I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like (20 page)

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I think they went out to get some air, Daichi said.

Chris went outside and looked over the railing at the street below. It was not overly crowded, and he made out two figures that he recognized as Norika and Takeshi walking towards an intersection. He dashed down the two flights of stairs to street level and hurried after them. He knew this area well and had some idea of where they were going.

A wind had picked up, but other than that the night was not excessively cold. Takeshi and Norika were walking slowly, and he caught up to them easily enough. He could have made his presence known, but something held him back. Instead he followed them from a distance, not looking directly ahead in case either of them turned around. As he had expected, they turned off at the intersection and began walking down the path that led to the public park bordering the Kanda River.

When they crossed into the park grounds, Norika slowed down and leaned against Takeshi’s shoulder, and he placed his arm around her. A row of cherry trees bordered the river, and benches had been placed beneath them at spaced intervals. Moonlight filtered through the bare branches and fell on the surface of the river. The electric lights of houses and an all-night bar flickered on the other side of the water, but here only the faint glow of a vending machine stood out against the darkness covering the main expanse of the park. The closest building was a public restroom, and Chris hid behind its wall, watching as Takeshi led Norika into the darkness beneath the cherry trees.

A breeze passed through the branches. Norika and Takeshi’s heads moved together, and then she raised her arms in the air as he pulled off her shirt. Chris caught a glimpse of her pale, flattened breasts as Takeshi’s head moved down to them. Norika’s gaze strayed in his direction, but she didn’t see him, and in fact seemed to be looking at nothing, her eyes unfocused. After a few moments they closed. Takeshi unbuttoned her pants and slipped them down to her feet.

All he had to do was call out and he could disrupt the situation, could prevent Takeshi from doing anything to her. But he felt incapable of movement. Everything seemed to be unfolding before him like a dream, and he could do nothing but watch. A sense of impossibility filled him. How had this ridiculous old man taken her from him?

A strange feeling came over him. Even as he watched the figures beneath the trees drop to the ground, obscuring his vision so that he could see only the back of Takeshi’s head and the awkward splay of Norika’s legs, he did not feel like a mere observer. Instead it seemed as if he himself was Takeshi and, in a sense, Norika. He felt as if he were moving inside Norika, and then he felt his own movements echoing through her body, carried back to him in the faint tremor of her hands, in her tightly shut eyes and open mouth. But how was it possible to be in two places at once?

At once he understood. Norika’s youth and beauty had absorbed the old man’s absurdity and ugliness, and from this collision of extremes, a peaceful neutrality fell over his thoughts like thick, artificial snow. His desires no longer pressed him, but neither did he feel that he had failed. If this could happen then so could anything else; he did not always need to win or lose.

A bird sounded in the darkness. For a long time he did not move. He looked at the trees and the pale outline of Norika’s face. He felt that he was involved in life.

I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like Etc.

Ayano and Ayako grew up in a family of strict vegetarians. From an early age they were fed on whole-grain bread, white and brown rice, pickles, tofu, fresh fruits, soy cheese, dairy-free ice cream and egg-free pasta, mixed salads and nutritional yeast. Their mother sent them to school with lunchboxes containing vegetable soup, rice balls, cheese sandwiches, pretzels, popcorn and granola bars. The young girls were instructed that their diet was not only for the benefit of their health, but also a moral response to the corrupt and wasteful industries that sustained most food production. But since they had no other experience to compare with, this rhetoric was mostly lost on them, and they accepted their diet as they accepted most everything their parents taught them.

Not that they were obedient to a fault — as long as they made a show of politeness and consistency, they were left to do as they pleased; their parents had little reason to discipline them excessively. Ayano was a diligent student, and Ayako was a kind girl, quiet and softhearted. Whenever a relative or a friend of their parents’ came to visit, they always remarked on the girls’ excellent manners.

But they were both ugly, that much was agreed. Ayano was thin and pustular, too tall for her age, with tiny eyes and a flattened nose. Ayako was soft, squat and shapeless, her crooked teeth unimproved by braces. Their mother was beautiful, but neither of them looked anything like her, and their father, a policeman, had wanted sons. He regarded his daughters as being no different from his chair, or desk, or bed: something he expected to find when he came home, but not anything worth troubling himself over. At school the girls had few friends, preferring to spend their time with each other. As children they had made up stories and songs and imaginary countries to play in, and this closeness persisted as they approached the end of high school: they often wore matching clothes; they sometimes held hands as they walked; until a few years ago they’d slept in the same bed. But their peculiarities weren’t enough to draw the attention of their classmates: since the sisters were quiet and unathletic, they were mostly ignored. And this, for the most part, suited them fine.

Ayano had not yet decided what she would do after graduation, and the question had been preoccupying her for some time. She was approaching the end of her third year, and most of her classmates were already preparing for university. She had a vague idea that she would like to study medicine, but it was only that this seemed slightly more interesting than business, or law, or anything else. At the moment, though, all she could think about was the next test, the next assignment, what she would do on the weekend. Graduation seemed distant, but at certain moments she became aware of time moving past, and it seemed to her that at some point the future would arrive suddenly, leaving her stranded and unprepared.

Today she had been sitting in History with Mr. Fukuda, listening to Ryoko Iwasaki and Yuka Morinaga talking behind her. Fukuda was in the process of handing back their tests from the week before, and as Ayano looked at the slashes of red pen across the front of the approaching paper she knew she had failed before she even saw the grade. In part she had expected it: the test had been culled from months of previous material that she hadn’t bothered to review. Usually she kept on top of things, but in History she had allowed the material to accumulate without keeping track of it. When the paper landed on her desk she glanced at the grade once and turned it over without looking at the questions.

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Are you coming on Friday? Ryoko asked Yuka behind her. We’re meeting in Ikebukuro at eight.

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Yeah, I’ll be there, Yuka said.

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Oh, and Akiko and Masuda are coming too. She showed me this necklace he got her the other day, it’s way better than anything Shun got her.

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She’s so lucky, Yuka said.

Ayano turned around.

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Is Akiko going out with Masuda?

Ryoko pretended not to have heard her, and Ayano repeated the question. Finally she turned and answered, her voice strained with contempt.

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Yeah, for the past month.

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But they don’t even have anything in common.

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What would you know about it anyway?

Ayano turned around and looked at the test in front of her. She tried to pay attention as Fukuda droned through a list of common mistakes, but all she could think of was Naoki Masuda giving a necklace to Akiko Mitsui. She knew it was probably plain, little more than a trinket, but in her mind it became a diamond necklace, enormous and glittering, resting imperiously on Akiko’s throat.

And why shouldn’t they be going out? a voice in her head said. Why shouldn’t he give her a necklace? What would you know about it anyway?

A weight settled over her limbs. She remembered the first time she’d seen Masuda, when she was still a first-year: he sat two seats in front of her in math, and she spent the entire first class peering forward, pretending to be looking at the blackboard but actually staring at the back of his neck, at the base of his broad shoulders. Within a week she knew a little more about him: he was a baseball player; he lived in Saitama; he had a high-pitched, unrestrained laugh. She tended these pieces of information like entries in a scrapbook, and whenever she was bored or sad or alone she took them out and went through them, turning them over in her mind. And over time, without her even noticing, Masuda’s presence became her only reason to continue whenever she felt unmotivated — there was always the chance that he would notice her, always the chance that he would talk to her, and so it was inconceivable to miss a single day of school. She always had Ayako to keep her company, but this was different — nothing solid, nothing she could explain definitely, but something with her at all times, at the back of her mind. And because her own feelings couldn’t be articulated, she never said a word about them to anyone, not even her sister. She had always been good at keeping secrets.

The class finished. She shoved the test under the cover of her notebook and followed her classmates into the hall, careful to stay out of everyone’s way. Ayano had four classes left until the end of the day, but she already knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate. She realized this was absurd — she had no claim of ownership over Masuda, had barely even spoken to him. And the test, she told herself, was not important in the long run; her earlier scores were high enough that it would scarcely dent her average. There was no reason for her to care excessively about either of these things, but in her mind she found herself bouncing from one to the other, and each made her feel worse. On a normal day she would have turned to her sister for comfort, but today Ayako was home with a cold. And she couldn’t return home immediately either — her mother had asked her to pick up groceries. She would have to detour on her way back, taking a later train than usual. But for now she would keep her head down, take notes mechanically and hope the teachers ignored her.

At 3:30 she walked to the main gate, following the crowd of students. She caught the bus and took a seat near the back. Some of her classmates took seats in front of her and she avoided meeting their eyes. As the bus took off she sent Ayako a text message and leaned against the window, watching the winter sun as it moved behind a patch of clouds. It was still only mid-afternoon, but already dusk was falling. Further off, more clouds blurred the edges of distant buildings. She turned from the window and placed her phone back in her bag. Then she sat up rigidly, her hands folded in front of her.

For the first time in as long as she could remember she felt that she hated someone. Her hatred was stupid, she knew, only envy really; but in her mind Akiko Mitsui seemed changed into a symbol of all that was coarse and common and wrong. She didn’t blame Masuda — he, for his part, seemed innocent in all this, even though he’d bought the necklace — since she knew it was all Akiko’s fault somehow. And what made her hatred stronger was not any extraordinary quality in Akiko; instead it was that she didn’t seem extraordinary enough
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If Masuda had chosen a girl Ayano couldn’t hope to compete with — Hisae Sato with her perfect hair, or Haruna Yamamoto, who had done modelling — then she could have accepted it more easily. But Akiko was not someone who usually drew attention. She was one of the normal girls, someone Ayano had been on good enough terms with, if not quite friends. She was not especially beautiful or talented or intelligent. If anything, her friends overshadowed her.

But maybe Akiko really was an extraordinary person — maybe Masuda had seen something in her that Ayano hadn’t. Or — what if he wasn’t serious about the relationship? Each line of thought threw up more questions than the last, and as she stepped off the bus Ayano found herself unable to think of anything else. She made her way to Seiyu without paying attention to the streets, letting her feet direct her along the route she’d taken countless times. Her parents usually shopped at organic food specialty stores, but today most everything on the list was easily obtainable: pickled cabbage, crackers, rice, miso soup. Ayano knew the layout of the store by heart, but still she shopped slowly, browsing the aisles, occasionally picking up an item — red bean paste, curry bread, a packet of biscuits — inspecting it, then placing it back on the shelf.

She stopped in front of the frozen meat section. Ahead of her, a young mother was pushing along a baby in a stroller, and as she came closer Ayano saw that she was beautiful. Her hair, pulled back in a ponytail, was dyed a chestnut brown, matching her lightly tanned skin. High cheekbones added to the effect of her thin, delicate lips, while her minimal makeup highlighted a perfectly clear complexion. At the moment she was comparing prices on packets of mince-meat, taking them down from the shelf and weighing them in her hand. Next to her, the baby sat up in the stroller, its eyes fixed on its mother’s movements.

Ayano moved to the side, taking in the woman’s profile. She would never be able to look like that, she thought — like this woman, probably only five years older than herself. She thought back to all the time she’d spent balancing her diet, monitoring her intake of calories, saving her money for skin care products. All of it had amounted to nothing — she was still too tall, too thin, her cheeks pocked and pale. The realization came as a sudden paralysis, and she continued to stare in the woman’s direction long after she had chosen her mince and moved on. What was the point of being healthy if you never looked any better, if your breasts never filled out, your hips never widened, skin never cleared? Then she thought of beautiful girls in her class who always ate hamburgers, ice cream sundaes, enormous bowls of curry rice. Probably the woman was someone like them — someone who never gave any thought to what she ate, and worse, didn’t need to.