Real World (4 page)

* * *

That night, around ten, the doorbell rang. Mom had just taken a bath and, thinking it might be the police again, she frowned as she went to the front door.
“Toshiko, it’s Kiyomi. A little late, don’t you think?”
“I know, but she’s got something she’s got to tell me.”
“It’s hot out, so have her come inside.”
Mom was taking out some cold barley tea from the fridge as she said this, a dubious look on her face. Dad was still out late, as always. One day after the shocking murder and he was back to his old routine. I went outside and was hit by the stifling, muggy air. I could feel the moisture on my AC-cooled skin grow sticky. There weren’t any reporters now, and the road was deserted. Yuzan was standing in front of our gate, holding my bike. She had on a T-shirt and Adidas shorts, Nike sandals and a backpack. If you saw her from far away you might take her for a short high school boy. She was huffing and puffing so much she must have ridden all the way here.
“Sorry to come so late,” she said, out of breath.
“It’s okay. Thanks for bringing it.”
I put the bike inside our gate. As I did, my arm rubbed against Yuzan’s bare arm. Her arm was all sweaty. Startled, I pulled away and our eyes met.
“Is that the guy’s house over there?” Yuzan motioned with her chin. Worm’s house was dark and still. Until last night the place had been crawling with investigators, but now it was deserted, like a discarded, empty shell.
“Yeah, that’s it. I think his room’s on the corner there, on the second floor.”
I pointed to the pitch-black window. Yuzan gazed at it for a while, then sighed and looked away.
“Yuzan, where did you guys meet up?”
“In Tachikawa. It sure was a long way to come here.”
“What’s he doing in Tachikawa?”
Yuzan took out a plastic water bottle from her pack and took a drink.
“He says he’s hiding out in a park there. Said he used to swim in the pool there when he was little. Said he used to have a good time, so he wanted to see the place again. He must have spent the day hanging out around the pool, ’cause he’s totally tanned.”
I tried to imagine Worm at the pool with his mom wearing her silver-framed glasses, and his dad with his ascot, but I just couldn’t picture the three of them together like that.
“What’d he say?”
Yuzan screwed the cap back on her water bottle. “Said he feels like he’s in a dream. Like the past, too, is all a dream.” She gazed back up at the empty house and I decided to go ahead and ask her something: “Did you feel the same way about your mother?”
“Um.” Yuzan nodded. “Sometimes I can’t even believe she ever existed.”
Yuzan and Worm shared this emotion, I could tell, something I would never be a part of. This didn’t make me sad exactly—it was more a feeling that my own world was too simple, too smooth, too boring and worthless. The most I could do was have another name, Ninna Hori.
“Oh, I’ve got something for you. He told me to say he’s sorry.”
She carefully extracted my cell phone from a pocket of her backpack. I switched it on and found that the battery was almost dead.
“Well, gotta run,” she said.
Yuzan started walking off toward the station.
“What did he say he’s going to do? Keep on running?”
“Yeah. I gave him my own bike and cell phone, so he says he’s going to run as far as he can.”
I looked at Yuzan, astonished. She passed by me and stared up again at the deserted house next door. I stood there, clutching my cell phone, wondering if Worm would get in touch, suddenly realizing I was hoping he would. I didn’t want to be an accomplice, but I did want a taste of adventure, like what Yuzan was doing. Kind of a lame attitude, I know, but that’s the way I am sometimes. That realization put me in a gloomy mood for the rest of the night.
CHAPTER TWO

YUZAN

I
can still picture Toshi’s surprised look. She was in shock about the woman next door getting murdered, plus her bike and cell phone being stolen. I’m sure she never imagined I’d help out Worm that much. Well—I guess I’m pretty surprised myself.
Toshi acts all laid-back and careless, but she’s built a Great Wall around her heart. It looks like you can get inside but it’s not easy. That’s ’cause she’s much more fragile than other people. She’s been hurt a lot in the past. But that’s what I like about her. She’s timid, but she manages to take care of herself. I think she’s actually the toughest out of the four of us. So when I told her about what I’d done and she gave me this sort of what-are-you-talking-about look, I felt uneasy. Like because of this whole incident I’ve been expelled to some universe far away from the world Toshi lives in. It’s not like I feel alienated from her or anything. It’s more like from this point on, the two of us were going to walk down very different paths.
With all these worries running through my head, I hurried down the dark road. The neighborhood was quiet. I was afraid there might be cops staking out Worm’s house, but there were only a few office types coming from the station. The trees that hung over the road gave off a heavy dampness, like when rain has just let up. The ground was still midsummer hot, and I felt like my body was slicing through the wet air.
In earth sciences class we learned that only fifty percent of the sun’s energy reaches the surface of the earth. Our teacher printed up two graphs on his computer to explain it to us. “This one’s the breast of a young woman, this one, that of an old granny,” he explained, a serious look on his face. The young woman graph was supposed to show how the heat energy accumulates a lot around the equator, while the old woman graph was flat and showed solar energy radiating away. How dumb can you get, I thought, but there were only five of us in the class so we all had to pretend it was funny. The teacher himself said that explaining things like that might constitute sexual harassment. Like I cared. What a loser.
He went on, saying, “At the equator the amount of heat absorbed is more than the heat radiated away, so it’s a heat source. The polar regions are the opposite—they’re cold sources.” A
cold source.
The vague thought crossed my mind then that that’s exactly what I’d been back then. By
then
I mean my mom’s death and one other thing that happened. I was just radiating away heat, like the poles, and in my whole life I’d never be warm. That made me sad, and I got depressed.
Toshi, Terauchi, and Kirarin all have both parents and pretty affluent families, and I doubt whether they have the kind of worries I have. After my mother died I was left with my pain-in-the-butt dad, and grandparents who worry over everything. I doubt they have any idea how I really feel.
Sometimes my friends will start to say something about their mothers, then notice my expression and get all flustered. Before this happens, though, I try to say something, something stupid like my teacher said. Or even dumber. Or else fill in the gap by asking something about
their
mothers, like, “Hey, Kirarin, is your mom coming to the school festival or what?” Is there any other high school student who has to be walking on ice like this all the time? What a joke.
I feel so alone. And there’s a good reason for this. Mom’s death only made me lonelier, lonelier than anybody. Worm felt a little lonely and killed his mom, perfecting his solitude. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I want to perfect mine, too. Maybe life would be easier then. I’ve only talked about this with Terauchi—not because she’s so gloomy, but because her gloominess and mine are similar. Toshi and Kirarin are too gentle and kind to talk to about this. I figure being gentle means you must be happy. Terauchi, though, is more edgy. I like the edgy, risky types, and feel closer to her. But I haven’t told her yet about Worm. I’m not sure why.
The cell phone in my pack buzzed against my back. I stopped, took it out, and saw that I had a text message.
Thanks for the bike and phone. I’ve come to Iruma, but got tired so I stopped at a convenience store. I’ll rest for an hour and then take off again.
It was from Worm. I lied when I told Toshi I’d given Worm my cell phone. She’ll find out someday, but she looked so astonished I couldn’t tell her the truth. Actually, I bought him a new cell phone. But lending him my bike—that part’s true. Don’t worry about it, I told him, you can get rid of it anytime you like. Otherwise people will find out I helped him.
I was thinking I’d phone Worm, and glanced at my watch. It was past ten fifteen p.m. I had to get back home or Dad would have a fit. Ever since that incident last summer, he’s started to meddle in everything I do. I keep telling myself just to hang in there until I graduate from high school. I figured I’d call Worm after I got home, so for the time being I sent him a text message.
I gave the phone and bike back to Toshi. Call her to apologize, okay? Take care of yourself.
I stared at the message. I was helping a guy escape—a guy who had killed his mother. I have no idea what made him do it, but I wanted him to run away and never get caught. I don’t really know how to put it, but it was like I didn’t want him to come back to stupid, boring reality, but instead create a new reality all his own.
I heard this sticky sound of footsteps like something being crushed underfoot, and I shoved my cell phone into my pocket. The tip of a cigarette glowed in the dark like a firefly. I was a little tense but then saw that it was just a young office-type girl in mule sandals. The weird sound as she walked came from her bare feet sticking, then unpeeling, from the sandals. As the girl passed by me, she flicked her cigarette butt aside. My nose was hit by the strong stink of nicotine.
“Don’t throw your butt away like that!”
I said this without thinking and the woman turned around and glared at me. She was a hefty girl, about five-seven. She had on green phosphorescent eye shadow, and a blue camisole that barely fit her broad shoulders. One of your sulky, penniless Office Ladies. She looked like an unpopular, down-on-his luck transvestite. I suddenly remembered the shock I felt last year when a transvestite in the Shinjuku 2-chome entertainment district roughed me up, and I held my breath.
“Don’t preach to me, you bitch,” the woman said in a shrill voice and briskly walked off. I stood stock-still under the streetlight and remembered that night last summer in Shinjuku, when I was in my second year of high school.
In the 2-chome district there are several small bars that cater to only women.
I’d heard that the Bettina was the most radical, the one that turned away anyone who’s straight.
I’d found it on the Internet and went to check out the place during summer vacation. I had a pretty good idea before I went what the bar would be like, but I just wanted to find out what sort of people went there. I guess I wanted to make sure I wasn’t the only one who was like me.
The place was what I expected, a tiny, cheap bar that could seat barely ten people. The owner was a middle-aged woman who looked like a sushi chef—white shirt with the collar turned up, short neatly combed coarse hair with a sprinkling of gray. Most of the customers were disagreeable career hags on the lookout for young girls to snag. There were a couple of people like me who were curiously, nervously looking around. We all sported short haircuts, T-shirts, shorts, day packs, and sneakers—girls dressed just like your typical high school boy. They were junior and senior high school girls who had also found the bar on the Internet and had come to check it out during their summer break. The bar was well aware that summer vacation meant more junior and senior high school girls coming by, and they were nice enough to allow them to hang out till morning, like it was a onetime summer experience for them, for the price of a can of beer.
I got to know two girls there. One, named Boku-chan, had come to Tokyo from Kochi and was planning to stay as long as she could. The other, named Dahmer, was from Saitama, where she was a top student in an elite high school. All of us went by our pseudonyms, so it took a while before I learned their real names and where they came from.
Boku-chan was trying her best to become a guy. She was a dummy who thought that as long as she acted rough and squared her shoulders she’d look like a guy. Her dream was to make a living as a transvestite in the infamous Kabuki-cho district. She made it was obvious she was looking for a rich older woman. But really, age didn’t matter—she’d have taken an elderly woman, someone middle-aged, or even a young hooker. Boku-chan had the simple fixed idea that, since she liked women, she wanted to become a nice man; and that in order to become one, she needed to act manly. Which to her meant frowning as you held your cigarette between thumb and forefinger, putting your arm around a girl’s shoulder and lifting her chin with your finger, speaking in a deep, threatening voice, adopting all the poses and actions of hunky actors in movies. She was tall, had studied karate, and was muscular, so she had the mannerisms down, but somehow when she did it, it all came off as a joke. On top of that, she wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box. Dahmer and I talked once about how if she actually did become a transvestite she’d run out of topics to talk about and customers would find her boring.
Boku-chan didn’t have any money, so she slept on the street or hung out at Dahmer’s, spending most nights during summer vacation in the 2-chome district before she went home to Tosa Yamada in Kochi. My dad wouldn’t allow her to stay in our house but that never seemed to bother her. Even now I get e-mails from her sometimes. Her e-mails are full of happy-go-lucky stuff like,
I just bought a purple suit in the shopping district. They had only a double-breasted one so I bought that, but I think single-breasted looks better on me.
Dahmer, on the other hand, was a more complicated character, like me. She took her nickname from the serial killer in America. She was interested in cruel murders and dead bodies—kind of a death obsession. Since my mother died in the fall of my last year in junior high, I hate that kind of thing. I told Dahmer how I felt once, that people who are afraid of death and are the farthest from it are the most obsessed by it. She just shrugged. I think Dahmer felt the same kind of alienation from me that Toshi did when I told her about helping Worm. That was the only time we talked about death, and I never mentioned my mom again. I’ve packed away the pain so deep inside me that I can’t even draw it out myself, and my body just continues to function like nothing had ever happened.
Dahmer’s parents had gotten divorced and, like me, she was an only child. It was just her mom and her now, and her mom, she said, did all kinds of jobs and wasn’t home very much.
That person
—that’s how she referred to her mother.
That person’s
fairly good-looking, she’d say.
That person’s
a slacker.
That person’s
got her own life to live. There was something similar about my mother’s death and the way Dahmer referred to her mother. With both there’s a sense of distance from the reality we live in. Like they’re people who live in some far-off other country. No matter whether they’re dead or alive.
Dahmer was in love with her female math teacher in high school. The woman was twenty-six, a graduate of a scientific university, a smart aleck who made fun of anyone who was less than a mathematical genius. Dahmer liked the woman’s arrogance. She was always saying she wanted to be better than that woman, so she wouldn’t be made fun of, otherwise she’d die. Once, when her grades fell below the class average, she got drunk and felt so humiliated she slashed her wrist with a knife. I saw it once, that thin scar on her arm. She was always lugging around a math textbook, but with Boku-chan hanging out at her place, she moaned and groaned about not being able to get much studying done. She loaned Boku-chan money, even let her borrow her T-shirts and shorts. If Boku-chan was too much for her, I figured she should just kick her out, but Dahmer was the type who couldn’t say no. An idiot like Boku-chan was too much for her, but Dahmer had a weak point: she was also impressed by someone this dumb, knowing she couldn’t act like that. Maybe this was the same sort of weakness that made her say that if people made fun of her, she’d die. I don’t know.
I have my own weaknesses, and Dahmer and I share the same sense of despair, since we’d like to live a cool life but can’t as long as we’re burdened down with all these problems. I can’t let on to my dad that I’m a lesbian, I can’t seem to manage relations with people in high school, and I’m sure I’ll never be able to do so. These are burdens I’ll carry around the rest of my life. I get so scared thinking about the future it drives me crazy. Still, I just want my friends at school to think I’m a slightly mannish type of girl, nothing more, and I never, ever want the girls I’m friends with, Toshi, Kirarin, or Terauchi, to know that I’m a lesbian. Because of my issues, my life’s pretty complicated and I feel constrained, like I have to keep a tight lid on who I really am.
I was happy to meet Dahmer, because I think she understood all that. I think she was the same way. On days when she didn’t e-mail, I felt really down. Like lovers, we tried to tell each other what was going on every day. At the end of last year, though, I suddenly couldn’t get in touch with her anymore. When I called her mother, she said, “
That person’s
gone off to study in Canada. I’m sure once she settles in she’ll e-mail you.” Her voice was strangely high-pitched and cheerful. I thought it was funny that they both referred to each other the same way, but there was something odd about her mother’s cheerfulness. I was wondering whether Dahmer had actually failed her math teacher by not getting her grades up and if she had died. I didn’t ask anything more. And that was the last I heard of her.
The incident I keep mentioning took place at night, three days before the end of summer vacation. The same sort of muggy night as tonight.
Boku-chan had announced she was going home to Kochi, so the three of us had a going-away party at Bettina. We had a few drinks but the party just didn’t get going. We hardly said a word and avoided looking at one another. “This looks more like a funeral than a going-away party,” the owner of the bar joked.