Death Sentences (29 page)

"What are you talking about, you-!"

Without realizing it, Kiuchi was shouting.

He felt entirely at a loss faced with such behavior.

"If you like, Mr. Kiuchi, we will give you a copy. In return, you'll keep quiet about this with the other teachers. That's our only request."

Misaki finally adopted the behavior befitting a student and bowed deeply. Takehashi and Shizimu Reiko followed his example.

"In your class, then, this . .

It finally dawned on him. If that were so ... then-!

Misaki's mouth twisted into a smile.

"This is our class secret. It is one of our few pleasures. Please don't take it away from us. Ever since we began to pass this around, we've really come together as a class. And our scores have gone up, too. So please do this for us."

Indeed, their class average on the standardized tests was now at the top.

Some of the teachers had suspected the entire class of cheating together.

He could see how the class might come together, but why had their scores gone up-? What was it exactly, this book-?

"All right. That will do. You may go now."

"Can we count on you?"

Misaki was not about to let it go.

Kiuchi didn't see any better solution.

"... sure, I'll keep quiet about it this time. You may go."

The three bowed again and silently left the room.

"Did they do something wrong?"

Their class monitor approached him with a worried look.

"No, it was really not a big deal."

Kiuchi shook his head.

"I caught a student reading something during my class, and so I gave him a warning. It wasn't anything frivolous; in fact, it was pretty lofty stuff ... I was rather surprised."

"What sort of stuff?"

Kiuchi made up something to satisfy the curious monitor and then left the teachers' office to supervise some extracurricular activities.

That day-

On the way home Kiuchi dropped by a large bookstore near the school.

"Do you have a copy of Languages of Surrealism from Kirin Publishers?"

One of the usual clerks knew the title.

"Oh, that one. That came out at the end of last year. It was part of a series of four, and we used to have all four."

"It is sold out? If so, I would like to order it."

The clerk shook his head.

"Unfortunately, Kirin Publishers went out of business. Apparently, several employees just vanished. Business was going well, and so some people said that it was some kind of planned bankruptcy. If you look around the used bookstores, you can probably find some remaindered copies-"

That night-after thinking it over and over, Kiuchi finally decided to call Misaki.

"Misaki, about that book. . ."

"You want a copy, right?" Misaki answered immediately. "I was certain that you'd want one after all."

In July of that year, a three-man rock-and-roll band called PLO made its debut. This PLO had nothing to do with the Palestine Liberation Organization. PLO stood for Private Love Orchestra.

Their debut song was "Who May Letter." They became a sensation with their performance of a translated poem set to music that went on for hours.

Needless to say, it wasn't easy to record it, and so they got their start with live performances for small audiences, but they soon had a fanatical following.

At a concert held in Shinjuku, one third of the audience, that is, about one hundred people, blacked out during the performance, which made PLO a household name.

Still, fearing another incident, the concert hall in Tokyo was hesitant to have them perform, and so they began a nationwide tour.

The number of PLO fans increased with every stop on the tour.

A cassette tape of one of their performances, recorded live, copied, and sold for almost nothing, began to circulate among fans.

Finally, a record company got into the act.

A certain company was about to release a highly unusual four-disk recording of their live performance.

But the collection was never released.

All three members of the PLO died in a terrible car accident.

Nevertheless, there were plans to make a record from the tape circulating among avid fans. Yet that too was abandoned.

Rumors circulated that the recording had been deliberately suppressed.

There were even rumors that the deaths of the PLO members had not been an accident.

None of these rumors was proved, however, and by the end of the year, they had faded away.

For the PLO fans themselves also vanished without a trace.

Scholars initially called it "fatal autism."

But investigations into its causes made no progress. In the meantime, the situation continued to advance.

At the start of the new school year, one in eight seats was empty in the classroom, and two in ten students had died over the vacation-yet, despite such alarming statistics, the existence of the name Who May and the work "The Gold of Time" remained unknown to those who had lost their children.

Well, there was one among them who knew.

An official in the Ministry of Welfare, Ueno Katsuhiko, had been aware of it from the very start.

He had lost his only son to the PLO.

His son has been one of the earliest victims, at the time when the newspapers and media had just begun raising the cry about "fatal autism."

He then discovered that the PLO song "Who May Letter" was based on a work called "The Gold of Time" by the poet Who May.

In the drawer of his dead son's desk, he found a copy of the work.

With the copy in hand, he soon found out that it had been published in translation in a book series that was now out of print.

Although no longer for sale, the entire series was in the National Library.

Ueno was aware at the time of the symptoms of addiction. And so he kept careful notes on the progress of his symptoms.

At the meetings held within the Ministry of Education, however, his report was ignored. No one in that Ministry appeared willing to push his claims forward.

And then-Ueno died.

I am notgoingto die. I am justgoing. I am joining up. And then I won't be returning anymore. just wait and see.

His final note ended with those words.

The Committee for the Prevention of Fatal Autism changed its name to the Committee for the Control of Spells. The facts of the matter were not openly presented.

A special operations police force for the control of spells was created within the Ministry of Education. Responsibility fell to the offices of the Ministry of Education due to the way in which events had unfolded, and to avoid administrative confusion with the Bureau of Drug Control within the Ministry of Welfare.

But facts of the situation were not made public knowledge, nor the existence of the regulatory bureau, nor the reasons for establishing it.

Directives and regulations were all implemented in the name of countering fatal autism.

Public announcements were made about the existence of a book hazardous to persons with autistic tendencies-and thus to assure the well-being of youth, possession, reproduction, exchange, purchase, and sale of it were forbidden.

But, because they did not specify exactly what was hazardous about the book, there were immediate outcries that the measures violated freedom of speech.

Nevertheless, the government completely ignored such issues.

To counter such criticism, they began to clamp down on public discussion of the matter.

Before long, there were no opportunities for voicing opposition.

Society had largely eroded away and was on the verge of utter collapse.

Yet the majority of citizens remained unaware of the facts.

It was better not to let them know.

It seemed preferable to eradicate the disease without their being aware of it.

And yet no one had found a way to figure out what was going on-to determine how the very cause of the disease, the "spells," produced their effect on the human body, on the mind and body.

The primary source of clues was "Ueno's Notes."

But the time for investigation had passed.

Eradication of the disease was the top priority.

To that end, the special police had free reign to do what they saw fit.

Whatever they saw fit-

4

A look of relief showed in her eyes when he pulled his cock out.

Seeing that look, Kuroda pulled up his pants and fastened the belt.

"That okay, honey? Okay if I leave now?"

The woman spoke in a husky voice.

Actually, she was not quite a woman but still a girl.

Kuroda grinned slyly and nodded.

"It's okay. Of course."

Suddenly the woman's eyes bugged out. She screamed.

"That's a lie! You're here to kill me!"

Kuroda frowned.

Those in the advanced stages were tough to dispose of. Some of them could see five to ten minutes into the future.

"You tricked me! You promised you'd let me go if I let you do me-"

She sat up, looking at him expectantly, her legs still spread wide, wet from their sex.

"You're going to shoot me with a pistol."

She was absolutely right.

That's what he had been about to do.

A smile of embarrassment flitting across his face, Kuroda pulled a small automatic from his shoulder holster. He pulled a silencer from his pocket and screwed it on to the muzzle.

"Sorry about that. But don't hold it against me. I've got a shitty job, and if I can't get a bit of something on the side, it's just total shit-"

"Wait!"

She screeched at him.

"What's that?" Kuroda's lips twisted. "Too bad but no time for another go. Busy day for me."

She glared back at him. But her anger quickly vanished, and she snorted a laugh through her nose.

"One minute ... no, thirty seconds is enough. Just give me that. Then I don't care if you shoot me-"

Kuroda glanced suspiciously around the room.

Would something happen in the next thirty seconds? Would someone be coming to her rescue? But-there was no chance of that. Cops were all over the entrance to the house. They had taken her parents in for questioning.

There was no fear of her getting away.

"Why?"

Kuroda asked her anyway.

"To pray."

Her voice was almost inaudible.

Kuroda nodded slowly.

"All right."

Before the words died on his lips, her eyes lost focus. And then her face went blank.

A second, two seconds, three ... her body suddenly started shaking. And she collapsed, flat on her back.

Her eyes remained wide open. She was clearly breathing. Yet it was clear that, in that instant, she had completely lost consciousness.

"Kuroda!"

The door opened behind him.

"You! Are you at it again-"

It was the chief, Sakamoto.

Kuroda pursed his lips and shrugged.

"It's not how it looks, you see ... she was coming on to me, and..."

"Shit!"

"But I found it, the PLO tape. That stuff is still making the rounds."

Kuroda pulled out the cassette tape he'd recovered and handed it to Sakamoto.

Sakamoto took it and then crouched next to the girl.

Cursing and clucking, he pulled the girl's skirt back down over her legs and then looked up at Kuroda.

"So what happened, then, with the girl?"

"Well, it looked like she made her `slip-away'... "

"While you were doing her?"

"No. Come on. That would have been `heavens-away."'

"Cut the jokes. I'm serious here."

"All right, it was-after that. She asked me for a couple of seconds before I shot her, and that's when-"

Sakamoto stood up.

The girl's eyes were still open wide.

But there was absolutely no sign of life in them.

She had gone away. But where-? Where had she gone?

(I think I know ...)

A feeling of dread passed through Sakamoto.

He was starting to understand .. .

Three times-

Finally, unable to resist the temptation, he had read it, three times.

The first time nothing had happened. Or maybe he had simply told himself it was nothing.

For, within three hours after he first finished reading it, he found himself wanting to read it again.

And then the following morning, he woke up while it was still dark out, went into the toilet, and secretly read it once again.

The third time he fell totally under its spell.

His soul left his body, and he even felt himself being cut off from time.

When he tried to move ... he found he could.

By simply bending his thoughts, he soared away from his house and soon was gazing down on his street, now under the midday sun.

"It's an illusion!"

But it was such a vivid illusion.

He had the impression that he could travel to any time and any place simply by bending his thoughts again.

The premonition of such absolute freedom terrified him.

He quickly bent his thoughts in reverse. He went too far, and there was no one in the toilet in the dark. He retraced his path again.

Repeating the process, he eventually regained consciousness in his body.