Real World Read online

  “Toshi, are you okay?”

  Yuzan’s worried voice called out from the cell phone that I was still clutching. I nodded again and again but couldn’t stop the tears. I suddenly noticed that my door was open and that my mother was standing there, looking pale.

  “Don’t you think you should go to Miss Higashiyama’s house?”

  “I’ll call you back,” I told Yuzan, and hung up. She was in tears, too, and couldn’t reply.

  I called Kirarin’s house but all I got was some woman who just kept gloomily repeating that she didn’t know anything, that the day for the funeral hadn’t been set. I didn’t know what to do and paced back and forth in my room.

  Reporters started calling us around ten a.m., and I shut my curtain tight. Next, Worm’s father stopped by. He said that before he went to see his son in the hospital in Nagano, he wanted to find out from me what had been going on between Worm and Kirarin. He was gaunt, like a sad old man—so much for the former dandy with his ascot. The arrogant face he used to make as he walked past our house was nowhere to be seen.

  “What sort of relationship did my son and Miss Higashiyama have?” he asked.

  “I really don’t know,” I lied.

  “Is that so,” he muttered back, then suddenly fell to his knees on the floor of our dirty entrance.

  “I am truly, truly sorry for all the trouble we’ve caused you. I don’t know where to begin to apologize for the death of your friend. Please forgive us. I know my son will spend the rest of his life trying to redeem himself for what he’s done to all of you. I should have supervised him more carefully, and since I didn’t, this horrible tragedy has taken place, and now I can only hand my son over to the courts. I feel so sorry I don’t want to go on living.”

  This middle-aged man was apologizing to me, a high school girl, for his son. You got it wrong, I wanted to tell him. It was like a game we were playing with Worm. And your wife’s murder was part of the game we were enjoying. I stood there, silent, with no idea how I should act. None of this, though, meant very much after I learned that Terauchi had died.

  “Why don’t you have a bite to eat? You haven’t touched anything since this morning.” It was almost evening when my mother came up to see me as I lay on my bed, weeping. Just when I started downstairs the phone rang. I motioned to my mother that I’d take it. I had a hunch it was for me. The phone rang on, like it was specifically waiting until I got downstairs.

  “Toshiko? I’m afraid I have some terrible news. Kazuko just killed herself. She left a letter addressed to you. Can you come over right away and open it?”

  My brain just went totally blank. I’d heard people say this before, and that’s exactly what happened. A total whiteout. I was so shocked it was like I forgot how to move my arms and legs.

  * * *

  The undertaker, with this pained expression, set down the tray used to offer incense. After a quick autopsy, Terauchi’s body was back home. And there she was, lying in a coffin. Her face was covered with a white cloth. I just kept staring at her fingers, the blackish fingertips clasped at her chest. When she fell she must have hemorrhaged inside. Maybe they weren’t showing her face because it’d been injured. Her beautiful face—what had happened to it now? You dummy, jumping off a building like that! Now we can’t see you. How am I supposed to say good-bye if I can’t see your face?

  * * *

  “What did she say in her letter?” Terauchi’s mother asked me again.

  “She said not to show it to anybody else, so I don’t think I should,” I was finally able to reply. Next to me, my mother stirred, like she was bothered by this. I knew exactly what she wanted to say to me: You know that’s not right, Toshiko. This is Terauchi’s mother we’re talking about. Show it to her. Tell her what she wants to know.

  “I understand. It’s just that I’m her parent and would like to know what she wrote.”

  Terauchi’s mother’s shoulders slumped as she muttered this. I thought maybe it would be okay to tell her the main points of the letter, so I scanned it again, but I’m lousy at summarizing things and nothing of the contents stayed with me. If it were Terauchi doing the summarizing, she’d do a great job, explaining things by emphasizing exactly what mattered. Still, you know something, Terauchi, I wanted to tell her—this is really poorly written. You always were a lousy writer. To really understand this, a person would have to read it a hundred times. Despite all this, I went ahead and tried to explain what was in the letter.

  “Mainly what she says is that she’s a very philosophical type of person and living exhausted her. There were things that make her and the world incompatible. And she said that as her friend I’m the only one who can understand this, so I shouldn’t show it to anybody else.”

  “Was it studying for entrance exams that did it?” Terauchi’s mother asked.

  “Maybe. I’m not really sure.”

  “I understand. This must come as such a shock to you, too, Toshiko. Asking you this must upset you.”

  Terauchi’s mother gave a quick smile. I couldn’t imagine what the problems between her and Terauchi had been, but the smile told me that she understood her daughter’s feelings.

  “Kazuko said this to me,” her mother said. “When she heard about Miss Higashiyama’s accident she said, ‘It’s all your fault.’ I don’t know what she meant by that.”

  I found that part of Terauchi’s letter. It’s too embarrassing to write down. So you were too embarrassed to even tell me. My mother shook my shoulder.

  “Please show her the letter, Toshiko. Kazuko asked you not to, but her parents have the right to see it. It might be addressed to you, but I don’t see how you can keep it to yourself.”

  The right. I wonder about that. It’s addressed to me, so doesn’t that mean it’s just mine? My brain wouldn’t function and I just stood there, my mother shaking me. No matter how much she shook me, I still clung tightly to Terauchi’s letter. She’d said things about her mother and how turning in Worm and Kirarin to the police made her want to die. The last thing I wanted was for anybody to learn about that. Especially her mother.

  “It’s okay,” Terauchi’s father said, interrupting. “No need to force yourself to show it to us. If those were Kazuko’s final wishes then we should respect them. Because I think she’s still out there, watching us.”

  At this we all turned to look at the white wood coffin. She’s definitely smiling inside there, I thought, her shattered face grinning. I thought of her pleasant features. When I thought that I’d never see that face again, talking to her just this morning seemed like an illusion. Reality started to fade away.

  “Terauchi!! You idiot!!”

  A voice shouted from behind us. It was Yuzan, shoulders squared, dressed in her usual T-shirt and work pants. The instant she saw the coffin, she collapsed on the floor in tears.

  “How could this happen? Tell me! They said Kirarin’s dead, too. What am I going to do?”

  You got that right, I thought. What am I going to do, too? I’d never been so confused in my life. I noticed that Yuzan, who usually referred to herself by the rough masculine word ore, had switched now to the feminine atashi. It was weird, but a strangely calm part of me could notice something like that. Next I had to go over to Kirarin’s house in Chofu. I was sure I couldn’t see her face either. The two of them had both been crushed. Completely disintegrated, the two of them. Why? I still couldn’t comprehend that all these things had happened. Am I to blame for all this? Did it all happen because I didn’t report Worm to the police? Thoughts kept swirling round and round in my head. Worm used my cell phone to call the three of us, Yuzan lent him a bike, Kirarin thought it’d be fun, so she went to see him, and Terauchi reported them to the police. This is crazy. Wasn’t there an anime movie like this? Rinbu/Rondo or something? Kind of out-of-date, I guess. I started to feel faint, but unlike in a movie, I didn’t lose consciousness. My head was, in a strange way, totally clear.

  * * *

  Everything about the