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  Pretty soon I was getting all hot and bothered not just by the nighttime goings-on but thinking about what the woman next door was doing during the day, when her husband was gone and she was alone. Maybe she was getting off by herself? I’d love to see that, I thought. One day I skipped out on school and while Mom was out shopping I went out on the veranda and peeked around the partition. The curtains were closed, though, and I couldn’t see anything. I was disappointed, but just then I noticed that she’d hung out her laundry to dry. Her tiny panties were all hanging from a round little dryer hanger. They were so pretty I reached out to try to touch them. I couldn’t quite reach them, so I went back inside and brought out a dust mop. But I still couldn’t get them. My arms got tired, and just when I was taking a break, a piece of thread wafted down from above. I looked up and two floors above us a lady was airing out her futons. She was a friend of my old lady’s, I’m sure, someone she got to know through the co-op. Unconcerned, the woman went on beating her futon. Damn. I went back inside.

  That night my old lady came up to me with this scary look on her face.

  “What in the world were you up to during the day? Tell me.”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “You were trying to get something from next door, weren’t you?”

  “No, I wasn’t. I dropped an exam answer sheet and was just trying to pick it up.”

  My mom thought about this for a minute. I thought I’d conned her, but she shook her head.

  “You should have just knocked on their door. I’ll do that right now.”

  “No way!” I yelled, but off she went. I waited thirty minutes, then an hour, and she didn’t come back. I was getting worried. Finally she came back, her eyes all red and puffy from crying.

  “We can’t live here anymore,” she said.

  What was going on? I didn’t do anything that bad. I stayed silent, while Mom made a big show of crying.

  “Maybe I’ve been a bad mother. I can’t believe you’d do something like this.”

  “What did they say?”

  “The husband answered the door and said there wasn’t any exam paper around. He said that he didn’t have any proof, but it looked like you were trying to steal his wife’s panties. He said one pair was lying on the ground and it looked suspicious. What if your school found out about this? What then? The husband said they wouldn’t make a big deal out of it or anything because of your age, but I can’t stand living here anymore!

  “I can’t believe it, can’t believe it, we can’t stay here anymore,” she kept repeating, crying hysterically. The upshot was we left there soon after and moved here. In the beginning, after we moved, Mom seemed to have forgotten all that had happened and was happy. The nearby supermarket made her ecstatic: “They have my favorite salad dressing there!” she’d say. “And can you believe it—they carry pie sheets! It’s a much higher class of customers here.” When she found out that Toshi lived next door, though, she gradually grew more cautious.

  “You can’t see her room from yours, can you, Ryo?” she asked. How stupid can you get, I thought. You’re the one who decided this would be my room! I didn’t bother answering. And then there was this whole new incident with Toshi in the bath. You understand how disgusted I was with my mom? She was constantly smothering me. When I was in the bath myself, for instance, she’d be hovering outside next to the sink and I couldn’t even come out when I finished. God, I hate her!

  * * *

  On the fateful day, I slept until eleven, with the AC on full blast. Just about the time when my old lady would come and try to get me up. But I was ready for her. The desire to kill her hadn’t wavered since the day before. I got out of bed and grabbed my aluminum bat. I had on an old T-shirt instead of pajamas, in case there was a lot of blood. And a pair of boxers. I thought about doing it naked, but that would look stupid. I heard someone coming upstairs, noisier than usual. The old lady must be pissed about something again. Excellent. She knocked on my door and opened it.

  “Are you going to sleep all day?” she complained.

  She stopped, surprised at how chilly my room was. As I raised the bat I shouted out and she looked up at my hands. She shouted, too—“Stop it!” she yelled.

  I swung the bat down and she leaped back out the door. Strike one. The bat slammed against the top of my bookshelf, banging off the pile of manga on top and shattering the lightbulb in the lamp next to my desk. The old lady scrambled down the stairs. Hey—you’re not bad, I thought. She was pretty damn fast. I slowly came out of my room and came down after her. When she saw that I still had the bat in my hands, she dropped the phone she was holding. I placed it neatly back where it belonged and grabbed her hair. She struggled and finally broke free. I slammed the bat against the back of her head. It made a solid crunch but wasn’t a direct hit. Foul ball. Blood dripping down her head, she staggered over to the bathroom. Probably thought she could lock herself inside. I raced after her and whacked her again on the back of her head. Smush! Sounded good, but it was still a bit off center. Another foul ball. Blood splattered out on my face. The old lady fell forward, head over heels, and collapsed, shattering the glass door to the bathroom. She was still alive. Her hair was matted with blood as she crawled toward the kitchen.

  “You’ll…be a criminal…” she moaned.

  “I know. And I don’t give a shit.”

  She nodded, but I could see the blood drain out of her face. It looked like she was dead. So the last one wasn’t a foul ball after all, but a clean hit. Finally, the woman who gave birth to me, raised me, ordered me around, yelled at me, turned me into a sex maniac, who complained all the time, was dead. And I’m the one who killed her. I suddenly felt light and airy, like a balloon. Puffy. Swollen. I tossed the bat aside and sank down, exhausted, to the floor.

  * * *

  From the grass I could hear the low electric buzzing of some insects. Something must be up with my brain, I thought. Maybe something’s seriously wrong with me. I don’t feel even a bit of guilt. Holding my head, I stood up. The handles of the bike must be burning hot ’cause of the sun. This random thought was cruising through my head when the cell phone rang. It had to be Toshi.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hi, my name’s Kirari Higashiyama. We talked before.”

  She had a high, clear voice. Different from Toshi’s calm voice, or Yuzan’s attempts to talk like a guy. Or that girl Terauchi with her gloomy voice. It made me happy.

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “Yuzan told me the number. So what are you doing now?”

  “Just thinking, I guess. Or daydreaming. About all kinds of things.”

  “Really? Hey, are the police after you, or can we talk for a while?”

  She sounded sympathetic. This girl didn’t seem like she’d be much of a bother. An image came to me of the woman who lived next door in our old apartment building. If this girl was like her, that’d be cool.

  “I don’t know. Hey, babe, how ’bout we—?”

  “Everybody calls me Kirarin.”

  Kirarin. I was too embarrassed to call her that silly name.

  “Could we meet?” I asked.

  “Are you sure?”

  She hesitated, but I could tell she was curious. Maybe I really had become these girls’ hero. Happy and excited, I wiped the sweat off my forehead.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  KIRARIN

  Could we meet?”

  Worm sounded just like the guys I meet through text messaging when they phone me. Kind of fawning and brazen, like they know exactly what I want. Like all they’re thinking about is getting it on.

  “Are you sure?” I asked him hesitantly, but I was disappointed as usual. Hmm…so even a pumped-up young mother-killer like Worm wants to hit on girls. I’d been hoping he’d have a bit more backbone than that. Yet unconsciously my fingers started moving like I was typing out a text message. Sure, I want to meet you, too. I’m all by myself today and kind of lonely. A total lie.

  I’ve only r