The white-haired commentator, who had been silent, tried to speak up. “What you’re saying is—”
But Sasahara cut him off. “I’ve read your writing. You say that Japan should abandon its military force to maintain peace in Asia. But let me ask you this. Is the world a kind place? The true nature of the world is evil. Should one remain defenseless in an evil world? If there are invasions or genocides in other countries, does that have nothing to do with us? In all of Japan’s history, we have only lost one war with another country. The only country that has genuinely defeated Japan in all of history is America. And they had an embargo against us, which gave them a huge handicap. Should such a strong country just sit there, not giving anything back? You liberals worry about the country remilitarizing, but can’t even work together. Why do you send in so many candidates to the elections, splitting all the votes and letting the conservatives benefit? Later generations will laugh at you! I want to ask you one thing. Say we did live in this play world where your logic worked, a world that was not evil, but good. What would you do if aliens attacked?”
“What? Aliens?”
“Are you going to just say it’s impossible? Just like the useless politicians said about possible incidents with nuclear reactors?”
“If aliens did come to Earth, we couldn’t fight them. We’d lose no matter what.”
“So if that time came, you’d just take the position that we can’t win anyway. So when the humans are fighting desperately against the aliens, you’ll just suck on your thumb and watch? Is that right? Do you think you can convince the aliens to leave us alone with your great negotiating skills? Will you organize demonstrations against them?”
A sudden laugh rose up in the studio. The main anchor said, “This isn’t the time for you to be arguing about politics, is it?”
“I think this is an important issue,” Sasahara said, cutting off the anchor. “I don’t want to hear grand pronouncements coming out of the mouths of people who can’t even get straight what they think of that war seventy years ago where so many people died.”
“But this is no longer just a Japanese issue. The world is watching you, and the world won’t forgive your terrorism.”
“Then I’ll ask the whole world. Can you absolutely condemn our actions?”
Then Sasahara began a long, long lecture. A lecture on the problems of poverty and starvation that Takahara had cared so deeply about. But Sasahara named names. On national television he revealed the economic crimes of specific interest groups and politicians. After a few minutes, the Japanese branches of implicated organizations began calling to protest the program, but it didn’t end.
The crisis in Japan began to spread to international news. In countries around the world, the broadcast was streamed online and subtitled in one language after another, and even more people began to watch.
20
In a small room, the fifty-something man was watching the events unfold on television.
“Isn’t this brilliant? Ha ha ha. Look. It’s great.”
His voice was strangely high. His thirty-something companion found him disgusting. Of course, he did not let that show on his face.
“Don’t you think there’s going to be a big question of responsibility? We have . . .”
“What are you talking about? You’re still so green,” the fifty-something man said, smiling. “I thought I told you. We don’t need a name. All we need is a purpose.”
On the screen, Sasahara continued to speak. “Let’s just think of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials he mentioned . . . Those trials covered the period from 1928 until Japan lost the war in 1945. Do you know how many times political power shifted hands in those years?”
“Not in detail . . .”
“Prepare yourself for this, now. Seventeen times. Seventeen times in seventeen years. That’s why at those trials the international commission had a very difficult job. It wasn’t like with the Nazis. In Japan there wasn’t one obvious villain who could take responsibility for all the evil done. Every single leader propagated ridiculous domestic and foreign policies, and then when things didn’t go well, they just ran from the job. Meanwhile, vast numbers of civilians and soldiers were dying.”
Suddenly, the fifty-something man wasn’t smiling anymore. “Where is the security guard they shot?” he asked.
“The Shindaiwa Hospital. It seems he’s in stable condition.”
The fifty-something man clicked his tongue. The thirty-something man was surprised by that sound, but also felt that his own surprise was forced. He already had a faint idea of what he was going to have to do.
“There was another person hospitalized, right? Do you know anything about him?”
“I’m not sure what his name is, but he seems to be a member of that cult. I’m not sure if he broke off from the main group, or what, though . . .”
“What was he wearing?”
“What?”
“I asked what he was wearing.” All traces of his earlier mirth had vanished, and he wore his usual languid expression.
“He was wearing a black parka and jeans. He was in critical condition after being shot in the shoulder.”
“And where was he hospitalized?”
“Sasagaoka Hospital.”
“Great. We can get to him there. Let’s go.”
The fifty-something man put on a coat that was neither new nor old. The thirty-something man put on a new coat that certainly did not look cheap, even if one could not tell the brand name at a glance.
The younger man picked up his bag to go, but the older man turned the TV on again. He narrowed his eyes at the screen, his expression neither happy nor upset.
“Are we going?” the thirty-something man said, but the older man ignored him.
“Of course he would,” he whispered to the television. Finally he grabbed his bag and turned off the TV.
On her way down the narrow hallway, Ryoko Tachibana passed several excited believers. They all greeted Tachibana, but she didn’t have the time to acknowledge them. Narazaki-kun, she kept whispering, her mind blank. Room 1023. He’s here. At least I’m not alone.
She took the elevator, and then walked down another narrow hall. Room 1023. He’s here. Tachibana took a small breath and knocked on the door. No one answered. She willed herself to take another breath, knocked again, and finally opened the door.
She was hit by a waft of women’s perfume. The naked woman was bathed in red light—it was Komaki, moaning as she moved on top of some man. Her heart raced. The man was Narazaki.
Tachibana stood there dazed. Of course. What was I hoping for? As she watched, she felt her heart beat hard. This is the cult. Of course this is what would happen.
Though the door had burst open, Narazaki paid no attention. He assumed it was just the next woman, even though he didn’t need one yet. He pushed his torso up and buried his face in Komaki’s chest, thinking, I’m still busy with Komaki. I want to devour her body. When he finally looked toward the door, he froze. Ryoko Tachibana was standing there.
Narazaki tried to pull his body away from Komaki. Komaki turned to look and her expression became one of surprise. Then faintly—so faintly Narazaki barely spotted it—she smiled. She began moving more ostentatiously, as if making a show of it for Tachibana.
“Get off me,” Narazaki said. Komaki brought her face toward him.
“Are you sure? If we don’t keep going, we’ll never do it again—you know that, right?”
Narazaki pushed Komaki out of the way. He grabbed the sheets in front of him and covered the lower half of his body. Tachibana was still staring at him. Komaki left without dressing, her clothes in her arms—without bowing to or greeting Officer Tachibana.
“I heard you were here,” Tachibana said softly. “I . . . uh . . .” She couldn’t think of the words she wanted. Should I start over? No, what would starting over do? He
r breathing grew difficult. “Why are you here?” she finally managed to ask.
But Narazaki just kept staring at her, speechless. When he thought about it, it was natural that Ryoko Tachibana was here. He had started all this trying to find her. But that’s not right, he thought. Why am I really here?
A ten-square-meter room with red lighting. Soaked sheets.
The sweat on his back suddenly went cold.
I came here to see you, Narazaki thought. But that had only been one of the reasons. He’d also wanted to get wrapped up in something occult. Why had he wanted that? Because he hated the world.
When he was a child, he’d cover up the sounds of his parents yelling at each other with music, and he’d recreate passages from novels in his mind, and live in those stories, in those other worlds. Whenever something bad happened in the world, whenever he felt he didn’t belong there, he would choose just the pieces he liked, and live cautiously among them. His days at that awful, exasperating company were the same. He would cover up the voice of his screaming boss with Herbie Hancock’s piano; obscure his alienation by reading Meursault’s soliloquies from The Stranger; and he covered up his own personality, which he’d developed playing go-between for his parents—his desire to be helpful, which always led to his own exhaustion—with Fellini’s carnivalesque images. He’d always lived his life that way. But it had stopped working. Reality kept breaking into his fantasies, and he’d grown more fatigued year after year. When reality ultimately punctured one corner of his consciousness, the violence of his desires had come gushing out. That’s why I came here, Narazaki thought. To make my own real life seem like a fantasy. Out of contempt for my life . . . No, contempt for the real world. But Narazaki couldn’t say that to Tachibana. He still had an erection. It was an ugly erection from some other woman. Why does she have to see me like this? And why, now, in this important moment with my old lover right in front of me, is Komaki still lingering in the back of my mind? “Are you sure? If we don’t keep going, you know we’ll never do it again?” Komaki’s words were frightening. He wanted to fuck her again. Why am I like this? Why is my body like this? Narazaki’s eyes began to tear up—tears no one could sympathize with. Anger rose up to replace his embarrassment—ugly, inappropriate anger.
Narazaki began to speak—everything he’d been too careful to say before. Now, in this reality that seemed like an illusion, the words just came out.
“Why did you approach me?”
I can’t say this, he was thinking. He felt hate in the words leaving him, but he couldn’t resist his filthier desires.
“You scammed Matsuo-san—you’re a criminal, aren’t you? And you had a lover named Takahara, right? So why did you approach me? Did you have fun playing with me? Acting like you’d die, and making me all worried, while you had a real lover the whole time? You were just making fun of me. I can’t believe you. Are you going to criticize me for what I’ve been doing here? Try to make me out to be the bad guy?”
His words were nothing special, not particularly mean, but to such a simple man, they seemed unbelievably cruel. The cruelest he could muster. He thought he would never be able to recover from this embarrassment. But Tachibana remained calm. She had already regained her focus.
“I didn’t approach you. Actually . . . I was approaching Kobayashi.”
Narazaki was surprised. Kobayashi? The private detective?
“It was an order from the cult. We needed a talented private eye. Kobayashi was chosen as the target. He was still training at his office, but he was incredibly talented. We needed to get him to join us before his company realized how good he was.”
Tachibana’s voice remained calm.
“To pull one person in requires getting a feel for those around them. You must obtain all the information you can while you’re preparing for the invitation. That’s where you came in. That’s why I approached you before Kobayashi . . . And then . . .”
Tachibana stared at Narazaki’s face. In her voice was neither the sweetness of love nor the conflict that came with any other special emotional attachment.
“I fell in love with you.”
Narazaki was frozen on the bed. He couldn’t move. The smell of Komaki’s perfume still filled the air.
“As you said, I have a lover named Takahara. My mother and his father got married, we became siblings, and we have been lovers ever since. We’re tied together in a complex and far too powerful way. He’s trying to destroy himself. He’s stuck in a state of nothingness and has no interest in his own life. He’s trying to do terrifying things to change the world. I keep sacrificing myself to get him to stop. I thought our path would destroy both of us. That’s when I met you. Even though I was supposed to be working on luring in Kobayashi, I just kept coming back to you. Our relationship felt so precious to me, but at the same time, I felt like I had already lost your love. Like I had always been fated to lose it. I wasn’t brave enough to have sex with you. I have never had sex with any man besides Takahara. I was scared. I was scared I’d change if I did it with you.”
Tachibana burst into tears. Narazaki could still do nothing but look at her.
“That’s why I left you. That’s why I returned. I returned to the bog of my own life. To share a fate with this man heading toward destruction. It seems I’m going to sacrifice the remaining pleasures of my life for him. That’s why . . .”
Tachibana put her hand on the door. She felt she couldn’t stay in that room for even a few more seconds.
“You were the other fate that I couldn’t hold on to.”
Tachibana left the room. She noticed that she was crying, but in a few seconds, when she was alone, the tears would dry. And then, as resilient and determined as a junior high school class president, she would rush into the maelstrom, make sure that not a single believer died.
The lights in the hallway were faint. Just like the lives of women.
Tachibana walked down the narrow hallway. Her tears continued longer than she had expected, but finally, they dried.
21
“Let us go to the bathroom,” a man in a sweater begged the believer. Next to him crouched a young woman, her head hanging. The believer could tell the man was speaking up on her behalf; he didn’t have the courage to challenge the gunmen on his own account. Maybe he was thinking about what would happen after the studio raid was over, was hoping he could impress her with his kindness.
The believer looked at Sasahara, and he nodded slightly. Bracing his gun, the believer stood the woman up and walked her to the bathroom. She was wearing tight beige pants. The believer could see her white bra through her white blouse. The blouse was tight, too, and he could clearly make out the shape of her chest. That sweater man had definitely wanted to sleep with her.
As the woman stepped into the women’s room, the believer wondered where he should wait. At the door to the bathroom? But if she escaped through the window, Sasahara would question his responsibility. He’d have failed to satisfy the leader’s desires. Instead he stood right in front of the stall door.
He could hear her unfasten her belt, and then the sound of her tight pants rubbing against her thighs as she pulled them down. He felt as if he were seeing all her hidden parts on the other side of the door. He heard her sit on the plastic toilet seat, and turn on the tap so water splashed into the sink. She’s running water to hide the sounds she’s making. He stepped closer to the door.
He remembered his mother. His mother, who had satisfied so many men. She would do it for 20,000 yen. He’d watched her through the hole he’d made with a drill as she accepted the violent thrusts of those men’s hips, smiling. Those men, crazy for her body. She’d moan and make them come with her pussy. Those muscular men would tremble and his mother took it all inside her. Even when there were many men, his mother took the lead. She was always ready for more, and they could never wear her out. The believer used to listen to his mother’s beaut
iful moans swallowing up those men. He saw her shine softly, as though she were illuminated from above. He could imagine this woman in the bathroom doing what his mother did. This woman in the bathroom, she could certainly satisfy many men.
The believer suddenly grew jealous of women. Of the fact that they could let go so completely, and reach deeper realms of pleasure than men. He was filled by a growing sense of awe at the woman on the other side of the door. When he noticed he was hard, he felt as though someone were standing next to him—another tall man, with a large presence, although there was no one there. As he got harder, he wondered why the presence felt so familiar. Is it Christ? Someone like Christ? Is he trying to show me my true self?
He wanted to make her feel it. Put her in an embarrassing position, make her cry, and make her feel so good she forgot herself. He wanted to be one with that sensation. He’d never wanted to leave the cult’s facility in the first place, but now that he was here he would show his loyalty. The water was still running in the stall sink. She must have been taking a long piss. She had been holding it for a long time. She was probably embarrassed about her long piss. To show her that he was listening, he pressed himself against the door so that the toes of his shoes stuck into the stall. Something was egging him on. He was looking forward to her coming out. He wished he could make a hole in the door with a drill and watch her, but he also just wanted to be in there with her on the other side of the door. He heard her pull up her pants. The door opened. That woman’s sealed-off world became one with his. He pointed his gun at the woman.