‘I’m after both of them,’ Sasagaki said, a wry smile on his face. ‘The goby and the shrimp.’
The first patients were admitted for consultations at the Imperial University Hospital at nine, but there was always a considerable lag time before the first prescriptions came into the system.
Whenever one came through, they would work on it in pairs. One would measure out the medicine, the other would check for any mistakes and bag it. The checker would stamp the sealed package when the prescription was complete.
In addition to outpatient requests, they would get work from the wards as well. There were emergency medicine deliveries, and occasionally carting around IVs.
Today, there was someone else in the pharmacy besides Noriko and her partner: a man who sat in the corner staring at a computer terminal. He was a young assistant professor in the medical department.
For two years Imperial University had been taking steps to connect their computers with those at other research facilities. The biggest of these connections was a permanent online channel between their office and the central research facility of a pharmaceutical manufacturer. Whenever they needed to know anything about any of the drugs handled by that company, they could check the data instantly.
Anyone with an ID and a password could use the system. Noriko had both, but she had never touched the thing. Whenever she needed to know something about a medicine she called the pharmaceutical company up, the way they had always done. Most of the other pharmacists did the same.
The assistant professor currently working the terminal was engaged in a joint research project with the pharmaceutical company. Noriko agreed that their kind of system would be extremely handy for someone in his position – though it wasn’t perfect. They’d had a bunch of technicians in just the other day discussing the latest issue with the doctors on staff: a recent hacking attempt on their system. Noriko wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but it didn’t sound good and it did little to instil faith.
After lunch she made the rounds helping inpatients with their daily dosages and talking to doctors and nurses about the drugs they were using. Then she went back to the pharmacy to measure out more dosages. Five o’clock came quickly.
She was just getting ready to leave when one of her colleagues stopped her – a phone call for Noriko, she said.
Noriko’s heart fluttered.
‘Yes?’ she said, picking up the receiver. Her voice was a little hoarse.
‘Noriko? Noriko Kurihara?’ It was a man’s voice, but not the one she had been hoping to hear. The voice was thin and made her think of illness. It was also somehow familiar.
‘Yes?’ she replied.
‘I wonder if you remember me. It’s me, Fujii. Tamotsu Fujii.’
‘Mr Fujii?’ She remembered. He was one of the men she’d met through the matchmaking service – the one with the mother suffering from dementia.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘how have you been?’
‘Fine, fine. You sound well.’
‘Yes, um, can I help you?’
‘Well, I’m calling from very close to the hospital. Actually, I stepped in a few moments ago and saw you – have you been eating properly? You’re a little on the skinny side.’
He chuckled, and the sound sent a chill down her spine.
‘I was hoping we could meet up,’ he said. ‘Maybe have tea?’
Noriko rolled her eyes. What, he wants another date?
‘I’m sorry, but I have plans today.’
‘It would only be for a bit. There’s something I really need to talk to you about. Can you spare even a little time? Thirty minutes?’
Noriko sighed loudly for effect. ‘Really, I don’t have time. I can’t even have you calling me here like this. I’m going to hang up.’
‘No, sorry, wait. At least answer one question, just one? Are you still living with that man?’
‘What?’
‘Just, if you’re still living with that man you’ve been living with there’s something I really need to talk to you about.’
Noriko cupped her hand over her mouth and the receiver, lowering her voice. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘That’s what I want to tell you, in person.’
Noriko hesitated, but he had piqued her curiosity. ‘OK. Where should I go?’
Fujii told her to meet him at a café just a few minutes’ walk from the hospital, near Ogikubo Station.
She went in and saw him sitting at a table near the back. He was thin, with buggy eyes that made her think of a praying mantis. He was wearing a grey suit, his jacket hanging on the wall behind him.
‘Long time no see,’ Noriko said, sitting down across from him.
‘I’m so sorry to call out of the blue like that.’
‘What’s this all about?’
‘Please, order something first.’
‘I’m fine. I need to leave soon, so please, just say what you have to say.’
‘It’s not that simple,’ Fujii said, calling the waitress over and ordering a milk tea. He looked at Noriko and smiled. ‘You liked tea, didn’t you?’
She didn’t remember anything she’d ordered on their last date. The fact that he did made her feel uncomfortable.
‘How’s your mom?’ she asked, hoping to put him on the spot.
The man’s face darkened and he shook his head. ‘She died. A few months ago.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry. Was it her illness?’
‘Not really, it was an accident. She choked.’
‘That’s horrible. Choking on food is pretty common, though.’
‘Well, it was cotton.’
‘Cotton?’
‘I only took my eyes off her for a moment and she started eating the stuffing out of a cotton comforter I’d put over her. I have no idea why she did it. When I took it out, it was larger than a softball. Can you believe it?’
Noriko shook her head. No, I cannot believe you’re telling me this.
‘I was so overcome, I didn’t know what to do for a little while, but then I realised that there was also a kind of relief, you know? I thought: now I won’t have to worry about her all the time.’ He sighed.
Noriko understood how he felt. She’d seen more than her share of families exhausted by having to take care of elderly relatives. Still, she wasn’t sure what any of this had to do with her.
The waitress brought her milk tea. She took a sip and Fujii’s eyes narrowed as he smiled. ‘It’s been a while since I’ve seen you drinking tea.’
Noriko looked down at the table.
‘There was another thing I thought, probably inappropriately, after my mother died,’ he continued. ‘That is, I thought someone might think of dating me again. I don’t mean just anyone, of course. I mean you.’
‘That was a long time ago.’
‘But I never forgot you. And I went to your apartment. It was about a month after my mother died. That’s when I found out you were living with someone. It came as a bit of a shock. But I was also very surprised when I saw him.’
Noriko frowned and stared at him. ‘Surprised? Why?’
‘Well, it’s just that I had seen him before.’
‘No way!’
‘It’s true. I don’t know his name, but I remember his face quite well.’
‘Where did you meet him?’
‘Well, that’s the thing. I didn’t actually meet him, but I saw him. Here, at the hospital, and near your apartment.’
‘What?’
‘It was around April of last year. To be perfectly honest, I was a little obsessed with you back then and, well, I’d make trips to the hospital just to see you, or hang out near your apartment. I’m guessing you never noticed.’
‘I had no idea.’ Noriko shook her head. The thought made the hair on the back of her neck rise up.
‘But,’ he continued, unaware of her reaction, ‘it wasn’t just me coming to see you. He was watching you, too. I know this is a little funny, me saying this, but he gave me a bad vibe. I e
ven thought of telling you once. But I started getting busy at work, and with my mother, and I had no time to myself and, well, I guess I just let it slide.’
‘And you’re sure it was him?’
‘He’s the one living with you now, absolutely.’
‘That’s impossible,’ she said, shaking her head. Her face felt drawn and taut, as if she were wearing a plaster mask. ‘I’m sure you’re mistaken.’
‘I’m sure I’m right. I have a very good memory for faces. He was definitely the man I saw last year,’ Fujii said with certainty.
Noriko picked up her teacup, but she didn’t feel like drinking. Her head was a storm of thoughts.
‘Of course, just because he was hanging out around you doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. Maybe he was like me, and he fell for you, you know. But, like I said, he gave me a bad vibe, and the thought of you two together, well, it made me worry. Not that it’s any of my business, of course, so I held back until I saw you the other day – entirely by accident, you understand – and that got me thinking about it again. Thinking about you. So, that’s why I’m here.’
Noriko was hardly listening to him by that point. His meaning was clear: break up with Akiyoshi and go out with him. But she wasn’t interested in the least. Not only because it was ridiculous; she just wasn’t in the right state of mind.
She wasn’t sure what she said when she left the café. When she came to her senses, she was walking down the street at night. April, he had said. April of last year.
That didn’t make any sense. She hadn’t met Akiyoshi until May, and their meeting had been a total accident – or so she’d thought.
What if it wasn’t?
She thought back to that night. Akiyoshi, hunched over with a pain in his stomach. Had he been waiting for her to come home? Had it all been an act to get close to her?
Why?
Assuming that Akiyoshi had some purpose in getting close to her, why had he chosen her? She wasn’t so enamoured of herself as to think he had fallen for her looks. So she filled some other condition, then. Was it because she was a pharmacist? An unmarried thirty-something? Was it because she lived alone, or because she worked at the Imperial University Hospital?
Noriko gasped as a thought occurred to her. When she had signed up for the matchmaking service she’d given them a great deal of information about herself. If someone peeked at the data they could easily find someone who met certain criteria. Maybe Akiyoshi had got his hands on their data somehow. Hadn’t he worked at a computer company? What if Memorix had been involved in making the matchmaking service’s computer systems?
She looked up and noticed that she had already reached her apartment. A little shakily, she climbed the steps until she was standing in front of her unit. She unlocked the door and opened it, Fujii’s warning ringing in her ears.
If we know the truth, there’s nothing to be afraid of, she muttered to herself, staring into the dark apartment.
FOURTEEN
A hammer struck a bell inside her head: ding, ding, ding!
Then she heard the faint sound of laughter. That got her eyes open. She saw a ray of sunlight striking the floral print on the wallpaper, the morning sun sneaking through a gap in the heavy curtains.
Mika Shinozuka twisted her neck to look at the clock by her pillow. Her father had bought it for her in London. She’d set it for seven-thirty, one minute away from now. If she just lay there a little more, a cheerful melody would play and figurines would emerge from the clock face to begin a dance. She reached out and turned off the alarm.
Mika got out of bed and opened the curtains. The sunlight poured in through the big window, illuminating every corner of her room. She saw herself in the mirror on the dresser – pyjamas all wrinkly, hair a tangled mess, face like a lump of coalesced grumpiness.
Ding, the bell sounded again. Then she heard voices talking, too faint to overhear. She had an idea what they would be talking about, though, and immediately lost interest.
Mika went over to the window and looked out over the lawn, still green, though its colour was fading. Just as she had thought, her dad was teaching Yukiho how to play golf.
Yukiho stood holding the club in both hands. Then her father wrapped his arms around her from behind, holding her hands in his. It was like that comedy routine where one person does the arms for another person. Her father whispered something in Yukiho’s ear and together they lifted the club. It swung up and slowly back down. It looked like her father’s lips might brush the back of Yukiho’s neck. He was so close. In fact, he probably had done that on purpose a few times already.
After they slowly swung the club together a few times he stepped back and watched while Yukiho tried to hit the ball. Ding. Sometimes she would hit it, but most of the time she would miss. Then she would get a sheepish look on her face and Mika’s father would give her some advice. Then they would start over from the beginning with the comedy routine. This would go on for half an hour.
The same scene had played out the same way almost every day for the past week. Mika wasn’t sure whether Yukiho had expressed an interest in starting golf, or whether her father had pushed her into it. Regardless, it looked like the two of them were doing their utmost to find something they could enjoy together as a couple.
Even though her father had flat-out refused when Mom once said she wanted to learn how to play.
Mika stepped away from the window and stood in front of her dresser, painfully aware of her fifteen-year-old reflection. She was skinny, without any womanly roundness. Her arms and legs seemed too long for the rest of her and her shoulder bones were pointy and stuck out at all the wrong angles.
In her mind’s eye she saw an image of Yukiho’s body superimposed over her own. She had seen Yukiho naked only once, when she had mistakenly opened the bathroom door, thinking no one was inside. Yukiho had just stepped out of the shower. She wasn’t wearing anything, not even a towel.
Her body was perfect, made up of curves so precise they looked like something computer-generated, yet with the simple warmth of something turned on a potter’s wheel. Her ample breasts were still firm, and tiny droplets of water hung on her pinkish white skin. What fat she had seemed to fit perfectly along the lines of her body, rounding out the curves. Mika had gasped. In the space of a few seconds the sight of Yukiho’s body was burned into her mind.
Yukiho had taken it with utmost grace. She hadn’t seemed flustered in the least or unhappy at all.
‘Hello, Mika,’ she’d said. ‘Getting into the bath?’ She had smiled, not even hurrying to cover herself.
It was Mika who’d lost it. She turned and ran without saying a word. Dashing into her room, she dove under the covers of her bed, her heart racing.
Mika frowned, remembering her embarrassment. The girl in the mirror made the same expression. Picking up her hairbrush, she started working at her hair until the brush became so entangled it stopped. She tried yanking it, and only succeeded in snapping off a few of her hairs.
She heard a knock at the door. ‘Mika? Are you awake? Good morning.’
She didn’t answer, and on the third knock, the door opened and Taeko gingerly peeked in. ‘Oh, you are awake,’ she said, stepping inside and immediately beginning to make the rumpled bed. Mika looked at her. She was the perfect image of a housemaid in an old movie: the dumpy body, the big apron around her waist, a sweater with the sleeves rolled up, her hair done up in a big bun on the top of her head.