Ring (12 page)

Here Ryuji interrupted his story. He seemed to be replaying the ensuing events agilely in the back of his mind, staring down distant memories with a mixture of tenderness and cruelty. Asakawa had never seen Ryuji look so conflicted.

"… then, two days later, on my way home from school, I passed in front of that apartment building. A two-ton truck was parked in front of it, and guys were hauling furniture and stuff out of the building. And the person moving was Yukari. She was standing around aimlessly, leaning on a wall, accompanied by a guy who looked like he must be her dad, just staring at her furniture as it was being carried away. I'm sure her dad didn't know the real reason his daughter was moving so suddenly. And so Yukari disappeared from my life. I don't know if she moved back in with her parents or got another apartment somewhere and kept going to the same college… But she just couldn't live in that apartment a second longer. Heh, heh, poor thing. She must've been awfully scared."

Asakawa found it hard to breathe as he listened. He felt disgusted even to be sitting here drinking beer with this man.

"Don't you feel the least bit guilty?"

"I'm used to it. Try slamming your fist into a brick wall every day. Eventually you won't even feel the pain anymore."

Is that why you go on doing it?
Asakawa made a silent vow never to bring this man into his home again. At any rate, to keep him away from his wife and daughter.

"Don't worry-I'd never do anything like that to your babykins."

Asakawa had been seen through. Flustered, he changed the subject.

"You said you have a premonition. What is it?"

"You know, just a bad feeling. Only some fantastically evil energy could come up with such an involved bit of mischief."

Ryuji got to his feet. Even standing, he wasn't much taller than Asakawa was when sitting down. He wasn't even five-three, but he had broad, sculpted shoulders-it wasn't hard to believe he'd medalled in shot-put in high school.

"Well, I'm off. Do your homework. In the morning, you'll be down to five days left." Ryuji extended the fingers of one hand.

"I know."

"Somewhere, there's this vortex of evil energy. I know. It makes me feel… nostalgic." As if for emphasis, Ryuji clutched his copy of the tape to his breast as he headed for the entry hall.

"Let's have the next strategy session at your place." Asakawa spoke quietly but distinctly.

"Alright, alright." Ryuji's eyes were smiling.

The moment Ryuji left, Asakawa looked at the wall clock in the dining room. A wedding gift from a friend, its butterfly-shaped red pendulum was swinging. 11:21. How many times had he checked the time today? He was becoming obsessed with the passage of time. Just like Ryuji said, in the morning he'd only have five days left. He wasn't at all sure if he'd be able to unlock the riddle of the erased part of the tape in time. He felt like a cancer patient facing an operation with a success rate of almost nil. There was debate over whether cancer patients should be told they had cancer or not; until now Asakawa had always thought they deserved to be allowed to know. But if this was how it would feel, then he preferred not knowing. There were some people who, when facing death, would burn brightly with what life they had left. Asakawa couldn't manage that feat. He was still alright for the moment. But as the clock chipped away at his remaining days, hours, minutes, he wasn't confident he'd be able to keep his wits about him. He felt like he understood, now, why he was attracted to Ryuji even while being disgusted by him. Ryuji had a psychological strength he just couldn't match. Asakawa lived his life tentatively, always worried about what people around him thought. Ryuji, meanwhile, kept a god-or a devil-chained up inside him that allowed him to live with complete freedom and abandon. The only time Asakawa felt his desire to live chase away his fear was when he thought of how his wife and daughter would feel after his death. Now he suddenly worried about them, and softly opened the bedroom door to check on them. Their faces in sleep were soft and unsuspecting. He had no time to shrink in terror. He decided to call Yoshino and explain the situation and ask for his help. If he put off until tomorrow what he could do today, he was bound to regret it.

October 13
-
Saturday

Asakawa had thought of taking the week off work, but then decided that using the company's information system to the full would give him a better chance of clearing up the mysteries of the videotape than holing up in his apartment pointlessly cowering. As a result, he went in to work, even though it was a Saturday. "Went in to work," but he knew full well that he wouldn't get any actual work done. He figured the best policy would be to confess everything to his editor and ask that he be temporarily taken off his assignments. Nothing would help more than enlisting his editor's cooperation. The problem was whether or not Oguri would believe his story. He'd probably bring up the previous incident yet again and snort. Even though he had the video as proof, if Oguri started out by denying everything, he'd have all sorts of other arguments arrayed to support his view. He'd skewer all sorts of things his way to convince himself he was right.
Still...it would be interesting,
Asakawa thought. He'd brought the video in his briefcase, just in case. How would Oguri react if he showed it to him? More to the point, though, would he even give it a glance? Last night he'd stayed up late explaining the whole sequence of events to Yoshino, and he'd believed. And then, as if to prove it, he'd said he absolutely didn't want to see the video-please don't show it to him. In exchange, he'd try to cooperate however he could. Of course, in Yoshino's case, there was a firm foundation for that belief. When Haruko Tsuji and Takehiko Nomi's corpses had been discovered in a car by a prefectural road in Ashina, Yoshino had rushed to the scene and felt the atmosphere there, the stifling atmosphere that had the investigators convinced that only something monstrous could have done this, but that kept them from saying so. If Yoshino hadn't actually been there himself, he probably wouldn't have accepted Asakawa's story quite so easily.

In any case, what Asakawa had on his hands was a bomb. If he flashed it in front of Oguri's eyes threateningly, it ought to have some effect. Asakawa was tempted to use it out of curiosity, if for nothing else.

* * *

Oguri's customary mocking smile had been wiped from his face. Both elbows were planted on his desk, and his eyes moved restlessly as he went over Asakawa's story once again with a fine-toothed comb.

Four young people almost certainly watched a particular video together at Villa Log Cabin on the night of August 29th, and exactly a week later, just as the video had predicted, they died under mysterious circumstances. Subsequently, the video had caught the eye of the cabin manager, who had brought it into the office where it calmly waited until Asakawa discovered it. Asakawa had then watched the damned thing. And now he was going to die in five days? Was he supposed to believe that? And yet those four deaths were an indisputable fact. How could he explain them? What was the logical thread to connect all this?

Asakawa's expression, as he stood looking down at Oguri, had an air of superiority that was rare for him. He knew from experience just what Oguri was thinking right about now. Asakawa waited until he thought Oguri's thought process would have reached a dead end, and then extracted the videotape from his briefcase. He did it with exaggerated dignity, theatrically, as if laying down a royal flush.

"Would you like to take a look at it? You're quite welcome to." Asakawa indicated with his eyes the TV by the sofa under the window, flashing a composed, provocative smile. He could hear Oguri swallow loudly. Oguri didn't even glance in the direction of the window; his eyes were fixed on the jet-black videotape that had been placed on his desk. He was honestly trying to decide what to do.

If you want to watch it, you could just press play. It's that easy. C'mon, you can do it. Just laugh like you always do and say how stupid it is, and shove it in the video deck. Do it, give it a shot.
Oguri's mind was trying to issue the command to his body.
Stop being such an idiot and watch it. If you watch it, doesn't it show that you don't believe Asakawa? Which means, right, think about it now, it means if you refuse to watch it, you must believe this cock-and-bull story. So watch it already. You believe in modern science, don't you? You're not a kid afraid of ghosts.

In fact, Oguri was 99% sure that he didn't believe Asakawa. But still, way back in a corner of his mind, there was that
what if
What if it were true? Maybe there were some niches in this world that modern science couldn't reach yet. And as long as there was that risk, no matter how hard his mind worked, his body was going to refuse. So Oguri sat in his chair and didn't move. He
couldn't
move. It didn't matter what his mind understood: his body wasn't listening to his mind. As long as there was the possibility of danger, his body would keep loyally activating his instincts for self-preservation. Oguri raised his head and said, in a parched voice:

"So, what is it you want from me?"

Asakawa knew he had won. "I'd like you to relieve me of my assignments. I want to make a thorough investigation of this video. Please. I think you realize my life is on the line here."

Oguri shut his eyes tightly. "Are you going to get an article out of it?"

"Well, regardless of how I may appear to you, I'm still a reporter. I'll write down my findings so everything isn't buried with Ryuji Takayama and myself. Of course, whether or not to print them is something I'll leave up to you."

Oguri gave two decisive nods. "Well, it can't hurt. I guess I'll have a cub take your feature interview."

Asakawa bowed slightly. He went to return the video to his briefcase, but couldn't resist the temptation to have a little more fun. He proffered the tape to Oguri once again, saying, "You believe me, don't you?"

Oguri gave a long sigh and shook his head. It wasn't that he believed or disbelieved; he just felt a tinge of uneasiness. Yeah, that was it.

"I feel the same way," were Asakawa's parting words. Oguri watched him walk out and told himself that if Asakawa was still alive after October 18th, then he'd watch that video with his own eyes. But even then, maybe his body wouldn't let him. That
what if
didn't feel like it was ever going to go away.

In the reference room Asakawa stacked three thick volumes on a table.
Volcanoes of Japan, Volcanic Archipelago,
and
Active Volcanoes of the World.
Figuring that the volcano in the video was probably in Japan, he started with
Volcanoes of Japan.
He looked at the colour photos at the beginning of the book. Mountains belching white smoke and steam rose gallantly into the sky, sides covered with brownish-black lava rock; bright red molten rock spewed into the night sky from craters whose black edges melted into the darkness; he thought of the Big Bang. He turned the pages, comparing these scenes to the one seared into his brain. Mt Aso, Mt Asama, Showa Shinzan, Sakurajima… It didn't take as long to locate as he'd feared. After all, Mt Mihara on Izu Oshima Island, part of the same chain of volcanoes that included Mt Fuji, is one of Japan's more famous active volcanoes.

"Mt Mihara?" muttered Asakawa. The two-page spread for Mt Mihara had two aerial shots and one photo taken from a nearby hilltop. Asakawa recalled the image on the video and tried to imagine it from various angles, comparing it to these photos. There was a definite similarity. From a perspective at the foot of the mountain, the peak seemed gently sloped. But from the air one could see a circular rim surrounding a caldera, in the centre of which was a mound which was the mouth of the volcano. The photo taken from a nearby hilltop especially resembled the scene in the video. The colour and contours of the mountainside were almost the same. But he needed to confirm it, instead of just relying on his memory. Asakawa made a copy of the photos of Mt Mihara, along with two or three other candidates.

Asakawa spent the afternoon on the phone. He called people who had used cabin B-4 in the last six months. He would have been better off meeting them face to face and gauging their reactions, but he simply didn't have that kind of time. It was tough to spot a lie just from a voice on a telephone. Asakawa pricked up his ears, determined to catch the slightest crack. There were sixteen parties he needed to check out. The low number was due to the fact that the cabins hadn't been equipped with individual video decks when Villa Log Cabin opened in April. A major regional hotel was torn down over the summer, and it was decided to transfer the large number of VCRs it no longer needed to Villa Log Cabin. That was in mid-July. The decks had been installed and the tape library assembled by the end of that month, just in time for the summer vacation season. As a result the brochure didn't mention that each room had its own video equipment. Most guests had been surprised to see the VCR when they arrived, and thought of it as nothing more than a way to kill time on a rainy day; almost nobody had expressly brought a tape for the purpose of recording something. Of course, that was
if
he believed the voices on the phone. So who had brought the tape in question? Who had made it? Asakawa was desperate not to overlook anything. He chipped away at people's responses time and again, but not once did anybody seem like they were hiding something. Of the sixteen guests he called, three had come to play golf and hadn't even noticed the VCR. Seven had noticed it but hadn't touched it. Five had come to play tennis but had been rained out, and with nothing else to do had watched videos: classic films, mostly. Probably old favourites. The last group, a family of four named Kaneko, from Yokohama, had brought a tape so they could record something on another channel while watching a historical miniseries.

Asakawa put down the receiver and cast an eye over the data he had collected concerning the sixteen groups of guests. Only one looked pertinent. Mr and Mrs Kaneko and their two grade-school-aged kids. They'd stayed in B-4 twice last summer. The first time had been the night of Friday, August 10th, and the second time they had stayed two nights, Saturday and Sunday, August 25th and 26th. The second time was three days before the four victims had been there. Nobody had stayed there on the Monday or Tuesday following the Kanekos' stay: the four teenagers were the very next people to use the cabin. Not only that, the Kanekos' sixth-grade son had brought a tape from home to record a show. The boy was a faithful fan of a certain comedy series broadcast every Sunday at eight, but his parents, of course, controlled the TV, and every Sunday at eight they made a habit of watching the annual historical miniseries on NHK, the public television network. There was only one television in the cabin, but knowing it had a VCR, the boy had brought a tape, thinking to record his show and watch it later. But while he was recording, a friend came over to tell him that the rain had let up. He and his younger sister ran off to play tennis. His parents finished their program and turned off the television, forgetting that the VCR was still recording. The children ran around on the courts until almost ten, then came home all tuckered out and went straight to bed. They, too, had completely forgotten about the tape. The next day, when they were almost home, the kid suddenly remembered he'd left the tape in the VCR and shouted to his father, who was driving, to go back. This turned into quite an argument, but eventually the boy gave up. He was still whimpering when they got home.