cheap underpants. After that, we’ll take a shower together, and I’ll teach you about the elastic band on the shower cap.

Strange shoes, thought Kawashima. Short, lace-up boots that covered the ankle bone. Black, with stiletto heels. He’d have her put them back on before he tied her up. Push forward on the heels to stretch her Achilles tendons, then press the blade of the knife down hard and slowly slice through. He wondered what would happen to the shoes then. Would they just sag forward, or would the recoil of the tendons send them flying?

The girl closed her eyes and began to moan. In those black stockings, her legs looked incredibly delicate and slender. Not much meat even on her thighs and ass, he noted. When she was done, he’d ask her in a very gentle and patient tone of voice to undress. What a lame performance, though, he thought and laughed to himself. Someone must’ve told her that johns get off on watching things like this.

Chiaki was tracing her finger along the crease in her panties when she heard the man laugh. She opened her eyes, and he was sitting there in his cheap suit, holding the handkerchief to his mouth and chuckling.

‘That’s enough,’ he said.

Humiliated, she immediately swung her leg down from the armrest, and as she did so her heel struck the coffee table with a bang, knocking over the can of Cola. Kawashima reflexively grabbed the can with his bare left hand.

‘Idiot!’ he shouted, staring bug-eyed at the can he was holding and feeling as if his temples had burst into flame. ‘Watch what you’re doing!’

Chiaki’s heart gave a hard thump and began to flutter. A pale mist blurred her field of vision. She’d been trying to arouse him but had only succeeded in making him angry. It was all her fault, and she found herself unable to fight off the eddying panic. Like lights going out one by one, words were whirling away, receding out of reach. AROUSE, MASTURBATE, SEX, then CHEAP SUIT, HUMILIATED, SIGN LANGUAGE, RESTROOM. . It was as if neon signs in the shapes of all these words were slipping off into darkness and memories were rising to take their place. This was the scariest part — the sudden anticipation of the Nightmare to come. Once the Nightmare began, of course, there wouldn’t even be anything you could recognise as fear.

My make-up, she thought. I’ve got to fix my make-up.

Kawashima didn’t know what was happening to the girl, but something was, and it was unnerving to watch. Had he made her angry by laughing at the masturbation act and then shouting at her? Her face was a blank mask, and her eyes seemed to bob freely in their sockets, focused on nothing. He was about to say something to her when she suddenly reached for the handbag at her feet, placed it on her lap, dug around inside, and extracted a tube of lipstick. She then calmly proceeded to apply it to her lips, peering into a compact she held in her left hand. So she’s not angry, he thought, feeling mildly relieved. He didn’t notice the tip of the lipstick trembling, or the resulting slightly uneven line.

She put the lipstick and compact back in her bag and stood up.

‘I’ll just take a shower,’ she said.

There was something different about her voice now too.

‘Will you let me tie you up after that?’

‘Anything you like!’ she said and giggled. Tucking the handbag under her arm she made her way to the bathroom, went inside, and shut the door behind her.

What was she doing in there? Thirty minutes had passed since the girl had painted her lips red and disappeared into the bathroom. Kawashima had carefully and repeatedly wiped the Cola can clean of any fingerprints, and all the implements necessary for the ritual were in place. He’d already put on a new pair of leather gloves and unwrapped the knife and ice pick, picturing the girl’s slender legs as he did so. Her waist would be slender too, her stomach flat. He’d bought the longest ice pick he could find — the metal part was fifteen or sixteen centimetres long — and it might just pierce all the way through her. His intention had been to tie her to the sofa, but he’d better rethink that or he wouldn’t be able to see the point of the ice pick protruding out of her back. To suspend her from the ceiling, with just the tips of her toes touching the floor, would be ideal, but it wouldn’t be possible in this room. There was nothing to attach a rope to.

His heartbeat quickened as these thoughts raced through his mind. He was leaning against the wall in the vestibule outside the bathroom now, taking the gloves off and putting them back on and growing agitated. What the hell was she doing in there — shampooing, maybe?

What bothered him most was the faraway look he’d seen in the girl’s eyes. Those restless, disconnected, oddly glazed eyes. It seemed to Kawashima that he’d met a woman with eyes like that before, but he didn’t try to remember who she was. He had nothing but unpleasant memories of all the women in his past, with the single exception of Yoko.

‘You all right in there?’ he said, knocking on the bathroom door.

I’m fine! came the reply. Just a little while longer! The voice was high-pitched and the intonation oddly warped, like a cassette tape coming unreeled. He could still hear the shower.

My lipstick’s crooked, Chiaki had thought when she first looked in the bathroom mirror. You have to take extra special care with lipstick. She rubbed violently at her mistake with a tissue, pressing hard enough almost to bruise her lips, but they’d already lost the capacity to feel anything. She took off her dress, folded it, shook it out and refolded it several times before setting it on the counter next to the sink, then went through the same routine with her slip. She turned on the shower and slowly twisted the handle from C to H until the air filled with steam, then felt the water with her hand and gave a little cry. It was scalding. She turned the handle slowly back towards C before checking the temperature again, cupping the other hand under the water. She went back and forth between H and C a dozen or more times, alternating hands, and then returned to the mirror, leaving the shower running and steam billowing into the room.

As she undid her bra, she remembered that she’d been in high school when the Nightmare first happened. It was only at times like this, when it started up again, that she could really remember what it was like.

Her second year of high school. She and some class-mates had gathered at the house of one whose parents weren’t home, and they’d ended up watching a pornographic video. The tape hadn’t been rewound and came on in the middle of a hardcore sex scene. She didn’t know how long she’d watched it, but she remembered that at some point her stomach had begun to hurt and then, suddenly, she was consumed with a nameless terror. It was as if someone were flashing a strobe light in her face, and a completely different scene unfolded before her eyes.

That was the first episode, but now she’d been visited by the Nightmare a total of seven times. Losing her sex drive, it always started with that. She knew she was in trouble when she could look at a really hot guy without thinking where she’d like to lick him, or where she’d like to feel his tongue. The blood vessels or nerves or whatever would shut down, and all the hungry yearning, no longer able to make its way to the surface or connect with her libido, would begin accumulating deep inside — though she couldn’t have said exactly where. And this condition would continue for the longest time. Once, it had gone on for nine hundred and thirty-eight days. To cope with the anxiety, she’d sometimes try to have sex with someone — anyone — but it always felt as if the man’s penis wasn’t in her vagina or anus but a completely different sort of hole. Orgasm was out of the question, and there were even times when she ended up not knowing where she was or what she was doing. Or, worse yet, she’d have the creepy sensation that What’s-her-name was up on the ceiling, watching.

Of course, Chiaki thought as she rolled her panties down, I know perfectly well who What’s-her-name is. What’s-her-name is me, watching myself have sex. At first I used to ask her not to look at me like that, but all she would do is snicker, so I stopped. Besides, I was afraid that if I talked to her too much I might divide into two separate people.

She thought about the man in the cheap suit, and wondered if he was a cleanliness freak. He never let go of that handkerchief, she thought, not even for a second. Men like that are sick. What they really love is dirty stuff, and doing disgusting things. You-know-who was like that, too. You-know-who? Wait a minute. Who am I thinking of? He always wore a newly laundered and starched white shirt, with trousers creased to perfection, and no matter where he went he had his white handkerchief. Somebody once teased him about that, saying he looked like an old lady at a funeral, but he said a starched white shirt and clean white hanky always made him feel that even his heart was as pure and clean as the driven snow.

He was my father. He liked to do filthy things. When I was in elementary school he even told me not to bathe. I really love you, Chiaki. So I want to lick all the dirt off you myself. It might feel really good, but there’s nothing to be afraid of. You mustn’t tell anyone about this, though. It’s our secret. Don’t even tell Mama. If anyone finds out, they’ll take you away from Mama and me, so never, ever tell anyone, OK?

But I did, finally. In middle school I told my friend about it, and then I told Mama too. Mama talked to him, and he was standing there in his white shirt, twisting his white handkerchief and listening to all these things she was saying, and then suddenly he started yelling at me. How dare you make up such a disgusting lie! That was the first time I ever heard him raise his voice, but it certainly wasn’t the last. After that, he turned into a different person, someone who was always yelling about every little thing. My heart is as pure and clean as the driven snow. Pure and clean as the driven snow. Pure and clean as the driven snow. Don’t make me laugh.

‘No more words,’ Chiaki muttered to herself, and just then a voice spoke to her from beyond the door.

‘You all right in there?’

‘Fine!’ she called out. ‘I’m fine. Just a little while longer!’

Just a little while longer and all the words would be gone. It was only when you actually experienced words vanishing that you realised how dry and lifeless they were, like dead leaves or old, discarded money. You could spend hours flattening out all the wrinkles and creases, but when you tried to buy something with those bills, no one would accept them. They wouldn’t even take you seriously. You clench your fist in anger, and the bills just crackle and crumble apart in your hand.

Just before words vanish they acquire a sickening pulpy smell, like clumps of dead grass whipped by the wind into dry little spheres, and they spill from the brain and the vocal cords, down through the blood vessels and nerves to the deepest, farthest corners of your body. Words the size of pachinko balls or Tic-Tacs, vanishing as they roll off into the hidden crannies, where they bump into these other things and awaken them. These memories.

Memories aren’t like words; they’re soft and gooey. Covered with a sticky slime, like a penis after sex, or your vagina when you menstruate, and shaped like tadpoles or tiny watersnakes. When these sleeping memories are awakened, they begin to squirm and then to swim, slowly at first but gradually faster, up to the surface. And once they get there, your senses shut down. The first wave hits you in the lips, then the palms of the hands, the toes, and under the arms. Some of the memories escape through the pores of your skin to hang about your body like a mist, waiting for the rest to swim up and join them. Once they’re all there, they come together to form an image, and it’s like a television screen being switched on before your eyes.

His face as he licks me down there. His face. A face like a bundle of rotting vegetables wrapped in an old rag. I love you, he whispers. He keeps whispering this as he licks and licks and licks. I love you. I love you. I love you, Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Then another voice, blending with his. A little girl’s voice. My voice.

Chiaki tugged on her nipple ring. She felt nothing, no pain whatsoever. She tugged harder, until her breast stood out like a little teepee and a tiny amount of blood oozed from the hole that passed horizontally through her nipple.

The sound of the shower was like the hissing static of an untuned radio. Kawashima was slipping past irritation into anxiety. He stood in front of the bathroom door and checked his watch: she’d been in there more than fifty minutes now. He’d called to her several more times in the past few minutes but got no reply. Unable to ignore any longer the feeling that something was very wrong, he reached for the doorknob with a gloved hand and was taken aback to find that it wasn’t locked. He opened the door a crack. Steam curled out through the opening, and the shower noise became several times louder.

‘Hey! What’s going on in here? I’m opening the door!’

No reply. He pushed the door wide and stepped into the bathroom. And as the steam began to dissipate, the girl materialised on the edge of the tub. She was sitting there completely nude, stabbing herself in the right thigh with the scissors of a Swiss Army knife. When she noticed Kawashima, she gave him a little smile and spread her legs as if to show him the bits of bloody flesh that had caught in her pubic hair. The wounds weren’t very deep, but she had gouged a good deal of flesh from the thigh, and blood was pooled on the tile floor at her feet.

He instinctively moved to stop her, but at his first step the girl opened her mouth, drew a big breath, and let out a scream that rattled the mirror and chilled him to the bone. After a scream like that, someone might be pounding on the door any minute. He had to show the girl that he wasn’t going to approach any closer. He stepped back into the doorway, and she immediately reverted to her vacant little smile.

If anyone were to search his bag they’d find the knife and the ice pick. Maybe he should call the girl’s office. There was a telephone receiver on the wall right next to him, but it was for incoming calls only. He took another step back, and the expression on her face underwent an immediate change. Terror showed in her eyes and brow, and she opened her mouth wide and sucked in another big breath. She was going to scream again.

‘I’m not going anywhere!’ Kawashima said quickly. ‘OK?’ He leaned against the doorframe. ‘Do you understand?’

She nodded, very slowly and almost imperceptibly.

I’ll be damned, he thought. She’s scared half to death. Just like the little kids back in the Home. She wants me here, but not too close. She panics if I approach, and she panics if I try to leave. Stabbing herself like that because she doesn’t know any other way to ask for help.

The girl had been holding the knife down at her side since he’d appeared, but now she raised it and plunged the scissors into the blood-dark meat of her thigh again. It sounded like when you step in mud — splut. She didn’t look at the scissors or the wound but kept her eyes on Kawashima. And just then the telephone rang, giving him such a jolt that his shoulder slid off the doorframe and he nearly fell down. The girl screwed up her face and laughed in a wet, throaty voice.

‘Mr Yokoyama? Is everything all right, sir?’

The call was from the front desk. No doubt someone in a neighbouring room, or a security guard maybe, had reported the scream. Everything’s fine, Kawashima said over the hammering of his heartbeat, trying desperately to sound calm.

‘As you may be aware, sir, all our rooms are occupied tonight, and some of our guests are already sleeping, so we would very much appreciate it if you could keep the volume as low as possible when enjoying music or television.’ The man went on to thank him for his cooperation and to bid him a formal and courteous good night.

What a roundabout way of complaining, Kawashima thought. Somewhere a little kid was getting his brains beaten to a pulp because he’d wet the bed; somewhere a woman who’d broken some arbitrary rule was being taken to a room where unspeakable things could be done to her away from prying eyes; and meanwhile: Is everything all right, sir? Thank you so much for your cooperation, sir — a complaint that sounded more like an apology.

‘Who are you?’ the girl growled in her wet voice. He leaned back against the doorframe and didn’t answer. ‘Who are you!’

He mustn’t say anything. No matter what he said, she would merely shout him down and refuse to listen. She was like a wounded animal. Try to get close and she’d bare her fangs; try to leave and she’d yowl for help.

Kawashima held his right index finger up to his lips in a silent Shhh. He remembered the way he’d felt when he was first put in the Home, convinced that any adult who came up to him smiling and offering kindly words was the enemy. Right now they’re making nice, he’d tell himself, but sooner or later they’ll be pounding on me, for reasons I won’t even understand. As a little boy, Kawashima had never been able to fathom what it was about himself that made adults so angry, but the thought of being completely abandoned by them was even scarier than the unpredictable attacks. All he’d learned for certain in his few years on earth was that he was powerless, incapable of surviving on his own, and that the people he came into contact with all seemed to despise him. He knew from his own experience that he mustn’t approach this girl, and he mustn’t leave her, and he mustn’t speak directly to her or even answer her questions. She wants help, he thought, but she can’t let down her guard. That’s why she’s staring at me like that, watching my every move.

When he put his finger to his lips, the girl studied the gesture curiously and let the knife dangle at her side again. Kawashima slowly took off his gloves and dropped them in the wastebasket next to the door. He showed her his bare palms, as if to say: Calm down. Calm down. I’m not going to hurt you. As he did this, and without turning his head, he looked down at her open purse, which was sitting beside the sink. He could see cosmetics, a memo pad, and a small envelope of the sort hospitals dispense medicine in. Handwritten in ink beneath the gothic-style printing that said Shiroyama Medical Clinic — Dr Shiroyama Yasuhiro, Director was the name Sanada Chiaki.

He mustn’t speak directly to her, even to answer a question, so he needed some sort of intermediary. He lifted the telephone receiver from the wall unit and held it to his ear, tucking his free hand underneath to surreptitiously hold down the hook. The last thing he needed was to connect to an emergency operator while pretending to speak on the phone.

‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Yes, that’s right. Sanada Chiaki is here with me now.’

He looked over his shoulder at the girl. The hand holding the knife still hung at her side, and she was watching him closely, trying to comprehend what was happening. The first order of business was to get that knife away from her.

‘She still doesn’t really trust me. I’m completely on her side, and I’d never do anything to hurt her, but she doesn’t understand that yet.’

When the man first came into the bathroom, Chiaki had felt her face light up with a smile. This must be him, she thought — the one who always takes me to the hospital. When she began stabbing herself in the thigh, she’d had, as usual, no idea who she was or where she was, and naturally she hadn’t felt any pain. Unfolding the little scissors, she’d remembered wanting to do something fun with them but couldn’t remember what. She knew what she was going to be doing, however. It was what she always had to do whenever that face appeared before her eyes, the face of You-know-who with his bright white shirt. She didn’t know who she was. But she knew what her name was, because You-know-who kept whispering it in her face. Chiaki. My name is Chiaki. I’m someone they call Chiaki. He calls me that, and he’s licking me down there, so there’s no doubt about it — Chiaki is me.

But who was she? And where was she? That was the question, but the answer didn’t really matter. What mattered was that she needed to be punished. And the one who knew she needed to be punished was the real her. Chiaki was just a name. There was nothing in it. Chi-a-ki — three empty little syllables. Die, said a voice. And it was her, the real her, moving her lips and using her voice to say the word. She was the one telling herself to die — that was all she could be sure of right now. Die, why don’t you? Why don’t you just drop dead, Chiaki?

How proud I’d be if I could actually kill her, she thought. Stab her in the thigh and hear the skin puncturing, like when you spear a sausage with a fork. But then things get hazier and hazier, and finally you wake up in the hospital. Somebody always takes me there. Kazuki said it was him who called the ambulance last time, but that was a lie. It’s someone I’ve never met, and it definitely isn’t You-know-who. All You-know-who ever did was lick me down there and suddenly start yelling at everybody. I’ve always wanted to meet him, the one who takes me to the hospital. I’ve always hoped to see his face just once, but I never really thought it would happen. He’s somebody very special, a very important person. It’s not so easy to meet people like that.

And yet, this man just might be him. That’s what she’d thought when he opened the bathroom door, but of course there was no way to be sure. Maybe it’s someone completely different, she cautioned herself. A bad person. Someone who hates me and wants to get rid of me. But she’d asked him who he was, and he hadn’t answered. That was a good sign. A bad man would’ve made up some lie. At least she knew he wasn’t a liar. And now he was saying her name to someone on the telephone. Who was he talking to? The hospital?

‘Yes, Chiaki is here. She’s hurt. I want to help her, but she still doesn’t trust me. What? Is that so? All right, then, I’ll put her on the phone.’

The man held the receiver out to her. Who could it be? She rose unsteadily to her feet, and all the blood that had collected in the wounds washed down her leg.

The moment the girl was within reach of the receiver, Kawashima made his move. He snatched hold of her right wrist with one hand and prised her fingers open with the other. The Swiss Army knife clattered to the floor. The girl stared blankly at the hand that held her wrist for some moments, as if unable to process what had just happened, and then, suddenly, she was twisting and thrashing and kicking. With a flick of his shoe, Kawashima sent the knife skittering over the tiles to the far corner of the bathroom. He then pivoted behind the girl and threw his arms around her wet body, pinning her own slender arms to her sides. She glared at him over her shoulder with wide, wild eyes, opened her mouth, and took a deep, wheezing in-breath.

Kawashima clamped his left hand over her mouth before she could scream. There was so little of her that he needed only his right arm to keep her more or less immobile. She was kicking his shins with her bare heels, but feebly, and he scarcely felt it. The problem was the hand on her mouth. Curling back her lips like a cornered dog, the girl bit into the base of his middle finger, where it met the palm. She was biting as hard as she could, squeezing her eyes shut and scrunching up her face, and her teeth broke the flesh and severed a nerve. A sickening chill shuddered through Kawashima’s body, but he fought off the impulse to pull his hand away and began whispering in her ear:

‘It’s all right. It’s all right, it’s all right. I would never hurt you, I would never hurt you.’

This isn’t my pain! he was shouting inwardly; but it wasn’t working — his finger hurt like hell. He had to hand it to this girl. She was worthy of the ice pick, and she was going to get it as soon as she calmed down.

‘Don’t be angry,’ he whispered gently. ‘Don’t be angry. Don’t be angry, everything’s all right. It’s all right, OK? Everything’s all right. You don’t have to be afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

The man’s voice was deep and soft and nice, but he was holding her from behind, and all Chiaki could think was that someone was trying to take control of her. There was a coppery taste and the sticky texture of blood in her mouth. The voice in her ear saying ‘Don’t be angry’ never varied in tone or volume. Don’t be angry, don’t be angry. You don’t have to be afraid. You don’t have to be afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of. And slowly, as the words were repeated again and again, they began to sink in. It was true: she really was angry, and afraid of something. No one had ever pointed that out to her before. She decided it was all right to relax her guard and promptly wilted in the man’s arms.

Kawashima carried the girl to the sofa and laid her limp body down. Her eyes were half-closed and bleary, her mouth open, her lips and teeth flecked with blood, her breathing faint and slow. He dried her with a bath towel and inspected the scissor wounds. The skin of her thigh was punctured in ten or more places, but the cuts weren’t deep and some had already stopped bleeding. It’s not too late to murder her, he thought. She was lying before him, perfectly still, and the knife and ice pick were right there under the sweatshirt in his open bag. He lightly touched one of her wounds, and she didn’t react in any way. She’s all numbed out, he thought. Stabbing someone in a state like this would be like stabbing a mannequin. She probably wouldn’t even try to scream if he cut her Achilles tendons; she’d probably greet death with this same out-of-it expression on her face. And besides, he ruminated, balling a tissue in his left fist to stop his own bleeding. .

Besides, she’s one of us. A kindred spirit. Are you going to stab a woman who’s hacked her own leg into a bloody mess and who’s lying there looking like death warmed over? Best to give up on the whole idea. The plan had gone completely awry. His suit was wet, and there was blood on the cuffs of his trousers. He’d taken off the gloves, his fingerprints were all over the place, and his left hand was gouged and bleeding. It would be impossible to hide the wound, and bits of his skin would be stuck to her teeth. No, he’d have to abort and start all over again from scratch.

He took off his shirt and used the knife to cut out a long strip of cloth. Doubling up a clean face towel, he placed it over the wounds on the girl’s thigh, then wrapped the strip of cloth around it. He was fairly sure this would stop the bleeding. As he changed into the jeans and sweatshirt, he shook his head ruefully: he’d bought a combat knife with a blade as long as his forearm and ended up using it to slice through a cheap shirt instead of a pair of Achilles tendons. The girl’s eyes were closed now, and her naked breast rose and fell slowly with her breathing, but he couldn’t tell if she was actually asleep or not. He got a blanket from the closet and draped it over her.

After devising a smaller bandage for his left hand, Kawashima wrapped up the knife and the ice pick again. The bundles were fairly bulky, what with all the layers of cardboard and paper and duct tape, and surprisingly heavy. He had to dispose of them somewhere — the farther away the better, ideally, but these weren’t ideal circumstances. Maybe he could just dump them in one of the trash receptacles near the elevator, though on a different floor of course. Then he’d call the S&M club and have them come get the girl. They probably wouldn’t report anything to the hotel or to the police. But since there was no way to be sure of that, or of what sorts of characters they might send to retrieve her, it would be foolhardy to have weapons in the room. He didn’t want to throw away the notes, though. They’d cost him a lot of time and effort, and the thought of starting all over again was daunting. Anyway, having notes was no crime. He’d be all right as long as the knife and ice pick weren’t found in the room.

Checking to see that the girl’s eyes were still closed, he picked up the vinyl bag containing the two bundles, slipped the room key into his pocket, and stepped out into the corridor. He closed the door behind him and stood there a moment, getting his bearings. Room 2902 was at the very end of the twenty-ninth floor. There was a certain surreal quality to the long corridor, and it took him some time to realise that the faint buzzing in his ears was in fact the sound of a TV somewhere. But merely stepping outside the room, away from the girl, had helped dissipate some of the tension — which perhaps explained why his finger was suddenly hurting like hell again. The gash was a deep one, and his tissue-paper and shirt-cloth bandage wasn’t doing much to stop the flow of blood.

He was slowly making his way down the corridor when a door opened just ahead and an elderly couple emerged. They were speaking together in English and dressed as if they’d just returned from a round of golf. Kawashima was walking past with his head down, when the woman startled him by flashing a big smile and saying, ‘Excuse me, sir!’

He felt as if both she and the man were eyeing the vinyl bag and the bandage on his hand, but apparently she was asking him about restaurants. Kawashima’s English was shaky at best, but she seemed to be saying that they’d been told the restaurants in Tokyo hotels were outrageously expensive. Could he recommend a nice place nearby, preferably Italian or Continental? The husband protested that she should ask the front desk or concierge, that it was rude to bother a complete stranger with such things, and gestured for Kawashima to walk on and pay no attention to her, but he too was wearing a big smile. They reminded Kawashima of the sort of elderly couple you see in old American movies. He excused himself, ducking his head apologetically, and continued down the corridor towards the elevator, but of course the elderly pair were going that way too and walked along behind him, talking quietly. It would not be good to get on the elevator with these two, he thought. Getting off at any level other than the lobby or the restaurants would strike them as odd, and they might even remember which floor it was. If calling the S&M club should lead to any sort of complication, he couldn’t risk having the ice pick and knife discovered and linked to him.

He stopped and pretended to search his pockets as if he’d forgotten something. As the couple passed him, he wished them a good evening and did an about-face to head back towards his room. And no sooner had he spun on his heel than he saw the door to room 2902 open and Sanada Chiaki come staggering out into the corridor, completely nude. Kawashima froze, and the vinyl bag nearly slipped from his hand. If he broke into a run, the elderly couple would hear his footsteps and turn to look. And what they would see was like a scene from a nightmare — a thin, naked, blood-smeared Japanese girl with a crude bandage wrapped around her thigh, stumbling down the corridor of their hotel. Glancing back at them, he saw that they hadn’t yet noticed anything and were about to turn the corner to the elevator hall. The girl was slumped against the wall, looking around her in a bewildered way, as if wondering where she was and which way to run.

The moment the elderly couple disappeared around the corner, Kawashima broke into a sprint. He prayed that no other doors would open before he got to her.

When she saw the man running towards her Chiaki gave a little squeal. She turned to flee but ran into the wall, scraping her knee on the plaster and falling back on to her rear end. When Kawashima caught up to her she was scrambling to escape on all fours. He bent down to reach under her arms and drag her back to the room, but it was no easy job moving an unwilling woman — petite or not — even a few metres. Pinning her under his left arm, with the vinyl bag still dangling from that hand, he searched his right-hand pocket for the key. As the girl thrashed about, the bouncing bag dislodged his bandage and the wound at the base of his finger began bleeding freely again. He somehow managed to get the key in the lock and to open the door, and just as he tumbled inside with the girl, throwing her to the carpet as if tackling her, he heard another door closing somewhere down the corridor. The pain in his left hand was intense, and his heart felt as if it were going to explode.

Had someone seen them? In any case, he certainly couldn’t call the S&M club now. He hadn’t even disposed of the weapons yet. The girl lay in the entryway, moaning.

‘Owww! It hurrrts!’

Minutes earlier, awaking from the briefest of naps, Chiaki had found herself back in touch with all five senses, and the pain had been excruciating. Her thigh was clumsily wrapped with a makeshift bandage, and when she stood up a rivulet of blood ran down her leg to the top of her foot. She was scared. She’d have to go to the hospital again. The man who always took her there had been at her side just a moment ago — she could still feel the warmth of his arms around her. Her teeth were coated with a sticky substance, and her tongue discovered something like a bit of rubber band stuck to her upper gum. She fished this out and looked at it. It had a pattern of little grooves, and when she realised it was a piece of human skin, she remembered having bitten the man’s finger. She could still hear the way he’d whispered in her ear: It’s all right, don’t be angry, there’s nothing to be afraid of. To think that even as he was whispering things like that in her ear, she was tearing his flesh with her teeth. . She limped to the bathroom, groaning with each step, but the man wasn’t in there either. She picked up the navy-blue suit he’d been wearing and shook it out, waving it in the air and shouting, ‘Where are you?’ Spotting his overnight bag next to the desk, she snatched it up and threw it against the wall, then hobbled to the door. Only after she’d stepped out into the corridor did she realise she wasn’t wearing any clothes. The door slowly swung closed behind her, and it had just dawned on her that she couldn’t get back inside when she saw the man running towards her from way down the corridor. But wait. This couldn’t be the same man — he was wearing different clothes. Terrified at this realisation, she’d scrambled to get away, but the man had caught her and dragged her back into the room. Once inside, she noticed the wound on his hand and thought: It’s him after all.

‘Listen to me!’ Kawashima said, gasping for breath. ‘Can you, understand, what I’m saying?’

Chiaki nodded, staring at his face and trying to fix it in her memory. Of course I understand what you’re saying, she thought. You want to take me to the hospital, right?

‘First of all, would you, please, put your clothes on?’

He had to get out of this hotel as soon as possible. Someone may have seen them just now, and he still had the knife and ice pick in his possession. He should probably take her to a hospital. Escort her to an emergency room, get her some treatment, and the S&M club could have no cause for complaint. He was the one who was being inconvenienced here, after all. Surely they’d be satisfied if he explained things properly and paid for six hours of her time.

‘Please? Please get dressed.’

He’d throw everything into his bag and check out immediately. The fact that he was with a woman would make an impression on the clerk, but he couldn’t worry about that at this point. I haven’t actually done anything anyway, he told himself. Get in a taxi, take her to the nearest hospital, and wash my hands of the whole thing.

‘We’re going to the hospital. You can’t very well go naked, right?’

Chiaki was ecstatic. So it really was him. The one who’d grabbed her from behind and whispered in her ear and made her realise how angry and scared she was, was the same one who always saw to it that she got to a hospital. It’s really him, she thought. I’ve finally met the mystery man.

‘OK,’ she said, peering at his face and nodding. ‘But let me call my office first, OK?’

She limped to the telephone on the table, and Kawashima went into the bathroom to gather her things. The Swiss Army knife was on the floor. He used a tissue to pick it up, wiped the blood from the scissors, folded them back into the handle, and dropped the knife into her purse. He’d left the door open so he could hear her talking on the phone.

‘That’s right, I’m not feeling well so I’m going to finish up now, but it’s all right if I don’t come by the office, isn’t it? It’s, let’s see, just after ten, so. . four hours, right? Don’t worry, I’ll go to the hospital if it keeps getting worse.’

Kawashima heard her hang up and turned on the shower to wash the remaining blood from the bathtub and floor. Even the blood that had already dried cleaned up nicely with a wet towel. I’m not feeling well and might have to go to the hospital — couldn’t have invented a better story myself, he thought with some relief. He carried the girl’s purse and undergarments and dress into the bedroom. She was sitting on the sofa, still naked except for that silvery ring in her nipple.

‘Can you help me with my panties?’ She lifted her legs so that her toes pointed at him. ‘I’m afraid I’ll hurt my leg.’

He knelt before her with the rolled-up panties in both hands, slipped them over her feet and pushed them up her shins to her knees, then let go and told her to stand. She put a hand on his shoulder and rose unsteadily to her feet, her thin pubic hair nearly brushing against his face. Stretching the elastic as far as it would go, he managed to pull the panties up without disturbing the bandage, then unrolled the purple, translucent material to snugly encase her crotch and buttocks.

‘I don’t need to put on my stockings, right? They’ll just make me take them off again, right?’

Kawashima grunted agreement and stood up. It was then that he noticed his overnight bag lying on its side against the opposite wall, and his open notebook beside it. His blood turned to ice. She must have read the notes, he thought, and a shiver emanating from his bitten finger rippled through every cell in his body. He experienced a surge of nausea and looked over at the girl, who had turned her back to him and was climbing into her slip. I have no choice now, he thought, and the chill and the nausea merged with a peculiar, bubbling excitement. I have no choice but to kill her. If she read the notes and lived, there couldn’t be a next time. She’d be sure to tell someone: I had a client like that once.

It was a good thing he hadn’t disposed of the ice pick and combat knife after all.

He had to walk slowly to keep from outpacing the girl, who was limping along beside him, holding his arm. Wind whistled through the canyon of skyscrapers, and on the empty street the cold seemed to seep into every pore. For a moment he even forgot about the pain in his finger.

‘It’s freezing,’ the girl said, turning up the collar of her coat, hunching her back and clinging even more tightly to his arm.

What a strange woman, he thought — why’s she so thrilled about going to the hospital? Well, at least she hadn’t caused any problems when he was checking out. She’d clung to his arm like this in the elevator too, but when they reached the lobby she let go and headed straight for the exit without so much as a backward glance, as if they had nothing to do with each other. Probably second nature for a girl in her profession, but he was glad not to have been seen leaving the hotel with her.

Chiaki hadn’t wanted to let go of the man’s arm in the lobby, but she guessed he wouldn’t care to be seen cuddling with her in front of a lot of people. Nobody likes to be seen with me in public, she thought. Even Mama, after I told her what You-know-who was doing, started walking a few steps ahead when we went out together. That’s me: a woman other people are ashamed to be seen with.

Waiting for his receipt at the checkout counter, Kawashima had peered over the rim of his fake glasses to watch her crossing the lobby. She slumped along with bent head and rounded shoulders, dangling her sizeable bag of toys from one hand and her purse from the other.

‘Emergency room of the nearest hospital, please,’ Kawashima said, and the driver asked if Sogo Hospital in Yoyogi would be all right. Kawashima didn’t care which hospital it was, and neither did the girl. It was warm inside the taxi, but she snuggled up to him anyway, twisting her upper body to bury her face in his chest. There had been girls like this in the Home, Kawashima remembered. He knew she wasn’t doing this because she liked him, that any moment her attitude could change completely. You never knew what someone like this might do. She might laugh hysterically out of sheer terror, only to end up sobbing and attacking you with her fists. She might be all over you one minute and act as if you didn’t exist the next.

In other words, her clinging to him like this was by no means an indication that she hadn’t read the notes. He’d have to spend more time with her before he’d know for sure.

‘Emergency room, eh?’ the driver said, glancing in the rear-view mirror. ‘Anything wrong?’

The girl laughed in a weird voice — a voice remarkably like the beeping of an ATM — and said, ‘I’m having a baby.’

Kawashima shook his head. What an imbecilic thing to say. The driver had seen her standing at the kerb, and would surely have noticed how slender she was. You could have encircled her waist with two hands.

‘Aren’t I?’ she said, looking up at Kawashima.

He didn’t bother to reply. He glanced at her moist eyes for a moment, but the expression on his face gave her nothing.

‘You look good with those glasses on,’ she said.

He stared straight ahead, thinking: Hurry up and get us to the hospital.

‘Your eyes are really pretty through the lenses.’

Chiaki had begun to sense that this man, her mystery man, was in fact very wealthy. He was so calm and dignified, and really kind of handsome up close. And somehow she knew she could trust him completely. Normally, whenever she said something she really believed, something straight from the heart, or made a clever joke, all she’d get from people were phony reactions. But this man wasn’t saying anything or reacting at all, so she knew he wasn’t a phony, or a liar. He’d been wearing that cheap suit at first, and the things he had on now — the coat, the sweatshirt and jeans, the shoes, even the glasses — were chintzy too, but maybe he was in disguise. Maybe he’d disguised himself because he was embarrassed about the whole idea of S&M. He’d reserved her for six hours but never even touched her in a sexual way. And he’d paid her for six even though she said she’d only charge him for four. He was nothing like all her other clients — Hurry up and take it off, hurry up and show it to me, hurry up and lick it, hurry up and suck it — he was different, in every way. And even though her leg had been hurting really bad, she’d got wet when he put her panties on for her. He must’ve gone to that hotel incognito for one night of fun, she thought, just to try something new. I bet he’s from Kyoto or Kobe, someplace like that. And I bet he’s even got another room at a different hotel, probably some unbelievable luxury suite.

‘Hey,’ she said softly, smiling up at him. ‘What hotel are you staying at really?’

Kawashima’s body stiffened.

I knew it, Chiaki said to herself — he’s a secret rich man.

Sure enough, thought Kawashima — she read the notes.

Most of the hospital’s windows were dark. The driver dropped them off at the side entrance and watched them move slowly, arm in arm, up the walkway to the door.

‘Listen, I’ll be waiting right here,’ Kawashima told the girl. ‘I don’t want to go in, but I won’t move from this spot. I don’t like hospitals, never did. I mean, the truth is, I’m afraid of them. Hospitals scare me.’

His breath made little clouds as he spoke. They were standing in front of a lighted sign that said EMERGENCY OUTPATIENT RECEPTION. The reception room would be brightly lit, and he couldn’t afford to be seen with the girl in a place like that, especially by any doctors or nurses.

‘OK,’ said Chiaki, thinking: So that’s why he’s never around when I wake up — he doesn’t like hospitals. ‘But shouldn’t you have them look at your hand?’

‘I’ll be all right,’ Kawashima said. He took three 10,000-yen notes from his pocket and held them out to her. ‘Use this to pay.’

‘That’s OK,’ said the girl, shaking her head. ‘You already paid me extra and everything.’ She stepped towards the door beneath the sign, then stopped and looked back at him. ‘You’ll be right here, right?’

‘I promise.’

‘And you’ll stay with me tonight, won’t you?’

‘Of course. I won’t leave you.’

I’ve got to snuff her as soon as possible and get this over with, Kawashima thought as he watched her enter the building. The longer I put it off, the greater the risk that someone will get a good look at us together.

Chiaki shook her head when the nurse asked if she had her insurance card, and she had to present her driver’s licence and write her name and address on some forms. When she got in to see the doctor she told him she’d fallen off a bicycle. He inspected the wounds on her thigh and said that one of them was fairly deep and would require stitches. He didn’t question her story or ask about the shirt-cloth bandage, and though he must have seen the scars from all the previous incidents he didn’t say anything about them either. He injected her with a local anaesthetic in three different spots, disinfected the scraped knee and the wounds and sewed up the deep one, and covered them all with lots of gauze. He seemed to be in a hurry to finish.

There had been about ten other people in the waiting room. A man with a shaved head sitting in a wheelchair, his eyes half-closed and his mouth hanging open, wearing just a thin cotton robe; a middle-aged woman with thick make-up whose big toe and ankle were swollen grotesquely, and who was supported by two thin young men sitting on either side of her; a group of four men dressed for construction work who smelled of sweat and sat with their heads bent together, discussing something in low voices; an old man with bulging purple veins on his hands reading a newspaper; a man cradling a baby, next to a woman holding a stuffed toy chipmunk and pressing a handkerchief to her eyes.

The anaesthetic had taken effect in just a few minutes, but Chiaki still felt a little pain when the suturing needle pierced her flesh, and beads of sweat broke out on her upper lip and the bridge of her nose. Each time the doctor’s arm brushed against her translucent purple panties she thought of the man with the glasses on, the way his eyes looked behind those lenses.

‘Is it OK to have sex?’ she asked as she was leaving the examination room. Without even glancing up from the chart he was scribbling on, the doctor muttered, ‘Just be careful the bandage doesn’t come off.’

Kawashima had taken refuge across the street from the entrance, at a bus stop with partitions to protect him from the freezing wind. He’d decided that loitering outside an emergency room entrance at eleven o’clock on a cold night like this, holding two large bags, just wouldn’t look right. If a cop on patrol were to come along and question him and then ask to look in the bags, he’d find the girl’s S&M toys in one and an ice pick and combat knife in the other. At a bus stop, on the other hand, there was nothing suspicious about carrying luggage of any size. He had a clear view of the hospital doors from here, and if a bus were to come he had only to act as if he were waiting for a different one.

His clothes — T-shirt, sweatshirt, and jeans under a cheap coat of thin material — were no match for this weather, though. He’d finally stopped bleeding, but his fingers were frozen, and he reopened the wound by putting his leather gloves back on. He wondered if he couldn’t separate himself from the cold and the pain, using the technique he’d developed as a boy. There were a lot of things he had to think through right now, while the girl was receiving treatment, but conditions like this robbed you of the power to process information. The technique. .

It had been a cold night in winter, just like this, when he first discovered it. He’d run out of the house and slammed the sliding glass door behind him. Come to think of it, the palm of his left hand was hurting that night, too. Mother had coated it with industrial ammonia — the kind you dilute ten parts to one to use as insecticide. In a little while it had begun to make this awful smell, and he felt the skin of his palm burning. When he tried to wash the stuff off she pulled him away from the sink, and he ran outside. Don’t bother coming back! she shouted through the glass and locked the door, turning the latch slowly, deliberately. Clack. Her silhouette on the frosted glass was terrifying, blurry at the edges and bigger than life, and he was freezing and in so much pain that he thought he was going to lose his mind. I must’ve made use of that, he thought, that feeling that I was going insane. Something came flooding into me, I remember, and something went flooding out, and suddenly I’d managed to separate myself from the pain and the cold and the fear.

The one who’s here right now isn’t me. This pain isn’t mine. That was the general idea, but of course he hadn’t put it into words at the time. The words had all been erased, along with the feelings. He’d used the technique later on in life, too, when he lived with the stripper. He seemed to remember subtly shifting the focus of his eyes, like with one of those 3-D illustrations, but there was no way he could maintain that sort of concentration right now. And it was no use trying to analyse how he’d done it. The instant you put something like that into words, it was gone. Words and combinations of words — the more you relied on them, the less power you actually had.

About two hundred metres from the bus stop was a phone booth. If only he were inside it. He’d be completely protected from the wind, and he could even call Yoko and hear her voice if he wanted to. He was summoning up the sound of that soothing voice of hers when, absurdly, he began to imagine actually asking her advice.

‘So, anyway, she read the notes. I have no choice but to kill her, right? What else can I do?’

‘Where is she right now?’

‘She’s in the emergency room at this hospital. I’m outside waiting for her.’

‘Won’t she say something to the doctor, or one of the nurses?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, if she was going to do that, she could’ve talked to someone in the lobby of the hotel, right? The security guard or whatever.’

‘I guess that’s true. But if she read the notes, why isn’t she trying to escape?’

‘I don’t get that part, either, but it’s not as if this is a woman who’s in control of herself, or acting rationally. I’m pretty sure she’s a kindred spirit.’

‘Kindred spirit?’

‘I think something happened to her when she was small.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know, and I don’t want to know, but I can tell she’s afraid, and starved for something.’

‘So, what are you going to do now?’

A slender figure came out through the emergency room door. She was hopping on one leg and looking anxiously about. One thing’s for sure, Kawashima muttered under his breath as he sprinted towards the girl. I can’t take her back to the hotel in Akasaka.

He really did wait for me, Chiaki thought when she saw the man running to her out of the frozen darkness. She thought he looked like a steam locomotive in an old cartoon, lugging those two big bags and expelling clouds of white smoke. And it was comical the way he dangled her Lancel bag from the crook of his left arm, like a lady. Of course he can’t hold it in his hand because of his finger, she thought — but just look at him, running like that for all he’s worth. How cute can you get?

Not wanting to wait a single extra second to feel his arm around her shoulder, supporting her, Chiaki started towards the man, dragging her numb, anaesthetised right leg.

‘Come to my place,’ she said as they settled into a taxi. ‘You’ll come and stay with me, won’t you?’

Kawashima’s lips and cheeks were stiff with the cold, and he merely nodded rather than trying to speak. Her place would certainly work for him. He couldn’t take her to the hotel in Akasaka, where he was registered under his real name, and had been thinking he might have to make do with a love hotel after all.

Chiaki never thought to question the man’s motivation for accompanying her to the hospital — or for waiting outside, for that matter. She had long since lost sight of the fact that he was merely a client who’d happened to call her club and ask for a girl to be sent to his hotel room. All she could see were his selfless efforts on her behalf, which, in her mind at least, were beginning to take on epic proportions.

He stood out there in this freezing weather waiting for me, she thought. His arm felt like ice — I never even knew a body could get that cold. I was afraid he wouldn’t really wait for me, and when he wasn’t right outside the door I almost fainted, but then there he was, humping it across the street as fast as he could go, huffing and puffing clouds of steam. It was like being in a movie, like being lead actress in some big romantic scene.

It was warm inside the taxi, but the man was still shivering. His face, just above and to the right of hers, looked distorted, the features out of balance. It was as if only some of his facial muscles had thawed while the rest remained frozen solid. His hair, exposed all that time to the cold wind, was dry and mussed, his teeth were chattering, and his nose was runny. His eyes were watering, too, and he kept blinking. His face was a complete mess, in fact, and yet it was also the most adorable thing she’d ever seen. She had a sudden urge to hit that face. Not just give him a little slap on the cheek but slug him as hard as she could, with her fist or a bottle or a wrench or something, right in the eye. He’d be bleeding and begging her to stop, and she’d just laugh. He’d be even cuter weeping and asking for forgiveness, she thought. And after that he’d stay by her side for ever, no matter what.

Chiaki wanted to communicate these feelings to him. How nice it would be if she could tell him everything, even all the bad stuff. She could see herself tugging on his sleeve, going: Listen, listen, I know you probably don’t like to hear about things like this? But I really really hate my father. I do. Everybody thinks he’s a good man, a nice, respectable gentleman, and he was head accountant for the biggest company in our home town and didn’t even have any interests or hobbies outside of work except for spending like an hour every day feeding the goldfish, but from about the time I started elementary school, whenever my mother was away or after she’d gone to sleep, he’d do nasty things to me. He really did. That’s why I’ve always just wished he would hurry up and die, and he’s told me to drop dead too, lots of times. I really and truly wish he would die, but when I was in middle school my tonsils kept getting inflamed and finally I got a really bad fever and they decided to take them out? And we lived in this small town outside Nagoya that didn’t even have a real hospital, so our local doctor was going to perform the operation, and at the dinner table my mother was worrying about that, saying she wondered if the doctor really knew what he was doing, and my father said, ‘If anything happens to Chiaki I’ll kill that son of a bitch,’ and then he burst into tears. I mean, I was amazed. At the time our family was a shambles because I’d finally told my mother what he was doing to me, and after that he turned into this really mean and angry person who was always yelling, but him saying that about the doctor and crying, that’s the thing I remember most. You don’t see a grown man cry very often, right? I changed my personality too, right after I entered junior college, except I did it on purpose, and after that boys started liking me more, and I have three boyfriends right now, sort of, but don’t be jealous, OK? You don’t have anything to be jealous about. They’re all losers, really. One’s named Kazuki; he’s a college student, but in high school he crashed his motorcycle, and his shoulder and knee are messed up, and he’s always saying he wants to die. I like to watch boys when they’re sleeping really soundly? So about six months ago I crushed up three Halcion tablets and mixed them in Kazuki’s Campari and orange, and ever since then he won’t eat or drink anything I give him. They’re all like that. Yoshiaki’s this guy who when I tried to stab myself in the leg he got all hysterical, and then when I pricked him just a little with the knife he ran away. He’s twenty-eight now but he’s still just a clerk in a video store. Atsushi is young, the same age as me, and he just became a hairdresser, and he’s half-white but near-sighted and doesn’t have any parents. He’s an orphan. He’s always going on and on about his childhood, and when he gets drunk he might tell me he’s going to kill me or he might start bawling like a baby, and sometimes he calls me Mommy. Atsushi’s the one who taught me about piercings. He’s got five rings in his ear, eighteen gauge to ten gauge, but when I told him to get one in his nipple to match mine, and to get a Sailor Moon tattoo — because I like Sailor Moon? — or if not that, a skull, he stopped calling me. I was eighteen when I changed my personality, and in the three years since then I’ve had about twenty boyfriends, but they were all more or less like that. So you can understand how happy I am to finally meet someone like you!

‘Are you hungry?’ she said.

The man nodded without taking his eyes off the road ahead and without any change of expression. High-rise buildings loomed on all sides, and the lights from the windows — so many different colours and shades — seemed to swirl around them, enveloping the two of them in a warm cocoon.

I can’t communicate the way I feel to him, she thought, but I probably don’t need to anyway. He’s not going to ask me a lot of questions, and he’s not going to tell me about himself. You can tell he doesn’t like hearing or making confessions. Who knew there were still people like that in this world, though? Everybody wants to talk about themselves, and everybody wants to hear everybody else’s story, so we take turns playing reporter and celebrity. It must have made you very sad when your own father raped you — can you describe some of your feelings at the time? Yes, I wept and wept, wondering why something like this had to happen to me. It’s like that. Everyone’s running around comparing wounds, like bodybuilders showing off their muscles. And what’s really unbelievable is that they really believe they can heal the wounds like that, just by putting them on display.

This man was different. But she had to ask herself: Was he really the one she’d been waiting for? And her various selves — the self whose father licks her down there, the self who whispers I love you to him as he laps at her private parts, the self who watches from the corner of the ceiling, the self who commands her to die, the self who unfolds the scissors from the handle of the Swiss Army knife — all gave her the same reply: Who knows? How could anyone know what sort of man she was really waiting for? Up until now, she’d simply accepted whoever showed interest in her and put up with her and sacrificed for her and wanted her body.

Well, it doesn’t matter if he’s the one or not, Chiaki thought and looked at the man, who wasn’t even bothering to wipe his fogged-up lenses. Once we’re in my room, I’ll have him shedding tears of joy and gratitude.

‘We’re almost there,’ she said. ‘I’ll make you some hot soup, or a nice stew or something, OK?’

‘Ah,’ Kawashima said in a hoarse whisper. Could he get to her room without being seen by anyone? All he knew for sure was that he needed to rest awhile. He’d rest first, and then plan the next move.

‘Try these slippers; they’re more for summer really, but they’re nice, aren’t they? They’re from Morocco. I have lots of other kinds, too. See these? Antique Chinese — isn’t the silk beautiful? Of course, they were for bound feet, so they’re just to look at, you can’t really wear them. The Moroccan ones feel a little rough if you’re not wearing socks, but with socks on they’re really comfortable, don’t you think?’

It was a spacious one-room apartment with thick carpeting everywhere except the entryway and kitchenette. A big climate-control system built into one wall emitted heat with a low, almost inaudible hum. Next to this was a sliding glass door that led to a veranda with deckchairs. The skyscrapers of West Shinjuku were visible in the distance.

The taxi had dropped them off here, a small new apartment complex midway between the shopping and residential districts of Shin-Okubo. There was no security guard in the lobby. The building was U-shaped, and in the centre was a cramped little garden with potted plants and an angel statue. The walls of the elevator were glass, so that you looked down at the angel falling away as you rose.

They’d got off at the sixth floor. In the corridor they passed an elderly man with a puppy, but the girl didn’t say anything to him and he scarcely seemed to know they were there. The corridor was fairly dim, with soft indirect lighting, and Kawashima was sure the old man hadn’t got much of a look at him.

The girl had slid an electronic key card into a slot and opened the door, then switched on a muted spotlight and introduced him to her slipper collection, which she kept on a rack in the entryway. He stepped into the Moroccan slippers she’d set out for him. They were yellow and looked like sandals.

‘Would you like some espresso?’ she asked. ‘Or would you rather have a beer or gin and tonic or something like that?’

Kawashima opted for the caffeine, and the girl pointed out her espresso machine (‘It’s from Germany!’) and took a Ginori demitasse cup from the cupboard. The machine was a professional model about the size of a large microwave oven, its stainless-steel housing and fixtures polished to a shine. She fiddled with it, then crossed the room to the closet beside her bed, where she hung up Kawashima’s coat and began to undress. She was facing him when she squirmed out of her slip and let it fall to the floor. He studied her standing there in her purple panties and marvelled at how different a woman can look in different settings. He’d gazed at and grappled with this girl’s naked body in the hotel room, the bathroom, and the corridor, but now somehow her skin seemed even whiter, almost luminous. And when he’d helped her into her panties he hadn’t noticed the wisp of downy hair curling above the waistband towards her navel. What a beautiful tummy, he thought.

She put on a grey T-shirt and a loose-fitting brown velvet skirt that wouldn’t constrict her bandaged wound. As she fastened the skirt, she looked over at Kawashima and mouthed the words Just for now! Meaning, he gathered, that she’d take it off again later.

‘Nice room,’ he said.

Thick, dark coffee began to trickle from the espresso machine into the fancy cup.

‘I don’t spend much money on anything else,’ the girl said, walking to the kitchenette. She retrieved the cup, set it on the coffee table, and took a seat on the sofa beside him. ‘A lot of girls like to go out drinking or clubbing or whatever? But I don’t, and I don’t buy that many clothes, either. I prefer to build my wardrobe little by little, you know what I mean? Just buying the things I really really like?’

Against the wall opposite the L-shaped sofa were the A/V rack and a bookshelf. There were paperback mysteries and horror novels, complete multi-volume sets of various girls’ manga, and a photograph collection entitled Corpses mixed in with a number of oversize books about tableware and furniture. She had only a smattering of videos and CDs: three domestic animated films that had been big hits, a few CDs of the ‘Greatest Classical Melodies’ sort, and ten or twelve others that were movie soundtracks or ‘best of’ collections by Japanese pop stars. The TV screen was on the small side, and the stereo was just your average mini hifi system.

‘After we rest a minute I’ll make some soup,’ Chiaki said. ‘Would you like to listen to a little music?’

The man nodded, and she slid Afternoon Classics, Volume III into the CD player. It was the one with Chopin’s Nocturnes, Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood, and Schubert’s Moments Musicales. She turned the volume low and sat back down even closer to the man, who’d already finished his espresso. She was about to say, Doesn’t the piano sound like rain? — but he spoke first.

‘It was too cold even to talk earlier,’ Kawashima said. As his body warmed in the heated room, that vision of the girl’s white belly kept replaying in his mind, and he was suddenly excited again, and nervous. ‘So, anyway, how did it go in the hospital?’

She lifted the hem of her velvet skirt and showed him the clean new bandage on her thigh. Kawashima wished he knew what she and the doctor had talked about. There was no guarantee she hadn’t told him about the notes. For all he knew, the police, tipped off by the doctor, might already be staking out this apartment and stationing men outside the door, ready to burst in on them the moment the ice-pick made its appearance. But he hadn’t noticed any cars tailing the taxi or any indications inside or outside the building that they were being watched. Well, he had time now to wait and feel things out. Surely he couldn’t be arrested just for having an ice pick, a knife, and some notes on how to commit a murder. And if the girl were to lie and say he was the one who’d stabbed her in the thigh, all the police would have to do is inspect the wounds to see that they hadn’t been made with an ice-pick or combat knife but with the tiny blades of her own Swiss Army scissors. And the depth and angle of the cuts would prove they’d been self-inflicted.

He was still gazing at the girl’s new bandage when he became aware of a voice reverberating inside him, and a shiver vibrated out from his core. Who are you kidding? the voice said. All you really care about is stabbing this girl with your ice pick. It was the same voice he’d heard several days before, by the diaper shelf in the convenience store. You still don’t get it, do you? Can’t you see that it isn’t about maybe she saw the notes, or maybe she told someone? And that it doesn’t even have anything to do with your fear of stabbing the baby? None of that really matters to you. Ask yourself this: Why did you come tagging along with this woman — to sit there snuggled up on the sofa drinking coffee? I don’t think so. You did it because you’re afraid of losing her. Why? You know perfectly well why. You were staring at her little white stomach when she changed clothes, weren’t you? That pretty tummy with the soft brown peachfuzz. And you were thinking how you’d like to slowly open a small hole in that tummy with the point of an ice pick. That’s all it’s about for you. It’s more important to you than anything else. To pull the ice pick back out and watch the thick, red blood ooze from that little hole. Your whole life has been leading up to this moment, when you reveal to the world the sort of human being you are. This is your debut as the real you. And guess who you have to thank for this opportunity?

Mother? Kawashima detected an odour like hair or fingernails burning. A fever was gathering between his temples. Sparks burst where his olfactory and optical and auditory nerves crossed and short-circuited, and his lips were trembling. He touched the nape of his neck. It was wet with perspiration, and he could feel his vocal cords were preparing to scream, all on their own. A scream of horror or exultation? He wasn’t sure. He bit his lip, squeezed his eyes shut, and tore off the gloves he’d been wearing all this time, beginning with the left one. The newly formed scab had stuck to the inner lining; it peeled off, and he could feel fresh, warm blood seeping out again. He bowed his head and clenched the hand in a tight fist, trying to use the pain to gain control of himself.

‘Oh, I forgot!’ the girl said. ‘We have to put something on that finger!’

Kawashima shook his head.

‘But you have to disinfect it! I got some medicine from the doctor — I’ll put some on for you, OK?’

He shook his head again. His eyes were still shut. He was barely listening to what the girl said, but something about the tenor of her voice was triggering a memory. It was like a voice he used to hear back in the Home whenever he had an episode. He’d be lost in his mind, no longer in control of himself, terrorised by the overpowering sense that something was about to burst or rip apart, the fever building between his temples, sparks flying where the sights and sounds and smells short-circuited, and then he’d hear this voice — an actual voice, coming not from within but from somewhere outside himself. It wasn’t a scolding or appeasing or soothing voice, just matter-of-fact and real. Masayuki, hey, it’s dinner time. We’re having everyone’s favourite today — hamburgers! Time to wash up. Let’s go and wash our hands. I know the water’s cold, but we want those hands to be really clean! Everybody’s happy because we’re having hamburgers. See? See how happy they all are? That voice would smother the sparks one by one and slowly cool the fever. Take your fingers out of your ears now and open your eyes. Look around, listen to all the children talking and laughing. Everything’s the same as ever. Nothing has changed, and no one is going to hurt you.

Kawashima exhaled deeply, unclenching his left hand and opening his eyes. Keeping them closed was no more defence against the images that accompanied the sparks than plugging his ears was against the voice from inside, the voice he heard echoing off the interior walls of his skin. Only voices and images from the external world could neutralise those from inside. That was why Kawashima’s greatest fear — far greater for him than the fear of death — was of losing his sight and hearing to some illness or accident. Cut off from actual sights and sounds, with the unchecked terror swelling inside him, he knew he’d go mad in no time. He looked at the girl, hoping she’d keep on talking.

‘Oh, that’s right,’ she said. ‘You’re hungry, aren’t you! I make really good soup. I mean, it’s just instant, but instant can be delicious if you know what to add.’

Chiaki was wondering what was wrong with the man. Had she offended him? She couldn’t think how. All she’d done was show him her new bandage, but he’d suddenly clammed up and closed his eyes and gone all pale in the face. The climate-control system kept the room at a pleasant temperature, but he was shivering. And he didn’t seem to notice that he’d been biting his lip so hard he’d left a mark and even drawn a little blood.

‘Like tonight, for example? I’m thinking I’ll use a package of cream consommé. Knorr makes a good one, but on a cold night like this, when you feel chilled to the bone, potage is better than consommé, don’t you think? You want something thick and hearty, right? So what I do is, I add a little curry powder, and milk of course, regular milk and also condensed milk, because it complements the sweetness of the corn? And besides, it’s more nutritious that way, right?’

Chiaki was glad to see that as she chattered away the man seemed to be listening closely, although there was something strangely vacant about the way he was nodding his head, focusing now on her bandaged thigh, now on her lips. The bandage must remind him of something, she thought. He’s probably thinking about what I did in his bathroom at the hotel.

Of course. What else could it be?

She knew she’d been bad, but what exactly had she done? Chiaki was never conscious of any pain when she was hurting herself, and never had much memory of the incidents afterwards. All she could recall of the incident earlier this evening were fragmentary images, but she decided to see if she could patch them together. She’d never tried that before, and didn’t really want to now but would do it for his sake. She remembered the way her thigh had looked, all chopped up and covered with blood. Now she had to retrieve the image of the man reacting to that. She concentrated on bringing the image into focus, and a field of little coloured dots of light separated and swirled and came back together and slowly began to set, like gelatine. The first image to resolve itself was the man standing by the bathroom door.

The door opens. The door opens. The bathroom door opens and this man is there. He’s standing there. Just standing there. And his face? His face looks. . scared. He looks so shocked, in fact, so horrified, that I can hardly keep from laughing. That must be it. He caught me being bad in the bathroom, and it scared him so much that just to think about it now makes the blood drain from his face.

‘I have two soup bowls I just bought,’ she said. ‘They’re Wedgwood, and I haven’t even tried them out yet. Don’t worry, it won’t take any time at all to make. I mean, all I have to do is boil the water and cut open the package and pour it in, and then basically just stir in the curry and milk.’

He got scared. Only natural, if you thought about it. After all, she’d been stabbing herself in the leg, right in front of him. How could she have forgotten that horrified look on his face, though? It must be because he didn’t run away, she decided. Yoshiaki had run away, and the guy she was seeing in junior college, Yutaka — he went off saying he was going to call an ambulance and never came back. Hisao tried to stop her and got a cut on his hand, and sure enough he left too. They all ran away. That was why whenever she woke up in the hospital she let herself fantasise that some mystery man had taken her there.

She knew it was just a fantasy, just something her mind had dreamed up. There never had been any such man, not really. There were lots of different men instead, men in white clothes and white helmets who would catch hold of her and give her a shot in the arm and load her into a white van. That was the reality. She knew the mystery man wasn’t real. . and yet she couldn’t help but wonder now. It just might be him, she thought. Because he didn’t run away, even though he was horrified. And even though I bit his hand he just kept whispering gentle words in my ear.

No one had ever treated her like that before.

There was something else, too, something important that she couldn’t quite recall. Another reason she’d thought he must be the mystery man. What was it? She reviewed the images from the bathroom one by one: the man’s horrified face, his gestures, his hands, his arms. What was she forgetting? It was something in the bathroom. Bath towels, soap, shampoo, handbag, blood on the floor, wastebasket, box of tissues, bidet, toilet, toilet paper. . Got it. The telephone.

‘Adding curry powder to soup is a different idea, don’t you think? Did you know that milk and curry go really well together? And sometimes they put corn in curry, right? You don’t want to use any meat or anything. But if you put in a little curry powder — just a little — it accentuates the sweetness of the corn and the milk. I bet you didn’t know that!’

He’d used the telephone in the bathroom. But the image of him standing there with his arms crossed, holding the phone, wasn’t the important thing. The important thing was what he was saying. And when she remembered what that was, she felt goose bumps rising on the insides of her arms.

He said my name. I’m with Chiaki right now, that’s what he said, my real name. That’s what made me think he knew all about me. It must be him after all. And he probably does know all about me, too. I bet he’s been watching me from afar. He didn’t know how to approach me, so he pretended to be a client and asked the office to send me to him, and then all that stuff happened and he was scared but even so he didn’t run away but stayed and helped me. That’s why it didn’t turn him on when I masturbated for him. He doesn’t like me doing things like that. I hated it when he asked me right at the beginning if I’d take off my clothes and let him tie me up, but he didn’t mean it, he wasn’t going to do any such thing to me. If he were just another S&M freak he wouldn’t have taken me to the hospital, and he never would have waited for me out in the freezing cold.

‘Tell the truth,’ she said, smiling at him.

Kawashima’s heartbeat quickened at her sudden change in tone.

‘What?’ he said.

‘The reason you sent for me. It wasn’t really for S&M play, right?’

He was aware of his own face freezing in an oddly lopsided expression. Chiaki noticed it too and thought: He’s embarrassed. He’s so surprised I guessed his secret he can’t even speak.

Why the hell would she say something like that, Kawashima was thinking. Why, after babbling on and on about curry-flavoured cream soup, would she suddenly hint that she’s read the notes and knows all? Was she taking pleasure in watching his reaction? How do you enjoy someone’s reaction when you know it could result in your own death? Had she told the doctor everything after all? Did the doctor call the cops, and were the cops surveilling them at this very moment?

‘About the hospital. .’ His voice was trembling a little.

Chiaki thought: He’s embarrassed, so he’s trying to change the subject. What a bashful person. He’s quiet, and he doesn’t like to talk about himself or ask people questions, and he’s so shy and bashful that he couldn’t find the nerve to approach me, so he pretended to be a client.

‘Didn’t the doctor say anything?’ he asked her.

‘About what?’

‘You know, how did you get the wound, or—’

‘I told him I fell off my bicycle.’

‘Your bicycle?’

‘Uh-huh. Bicycles nowadays, they have all sorts of attachments and things sticking out all over? A thing to hold your water bottle, gear-shift levers, things like that. I mean, I’m not a cyclist or anything, but I read about this in one of those outdoors magazines? That a lot of people get cuts on their legs when they fall.’

‘So you told him you fell off a bicycle.’

‘I don’t think he believed me, but I guess he didn’t care.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There were a lot of patients waiting, and he looked really busy, so even though he probably knew it wasn’t a bicycle accident because of the other scars, I guess he couldn’t be bothered.’

‘The other scars?’ the man said, and Chiaki showed him the four long stripes on the inside of her left wrist.

‘I have a lot more on my leg, too, but you can’t see them because of the bandage.’

I should have known, Kawashima thought. She’s a chronic suicide case. Why hadn’t he seen it sooner? The scars on the wrist were right where the skin wrinkled, and her thigh had been covered with blood — but still, he should have recognised the signs. A chronic case, with a powerful drive to destroy herself. Maybe she wants me to kill her, he thought, staring at the scars on her wrist and feeling his heartbeat quicken again. Maybe she’s just waiting for me to pull out the knife.

The girl took his hand and stood up. She signalled with her eyes and a tilt of the head that she wanted him to follow, and led him across the room to the semi-double bed in the corner. She sat him down on the edge of the bed, then sat beside him, still holding his hand. Her moist eyes looked down at the scars on her wrist, and the corners of her mouth twisted upwards in a smile.

It must have been such a shock for him, Chiaki thought. She reached over and softly stroked the man’s hair. He’s not over it yet. And besides, he’s super-shy, so I’ll have to do the inviting. I need to let him know now, before even making the soup, that it’s OK to touch me, and kiss me, and have sex with me if he wants.

She could feel her libido squirming to life somewhere deep inside.

‘Isn’t there something you want to do to me?’ she said. The question made Kawashima dizzy. ‘You don’t have to be afraid.’

So it’s true, he thought. She read the notes and decided she’d found exactly the right person to help her die. That’s why she was all over him, clinging to him like a frightened child and luring him to her room, and now that she’d got him here she was just waiting for it to happen. But suicides like to leave a record of the act. For all he knew, there could be a video camera hidden somewhere in the room, taping them. Or she might have contacted a friend, an accomplice, who was training a telephoto lens on those glass doors at this very moment. Which would explain why she hadn’t closed the curtains.

‘Does it bother you that the curtains are open?’ Chiaki said when she saw the man staring at the glass doors. ‘I can see why you might want me to close them, but I don’t really want to, OK? I like to look at all the tall buildings. See the red lights blinking on top? That’s so aeroplanes and things don’t crash into them, but don’t you think they make the buildings look like they’re alive? Like they’re breathing or something? ’

Glancing from the cluster of skyscrapers in the distance back to the girl’s face, Kawashima began to feel a little sick to his stomach. She was wearing a smile, and her liquid eyes shone with the reflection of the bedside lamp. She’ll probably die wearing that same goofy simper on her face, he thought with disgust. He could see her covered in blood, ecstatically moaning More! More! as he slashed her neck and wrists and belly. He’d be nothing more than a tool for her.

What is with this guy, Chiaki was thinking. She was doing everything she could to help him relax, and all he did was tense up even more. Just how hard did he plan to make her work? Maybe he’d never even had a woman before. Maybe if I put his hand down there, she thought, he’d be so thrilled that blood would shoot out of his nose. I need to be patient, and lead him along gently. First I’ll tell him about my sex drive. Guys always seem to like it when I do that.

‘I’m the type of person that when I lose my sex drive? Sometimes? It makes me feel really insecure,’ she said. She turned back the corner of the duvet and placed Kawashima’s hand on the sheet. ‘Feel that. You can tell what it is, right? Silk. I bought these sheets two weeks ago. Run your hand over them. It’s nothing like the silk from Korea or Taiwan that you buy in department stores, right? Even cheap silk is smooth to the touch, but this is different. It’s like milk or something, only dry. Imagine me lying here, and you looking down at me, and these sheets getting wet with, well, all sorts of stuff. Just think what that could be like. You know, I’ve never let anyone else even sleep on these sheets before.’

Listening to the girl talk and studying her face, Kawashima began to feel a very specific old fear. The fear of feeling manipulated by outside forces. He remembered the terrifying story his mother used to tell him after a beating. He couldn’t have been more than four or five the first time, barely old enough to understand the words. But she told him the story many times in the years that followed, whenever her beatings failed to produce the desired tears.

You’re a weird kid, she’d say, and when you get older you’ll be a crazy person, a nutcase. I know because I had a classmate like that when I was a girl, and I visited him at the loony-bin once. He was in a narrow little room with no windows, and all he did all day long was stand with his ear pressed against the wall, listening to a voice only he could hear and laughing and crying. When he was in my class, whatever you asked this lunatic to do, he’d do the exact opposite. If you told him to shut up he’d start gibbering like mad, and if you told him to eat he’d clamp his mouth shut and grit his teeth and wouldn’t open up for anything. Obstinate and contrary, just like you. Wait and see — someday you’ll end up in a little cell with no windows, listening to the voice in the wall like that classmate of mine. He used to twist his neck to one side so he could press his ear against the wall, and finally he got so he couldn’t straighten it out and had to walk around with his chin touching his shoulder and only his ear facing forward.

In later years Kawashima had read up on mental illness. People like the one his mother had described were called schizophrenics. And one of the symptoms of a schizophrenic breakdown was the delusion that someone or something was manipulating you, making you say things or do things against your will.

I didn’t plan to kill her, officer. It was beyond my control. The girl started stabbing her own leg, and after that she begged me to kill her. She lay down naked on the bed, and when I planted the knife in her she was very happy and died smiling.

Imagine saying something like that, Kawashima thought. They’d put me in the nuthouse for sure. If anyone’s manipulating me, though, it isn’t this girl. She’s just a servant, a slave. Some random suicidal erotomaniac sent by whoever it is that wants me to go insane. I need her to squeal and weep and plead for her life — and look at her: sitting there with her eyes all misty, smiling like the masque of comedy as she imagines me stabbing her to death. She’s wet up to her eyeballs with lust and chatting away as if this were the happiest moment of her life.

‘Think about it,’ she said, moving his hand. ‘First you touch the sheets like this, and then, after that, you touch my skin.’ She put his hand on her left thigh, the one without the bandage. ‘Nobody’s ever done this before.’

And that’s the truth, she thought. Nobody else has ever touched these sheets — not Yoshiaki or Yutaka or Atsushi or Hisao or Kazuki or anybody. To be able to enjoy the feel of them and then the feel of my body, that’s a very special thing. And basically what I’m telling you, Mister, is that it’s OK for you to ejaculate all over my new sheets.

Ejaculate, she thought, and felt her smile drain away. I wonder what sort of face he’ll make when he comes. Will it be different from the others? How? Take it in your mouth. That’s what You-know-who used to say. But why do I have to remember him now? He made me take it in my mouth. We can’t have you getting pregnant, Chiaki. You-know-who would make me take it in my mouth, and then right away the stuff would come out. But this man is different. Isn’t he? He helped me in the bathroom, and he waited for me in the cold. That’s why I thought I’d do whatever he wanted, let him have his way with me, even lick me down there if he wants to. He licks me, and then I take it in my mouth. Take it in my mouth. Then the stuff comes out. Maybe I’m falling in love. Because even when I bit his finger he didn’t do anything but kept whispering softly in my ear, and because he stood out in that freezing cold waiting for me. Falling in love with him. Because he didn’t do anything. He didn’t do anything. Didn’t try to do anything. He’s different from You-know-who, completely different. You-know-who. Take it in your mouth. Take it in your mouth, Chiaki, take it in your mouth. Take it in your mouth.

The girl still had hold of Kawashima’s hand but had stopped sliding it up and down her thigh. She was about to say something, then clenched her jaw and seemed to swallow the words. Peering down at the hand that held his, she untwined her fingers and withdrew it. She raised her fingertips to her upper lip, as if smelling them, and closed her eyes. Her lips moved, and it looked as if she were whispering to her hand. When Kawashima gently removed his own hand from her thigh, she opened her eyes and glared at him.

Chiaki knew she was on the verge of snapping again. Looking down at the thigh the man had just rejected, she felt the rage building. He’s just like all the others after all, she said to herself. But just like them how? And who did she mean by ‘the others’? These questions occurred to her, but she didn’t have the energy or will to deal with them now. It was almost as if she could see the rage — the one thing without which she couldn’t survive, without which she’d be helpless. As if she could see the rage come foaming up the pathways from her fingers and toes to her heart and brain. Why do I need this, though, she asked herself, and tears welled up in her eyes. Why do I need this stupid rage? There were times when, having been slowly stretched to the breaking point, she snapped like a rubber band, and other times, like now, when it happened with no warning at all, as if the rage had been cut loose with a blade.

Something terrible always happens when I get like this, she thought. And when it’s all over I’ll feel so bad I’ll want to die. I hate it. I hate it, but I never have the power to stop it, so it must be something I really need. This rage that makes me want to destroy everything I see — all the people and things, and myself too, burn everything down to the ground. I must need it. But why would a person need something like that? In elementary school that time, alone in the equipment room with the young gym teacher. I lifted my skirt and took his hand and tried to slide it inside my underwear. I thought that was what grown-up men liked, and I wanted to make him happy. But he pulled his hand away. The rage took over and I started screaming as if I’d burst into flames, and the gym teacher reached for my hand, saying, I see — you just want to be friends with me, don’t you? and I bit his hand until it bled. This man too, Chiaki thought and glared at him again. I know he’s going to make me angry. Sooner or later he’ll do or say something to make me lose it. Whether he tries to kiss me or tries to run away or tries to lick me down there or tries to hit me or gets down on his hands and knees and begs for forgiveness, I’ll end up in a rage, like I always have, sooner or later, with all the others.

I hate that, she thought, I hate that that always has to happen.

She closed her eyes again, remembering walking along arm in arm with this man, and sitting next to him in the taxi with the lights of the skyscrapers all around. She remembered how cold his arm was to the touch, and the memory cheered her a little. I wanna do that again, she thought, silently mouthing the words. I wanna walk with him like that again.

‘I’ll fix the soup,’ she declared, and stood up and limped towards the kitchenette. She could feel the man’s eyes on her as she walked away from the bed. He’s probably really disappointed, she thought. I didn’t let him do anything after all, so now he’ll be all discouraged. What’ll I do if he tells me he’s leaving?

The thought frightened her, and she decided to mix some Halcion into his soup.

‘I put in too much curry powder, didn’t I? Sorry! Was it too spicy?’

No, it was good, Kawashima told her, wiping his mouth with a napkin. He’d devoured two rolls and finished every drop of the creamy yellow soup. Come to think of it, he hadn’t eaten anything since that sandwich at Haneda Airport when he bought the overnight bag. He could feel his body warming from the inside out, melting some of the tension.

Chiaki beamed contentedly at the empty soup bowl and carried it to the sink. She turned on the hot water and took a moment to check the contents of the McCormick’s spice bottle in the cupboard. It was still about half-full. The label said THYME, but inside the dark glass was a light-blue powder made of crushed Halcion tablets. The dealer near Shibuya Station had suggested this method of hiding the stuff. She’d mixed the equivalent of about two tablets into the man’s soup. The reason she’d added extra curry powder was of course so he wouldn’t notice, but Halcion was so bitter that she’d worried he might taste it anyway. The man had wolfed it all down, however, along with two buttered rolls, and never suspected anything. He must’ve been awfully hungry. He’d eaten in silence, sweat forming on the bridge of his nose.

She had slipped half a teaspoon — about three tablets — into Kazuki’s food that other time, but Kazuki used Halcion regularly. She couldn’t imagine this man being a regular user, though. He’d feel the effect of two tablets within thirty minutes and drop like a tranquillised elephant, dead to the world, within an hour. One tablet would’ve been enough, really, but a lot of times Halcion stimulated a man’s sex drive before knocking him out. She’d imagined the man getting all goopy-eyed and horny on her and thought: If he tried to jump me right now, it would only bring back those awful memories. Once he fell asleep, though, he was all hers. He wouldn’t wake up even if you cut off his finger.

Kawashima was tired. Gazing at the girl’s back as she washed the bowl, he wondered why her attitude had changed so suddenly. Would she try to entice him again after washing up? Or had the idea of being stabbed to death begun to scare her? She’d really given him the evil eye before getting up to make the soup, though. What had brought that on?

He was tired of racking his brains like this and thought longingly of the bed back in his hotel room in Akasaka. He could call the late-thirties erotic masseuse and put all this behind him. It was one a.m. According to the plan, he should have finished disposing of all the evidence and been back in that room by now. He wondered how it would have felt, and wished he could read through the notes. They were in the bottom of his bag.

The girl was washing the bowl meticulously, using only very hot water — no soap — to scrub off the grease and residue. She’d hold the bowl up to the light as if peering through it, and when she spotted the slightest blemish she’d start all over again. When she finally finished with the bowl, she began the same procedure with the enamel soup pan. Kawashima surveyed the room and noticed that there wasn’t so much as a stray scrap of paper lying about. No half-read magazines or newspapers, no open bags of chips or boxes of chocolates, no crumpled-up tissues, no fruit peels. The cosmetics on the dressing table were arranged as precisely as pieces on a chessboard, the little jars and bottles all grouped according to size and shape. The L-shaped sofa and the audio rack were equidistant — to within a centimetre, he would have wagered — from the coffee table that separated them, and neither the audio rack nor the bookcase held anything unrelated to their functions. The shelves weren’t cluttered with letters or postcards or pills or wallets or memo pads or business cards or paperclips or coins. All such odds and ends were stashed just outside the kitchenette, in a stack of translucent storage cases. He was seated at the two-person dining table, the blond wood of which was polished to such a shine that he could see himself in its surface. The place was like a real-estate agent’s model apartment, he was thinking. Immaculate and lifeless. The only exception was the corner of the bed where they’d been sitting. The duvet was turned back, exposing the wrinkled sheets, and the shadows of the wrinkles formed a pattern of irregular, curving stripes on the lustrous silk. Like the rolling hills of some undiscovered country, or scars of violence on smooth shoulders or breasts. Kawashima recalled the suffocating anxiety he’d experienced sitting there next to the girl and looked away, thinking: It must take a lot of work to keep a room this clean, though.

He was imagining the girl labouring for hours at a time to eradicate every last speck of dust when, suddenly, the room shook with such force that he had to grab the edge of the dining table. He looked around frantically, only to see that nothing had fallen or tipped over and that the girl, drying the soup pan in the kitchenette, seemed to have noticed nothing. Not an earthquake, then, he thought anxiously, rubbing his eyes and shaking his head. He sat still, waiting to see if anything else happened, but nothing did. He was just tired, that was all.

His thoughts drifted back to the notes. If only he could lie in bed and read through them! It occurred to him that he’d already forgotten a lot of what he’d written down, probably because things had taken so many unexpected turns. He knew he’d filled seven pages with small, dense writing, but couldn’t remember, for example, what it was he’d written first. He thought it concerned either which type of prostitute he should choose or which hotel, but he wasn’t sure. He’d scribbled in a sort of stream of consciousness, without any outline or organisation. If only the girl would go to sleep, he thought. He could read the notes right here.

She’d finished cleaning up and was standing in the kitchenette with her arms crossed, watching him. He noticed her checking the clock and glanced at his wristwatch. Twenty-five minutes had passed since she’d carried his empty bowl away. Watching her silently eyeing him from the kitchenette, he began to wonder how she’d managed to figure out his plan. Which part of the notes had she read? He’d been away from the hotel room for no more than a few minutes — maybe only two or three. How much of his crabbed handwriting could she have deciphered in that time? It would be impossible to understand what the whole thing was about just by reading a page at random. Wouldn’t it? And she hadn’t exactly been in a lucid state of mind. But somehow she’d figured it all out. She knows things she couldn’t have known without reading the notes, he thought. The fact that I was staying at a different hotel. The fact that I hadn’t called her for the purpose of S&M play. What else?

There was something else, he was thinking, when another tremor shook the room. Again he grabbed hold of the table. The girl was still standing there with her arms crossed, watching him. She seemed to be smiling. The room trembled once more. Then again. Gravity doubled, or tripled, and he had to hang on to the table or risk collapsing to the floor. What is this? he wondered, and was horrified to find himself being sucked inside something dark and enormous. It was as if a huge, diaphragm-shaped iron shutter were closing before his eyes. If I don’t get out of here, he thought, I’ll be trapped inside. His mother materialised, smiling, in the shrinking window of light. Or was it the suicide girl? Her voice rang in his ears:

I told you so! Look at you — locked inside a narrow cell with no windows!

‘Stop it!’ he shouted and tried to stand up, but it was as if he’d been turned to stone.

Didn’t I tell you you’d end up sitting all day long with your ear pressed against a wall, listening to some voice only you can hear? With your neck permanently twisted to one side? I always said this would happen to you when you grew up! I told you you’d go insane!

It was Mother, all right. The opening continued to shrink. Soon all the light would be gone. Someone was laughing. No. Not someone. Everyone. A vast sea of people laughing. Or cheering. The roar of a crowd in some great colosseum. Beneath the colosseum, in a windowless little dungeon cell, a thick iron shutter was about to seal him in.

He looked down. It was as if his own unconscious had become visible to him in the form of a rising tide. The waves lapped at his feet, then his ankles, his shins, his knees. A tide of swamp-water, sluggishly awash with vomit and flotsam: long-discarded items, all torn, tattered, rusting, bent, scorched, melted, crushed, cracked, oxidised, rotting, fermenting, festering with bacteria and crammed with every imaginable horror. He was up to his chin in the stuff now, and the fear was coalescing into a giant, repulsive insect that emerged from the swamp to crawl up his face and entangle its legs and feelers in his hair. The legs bristled with prickly thorns, and the feelers ended in sharp points that stung his forehead and scalp. Kawashima let go of the table, reaching up to tear the thing away, and fell. His knees hit the floor. The swamp washed over his head, and he shouted for Yoko at the top of his lungs.

At first Chiaki couldn’t make out what the man was mumbling. Those two tablets really did the job, she was thinking — definitely his first time taking Halcion. She’d been unable to suppress a smile when he was trying to maintain his grip on the table, but when he tore at his hair and fell to his knees with a look of utter agony on his face, she found herself sympathising a little. The first time she’d taken Halcion, she too had had an unpleasant experience. A panicky feeling at the ferocious onslaught of sleep. Atsushi or Kazuki, she forgot which, had been with her, and she’d fallen asleep clutching his hand. What was it the man was mumbling, though? Maybe he’s calling my name, she thought, listening carefully, but no. It was another woman’s name. Yoko. The blood turned cold in her veins. She gave a contemptuous little snort, as if to disparage her own emotion, and a shudder ran through her body. And then, just like that, something snapped and rage took over.

Chiaki reached for the kitchen drawer, but used too much force opening it, and it came all the way out. There was a great crash as the contents spilled on to the floor, and another as the drawer itself followed. Squatting down, she fished among the scattered utensils until she came up with a manual can opener. She tested its heft and closed her fist around the handle.

It was as she approached the man, who was grappling with his overturned chair, trying to climb to his feet, that Chiaki remembered why this uncontrollable rage of hers was so necessary. She needed it to contend with all the insults. Insults were the calling cards of hostility. And only violent rage gave her the courage it took to stand up to the hostility all around her. Rage alone could show you the way to action.

‘Yoko, Yoko,’ the man was mumbling. ‘Help me, Yoko.’

Chiaki took aim at his droopy-lidded eyes and slammed the can opener down. My name isn’t Yoko. She heard the stainless steel meet the bone of the eye socket, a sound like a shovel crunching into frozen earth. The man covered his head and tried to crawl away, but Chiaki followed, sobbing and raining down blows to his shoulders and arms and mouth and cheeks and ears.

The first blow dredged Kawashima up from the swamp of unconsciousness. The shock and the subsequent fierce pain reawakened his deadened senses, and the iron shutter was blasted to bits just before closing completely. He was bathed in a sudden, blinding light that screamed of danger, and he tried to shield his face and head. It was like waking from a long but fitful sleep, and it felt as if all the windows in the apartment had shattered and wind was howling through the room.

He heard the voice quite clearly.

Don’t say you’re sorry, no matter how much it hurts. If you apologise you’ll only be beaten harder. It was the same voice he’d heard by the disposable diaper shelf and again tonight, when looking at the new bandage on the girl’s thigh, but to Kawashima it seemed as if he were hearing it for the first time in years. This was the voice, he remembered very distinctly now, that had always protected him as a child. Don’t ask for forgiveness. The attack will be over soon. When you’re sure it’s over, look in her eyes. If you can do that, it won’t be a defeat. You will not have lost if you can look her right in the eyes.

The moment Chiaki realised she was sobbing, her shoulder and arm succumbed to exhaustion and she found herself gasping for breath. The tears coursing down her cheeks dripped from the tip of her chin to the carpet. She was gazing at a single teardrop that sat like dew on the shaggy strands, when all the strength drained from her body. I used up the rage, she thought as the can opener slipped from her hand to the carpet, I used up all the rage. The man, she noticed now, was peeking out between blood-drenched fingers, watching her. There was something scary about the look in his eye. Was he angry? What if he got up and left? She wondered if she should wrap her arms around him, apologise and beg him to stay, but she wouldn’t have had the strength to do that anyway.

The girl was just standing there with her face all contorted and her shoulders and chin jerking with silent sobs. Look at her, the voice said. She’s crying. She’s afraid. You see? You can let down your guard now — she’s crying, and she isn’t holding the weapon any more. Kawashima slowly lowered his hands. The sleeves of his sweatshirt were soaked with blood, and he couldn’t see out of his left eye because of all the blood from the gash. The back of his left hand was cut and bleeding as well, but he scarcely felt it. Why was the pain fading away, though, when he hadn’t even used the technique? It must be the power of the voice, he thought. The voice that came from somewhere inside his own skin and echoed in his ears. That voice had taught him so many things. He hadn’t heard from it much since meeting Yoko, but it had helped him out all through childhood. That voice was the only one he could trust.

Chiaki watched the man lower his arms, thinking how ridiculous he looked. He reminded her of the sloth she’d once seen in a Disney movie. The sloth that fell out of a tree. Sloths spend their lives hanging from branches, the narrator had said, and being on the ground is a serious threat to their safety because their muscles aren’t built for it. The sloth was desperately trying to get back to the tree, but its movements were slow and weird and comical: clinging to the ground, awkwardly waggling one arm or leg at a time and hardly making progress at all. This man was exactly like that sloth. His movements were totally primitive and retarded-looking, but Chiaki wasn’t able to appreciate the humour right now. The left side of his face was like a half-mask of thick, dark red blood, but it wasn’t that; it was the way his right eye was staring at her. No one had ever looked at her that way before. It was an ogling, spacy stare, but one that flickered with sorrow and hatred and defiance. He was trying to get to his feet again. And he was saying something to her in a voice she could barely hear.

‘Did you find the ice pick beneath the bathtub? The ice pick. Was it under the tub? You must’ve looked under the bathtub, right? When you moved?’

She didn’t understand what he was talking about, but the look in his eye scared her, and she shook her head.

‘I need it now. You didn’t look under the bath when you moved?’

She shook her head again.

‘That’s funny,’ Kawashima muttered. The smell of burning tissue was not only deep in his nostrils now but swirling through every cell in his body. Showers of sparks shot out where his senses intersected, but he wasn’t aware of them in any objective sense, or of the fever saturating the space between his temples. He was already one with the burnt protein smell and the sparks and the fever. The voice was no longer reverberating inside him, but that was all right. The voice helped me out earlier for the first time in a long time, he was thinking, but I can take it from here.

And now he remembered whose voice that was. It’s mine, he thought. It’s me as a child. I mean, the voice I created as a child. I knew my own voice would be too weak, too childlike and vulnerable, so I chose the voice of an adult. A generic grown-up, like the man who read the news. But now I’m all grown up myself. I can speak for myself, and act for myself. Look at the woman standing there. See how she fears me. The whole world shall learn to fear me.

He remembered feeling this way once before. This time the sensation was even more intense, but the first time was when he’d hit his mother. Seeing her after all those years, he couldn’t get over how small she looked. As if she’d shrunk. Like the toy monster they used to sell that expanded in water and shrank when it dried. That was her, all dried up and shrunken. Just to see her like that had been enough for him, but then she had to go and act timid and scared. ‘You forgive your mother, don’t you?’ That’s when he hit her, when he saw how scared she was. He couldn’t bear it that she was frightened and asking for help. Asking for help is wrong. Because there isn’t any such thing as help in this world.

Like the woman standing right here, he thought — scared to death and begging me to help her. I’ll have to set her straight. I have to let her know that no matter how much she cries, no one’s going to come to her rescue. She says she doesn’t know where the ice pick is. So maybe the ice pick wasn’t under the bathtub all this time. Maybe the police took it away after all, as evidence. The police. Wait a minute. Weren’t the cops supposed to be surveilling this apartment? Ah, well. No matter. Just have to do it over there in the corner, where they can’t see us. But what about the ice pick? How can I set this woman straight without the ice pick? I’ve got to hurry. Before my arms and legs get too heavy. All the pain is gone, though. No pain. Mustn’t sleep until I’ve taught her this lesson. Very important. Wonder if she’ll try to run. Have to show her she can’t escape. Easy enough.

‘Come here a minute,’ he said.

Chiaki shook her head again and took half a step back. The man lurched forward and grabbed hold of her arm, squeezing so hard that she screamed — or tried to. All that came out of her parched throat was a raspy, whistling sound, like steam escaping. Breathing heavily, the smell of curry thick on his breath and sweat pouring down his blood-slick face, the man dragged her into the kitchenette, to the counter where the espresso machine sat. He ripped the machine’s cord from the socket and used it to bind her wrists together. She tried to break free, but he was much too strong for her and didn’t even seem to feel it when she kicked him, though the kicking made her thigh hurt again. He wound the cord around her wrists three or four times, pulling with all his might, and ended by looping it the other way, between her hands and forearms. He secured it all with a tight knot, and her skin turned a colourless, ghostly white where the cord bit into it.

‘Just tell yourself,’ he said as he crammed a balled-up dishcloth into her mouth, ‘it doesn’t hurt.’ He was slurring his words now. ‘Here’s the secret. You have to believe. If you even think it might hurt, even a little, you won’t succeed. You mustn’t doubt, for even one second, that all the pain will be gone. Look at me. Look at me.’

He yanked on her bound wrists, pulling her so close their noses nearly touched. The wound above his left eye hadn’t closed and blood was still leaking from it. The Halcion must be killing the pain, Chiaki thought. The eye remained open even though it was awash with blood. Coated with a red film, it swivelled about as if it had a mind of its own. Searching for something in its own crimson world. Like the eye of a broken android, she thought, in some science-fiction movie. Her wrists hurt, and the dishcloth stuffed in her mouth made it difficult to breathe, but she couldn’t stop looking at that eye.

I have to show her there’s no need to run away, thought Kawashima. He kept talking but was having trouble enunciating some of the words. Twice he accidentally bit his tongue, and he tried to stimulate sensation in his mouth by running a fingernail over his gums.

‘I would never, lie to you, I want you, to look at me, but focus your eyes, somewhere behind me, like one of those, 3-D pictures, do like that, that’s the secret, my mother, she put ammonia, on my hand, and one time she said, do you want a tattoo, and she sharpened this pencil, a hard one, 4H or 5H, really sharp, and she stabbed my arms, and legs with it, and she hit me, with a milk bottle, and tied up my ears, and fingers, with string, she didn’t care, she’d prise open my eyelids, with her fingers, and bring the tip, of a burning cigarette, or a needle, right up to my eye, it didn’t bother her at all, so now, do you understand, the secret?’

Chiaki had no idea what the man was raving about, but as she gazed at his swivelling eyeball her ears were registering words like ammonia and tattoo and milk bottle and needle, and when he asked if she understood she nodded. The corner of the dishcloth protruding from her mouth flapped up and down as she did so.

‘Now I’m going to, cut your Achilles, your Achilles tendons, so remember, remember to do, like I just told you.’

It was hard to make sense of what he was saying, and Chiaki absently nodded again, but when she saw the man squat down and sift through the forks and spoons and cooking scissors and other utensils scattered on the floor, the words cut your Achilles tendons replayed in her mind, and she let out a muffled squeal and struggled to get away. The man was holding on to the cord with one hand, and she managed to rip it from his grasp but in doing so brought the espresso machine crashing to the floor. The impact it made caused her to fall backwards and sit suddenly down beside it.

Where’d my knife go, Kawashima was muttering, when his eye fell on the bag he’d left beside the sofa.

‘Hang on, a second, I’ll get, my knife.’

When he staggered off towards the sofa, Chiaki tried to yank the cord loose from the espresso machine, which lay on its side bleeding dark brown liquid. It was all she could think of to do, but she succeeded only in tightening the loops around her wrists, which were swollen now and turning purple. She could see the man reflected in the shiny stainless steel surface of the machine. He was rummaging in his bag. Gritting her teeth, she began dragging the machine little by little over the floor, hoping somehow to reach the door, but with each tug the cord bit deeper into her. She was breathing rapidly through her nostrils, and her chest began to hurt. The dishcloth was making her gag, and she tried to spit it out; but it was so tightly packed in her mouth that it wouldn’t budge. Somehow she had to make it to the door and kick or pound on it in the hope that someone would respond. She remembered how the man had looked in the bathroom at the hotel, whispering in her ear as she bit his finger, and she imagined him wearing the same bland expression as he sliced through her Achilles tendons. Murdering her with the same poker-face he’d worn waiting for her in the freezing cold.

I’ve never met a man like this before, she thought. He’s not like You-know-who, of course, but he’s not like any of the others either. When he says he’ll do something, he does it, no matter what. And it isn’t just the Halcion talking. Halcion confuses your mind but it doesn’t change your personality. This is a totally new type of man.

Urging the machine along a centimetre at a time, grimacing against the pain in her wrists and thigh, she’d managed to drag it out of the kitchenette and on to the carpet when she looked up to see that the man had returned. He was holding a small package wrapped in duct tape. She was still a good two metres from the door, and when she realised she wasn’t going to make it the strength drained from her body once again. She collapsed to the carpet, and the man bent down and grabbed hold of her left ankle.

Using his grip on her ankle, Kawashima rotated the girl on to her back and pulled her towards him, then sat heavily down on the toppled espresso machine. It made a loud bang, and she raised her head to look.

The man had her left leg pinned fast between his knees. He was stripping the duct tape from the package but stopped to wipe his bloodied eye with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. Chiaki could scarcely breathe. She let her head sink back to the carpet. The dishcloth was drenched with her saliva, and drool leaked from the corner of her mouth. Staring up at the ceiling and listening to the tearing sound the tape made, she tried to remember what the man had been saying a while ago. The secret. Just tell yourself it doesn’t hurt. Focus your eyes like on a 3-D picture. Believe. Don’t doubt you can stop the pain. Something like that. She stared at the ceiling, trying to do as he’d said; but the ceiling was a depthless field of white, and it didn’t seem possible to focus on a spot beyond it.

An irrelevant thought was trying to take shape in her mind — something about the man not being two different people — but she did her best to block it out. She had to concentrate on telling herself that she wasn’t going to feel any pain.

The bottoms of this woman’s feet are strange-looking, Kawashima was thinking as he stripped the duct tape from the cardboard. Every few seconds he nodded and sleep fluttered through him like a warm breeze. We’re almost there, he told himself sternly. We’re about to hear what it sounds like when you cut the Achilles tendons. He looked down at the figure lying supine and motionless on the floor before him and thought: Who is this woman, though? Her loose skirt was all up around her ribs now, exposing her purple panties and her white belly rising and falling like surf. He was still staring at that small white tummy, with its wisp of peachfuzz, when he tore the last strip of tape from the package. He reached inside the folded cardboard, and it fell away to reveal a thin, sharply pointed, steel rod. It wasn’t the knife after all.

When he saw what it was he held in his right hand, the image of the baby lying in her crib flashed through his mind, and he gave a little cry. The woman raised her head again at the sound, and when she saw the ice pick, her eyes widened with panic. Her muffled scream caused the veins in her neck to bulge, and she shook her head violently. The corner of the white dishcloth swung languidly back and forth as she did so, and the drool slid down over her jawline and dripped to her neck. Kawashima looked from the ice pick to the woman’s stomach, thinking: Guess I’m going to stab another one. He let go of her leg and slid forward to his knees, so that he was straddling her. He brought the tip of the ice pick to a point just below her navel, and the woman held her breath, stilling the creamy rise and fall of her stomach. He gently stroked the peachfuzz with the tip of the ice pick and was about to bear down hard when another warm breeze riffled through him, and he became aware of an enormous shadow penetrating and entering his body. Then came the odour of ammonia. A sharp, high-pitched voice saying, Don’t bother coming back! The sound of a latch being locked. A blurry silhouette on frosted glass. It’s Mother, he thought. She’s inside me.

The feeling of oneness with his mother was nauseating. It was as if she’d hijacked his body and held him locked in a tight embrace. He was trying to shout the words, I hate you! when he lost consciousness.