“There aren’t any decent cafés around here. But we have a lounge, if you don’t mind.”
“That’s fine.”
Ando decided to follow Kimura’s lead, and together they boarded an elevator.
The lounge was on the top floor of the building, overlooking the garden in the courtyard. It was quite well-appointed; as Ando sank into a sofa, he looked around and spotted faces that he recognized from newspapers and magazines. It seemed the lounge was a popular place for editors to meet with their writers. Several people were there with manuscripts in hand.
“We certainly lost a good man.”
At these words, Ando’s wandering thoughts snapped back into focus, and he looked at Kimura’s oily face directly across the table.
“It so happens that Ryuji Takayama and I were classmates in med school,” Ando said, watching for a reaction. He’d lost count of how many people he’d drawn out with this line so far.
“Is that a fact? So you knew Professor Takayama.”
Kimura glanced at the business card in his hand and nodded, seemingly reassured of something. The card bore the name of the university Ando worked for. The man had probably recalled that Ryuji had attended that same university’s medical department.
“What’s more, I performed his autopsy.”
Kimura’s eyes grew wide. He stuck out his chin and emitted a queer little cry.
“Well, now, that’s …”
Kimura lapsed into silence, staring at Ando’s hands, which held a coffee cup. He seemed interested in the fingers that had sliced Ryuji open.
“But I didn’t come here today to talk about him,” Ando said, putting down the coffee cup and bringing his hands together on the table.
“Why have you come?”
“I’d like to ask you a little about one of his students. Mai Takano.”
At the mention of her name, Kimura’s expression softened, and he leaned forward. “What about her?”
He doesn’t know, Ando intuited. But he had to find out sooner or later.
“Are you aware that Mai is dead?”
Kimura let out an even more curious groan and almost jumped out of his chair. It was almost comical how dramatically his features conveyed his emotions; he was the real Man of a Thousand Faces. He ought to audition for a sit com, Ando thought.
“You must be kidding!” Kimura cried. “Mai can’t be dead?”
“She fell into an exhaust shaft on a roof last November and died there.”
“I guess that explains why I haven’t been able to get in touch with her.”
Ando felt a certain closeness to the man, who’d been in the same boat. He had no idea if this Kimura was married or not, but he was willing to bet that the guy had had at least a slight crush on Mai.
“Do you remember the last time you saw her?” Ando asked quickly, loathe to give the man any time to wallow in sentiment.
“We were just beginning to proof the New Year’s issue, so it must have been the beginning of November.”
“Would you happen to know the exact date?”
Kimura took out a datebook for the previous year and started leafing through it.
“November the second.”
November 2nd. The day after Mai had visited Ryuji’s parents’ house and taken the videotape home with her. Mai had probably already watched the tape by then.
“Do you mind if I ask where you met?”
“She called me to say that she’d finished copying the article. I immediately went to pick it up.”
“Went where? To her apartment?”
“No, we met at a café in front of her station. Like we always did.” Kimura seemed to want to stress that he’d never set foot inside her apartment, knowing she lived alone.
“When you saw her, did she seem different in any way?”
Kimura looked puzzled. He couldn’t tell what Ando meant by the question. “What do you mean?”
“Well, unfortunately, there’s still some doubt surrounding the cause of her death.”
“Doubt, you say?”
Kimura folded his arms and thought for a while. The thought that what he said might influence Mai’s autopsy results made him suddenly cautious.
“Any little bit could help. Did you notice anything?”
Ando smiled, trying to put the man at ease.
“Well, she did seem a bit unlike herself that day.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“She looked pale. And she held a handkerchief over her mouth, like she was fighting back nausea.”
The nausea caught Ando’s attention. He remembered the brown clump of what had seemed to be vomit that he’d found on Mai’s bathroom floor.
“Did you ask her about her apparent nausea?”
“No. I mean, right away she told me she wasn’t feeling well because she’d pulled an all-nighter writing out Professor Takayama’s manuscript.”
“I see. So she said it was from lack of sleep.”
“Yes.”
“Did she tell you anything else?”
“I was in a hurry, you see. I thanked her for the manuscript, we had a brief discussion about the book to come, and then I said goodbye.”
“Book. You mean Ryuji’s.”
“Right. From the very beginning we ran the series of articles on the premise that we’d publish them in book form eventually.”
“When’s this book coming out?”
“It’s scheduled to appear in bookstores next month.”
“Well, I hope it sells well.”
“It’s difficult material, and we’re not getting our hopes up. I must say, though, that it’s a really good book. Just superb.”
After that, the conversation got sidetracked into reminiscences of Ryuji, and Ando found it hard to get back on topic. By the time he’d managed to drag Mai back into the discussion so they could talk about her relationship to Ryuji, the hour Kimura had promised Ando was up. Ando hadn’t really learned anything of value yet, but he decided he’d best not overstay the editor’s welcome. He doubtless needed to see this man again, and he wanted to leave a good impression. So he thanked Kimura and took his leave.
As Ando stood up, he happened to notice three people entering the lounge. There were two men and a woman, and Ando had seen each of them before. The woman was a nonfiction writer who’d vaulted to bestseller status when one of her books had been turned into a movie. Ando had seen her face on TV and in the weekly news magazines several times. One of the men was the director who’d adapted her work to the screen. But the one who really caught Ando by surprise was the fortyish man who came in with the director. The name was on the tip of his tongue. He wracked his brains. The man had to be a writer or something. As they passed, Kimura spoke to the man.
“Hey, Asakawa. Glad to hear it’s going forward.”
Asakawa.
It was Junichiro Asakawa, Kazuyuki’s older brother. Ando had visited him at his apartment in Kanda in November to pick up the Ring floppy disk. At the time, Ando had been so happy to get his hands on the disk that he hadn’t said more than a perfunctory goodbye. But when he’d sent the disk back later, he’d included a very polite thank-you note.
He also remembered that the business card Junichiro had given him had borne the name of this publishing house. Whether by mere chance or thanks to the connection, Ryuji’s book was being published by his best friend’s brother’s company.
Noticing Ando, Junichiro seemed to flinch slightly in shock.
“Well, nice to see you again …” Ando bowed, thinking to thank the man again for his assistance as well as utter a proper New Year’s greeting. But Junichiro averted his eyes and spoke almost before Ando could get a word out.
“Excuse me.”
With that he sidestepped Ando and ushered the writer and the director to an empty table. Ando could tell when he was being given the brush-off. He glanced again at Junichiro, now seated at the table, but the man was deep in conversation with the director now and didn’t look his way.
He was blatantly ignoring Ando.
He searched his memory for an explanation of Junichiro’s rude behavior. Ando thought he’d observed the man well enough in their previous contacts. He couldn’t remember having done anything to merit this treatment. He didn’t get it. Shaking his head at the man’s unnatural attitude, Ando followed Kimura out of the lounge.
8
That evening when he got back to his apartment, Ando filled the tub for the first time in ages. While his boy had been alive, they’d taken a bath together every night. Since he’d been on his own, drawing a bath seemed too much trouble, and he’d gotten in the habit of showering instead.
After his bath, Ando took his copies of the photos from the electron microscope and hung them on the wall. He stepped back and had a good look at them.
One wall of his apartment was taken up with bookcases, but the wall over his bed was bare and white, like a screen. He’d hung the photos there like X-rays on a light box, in ascending order of magnification: xl7000, x21000, xl00000. The photos were of the virus isolated from Mai’s blood. Without taking his eyes off them, Ando stood back a few steps. In one area the ring viruses were piled up on top of each other and looked like a spiral staircase. He concentrated, trying to notice something, anything he might have missed before.
He turned off the overhead light and shone a lamp directly on the photos. Under illumination, it looked as though huge specimens of the virus were crawling around on the white wall. He turned the lamp on a x42000 photo showing broken rings that were stretched out like threads. These showed up in great numbers in Asakawa’s and Mai’s blood, but hardly at all in Ryuji and the others. In Mai’s case, there were no signs of any narrowing in the internal membrane of the coronary artery. In Asakawa’s case, however, the beginning of a lump had been observed. In other words, even Mai and Asakawa showed slightly different symptoms.
Why was her artery undamaged? Ando turned his attention to this problem. The thread-shaped virus he was looking at now had not attacked Mai’s coronary artery, the main target in everybody else. Why was she an exception?
Something tugged at his memory. He opened his planner to where he’d jotted down Mai’s movements for late October and November and held it under the light. He’d first met her on October 20th at the M.E.’s office, just before Ryuji’s autopsy. Mai hadn’t looked well that day. Ando had formed a guess as to why: she was menstruating. It was just an intuition, but he was confident.
He returned his gaze to the photos on the wall. He looked at a xl00000 shot of the virus in thread form. He tried to remember his first impression upon seeing it at the university.
Hadn’t it reminded him of something, with its oval-shaped head and wiggling flagellum? Swarms of them had been swimming around in Mai’s veins, but they hadn’t attacked her coronary artery.
What did they attack?
His head felt hot. A tiny hole slowly opened, letting in light. It was one of those moments when something previously hidden suddenly begins to heave into view. Ando looked at his planner again, at the date on which he supposed Mai had watched the videotape. The evening of November 1st. The twelfth or thirteenth day after her period.
He took one step closer to the wall, and then another. Toward the ring viruses lashing their flagella.
That’s it. They look exactly like sperm swimming toward the cervix.
“Sperm?” he said aloud.
She’d have been ovulating that day.
A woman usually ovulates roughly two weeks after her period, and the egg only stays in the oviduct a maximum of twenty-four hours. If Mai had had an egg in her oviduct the night she watched the video …
The ring virus must have abruptly found another outlet and switched its target from her coronary artery to her egg. Gasping for breath, Ando sat down on the edge of the bed. He no longer needed to look at his planner or the photos. It was just possible that Mai had been ovulating when she watched the videotape. It had been her luck—misfortune, rather—to watch it on the one day of the month. And that was why she was the exception. Of all the females who had watched the tape, she’d been the only one ovulating.
And …
When he tried to deduce what must have happened, Ando’s spine froze. But he couldn’t prevent himself from arriving at the obvious conclusion.
Countless particles of the ring virus would have invaded Mai’s egg and been incorporated into its DNA.
They fertilized her egg.
Although it had evolved, the ring virus’s basic nature had not changed. In exactly a week, the fertilized egg would have reached its full growth and been expelled from Mai’s body. That had to be why the autopsy found evidence that Mai had just given birth.
But what did she give birth to?
Ando was trembling violently now. He was remembering a certain touch on his foot.
Whatever it was … it touched me.
When he’d visited Mai’s apartment, her supposedly empty room, he was sure he’d felt the breath of a living being. Hunched over at an unnatural angle to examine her toilet, he’d felt something soft caress his Achilles tendon where his sock had slipped down. He was sure that whatever had touched him was what Mai had given birth to. Something small enough to escape his notice when he looked around. Maybe it was early enough in its growth stage then to hide in her wardrobe. Whatever it was, he could still feel its touch as it swept across his skin.
Ando’s shivering didn’t stop. Feeling the need for another soak in the tub, he took off his clothes. He hadn’t pulled the plug, so the tub was still full of water. He ran the hot water until the bath temperature was higher than it had been for his first soak. After lowering himself into the tub, he poked his foot above the waterline and twisted it so he could see his Achilles tendon. He rubbed it. It felt perfectly normal, but that didn’t comfort him any.
He brought his foot back into the water and just sat there hugging his knees. After a while, a question came to him. He now knew why Mai hadn’t gotten a heart attack, but what about Asakawa?
“He was male,” Ando murmured.
But maybe he’d given birth to something after all.
Perhaps the water was too hot. Ando suddenly felt thirsty.
PART FIVE
Foreshadowing
1
January 15th, Coming of Age Day, was a holiday, which made it a three-day weekend. On the first day of the long weekend, Ando got a call from Miyashita asking if he wanted to go for a drive. The invitation was like a port in a storm for Ando, who’d been wondering how he was going to get through three workless days all alone. He wasn’t sure if he liked the way Miyashita asked him—like he was hiding something—but Ando had no reason not to go along. He said yes, then asked, “Where are we going?”
“There’s something I want to show you,” was all Miyashita would say. Ando figured his colleague had his reasons, and so refrained from pressing the matter. He’d get the answer out of Miyashita when he saw him.
Miyashita picked Ando up at home. As soon as he climbed in the car, Ando asked again where they were going.
“I can’t tell you. Now stop asking questions.”
And so even as they departed, their destination was unknown to Ando.
The car left the No. 3 Tokyo-Yokohama Freeway for the Yokohama New Road. They seemed to be heading for Fujisawa. They couldn’t go too far and still expect to keep it a day trip. Maybe as far as Odawara or Hakone, possibly the Izu peninsula, but no farther than Atami or Ito. After several guesses at the destination of the mystery tour, Ando decided to just sit back and enjoy the ride.
Just before they were to merge with traffic, they came to a halt. The entrance to the Yokohama New Road was always jammed, and was especially so today, at the start of the long weekend. In an effort to keep Miyashita from getting too bored at the wheel, Ando decided to tell him the hypothesis he’d come up with a few days ago as to why Mai alone had displayed no abnormalities in her coronary artery. It was Ando’s theory that Mai had been ovulating the day she watc
hed the video, and that the ring virus had shifted the focus of its attack to her egg. Then, just before falling into the rooftop exhaust shaft, Mai had given birth to some unknown life form. Something that had only gestated for a week. If she’d just given birth, that explained why Mai hadn’t been wearing any panties.
Miyashita heard him out and then was silent for a time. His striking round eyes seemed to be staring straight ahead, but then he changed lanes with an agility that belied his lax expression, poking his way into the passing lane.
“I thought more or less the same thing when we looked at Mai’s virus under the electron microscope,” said Miyashita, paying no attention to the blaring horns behind him.
“What do you mean?”
“The broken viruses looked familiar. After a while it hit me that they looked like spermatozoa.”
“You too?”
“Nemoto said the same thing.”
“So all three of us got the same impression.”
“Yes. Sometimes you have to pay attention to intuition.” Miyashita flashed Ando a grin, turning his attention from the road ahead.
“Watch where you’re going!” As the brake lights of the car ahead drew closer, Ando clenched his leg muscles.
“Don’t worry, we’re not going to end up like Asakawa,” Miyashita said, trying to look unconcerned as he stepped on the brake. But his front bumper was almost touching the car in front of them. Wiping away a cold sweat, Ando wondered if there was something wrong with Miyashita’s depth perception. Driving like that they were sure to get in an accident sooner or later.
“Speaking of Asakawa, it’s still a mystery as to why he didn’t die of a heart attack.”
“Right. Men don’t ovulate.”
“But maybe there was something physically different about him, just as with Mai.”
“The virus probably found another exit.”
“Exit?”
“A better way to spread and flourish.”
Once they passed the exit for the Hodogaya bypass, the traffic snarl eased somewhat, and they made better time. No doubt the road signs had inspired Miyashita to use the word “exit” as he had. He continued.