I summoned up the courage to ask, “The boy next door didn’t have a cell phone?”
He didn’t, the detective said as she glanced at her notepad. Great. Worm threw it away. I wanted to dance for joy, but soon felt ashamed at caring only about saving my own neck.
“It surprised me, too,” I said. “Maybe they just happened to hook up.”
“I wonder about that.”
The female detective looked up, doubt in her eyes. The old man spoke up.
“The boy said the same thing, but you and Miss Higashiyama were friends, and the only thing I can think is that you helped bring them together.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” I said.
“But you talked on the phone with Miss Higashiyama the day before she died,” the female detective said.
All of a sudden it hit me that this was just like something else I’d experienced before. Those pushy canvassers in front of the station. Guys with their questionnaires, women clutching clipboards. Young girls practicing to be fortune-tellers. Tell a lie. Come on, Ninna Hori, you can do it! Acting’s your forte. You’re the only one who’s going to protect yourself. I could hear Terauchi whispering this to me.
“There was just something I needed to ask her. I had no idea where she was. We just talked about movies and stuff like always and then I hung up.”
Cold sweat was running down from my underarms. I was trying my hardest to cover up something, but I knew it wasn’t just my own guilt.
“Is that right?” the woman said, a disappointed look on her face. “I’m also wondering whether Miss Terauchi’s suicide might not also be connected to this affair. We know she talked with Miss Higashiyama, and all I can think is that they argued about her being together with the boy.”
“Terauchi wasn’t that kind of person,” I insisted. “What I mean is, the kind of person who would die for somebody else. She wasn’t stupid. She was much smarter than that, very sensitive, the kind where you weren’t sure if she was completely unattractive, or the total opposite. But she’s not the kind of person who would die over something dumb like that.”
As I was speaking I started to cry. The weird thing was, this was the first time I’d cried over Terauchi. The woman looked concerned and frowned.
“I’m very sorry. We’ll ask you about this at some other time. Still, it’s all very puzzling,” she said, catching the eye of her partner. The old guy nodded and brushed away a mosquito.
“We heard that Miss Terauchi left behind a letter. I wonder what was in it. We actually had a call come in with information that led us to the two of them, and I have the feeling it was Miss Terauchi who made the call. I sense that since you were all good friends, when you found out the boy next door had run away you got together to help him. I’m guessing that Miss Terauchi found out about this and got angry, called the police, and when Miss Higashiyama was killed in that unfortunate accident, she felt responsible and took her own life.”
I was taken aback. It sounded so stupid when someone else put it into words. Which is exactly why I had to lie. Not to protect myself so much as to protect the truth about how all of us felt when we first heard about Worm. Or to protect what Worm felt in the instant he murdered his mother. Because it was something nobody else could know.
“Don’t you think that’s taking it a little too far?”
I wiped away my tears, dumbfounded.
“It is a bit much, isn’t it?” she said. “I don’t think even you all would do something that stupid.”
The detective’s tone was sarcastic, but it didn’t bother me. I’d seen her close her notepad, so I knew she’d given up on pursuing it further.
“Well, we’re off to question the boy.”
And that was the last time the police ever came by.
* * *
I was standing there blankly, thinking of all that had happened at Terauchi’s funeral. Haru was waving her hand right in front of my face.
“Hey, you all right? You look really out of it.”
“I’m okay. It’s just that lots of things have happened.”
“When everything’s back to normal come back to the cram school, okay?”
Haru said this gently as she pulled up her loose socks, which had slipped down. “Bye-bye,” I told her, then realized with a wry smile that those had been Terauchi’s last words.
* * *
When I got home there was a letter waiting for me on top of my desk, from some guy I didn’t know. What is this? I thought. I sat down at my desk, gathered myself together, and opened the envelope. Even now, every time I see a sealed letter it gives me the creeps.
Dear Miss Yamanaka,
I’m sure you’re very surprised to get a letter out of the blue from someone you don’t know. My name is Wataru Sakatani, and I’m a student at Waseda University. I used to go out with Kirari Higashiyama and I got your address from her mother. I hadn’t heard from Kirari for a long time, and it was a real shock to hear about this terrible accident. I can’t believe, even now, that she’s actually gone. It’s so sad.
I learned of her death when the police came to my house. They came because the day before she died, I got a call from the suspect. Also, on the day of her death, I was worried about her and called her cell phone. The first call she made was on the hotel’s records, and the call I made the day she died they found on her cell phone records.
I don’t know much about what happened but I somehow feel I’m to blame. I haven’t been able to say this to anyone else (meaning, I don’t think they’d understand—not that I’m trying to hide my mistakes), but I decided to tell you everything.
To go into more detail, I can’t help but think that it was my phone calls that got Kirari into that accident. Or that maybe this all happened because our relationship had gone bad.
I called her cell phone simply because I was worried that something had happened to her, and at first she sounded happy, but by the end she seemed sad. I wanted to suggest that we start going out again, but that weird phone call the day before made me worry she’d changed too much, so I didn’t say anything. I had doubts about her. For a moment I thought I’d call her again, but I didn’t. But if I had called her a second time, if I had asked her to see me again, maybe she wouldn’t have gone with that boy.
I don’t think this kind of speculation is pointless. I’m sure I’ll be thinking about her for the rest of my life. All the what ifs and if onlys…Anyone who says I should stop thinking about these kinds of things doesn’t have burdens himself. Or else is a person who never had a decisive moment in his life. I’ve been thinking about all kinds of things, and I’ve decided I’m going to live with this burden for the rest of my life. I’m sure there will be times when that feeling will be strong, and other times when it isn’t.
When I heard from Kirari’s mother that her good friend Terauchi had taken her life on the same day, I felt very, very sorry for you, Miss Yamanaka. I imagined that, even more so, you must be suffering, wondering what if. If that’s the case, then I truly feel sorry for you. As I said before, all we can do is live with our burdens (though maybe you don’t have any). To live and imagine. That’s the job left for those of us who’ve survived.
Maybe I’ve said too much. But it helps me a lot to write to you. Thank you for reading what I had to say.
Yours,
Wataru Sakatani
I took out Terauchi’s last letter from my drawer and lined it up with Wataru’s. There was something, I wasn’t sure what, that the two of them shared.
We’re in the same boat. What I mean is, you have to deal with my death.
I’m dealing with it already, I said to her. Bye-bye, Terauchi. Those of us who’ve survived—me, Worm, and Yuzan—will remember you and Kirarin for the rest of our lives. Wataru will remember Kirarin. And the man next door will never forget his wife.
A sudden thought hit me. The next time I go to karaoke, I’m through with using a fake name. No more Ninna Hori. Tears welled up in my eyes, and my name writ
ten by Terauchi on the envelope—Miss Toshiko Yamanaka—was blurry.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Natsuo Kirino, born in 1951, is the author of sixteen novels, four short-story collections, and an essay collection. She is the recipient of six of Japan’s premier literary awards, including the Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Out, the Izumi Kyoka Prize for Literature for Grotesque, and the Naoki Prize for Soft Cheeks. Her work has been published in nineteen languages worldwide; several of her books have also been turned into movies. Out was the first of her novels to appear in English and was nominated for an Edgar Award. She lives in Tokyo.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Philip Gabriel is professor of Japanese literature at the University of Arizona. He has translated works by Kenzaburo Oe, Senji Kuroi, Akira Yoshimura, Masahiko Shimada, and Haruki Murakami, including Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore; Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (cotranslator); Sputnik Sweetheart; and South of the Border, West of the Sun. Gabriel is a recipient of the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize (2006), and the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for Translation of Japanese Literature (2001).
Natsuo Kirino, Real World
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