The people who were beating him up were an emaciated old Filipino man and woman, most likely taking revenge for what the Japanese had done to them during the war. Their positions reversed now, the old Filipino woman was whaling away at the soldier, putting everything she had into it like that was the only way she could get rid of the hatred inside her. The soldier had on a grubby T-shirt and a loincloth. Somehow he was still wearing his uniform cap. His hands were tied behind him and he stood there, staggering under the blazing sun. Whenever he was about to collapse, someone off-camera pulled on the rope that bound him, so he had to remain standing up straight.
My point is, at a moment like that, what is a person thinking? I was in elementary school when I saw this scene, and I found it incredible that the soldier looked so sleepy, like he was about to doze off. He had these vacant-looking eyes, half closed like he was going to fall asleep any minute, so you couldn’t tell if he was feeling any pain. If it’d been me, I’d have been scared to death and would have cried and begged for it to end.
I remembered this scene because right now I’m so sleepy I can barely stand it. Abnormally sleepy. All the time I’m pedaling my bike I’m about to doze off. Maybe it’s the weather, but it’s weird I’d feel this way as I pedal down the blazing asphalt of the highway, inches from trucks whizzing by. It’s not like I’m tired or anything. All I’ve been doing since yesterday is tooling around on a girl’s bike. It’s been an easy trip so far. Whenever I see a convenience store I stop in to cool off, drink some water, read some manga. So there’s no reason I should be so sleepy.
So maybe the situation I’m in now is like that of the Japanese soldier. Maybe I’m not aware of it, but my unconscious is trying to escape from reality. So I guess there’s something to be afraid of.
Mother-killer. I never imagined I’d do something like that, but there it is. The shock of seeing that news program last night at the convenience store has started to make me jumpy. When I saw an article about it in the paper, I just thought, Hey, look at that! But TV is frightening.
What sort of ominous thing dwells in this suburban neighborhood? What happened to this boy who’s disappeared? Is the same darkness in this boy hidden in this seemingly quiet neighborhood?
The newscaster’s remarks were dumb, but when I saw this, it was the first time I realized what a mess I was in. Newspapers don’t count, but once something hits TV it’s all over. On news programs and talk shows people are endlessly analyzing this “darkness” in my heart. They’ll all join forces and drone on and on about my mental state—commentators and newscasters, all with these know-it-all looks on their faces, gabbing away like they know what they’re talking about. Isn’t that slander? Even if they say something about me that’s completely off the mark, though, I can’t just laugh it off. ’Cause it’s me they’re talking about.
Just like with Sakakibara and those other murderers, I’ll be in all the papers for days, and they’ll gather experts together to endlessly debate changing the juvenile statutes. There’ll be articles with my photo and the message I wrote in my grade school yearbook, some classmate will post my photo on the Internet, and all of it will be just more ammunition for the rumor mill. People who didn’t like me will say whatever they like: “He was kind of gloomy, but never stood out in class, so I don’t know much about him.” “He always said hello, but I heard rumors that he tortured cats in the neighborhood.”
When I think of being on the run all over Japan with everybody in the country trying to track me down, it feels like my fate is to keep on running forever. Not like there’s anyplace for me to run to. Like in Stephen King’s The Running Man, taxi drivers and convenience store clerks are going to phone the cops, telling them that that guy on TV was just here.
Speaking of Stephen King, I really like him. The Running Man and Carrie. I read The Long Walk twice. Battle Royale isn’t by King, but I read that twice, too. Most of the kids I know read only manga, but I prefer novels. Novels are closer to real life than manga, it’s like they show you the real world with one layer peeled away, a reality you can’t see otherwise. They’re deep, is what I’m saying. Which makes me sort of a weirdo in my class. The guys in my class see only the outer surface. Same with their parents. Guess they find that makes living easier, like that’s the smart way to approach life. What a bunch of assholes.
I have to keep doing something, I’m so sleepy. Half awake, I focus on the scenery passing by. Boring scenery along a main road. A pachinko place, a karaoke place, a used-car lot. A ramen shop, a family restaurant. All of them with their windows shut tight and the AC going full blast. A tin roof of a garage reflects the bright sun, hot as a frying pan.
But it’s like none of this is part of my world anymore. Ordinary scenery has transformed. Or I should say it’s me that’s changed. If I go into a pachinko place or a karaoke place, I know I won’t feel the way I used to about them. I’ll never feel the way I used to—ever again. Do you know what I mean? If somebody had told me all this before, I would have said, What the hell are you talking about? But there’s this gap now between my world and other people’s. And I’m totally alone.
People are part of the scenery, too. The truck driver talking on his CB as he passes me, the middle-aged guy stifling a yawn as he drives a white delivery van. The woman with a small child on the seat beside her, the elementary school pupil crossing the road. It’s like all these men and women—everybody—are in a different world from me. In their world, time just stretches on endlessly, today the same as yesterday, tomorrow the same as today, the future the same as tomorrow.
I feel like I’m racing alone through a desert on some distant planet, like Mars. Everything’s changed from two days ago. Everything’s divided now into before then and after then—then meaning the day I killed my mother. My actions created a turning point, a crossroads, in my own life. And now I finally understand the fear that Japanese soldier felt. People who experience this kind of a crossroads are afraid. And so sleepy they can’t stand it.
As these thoughts kept a lazy pace with my pedaling, I got so sleepy I really couldn’t stand it anymore. I wondered if I should stop my bike by the side of the road and take a nap. I looked around for a good place to sleep, but there wasn’t any, just cheap-looking houses and shops, not what I wanted—a bench or a small patch of grass. God, I’m so sleepy! So sleepy. I want to crawl into my own bed and sleep forever.
My room is a corner room on the southeast side of the house. An eight-mat room with wooden flooring, French bed, double mattress. Plus my own TV. It’s the biggest, best room in the house—not that I chose it myself or anything. Two years ago, when we moved in, when that trouble happened, Mom announced we were leaving the apartment building and moving here to a single-family home.
After we moved she said, “We’ll make Ryo’s room the sunniest one on the second floor.” She always says these “nice” things, taking care of her precious son.
Since that was already decided, my old man said he’d use the Japanese-style room on the second floor as his study. A study? Don’t make me laugh. All he’s got are dusty old sets of collected works. Those aren’t books—they’re furniture. And how about all those records he’s collected since college? He never listens to them. Hello! Ever heard of CDs? We got MP3s and DVDs, too, in case you didn’t know. And don’t give me all that crap about how great analog sounds, okay? You don’t know anything, yet all you do is brag, you clown. Where’d you learn all that useless stuff? From some bar hostess? Women aren’t falling all over doctors anymore. Okay, so you bought a computer, but do you ever use it? You’re just trying to look cool. Do you know that I sneak into your room, surf the Web, and play around on porn sites? As long as you don’t, there’s nothing you can do about it. Stop showing off, you jerk. Why can’t you see that I think you’re a total loser? You always brag about being a doctor, but you just work in a nothing little clinic. No better than some office worker. If you don’t like it, why don’t you become the head of a huge hospital and use your
money to get me into Harvard? ’Cause you can’t, that’s why.
Mom doesn’t have her own room. She uses the parlor, but that’s different, that’s public space. Does this mean we have a public park in our house? A public restroom? I don’t need my own room, she said, because I have the “utility room.” Give me a break. “Utility”—what the hell’s that mean? “Identity” I know, but “utility”? What? You’re telling me to look it up in a dictionary? No way. I only want to use an electronic dictionary. And it has to be one that’s an unabridged dictionary and also has an encyclopedia. Don’t you get it? I’m telling you to buy me one!
When I said that, she ran right out and bought one for me. I was sick and tired of being with her. If you’ll give me anything, how about giving me your life? I wanted to say. I didn’t exactly ask to be your son, so give me your life. Did she know how much I despised her? The thought that I had to be with this old hag for the rest of my days depressed me, like my life was already over. You know what that feels like? Total depression.
I feel relieved that my old lady’s no longer here, even though I’m the one who killed her. I still get angry when I think of her and it makes it hard to get sleepy. So thinking of her maybe is a good way to combat this sleepiness that’s come over me.
My mother was a total idiot. I don’t know when it was I realized this. Probably the year after I started cram school, around fifth grade. Every day she gave me a stupid sermon.
The most outstanding people in the world, she’d lecture me, aren’t just intelligent, but the ones who make an effort. It’s easy to substitute other words into this formula. Let’s try it—it’s fun. Not just intelligent, but those who make an effort. Not just stylish, but those who make an effort. Not just athletic, but those who make an effort. Not just those from a good family, but those who make an effort. Not just the rich, but people who make an effort. Not just the lucky, but people who make an effort. In other words, you first have to have the one good quality, and only then can you be considered outstanding.
Which raises the question of whether Mom herself is an outstanding person. When I was in fifth grade, I started to have my doubts whether she’d cleared any of the hurdles on the road to becoming outstanding. Let’s face it, she wasn’t especially smart or pretty. She had absolutely no sense of style. Zero athletic ability. And making an effort? Forget about it. So where did she get off lecturing me? Finally, though, I realized something. Mom was convinced she was an outstanding person. She was convinced she was smart, pretty, from a good family. And besides, she was married to a doctor, with a smart son, and worked hard every day. I was just a kid, but I was shocked all the same. She’s not playing with a full deck, this old lady. Unbelievable.
“Fortunately, Ryo, you’re smart, so I want you to make more of an effort. It’s important to do your best.”
I don’t know how many times I heard this. Somewhere along the line, though, it hit me: I’m really not all that smart. This was soon after I got into K Junior High, which is considered one of the hardest private junior highs to get into. The first exam we had there, of the two hundred and fifty kids in my grade level, I wasn’t even in the top two hundred. That’s weird, I thought. But the next test turned out the same. And the one after that. The whole five years I’ve been in junior high and high school it’s been more of the same.
Mom panicked. I did, too, but she panicked first. You know why, right? ’Cause this smashed to bits the theory she kept pounding into my head. If I put this much effort into it and was never rewarded, then the premise of her theory had to be wrong. I wasn’t as smart as my mom and I had thought. If Mom had only realized how stupid she was herself, she would have understood much earlier that I wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box.
Which is why she blames me, because I’m dumb. One time she stared intently at me, those eyes behind her glasses, sizing me up like she’d never seen me before. Finally she managed this: “Ryo, are you popular with girls?” Are you serious? Since I entered an all-boys school, I haven’t spoken to any girls. Haven’t gotten a phone call from any girl, or a letter. I’m my old man and old lady’s kid, after all. The offspring of a hick and a hag. And wasn’t it my old lady who dumped me in a place where there aren’t any girls? Yet here she is asking if I’m a chick magnet.
She was asking this because she realized her education policy was a failure. She understood that I’m not very smart, not good-looking, and that maybe I won’t have such a happy life after all. What a dolt. Take a look in the mirror, I wanted to tell her. How about considering your own crummy life before you rag on me?
All these memories were getting me angry and upset, and completely got rid of my sleepiness. I saw a convenience store off to my left. Convenience stores are my stations. Can’t live without them. I happily stopped my bike and went inside.
After the blazing inferno outside, the cold air felt better than good—it totally revived me. The store was still new and was spacious. There was one middle-aged woman behind the register wearing a visor and a smock that didn’t suit her. She was glaring at the customers who were standing at the magazine rack leafing through the magazines. An old guy, probably the manager, was bent over some shelves, doing his best to straighten up the bento section. They didn’t look like they were used to the work. A convenience store veteran would never be so angry at people standing around reading magazines and manga for free.
In convenience stores, the entrance is the coolest spot, since they keep the AC at full blast there, shooting out dry, cold air to keep away the heat from outside. So I stood there at the entrance for a while, cooling off my overheated body. The cold air crystallized my sweat. I had the illusion that my whole skin was covered with a thin layer of glittering white salt. With my salt suit on, I was better than any other person around. I am a mother-killer, after all! And I’m on the run! Only a tiny percentage of mankind could do what I did. I can get away with anything.
I grabbed a 1.5-liter bottle of water from the fridge and took it over to the register. Paid for it and impatiently drank it down. I was so parched I couldn’t stop. I gulped down over half before I put the cap back on. Then I turned to the woman behind the register, who was staring at me with a troubled look, hand over her nose.
“Could I use your restroom, please?” I asked.
The woman turned around to the middle-aged guy. He tossed the bentos aside and trotted over.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “We don’t have a restroom.”
“What’s that then?”
I know where the restrooms are in convenience stores, almost always next to the refrigerator. I pointed to a likely door.
“That’s a storage room.”
The man was holding his nose, too. Two out of three convenience stores turn me down when I ask to use the bathroom, so I wasn’t overly disappointed. Five other places in a row had said no, so all I thought was that the percentage was going down. The old guy, though, had to go and add this:
“I’m sorry, sir, but since it bothers other customers I’d appreciate it if you’d drink outside. And please use the restroom somewhere else. My apologies.”
I’m bothering other people? What did he mean? Was it my salt suit? I sniffed my T-shirt, and it did smell kind of gross—a kind of sour, weird smell. It had been two days since I left home. I hadn’t washed the shirt or taken a bath—was that all it took to get like this? I swam in a pool, but I guess that didn’t work. The blazing sun had turned me into this smelly guy people wanted to avoid. Just being at home meant I wouldn’t get smelly—the thought impressed me, somehow, in a weird sort of way. I’d washed my face and hands at a park, but couldn’t wash my T-shirt or jeans. I scratched my head.
“You’re telling me to get out?”
“No, it’s that we’d rather you didn’t drink here or use the bathroom. So if you don’t mind…”
So he was using the restroom as a pretext for getting me out of there. I ignored the old guy and, water bottle in hand, sauntered over to the magazine
and book rack. When I got there a fat guy engrossed in a porno magazine gave me a strange look and tossed it aside. Two high school girls also grimaced and edged away. I blithely opened up the latest copy of JUMP and started leafing through it. The fat guy left the store, so I opened up the porno mag he’d been reading. It was full of pretty girls with their legs spread. I wanted the magazine but didn’t want to spend the money on it, so I stared hard at the photos, to burn the images into my brain. “He stinks,” some girl’s voice whispered from the next aisle over. The high school girls. In times like these I always want to say this: “Hey, I go to K High, just so you know!” I’m such an idiot. But the thought also hits me that the guys at K High who really are smart would never brag like that. They’re much too clever.
So in the final analysis the only use for the education my old lady so highly prizes is to brag about it in front of others. Nobody outside K High knows I’m at the bottom of the class, or that the teachers make fun of me. The whole thing’s crappy. But I had to stay there, stay put. Junior and senior high—six years! “You’ll be studying for college entrance exams soon,” my old lady always told me, “so you just have to hang in there a little longer.” Hang in there for what? She didn’t understand me at all. I’d run out of patience a long time ago.