Ring (10 page)

October 12
-
Friday

"First let's have a look at this video."

Ryuji Takayama grinned as he spoke. They sat on the second floor of a coffee shop near Roppongi Crossing. Friday, October 12th, 7:20 p.m. Almost twenty-four hours had passed since Asakawa had watched the video. He'd chosen to have this meeting on a Friday night in Roppongi, the city's premier entertainment district, in the hopes that, surrounded by the gay voices of girls, his dread would dissipate. It didn't seem to be working. The more he talked about it, the more vividly the events of the previous night replayed themselves in his mind. The terror only increased. He even thought he sensed, fleetingly, a shadow lurking somewhere within his body that possessed him.

Ryuji's dress shirt was buttoned all the way up to the top, and his tie seemed rather tight, but he made no move to loosen it. As a result, the skin of his neck above his collar was slightly swollen-just looking at it was uncomfortable. Then there were his angular features. Even his smile would have struck your average person as being somehow nasty.

Ryuji took an ice cube from his glass and popped it into his mouth.

"Weren't you listening to what I just said?" hissed Asakawa. "I told you, it's dangerous."

"Then what did you bring this to me for? You want my help, don't you?" Still smiling, he crunched the ice cube loudly between his teeth.

"There're still ways for you to help without watching it."

Ryuji hung his head sulkily, but a faint grin still played over his features.

Asakawa was suddenly seized with anger and raised his voice hysterically. "You don't believe me, do you? You don't believe a thing I've been telling you!" There was no other way for him to interpret Ryuji's expression.

For Asakawa himself, watching the video had been like unsuspectingly opening a letter-bomb. It was the first time in his life he'd experienced such terror. And it wasn't over. Six more days. Fear tightened softly around his neck like a silken noose. Death awaited him. And this joker actually
wanted
to watch the video.

"You don't have to make a scene. So I'm not scared-do you have a problem with that? Listen, Asakawa, I've told you before: I'm the kind of guy who'd get front-row seats for the end of the world if he could. I want to know how the world is put together, its beginning and its end, all its riddles, great and small. If someone offered to explain them all to me, I'd gladly trade my life for the knowledge. You even immortalized me in print. I'm sure you recall."

Of course Asakawa remembered it. That's exactly why he'd opened up to Ryuji and told him everything.

It had been Asakawa who first dreamed up the feature. Two years ago, when he was thirty, he had begun to wonder what other young Japanese people his age were really thinking- what dreams they had in life. The idea was to pick out several thirty-year-olds, people active in all walks of life-from a MITI bureaucrat and a Tokyo city councilman to a guy working for a top trading firm to regular, average Joes-and summarize each one, from the sort of general data every reader would want to know to their more unique aspects. By doing this regularly, in a carefully limited area of newsprint, he would try to analyze what it meant to be thirty in contemporary Japan. And just by chance, among the ten to twenty names that had surfaced as candidates for this kind of treatment, Asakawa encountered an old high school classmate, Ryuji Takayama. His official position was listed as Adjunct Lecturer in Philosophy at Fukuzawa University, one of the nation's top private schools. Asakawa found this puzzling, as he recalled Ryuji going on to medical school. Asakawa himself had done the groundwork, and had listed "scholar" as one of the vocations to be included in his survey, but Ryuji was far too much of an individual to be a fair representative of thirty-year-old budding scholars as a whole. His personality had been hard to get a handle on in high school, and with the added polishing of the intervening years it seemed it had only become more slippery. Upon finishing medical school, he had enrolled in a graduate philosophy program, completing his PhD the year of the survey. He undoubtedly would have been snapped up for the first available assistant professorship if it weren't for the unfortunate fact that there were older students in the pipeline ahead of him, and positions were awarded strictly on the basis of seniority. So he took the part-time lecturer's job and ended up teaching two classes a week on logic at his alma mater.

These days, philosophy as a field of inquiry had drawn ever closer to science. No longer did it mean amusing oneself with silly questions such as how man should live. Specializing in philosophy meant, basically, doing math without the numbers. In ancient Greece, too, philosophers doubled as mathematicians. Ryuji was like that: the philosophy department signed his pay checks, but his brain was wired like a scientist's. On the other hand, in addition to his specialized professional knowledge, he also knew an extraordinary amount about paranormal psychology. Asakawa saw this as a contradiction. He considered paranormal psychology, the study of the supernatural and the occult, to be in direct opposition to science. Ryuji's answer:
Au contraire. Paranormal psychology is one of the keys to unlocking the structure of the universe.
It had been a hot day in the middle of summer, but just like today he'd been wearing a striped long-sleeved dress shirt with the top button buttoned tightly.
I
want to be there when humanity is wiped out,
Ryuji had said, sweat gleaming on his overheated face.
All those idiots who prattle on about world peace and the survival of humanity make me puke.

Asakawa's survey had included questions like this:

Tell me about your dreams for the future.

Calmly, Ryuji had replied: "While viewing the extinction of the human race from the top of a hill, I would dig a hole in the earth and ejaculate into it over and over."

Asakawa had pressed him: "Hey, are you sure it's okay for me to write that down?"

Ryuji had smiled faintly, just like he was doing now, and nodded.

"Like I said, I'm not afraid of anything." After saying this, Ryuji leaned over and brought his face close to Asakawa's.

"I did another one last night."

Again?

This made the third victim Asakawa knew about. He'd learned of the first one in their junior year in high school. Both of them had lived in Tama Ward in Kawasaki, an industrial city wedged between Tokyo and Yokohama, and commuted to a prefectural high school. Asakawa used to get to school an hour before classes started every morning and preview the day's lessons in the crisp dawn. Aside from the janitors, he was always the first one there. By contrast, Ryuji hardly ever made it to first period. He was what was known as habitually tardy. But one morning right after the end of summer vacation, Asakawa went to school early as usual and found Ryuji there, sitting on top of his desk as if in a daze. Asakawa spoke to him. "Hey, what's up? Didn't think I'd see you here this early." "Yeah, well," was the curt reply: Ryuji was staring out the window at the schoolyard, as if his mind were somewhere else. His eyes were bloodshot. His cheeks were red, too, and there was alcohol on his breath. They weren't that close, though, so that was as far as the conversation went. Asakawa opened his school-book and began to study. "Hey, listen, I want to ask you a favour…" said Ryuji, slapping him on the shoulder. Ryuji was highly individualistic, got good grades, and was a track star as well. Everybody at school kept one eye on him. Asakawa, meanwhile, was thoroughly unremarkable. Having someone like Ryuji ask him a favour didn't feel bad at all.

"Actually, I want you to call my house for me," said Ryuji, laying his arm on Asakawa's shoulders in an overly familiar manner.

"Sure. But why?"

"All you have to do is call. Call and ask for me."

Asakawa frowned. "For you? But you're right here."

"Never mind that, just do it, okay?"

So he did as he was told and dialled the number, and when Ryuji's mother answered he said, "Is Ryuji there?" while looking at Ryuji, who stood right in front of him.

"I'm sorry, Ryuji has already left for school," his mother said calmly.

"Oh, I see," Asakawa said, and hung up the phone. "There, is that good enough?" he said to Ryuji. Asakawa still didn't quite get the meaning of all this.

"Did it sound like there was anything wrong?" asked Ryuji. "Did Mom sound nervous or anything?"

"No, not particularly." Asakawa had never heard Ryuji's mother's voice before, but he didn't think she sounded especially nervous.

"No excited voices in the background or anything?"

"No. Nothing special. Nothing like that. Just, like, breakfast table sounds."

"Well, okay, then. Thanks."

"Hey, what's going on? Why did you ask me to do that?"

Ryuji looked vaguely relieved. He put his arm around Asakawa's shoulders and pulled Asakawa's face close. He put his mouth to Asakawa's ear and said, "You seem like you can keep a secret, like I can trust you. So I'll tell you. As a matter of fact, at five o'clock this morning, I raped a woman."

Asakawa was shocked speechless. The story was that at dawn that morning, around five, Ryuji had sneaked into the apartment of a college girl living alone and attacked her. As he left he threatened her that if she called the cops he wouldn't take it lying down, and then he came straight to school. As a result he was worried that the police might be at his house right about now, and so he'd asked Asakawa to call for him to check.

After that, Asakawa and Ryuji began to talk fairly often. Naturally, Asakawa never told anyone about Ryuji's crime. The following year Ryuji had come in third in the shot-put in the area high-school track and field meet, and the year after that he'd entered the medical program at Fukuzawa University. Asakawa spent that year studying to retake the entrance exam for the school of his choice, having failed the first time. The second time he succeeded, and was accepted into the literature department of a well-known university.

Asakawa knew what he really wanted. In truth, he wanted Ryuji to watch the video. Ryuji's knowledge and experience wouldn't be of much use to Asakawa if they were based only on what Asakawa was able to verbalize about the video. On the other hand, he saw that it was ethically wrong to get someone else wrapped up in this just to save his own skin. He was conflicted, but he knew if he had to weigh the two options which way the scale would tip. He wanted to maximize his own chances of survival, no question. But, still… He suddenly found himself wondering, like he always did, just why he was friends with this guy. His ten years of reporting for the newspaper had allowed him to meet countless people. But he and Ryuji could just call each other up anytime to go have a drink-Ryuji was the only one Asakawa had that kind of relationship with. Was it because they happened to have been classmates? No, he had plenty of other classmates. There was something in the depths of his heart that resonated with Ryuji's eccentricity. At that thought, Asakawa began to feel like he didn't really understand himself.

"Hey, hey. Let's get a move on. You've only got six days left, right?" Ryuji grabbed Asakawa's upper arm and squeezed it. His grip was strong. "Hurry up and show me that video. Think how lonely I'll be if you bite the dust because we dawdled."

Rhythmically squeezing Asakawa's arm with one hand, Ryuji jabbed his fork into his untouched cheesecake, shovelled it into his mouth and began to chew noisily. Ryuji had the habit of chewing with his mouth open. Asakawa felt himself beginning to feel sick at the sight of the food mixing with saliva and dissolving before his eyes. His angular features, his squat build, his bad habits. Now, while still munching away on his cheesecake, he fished more ice out of the glass with his hand and started crunching it, making even more noise.

That's when Asakawa realized that he had no one else he could rely on but this guy.

It's an evil spirit I'm dealing with, an unknown quantity. Nobody normal could deal with it. There's probably nobody but Ryuji who could watch that video and not bat an eye. Set a thief to catch a thief. There's no way around it. What do I care if Ryuji ends up dead? Someone who says he wants to watch the extinction of mankind doesn’t deserve to live a long life.

That was how Asakawa rationalized getting someone else wrapped up in this.

The two men headed for Asakawa's place in a taxi. If the streets weren't crowded it took less than twenty minutes to get from Roppongi to Kita Shinagawa. All they could see in the mirror was the driver's forehead. He maintained a resolute silence, one hand on the wheel, and didn't try to start up a conversation with his passengers. Come to think of it, this whole thing had started with a talkative cabby. If he hadn't caught a taxi that time he wouldn't have been caught up in this whole horrific mess, Asakawa thought as he recalled the events of a fortnight ago. He regretted not having bought a subway ticket and making all those transfers anyway, no matter how much of a pain in the neck they were.

"Can we make a copy of the video at your place?" asked Ryuji. Asakawa had two video decks because of his work. One was a machine he'd bought when they had first started to catch on, and it wasn't functioning as well as it could, but it did at least make copies with no problem.

"Yeah, sure."

"Okay, in that case I want you to make me a copy as soon as possible. I want to take my time and study it at my place."

He's got the guts,
thought Asakawa. And in his present state of mind, Asakawa found his words encouraging.

They decided to get out of the cab at Gotenzan Hills and walk from there. It was 8:50. There was still the possibility that his wife and kid would be awake at this hour. Shizu always gave Yoko a bath at a little before nine, and then put her to bed. She'd lie down beside the baby to help her get to sleep, and in the process would fall asleep herself. And once she went to sleep, nothing was going to get Shizu out of bed. In an effort to maximize time talking alone with her husband, Shizu used to leave messages on the table saying, "wake me up." So when he got home from work, Asakawa would follow her instructions, thinking she really meant to get up, and try to shake his wife awake. But she wouldn't wake up. He would try harder, but she would just wave her hands around her head like she was shooing a fly, frowning and making annoyed sounds. She was half awake, but the will to go back to sleep was much stronger than Asakawa was, and he eventually had to cut his losses and retreat. Eventually, note or no, Asakawa stopped trying to wake her up, and then she stopped leaving notes. By now, nine o'clock had become Shizu 'n' Yoko's inviolate sleepy time. On a night like this, though, it was actually more convenient that way.