Hardboiled & Hard Luck

  He wasn’t being all that delicate, but I could sense his sadness. I gripped the phone tightly in my hand, overwhelmed.

  “Thanks for telling me. Is there going to be a funeral?”

  “Some relative came to the hospital—judging from what I saw, he must have been a pretty distant relative—and went off almost immediately with her body. He said he hadn’t seen her in a decade. I guess Chizuru was involved in all kinds of stuff way back when, so her family wouldn’t have anything to do with her. I asked the guy to let me know about the funeral and stuff, but he never got in touch.”

  “Oh. Did you get his number or anything?”

  “Yeah, I did. I’ll give it to you next time we talk. It would be nice to visit her grave, at least, huh? It’s so hard to believe... all of a sudden she’s just not there, vanished without a trace.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  There was one other thing I wanted to ask.

  “Did the fire start in Chizuru’s apartment?”

  “No, it didn’t,” my friend answered angrily. “It started in the apartment next door, the one where the alcoholic guy lived. Apparently he got completely trashed and left the kettle on the stove. The bastard got out unscathed.”

  “Oh... I see.”

  I couldn’t cry. Even now, I still haven’t had a good cry.

  I’ve regretted what I did so many times. I still do. But I keep telling myself not to. We couldn’t have gone on any longer anyway, I know that. And we had fun, right to the end. Again and again, like an incantation, I repeat these words.

  “Oh, that’s nice—I wish things were like that for me. What did I do wrong?” the woman said, looking rather put out. I hadn’t told her what I was remembering, but she seemed to have read my mind. She looked as if she were truly annoyed, from the very bottom of her heart.

  “It’s not too late, is it?” I said. “Why don’t you go back to your room, maybe talk a bit more seriously about breaking up or carrying on or whatever seems best? And put on some clothes. Aren’t you cold?”

  “It may be too late,” said the woman. Her hair was covering her face. “We’re thinking of committing suicide together...”

  She didn’t say anything after that. She seemed oddly fidgety.

  “Oh my god,” I said, “you haven’t...”

  “And what if I did? What if I killed him first, then left the room and came... Of course, I’d prefer to think I wouldn’t do something like that. Or maybe it was a failed suicide, maybe I woke up, just me, and he was dead... Which one do you suppose it is?” she asked.

  “Which one! What are you talking about?” I shouted, because I had the feeling that unless I shouted, I was about to get very, very frightened. “Forget it, what’s the use in talking? I’m going to get the key from the woman!”

  I grabbed the key to my room and leapt to my feet. It crossed my mind that if I didn’t take my key, I’d fall into the same trap she had. I don’t know why. She would still be in my room, after all.

  When I looked back, she was sitting on my bed, her feet dangling over the edge, looking lonely.

  She kept staring at the ground, without looking up. I noticed how pretty her thighs were, and the V of her collarbone.

  I took the elevator down to the front desk and vehemently rang the bell.

  No one came out, so I kept ringing it. The only sound was the hum of the air conditioner, which echoed through the dark lobby; the faded colors of the couch seemed to levitate in space.

  After an extremely long time, the woman emerged from the back. It was clear that she had just gotten out of bed and she was in a terrible mood.

  “A woman staying in a room near mine has a problem—she’s been shut out of her room, and she’s naked. Do you think I could borrow the key to her room?”

  “Huh?” I doubt the human organism can create a voice more foul-tempered than hers was then.

  “If you don’t believe me, come and see!” I said.

  I thought it would be best to have her come, just in case the man happened to be dead or something.

  “I’m sorry to say that you’re the only guest today!” said the woman.

  “What? But, just now, really...”

  “Oh boy,” said the woman. “Which side should I take?”

  “What do you mean, which side?”

  “Should I think of the hotel’s profits or set the customer’s mind at ease?”

  Her expression was completely serious.

  “If you’ve said that much, you might as well tell me the rest,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “Listen, I understand what you’re saying. This is a strange day. The sort of day when people in the old days talked about seeing sneaky creatures like mujina. Somehow the air feels heavy, and the night is darker than usual. But you know what? It will pass. Even nights like this come to an end. Anyway, that woman you’re talking about—she was wearing a bathrobe, wasn’t she?”

  “That’s right.”

  “She appears sometimes. Here in the hotel. A while back, she and her lover planned to commit suicide together here, but she was the only one who died. The man, who was a teacher at the school, survived. There weren’t enough sleeping pills. So he took his wife and kids and moved out of town.”

  “How awful.”

  I didn’t like this at all. But the woman said:

  “It’s an old hotel, you know. All kinds of things have happened here.”

  So all I could say was:

  “Well, at the very least, no one has really been locked out, and no one’s dying in one of the rooms now or anything, right?”

  “Exactly,” said the woman. “Don’t worry, it’ll be morning in a few hours. If anything else happens, come wake me up.”

  With that, she returned to the back room.

  I was left standing in the lobby with no choice but to return alone to my room. I would either go listen to more of the ghost’s complaints, or I would have another bad dream. The choices were far from appealing.

  So I decided to go outside and give my head a rest.

  There was an incredible wind blowing outside.

  No doubt all the beautiful leaves were falling like crazy right now.

  Here, and at the spot where I last saw Chizuru.

  I gazed up at the sky, my head full of these thoughts.

  The stars were beautiful.

  Looking back, I saw that, except for the window of my room and the hall windows, the entire building was dark.

  I remembered how lonely the woman had looked.

  Suddenly I realized that she had taken most of the pills on purpose.

  She hadn’t let him take as many as she did.

  That’s why she seemed so fragile.

  I don’t know how I knew all this, but I was convinced it was true. What was it about this night that made me so sensitive?

  Now that I had cooled off, I went back into the lobby. The woman was awake, standing at the front desk.

  “You’re not a ghost, are you?” I said.

  “I’m just a woman who’s been working here for a long, long time,” she replied. “Thanks to you, I can’t get to sleep.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I think I’ll go soak in the bath again.”

  “Be careful. I’ll wait up for you—come by when you’re done.”

  Touched by the woman’s gentleness, I hurried off toward the bath.

  5

  The Tatami Room

  The springwater that filled the bath was just as hot as before, so I was able to relax and take my time warming my now cool body.

  Peering through the glass at the clock in the changing room, I saw that it was almost four.

  What kind of night is this? I thought. I encounter something strange on a road in the mountains and end up leading it into my hotel... it’s too much, it really is. I was reaching the peak of exhaustion then, and the ur
ge to sleep came welling up inside me; my eyes were about to close, all on their own.

  This time, no matter what happens, I thought as I gazed at the bath tiles, I am definitely going to sleep.

  The tiles were old but the colors were really nice; they made me feel nostalgic. These tiles looked like the ones we had had a very long time ago, when I was small, in the bathroom of the house where I lived with my father and my real mother. Back then, it never occurred to me that my life would turn out like this. I thought I would grow up with my parents the way other only children did, and then go off and get married. Who’d have guessed that I would end up so far away...

  I kept gazing down at the tiles, getting a bit sentimental. When I glanced up, I noticed that the rim of the bath was decorated with a simple mosaic made out of ordinary stones.

  It’s not much of a hotel, I thought, but this is a nice bath. Just then, a shiver ran down my spine. Something inside me had frantically shaken its head.

  What was that? This bath is so comfortable, it’s nice and small, it has just the right feeling of age, and even the water is good... why do I feel this way? I kept mulling it over as I succumbed to another attack of drowsiness, until suddenly my gaze landed on something... In the midst of the grayish stones that rimmed the bath, there was one of a different color—one pitch-black stone, buried amid the rest in the mosaic.

  So that’s what it was!

  I felt a strange sense of satisfaction.

  This hotel is part of it all.

  Somehow one of those stones ended up being used here. That’s why all these strange things have been happening.

  My heart ached when I thought about what had happened at the udon shop, but I decided that since this hotel had been around for ages and was still doing fine, it was probably best to leave things as they were.

  True, it might not be appropriate to say the hotel was doing fine, when couples came here to commit suicide and it was haunted and so on. But the fact that no one died at the udon shop suggested that the shrine’s powers were limited.

  I climbed gingerly out of the bath, taking care not to step on the black stone, and then, figuring I might as well, I went back by the front desk.

  “Good night!” I called to the woman.

  “Why don’t you come in and have some tea before you go to sleep?” she said, emerging from the back room. “You don’t want to return to your room, do you?”

  I was dying to get back to sleep, but I was thirsty too. I decided to join her.

  Going through a door next to the front desk, I entered the back room.

  It was a neatly organized, rather small room, with six tatami mats covering the floor. The curtains, which had a floral pattern, were tightly drawn.

  The woman stood in the kitchenette waiting for the water to boil.

  A vase of brilliantly white chrysanthemums, so huge that they seemed terribly out of place, stood on the table. I wasn’t very happy to see them there, considering their funeral associations, but I kept my thoughts to myself, thinking it might be better not to say anything.

  The woman must have noticed that I was looking at them, though, because she raised the subject herself when she brought the tea over.

  “You want to know about the flowers, right?”

  The tea was very hot, and it tasted good.

  “It’s great. The tea, I mean.”

  “I’ve got relatives in Shizuoka, near where they grow it,” said the woman. “I was telling you about the flowers, though. Actually, the man who was involved in the attempted double suicide we talked about earlier—he sends them. Every year.”

  “The one who was going out with the ghost?” I said.

  “That’s right. They come every year, with a note asking me to put them out as an offering. I can’t very well leave them on the front desk, though, can I? Talk about bringing bad luck! That would be about as bad as it gets. On the other hand, I don’t like to put them in the room. That’s why they’re here. I burn a stick of incense in front of them every day.”

  I remembered the aura of loneliness that had clung to the woman.

  “People are always going on about how scared they are of ghosts, but the way I see it, people are much more frightening,” said the woman. “You know, I was at the front desk when the two of them came here to die. That sure was scary, let me tell you. It was a night just like tonight, the same strange mood in the air. The man was deathly pale and covered with mud; the woman was barefoot, her hair a huge mess, and she was covered with mud, too. They said they had come over the mountain. They were falling apart, and you could see they were in a very dangerous mood—you know what I mean?—something awful hung in the air around them... normally, I would have turned them away then and there, but the woman kept pleading with me, she kept saying, I have to rest... I have to rest... And her eyes were all red and puffy from crying. It was terrifying... So I ended up giving them a room, and then—what a commotion! I just thank my lucky stars I wasn’t fired. But you know, she planned it so that only she would die. The pills she took were stronger than the ones she gave him. The man almost went crazy when he heard that. That was when I realized that they had really been in love, it wasn’t just a game.”

  “I knew it...”

  “But for her to come back as a ghost... I guess that’s what people mean when they say no good deed goes unpunished, huh?” said the woman. “Not that it really matters. The hotel will be closing next year.”

  “Really? This hotel won’t be here anymore?” I said.

  At the same time, I was thinking, Yeah, well, that’s probably for the best.

  “That’s right. The man who owned it passed away, you see. His son has been saying he might tear it down and build a restaurant in its place next year. You know that bath? The owner built that himself, you know.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s a cute little bath, isn’t it?”

  “Did he get the stones up on the mountain?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  “The mosaic is kind of unusual.”

  “Yes, he was a strange man—he collected stones. I don’t mean precious stones like diamonds and things like that. Just plain old stones. Useless rocks.”

  “I see. I think it’s great, though—it’s a lovely bath,” I said, because it seemed like a nice thing to say. “You should be careful, though. There’s a ghost, after all, and there’s something funny about this place. Somehow.”

  “Oh, I’ll be fine. I said this earlier, but it’s true—you have strange nights no matter where you are. And they always pass. You just have to force yourself to act like nothing is wrong, and when morning comes everything is back to normal. For me, people are the scariest. These other things don’t seem like such a big deal, not compared to the gleeful look the owner’s son had on his face when his father died. Once, the most elegant couple you can imagine came and took a room here, and when the man who does the cleaning went in after they left, he saw things so awful that he vomited. He said he couldn’t even begin to imagine the nauseating things they had been doing in there. That’s the kind of thing that frightens me.”

  The woman’s tone set my mind at ease. Everything will be fine, I thought, as long as they’ve got someone like her around. I made up my mind not to worry about the hotel.

  “Well, I guess I’ll go back upstairs. Good night,” I said.

  Outside, there was the faint chirping of a bird.

  Dawn was almost here.

  “You don’t really want to go, do you?” said the woman. “Why don’t you just sleep here?”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s fine, don’t worry, there isn’t a whole lot of space but I’ve got a futon here that you can use. Trust me, it’s better for you to stay. She’ll come back.” The woman’s voice was bright. “Things will be fine in the morning—you can go up and get your bag before you leave.”

  I don’t get it, I thought. I’m p
aying good money to sleep with an old woman in a Japanese-style room so dull it doesn’t even qualify as tastefully restrained. I decided to stay, though, since it was such an unusual experience.

  “OK, I will. Thanks.”

  I was also so tired by then that I didn’t care where I slept.

  The woman rolled out a futon for me a little apart from her own, which had been spread out on the floor the whole time.

  This small room, the low ceiling, the smell of the chrysanthemums.

  I got into my futon and said good night.

  Good night, replied the woman as she switched off the overhead light.

  She was still washing our teacups under the kitchen light, the only one she had left on, when I fell asleep.

  6

  Another Dream

  The dream was very real.

  I couldn’t even say for sure whether it was a dream or a memory. Though I had the feeling it had actually happened. The dream was extremely short.

  I was there, in Chizuru’s apartment. In a room that no longer exists.

  Everything was so clear; I could even see the stains on the high ceiling.

  I saw light glinting off the beautifully polished, stainless steel kitchen counter.

  It was foggy outside. So foggy I almost thought it would come inside.

  The sky glowed dully and the noise of the traffic was muted.

  I could hear the sounds of the couple overhead ardently creating another child in the bathroom, as if they didn’t have enough already.

  “God, they’re so loud!” I moaned. “Don’t they know how late it is?”

  I was flipping through a magazine; my mind was blank.

  Recently, I had become something of an alcoholic; I was almost finished with a two-liter bottle of sake I had been drinking, little by little, and I was very drunk.

  “I know, why don’t I put on some music?” said Chizuru.