Confessions (18 page)

I didn’t even mind when she showed up for Parents’ Day at school. I hadn’t mentioned it to her, but she must have heard from one of the other shopkeepers. Anyway, there she was, all dolled up and right in the middle of the front row. When I was at the blackboard solving some arithmetic problem that was too hard for the other kids, she took my picture with her phone, and then she showed it to my father when we got home—but I didn’t mind. To be honest, it made me kind of happy.

Sometimes the three of us would go out bowling or to karaoke, and I began to realize that I was slowly becoming as stupid as they were—and that there was actually something unusually pleasant about being stupid. I had even begun to think that I could be happy being nothing more than a member of this family of dummies.

About six months after my father and she were married, Miyuki-san got pregnant. Since both the mother and father were dumb, it was pretty much a sure thing the child would be, too. Yet part of me was curious to see what kind of baby it would turn out to be—given that half the blood flowing in its veins would be related to me. By that point I had come to feel that I was nothing more than a happy member of this stupid family. But I soon realized that I was the only one who felt that way. About a month before the due date, on the morning that she had placed an order for a crib, Miyuki-san made an announcement.

“I’ve talked this over with your father, and we’ve decided to make a study room for you in your grandmother’s house. It would be hard to concentrate on your schoolwork with the baby crying. Don’t worry, we’re getting you a TV and an air conditioner. You’ll see, it’ll be great.”

It seemed that it had already been decided and that there was no room for discussion. The next week, a van from the store picked up everything from my room and took it to the old house by the river. Before the end of the day, a brand-new crib had appeared in the sunny spot by the window in my old room.

I could hear the pop of a tiny bubble bursting.

Out here in the boondocks, there are no competitive schools. I was headed for our neighborhood middle school and had no need to study for entrance exams. As for the classes at elementary school—no matter what the subject, I could read the textbook through once to see what they were trying to teach us and then master the material in almost no time. I had no ambitions beyond that.

In other words, I had no need for a “study room.” But there it was. So, in order to make good use of the space, and all this time I had on my hands, I decided to read the books my mother had bought me, even if I was starting a bit early.

I’m not sure what my mother got out of
Crime and Punishment
and
War and Peace,
but I felt that my own thoughts as I read must have been like hers, since the same blood ran through our veins. I loved all the books she had chosen, and read them over and over. As I read, I felt as though I were spending time with my mother, even though she was far away, and those were some of the few moments of happiness I had during those lonely times.

My study room had once been used as a storehouse for our shops, and as I sat in there, alone with the memories of my mother, I began to look around—and to discover what a treasure trove it was. I had nearly every electrician’s tool imaginable, as well as broken or discarded electronics of all sorts. Among them, I found an old alarm clock, the same one my mother had taken apart to show me.

I replaced the batteries but it still didn’t run, so I decided to try to fix it. Once I had the back off, I could see that the problem was nothing more than a faulty contact, but as I made the repair, I hit upon an idea. My first invention: the backward clock. I rewired the hour hand and the minute hand and even the second hand to run backward and give the illusion that time had reversed course. I set the clock to midnight, and from that moment on I began calling the study room my “laboratory.”

I was pleased with the backward clock, but it didn’t elicit much of a response from my audience—which consisted of the idiots in my class who brought me their porn videos hoping I would agree to override the mosaic effect on the nasty parts. They would stare at the clock without realizing that the hands were running backward, and when at last I was forced to tell them, they would simply shrug. “Oh, you’re right,” was the most I got out of them. One or two seemed a little more interested, but even these never thought to ask how I’d managed the reversal. Idiots like them believe that the world is limited to what they can see with their own eyes. They never try to figure out the inner working of things. That’s why they’re idiots—and why they’re so completely boring.

When I showed it to my father, he simply asked whether it was broken. He was completely absorbed in doting over their new baby, which looked exactly like him—and was just as dull-witted.

My poor clock, my first invention, went completely unappreciated. But what would my mother say if I showed it to her? She alone would be able to see its genius and praise my achievement. I could barely contain my excitement at the thought.

But how could I show it to her? I didn’t know her address or telephone number. The only thing I did know was the name of the university where she was supposed to be working. So I decided at that point that the best strategy would be to set up my own website, which I dubbed The Genius Professor’s Laboratory. If I presented my inventions there, perhaps my mother would see them and leave a comment at some point. I knew the chances were slim, but that was what I was hoping when I entered my web address on the comments page of the university site and left a message:

But no matter how long I waited after that, there were never any comments that looked as though they might have been from my mother. The only visitors to the site were my idiot classmates, and when they mentioned that I could override the mosaic effect and uncensor porn, the number of hits from obvious perverts began to go up. Within three months, Genius Professor’s Laboratory was nothing more than a hangout for twisted idiots. I tried posting some pictures of a dead dog I’d found down by the river, with the idea of scaring them off, but they seemed to love that even more, and the comments got weirder and weirder. Still, I never wanted to shut the site down, since that would have been cutting off my one chance of contacting my mother.

I continued working on my inventions after I started middle school. Our homeroom teacher for seventh grade turned out to be a female science teacher. I actually kind of liked her, particularly because she was a little aloof and never tried to be too familiar with her students. That sort of attitude is pretty rare with teachers these days.

I took her one of my new inventions, of which I was quite proud—my Shocking Coin Purse. How would she react? I was really anxious to see—but what I got was the hysterics of an old hag.

“Why would you want to invent something so dangerous? What were you planning to do with it? Kill small animals?”

One of my idiot classmates must have told her about my website, but she was an even bigger idiot to take the pictures of the dog seriously. Disappointing. That was the only way to describe it.

Right after this, however, I had a stroke of good luck, which came in the form of the National Middle School Science Fair. A poster announcing the competition appeared on the wall in the back of the classroom, with the names and titles of the six judges in small print. One was a science fiction writer, another a well-known politician, but what caught my eye was the name Yoshikazu Seguchi. Actually, I couldn’t have cared less about the name—it was his title I noticed. He was listed as “Professor of Electrical Engineering in the College of Science and Technology at K University.” The same K University where my mother was said to be working.

If I entered an invention in the science fair and this professor noticed it, word of it might reach my mother’s ears. Would she be surprised to hear my name? Would she be happy to know that her son had won a prize using the knowledge she had bequeathed him? And would she be moved to offer a word of congratulations to her long-lost boy?

I was in a frenzy after that. I’ve always had the ability to focus when I need to, but I had never been so consumed by something in my life. First, I upgraded the coin purse by adding a release mechanism. But then I worked on the presentation values and the report, realizing that for a middle school project they probably looked at those even more carefully than they looked at the invention itself. Would they dismiss my purse as little more than a mechanized joke? Not if I could help it. I decided to bill it as a theft-prevention device. I made sure that the diagrams and the explanatory paragraphs were perfect, but I also crafted the “statement of purpose” and “project reflections” to sound like something a middle school student would write. I even wrote it all out by hand rather than printing it off my computer. The finished product was seventh grade science nerd perfection.

There was still one little problem: The application required a signature from the teacher who had served as your advisor, but Moriguchi had already told me what she thought of my purse. She must have been influenced by what she’d seen on my website, because she seemed shocked when I went to ask her to sign the form, but I had my line ready: “I can assure you I made this with the purest of motives, but you seem to think it’s too dangerous. Why don’t we let the experts decide which one of us is right?” In the end, she signed.

After that, everything went according to plan. Over summer break, the Shocking Coin Purse was entered in the local science fair in Nagoya and then went on to the national contest, where it was given honorable mention, the equivalent of third prize. I was a little disappointed at first, but in terms of my desired effect, third turned out to be even better than first: Judges were assigned to comment individually on each of the winning projects, and the judge for third place was none other than Professor Seguchi, the man from my mother’s university.

“I take it you’re Sh
ū
ya Watanabe?” he said, coming up to me as I stood by my display. “This is quite an achievement. I don’t think I could have built something like this myself. I’ve read your documentation, and I see you’ve applied a number of techniques you couldn’t possibly have learned in middle school. Did your teacher help you with this?”

“No, my mother did,” I told him.

“Your mother? You certainly are a lucky boy. Well, I look forward to seeing what you’ll come up with in the future. Good luck.”

He had used my full name and he absolutely had to know my mother. My fate was in this man’s hands. I prayed that he would talk about what he’d seen today the next time he was with my mother. Or, if he didn’t tell her, that he would at least leave the pamphlet listing the winners someplace she might find it.

After the meeting with the judges, I was interviewed by a reporter from our local paper. It was unlikely she would run across an article in a paper from a small town far from where she was living, but perhaps if she learned about the prize from Seguchi, she might go online and find the article. I could always hope.

The day I was interviewed, however, a seventh grade girl in some nowhere town committed a crime. The Lunacy Incident. She put several different kinds of poison in the food her family was eating and then blogged about the effects. I have to admit I was the tiniest bit impressed—once in a while one of these idiots comes up with an interesting idea.

I waited for the rest of summer break, but there was no word from my mother. Since she didn’t know my cell number, I hung around the store all day and ran to the phone every time it rang. Miyuki was used to having me out of her hair since I’d been spending all my time at the laboratory and she didn’t seem very pleased. I was constantly checking my email on the store computer, and I ran out to the mailbox at the slightest sound.

The TVs in the store played nonstop coverage of the Lunacy Incident. The girl’s home environment, her behavior at school, her grades, the clubs she had belonged to, her hobbies, her favorite books and movies…if the TV was on, the details came pouring in.

Had my mother learned of the prize I’d won in the science fair in spite of all the Lunacy news? I found myself imagining her having coffee with Professor Seguchi in the university cafeteria.

“There was a kid at that science fair the other day…Sh
ū
ya Watanabe, I think his name was…who came up with an interesting invention.…”

But that’s preposterous. Why would they be talking about me? They were probably discussing the whole Lunacy thing. As the coverage of that girl’s idiotic crime grew more and more overwhelming, I had the feeling that bubbles were popping inside me. I’d done something wonderful and had my name printed in the newspaper, but my mother didn’t know. But perhaps, just perhaps, if I did something horrible, my mother might come running to be with me again.

So that’s it: my “early life” and my “hidden madness” and my “motive”—or at least the motive for my first crime.

Crimes, like anything else, come in all sizes and shapes. Shoplifting, theft, assault.… But petty stuff like that gets you nothing more than a lecture from the police or a teacher, and if they wanted to blame anyone else, it would be my father or Miyuki. And what would be the point in that?

And I despise pointless things more than anything else in this world. If you’re going to commit a crime, it ought to be something that can get people talking, whip the media into a frenzy—which means there’s only one crime that will do, and that’s murder. So I could steal a knife from the kitchen, run through the streets waving it around and screaming like a madman, and then stab the lady at the deli. That would get a lot of attention, no doubt, but when they went to find somebody to blame, again they would cite bad parenting from my father or Miyuki. What good would it do to have the newspapers writing about the influence those two had on my character development? What could be more humiliating than seeing my father on TV saying how sorry he was he’d sent me off to my study room instead of keeping me at home?