Malice (19 page)

“Actually, I have faith you'll come around.” I could tell from his voice that he thought he'd already won. My defenses were shattered. “I'll call again soon,” he said, and hung up.

For the next several weeks I drifted around like a ghost. A ghost
writer
. I had no idea what I was going to do. I went through the motions of going to work, yet teaching was the furthest thing from my mind. Some of the students must've complained because the headmaster called me into his office and chewed me out.

Then, one day in a bookshop, I found it: a blurb in a literary magazine about the new novel from Kunihiko Hidaka, his first since
An Unburning Flame
.

Unable to stop my hands from shaking, I found the book on display and quickly skimmed it. I felt dizzy; I almost collapsed right there in the bookshop. It was as I'd feared. The novel was heavily based on the second book I'd given Hidaka to read.

My whole world was spiraling out of control. I spent weeks chastising myself for my stupidity on the night of the attempted murder. Again, I thought about running away somewhere and disappearing. Yet I lacked the spine. If I wanted to escape Hidaka altogether, I'd have to go far away and not register my new address. That would mean I wouldn't be able to work as a teacher. How would I live? I wasn't in good enough health for physical labor. Never had I felt my own lack of value to society more acutely than I did then. In any case, I couldn't bring myself to leave Hatsumi behind. I imagined her suffering in that house, by his side, and it agonized me.

Hidaka's new novel quickly hit the shelves in paperback and seemed to be selling well. Every time I saw it on the bestseller lists, I felt divided, because somewhere in that ocean of regret inside of me bobbed a tiny acorn of pride. Indeed, when I looked at the situation as objectively as possible, a cold, analytical part of me had to admit that, had I published the book under my own name, it probably wouldn't have sold.

Several more weeks passed until, one Sunday, Hidaka returned. He walked into my apartment as though nothing were the matter and sat down on my sofa.

“As promised,” he announced, placing an envelope on the table. I picked it up and looked at it, finding it was stuffed with bills. “That's two million yen. That's almost a year's salary for some people.”

“What's this for?”

“I told you, if the book sold, I'd give you your cut. That's a quarter of the royalties, as promised.”

I looked inside the envelope again and shook my head. “I told you I wasn't going to sell my soul.”

“Don't be so dramatic. Just think of what we're doing as a collaboration. It's not uncommon to collaborate on a novel these days, and you have a right to be paid for your work.”

“This isn't collaboration.” I stared at Hidaka. “This is rape. You're having your way with me, and then you're trying to pay me off like I was a prostitute.”

“How vulgar. And untrue.”

“Is it?”

“No one being raped sits still. But you did.”

To my shame, I couldn't think of a retort. “Regardless,” I said with great effort, “I can't accept this money.” I pushed the envelope back toward him.

He looked down at it, but made no move to pick it up. It remained sitting on the table.

“Actually, what I really wanted to talk about was what comes next.”

“Tell me then, what does come next?” I said with as much sarcastic faux enthusiasm as I could muster.

“Our next novel. I'm supposed to be writing a serialized story for a monthly magazine. I was hoping we could toss around some ideas.”

He said it as though I'd agreed to his terms and to be his ghostwriter.

I shook my head. “You're a writer. You should understand. How am I supposed to think up any kind of story in my current mental state—let alone a good one! You can't force it. It's physically and mentally impossible.”

But he didn't back down. Instead, he said something unexpected. “Of course I don't expect you to sit down right now and write something. But surely you could go find something you've already written? That wouldn't be so hard.”

“I don't have anything else written. You've already seen everything.”

“Don't be coy with me. What about that stuff you wrote for the school magazine?”

“What, that?” I said, truly surprised. “I don't have any of those anymore.”

“Bull.”

“It's the truth. I got rid of them a long time ago.”

“See, I don't believe you. Writers always hang on to their drafts and stories. If you insist, I'd be happy to search your house for them. I'm sure it won't take long. You've probably got them all stashed on a bookshelf or in a desk drawer.” He stood and went into the next room.

I panicked. All of my early stories were in spiral-bound notebooks on my bookshelf.

“Wait a second,” I called out. “It won't do you any good. I wrote those stories when I was a student. The writing's a mess, the plot structure is all over the place. They're certainly not the work of an adult writer.”

“Let me decide that for myself. Besides, I'm not looking for finished works. Just some raw material that I can polish into a salable product. After all,
An Unburning Flame
wouldn't have been one for the literary history books if I hadn't given it my touch.”

I couldn't understand how he could be so proud about stealing my work.

I told him to wait on the sofa and went into the next room. Eight of my old notebooks were on the top shelf in my office. I chose one. At that very moment, Hidaka entered the room behind me.

“I told you to wait.”

Without a word, he stepped up, snatched the notebook out of my hand, and quickly leafed through the pages. Then he glanced over at the bookshelf and quickly grabbed the remaining notebooks.

“Trying to trick me, were you?” He grinned. “You picked the notebook with your rough draft of
A Circle of Fire,
didn't you? Did you think you could brush me off with that?”

I bit my lip and looked down at the floor.

“Whatever. I'll be taking these. All of them.”

“Hidaka.” I looked back up at him. “Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Has the well of your talent run so dry that you feel compelled to steal something I wrote as a student?”

I wanted my words to hurt, even if only a little. It was the best attack I could muster.

And my words did have an effect. Hidaka's eyes flashed and he grabbed me by the collar. “You have no idea what it's like to be an author!”

“You're right, I don't. But I can say this. If it means having to do what you're doing, I don't want to be an author.”

“What happened to the dream?”

“I woke up.”

He let me go. “You're probably better off for it,” he muttered under his breath, and left the room.

“Wait, you forgot something.” I picked up the envelope with the 2 million yen in it and held it out to him.

His gaze shifted between my face and the envelope for a moment; then he shrugged and took it.

His serialized novel began two or three months later. I read it, realizing it was based on one of my stories. However, by that time I suppose I'd given up—or at least, I was ready for it, because it didn't come as the same sort of shock the first two books had. I'd already given up ever becoming an author in my own right, so the thought that at least my stories were out there and being read made me glad.

I still received the occasional call from Hatsumi. In our conversations, she would disparage her husband and apologize to me. Once, she said, “If you ever decide to turn yourself in for what happened, I will gladly share whatever punishment comes.”

I realized she was telling me this because she knew Hidaka was holding our relationship over my head and she wanted to give me a way out. I almost wept with happiness. Even if we hadn't seen each other for a long time, I felt as though our hearts were still connected.

“You don't have to worry about that,” I told her. “I'll do something. I'll find a way out of this.”

“But you've already gone through so much.” I could hear her crying on the other end of the line.

I tried consoling her, but the truth is, I didn't know what I was going to do. My promise to find a way rang hollow even to my ears, and it made me miserable.

Whenever I think back on that time, I'm filled with regret. I wonder why I didn't do what she suggested. If we'd turned ourselves in, my life would be entirely different now. At the very least, I would not have lost the thing most important to me in this world.

I learned of the accident in the newspaper. Because she was the wife of a bestselling author, the article was more prominent than a typical accident report.

I don't know how deeply the police investigated, but I never heard anyone suggest that Hatsumi's death was anything other than an accident. Yet, from the first moment, I knew that it wasn't. She took her own life. I need hardly say why.

In a sense, I killed her. If I hadn't gone mad and tried to kill Hidaka, none of this would have come to pass.

Call it nihilism, but at the time I was barely alive. I was just going through the motions, an empty shell. I didn't even have the strength to follow Hatsumi into death. I fell ill and was frequently absent from work. Hidaka, however, kept writing. In addition to the novels he wrote using my work as a basis, he also turned out a few originals. I never bothered to find out which of the novels received more praise.

Roughly half a year after Hatsumi's death, I received a package in the mail. The large envelope contained about thirty printed pages. I thought it might be a story, yet when I started reading it, I realized it was something far more sinister. It appeared to be a journal written by Hatsumi, woven together with an account by Hidaka. The journal section described Hatsumi's falling into a special relationship with a man she called N (myself), with whom she eventually conspired to kill her husband. Hidaka's account described in unemotional terms the sorrow of a husband who comes to realize his wife has stopped loving him. Then came the attempted murder. Up to that point, I believe everything was more or less the truth, but what followed was clearly fiction, merely invention. Hatsumi was portrayed as deeply regretting her mistake and begging for forgiveness. Hidaka, in turn, spends long hours talking with her, and together they decide to try again. Just when things are looking up for the couple, Hatsumi has an unfortunate accident. The story ended with her funeral. As a piece of fiction, it wasn't bad. For some readers, it might even have been moving.

I was speechless, and confused. What was I supposed to make of this?

That night, Hidaka called. “You read it?”

“What's this all about? Why did you write this?”

“I was thinking of giving it to my editor next week. It'll probably appear in the magazine next month.”

“Are you crazy? Do you know what this would do?”

“I have a pretty good idea,” he said, utterly calm.

“If you write that, I'm telling the truth.”

“What truth is that?”

“You know as well as I do. That you stole my work.”

“Did I now?” he said, entirely unfazed. “And who would believe that? You don't have any proof, do you?”

“Proof?” I gasped. How would I prove he had stolen my work when he had my notebooks? I had copies of my two novels—the ones he'd plagiarized—on my word processor, but what would that prove? That was when I realized that the death of Hatsumi meant the death of the only witness to all that had happened between Hidaka and me.

“Of course, if now doesn't work for you, I don't have to give that story to my editor tomorrow. I could always wait for a better time.” I got what he was aiming at before he actually said it. “Fifty pages. Give me a story fifty pages long, and I'll turn that over to my editor instead.”

This, then, was his plan. To create a situation in which I'd be forced to write for him. And I had no way to resist. I couldn't let him publish those journal entries. For the sake of Hatsumi's memory, I couldn't.

“When do you need it by?” I asked, my voice flat.

“Next weekend.”

“This is the last time?” It was only half a question at best, and he didn't even bother to respond.

“Let me know when you're done.” He hung up.

That was the day that I became Kunihiko Hidaka's ghostwriter. Since then, I've written seventeen short stories and three novels for him. These were the computer files the police found.

I'm sure if he's reading this, Detective Kaga must be wondering why I didn't put up more of a fight. To be honest, I'd grown weary of the constant psychological warfare between Hidaka and me. It seemed easier to just write what he needed and, by doing so, keep my past with Hatsumi private.

Oddly enough, over the next two or three years, the relationship between Hidaka and me developed into that of genuine collaborators. He introduced me to a publisher of children's literature because he had no interest in the genre. He also probably felt a little guilty by then. Finally, one day, he said the words I'd been waiting to hear.

“Once this next novel's done, you're free to go. Our working relationship is over.”

I couldn't believe my ears. “Really?”

“Really. But I only want you writing books for kids. Stay out of my territory. Understood?”

I thought I was dreaming. One last book and I would be free.

A short while later, I understood the reason behind Hidaka's change of heart. His marriage to Rie was in the works and they were considering moving to Vancouver. In packing up his things, Hidaka clearly wanted to jettison some of his other baggage as well.

I believe I was looking forward to the day the newlyweds moved to Vancouver even more than they were.

Then the day arrived. Bringing a disk with the next installment of
The Gates of Ice
on it, I headed to Hidaka's house. This would be the last time I handed him a computer file. Since I didn't have a computer, after he moved to Canada I would have to send the rest of the manuscript by fax. Once
The Gates of Ice
was done, so were we.