Last Winter We Parted (10 page)

February 11, 2:12pm

Going shopping today (^_^) Maybe I’ll buy a bag!!

February 11, 7:02pm

About to eat eel over rice, my favorite (^_^)

February 11, 7:51pm

Yummmy!!!

February 12, 1:46am

Can’t sleep … and I have to get up early tomorrow. I’m screwed (T_T)

February 12, 4:01pm

Got a job (O.O) With a famous photographer (O.O)

February 12, 11:08pm

Thanks everyone!!

February 12, 11:59pm

I’ll do my best (>.<)

February 13, 2:12pm

I feel like I have so much support in my life (-_-:) Having a late lunch with a friend (^_^)

February 17, 3:13pm

Actually, might not be exactly what I thought (-_-:)

February 17, 3:51pm

I’m not upset about it

February 17, 4:03pm

I’ll be fine (^_^)

February 17, 4:23pm

Matsuko, you’re so funny

February 18, 2:12pm

Shopping!!

February 25

Just smile. As long as I smile, I’ll be fine
.

February 26

Don’t get upset. Don’t even think about it
.

February 27

Toshiyuki, I’m sorry. I may already be dead. But I’ll never forget you, Toshiyuki. I’m afraid. Help me, I’m scared
.

February 28

I had no choice but to sleep with him. It’s probably my fault. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I was frightened. Most of all, I didn’t want him to hit me. It hurt really bad. It’s probably my fault. I’m the one who’s to blame. I’m so mad at myself. Help me. Help me, help me
.

February 29

Help me

March 1

Help me      Help me      Help me

March 2

Help me      I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it
.

March 5

I don’t want to die in a place like this. I don’t want to die in a place like this. What are photos about anyway? What do you think life is about? What do you think it is to be a woman? I don’t want to die in a place like this. I don’t want to die in a place like this. I want to see my friends. I want to go places. I want to live. I want to live. I want to live. However this turns out, I want to live. Toshiyuki, you probably never want to see me again, but I want to live. Toshiyuki, I love you
.

March 6

My body feels heavy. It hurts. It hurts.      Help me
.

March 7

(Handwriting illegible)

March 9

(Handwriting illegible)

March 18

If you’re reading this, please notify the police. My name is Yuriko Kobayashi, and I’m being held captive in this house. My captor is a photographer named Yudai Kiharazaka. Please help me. He’s going to kill me soon
.

March 29

If you’re reading this, please notify the police
.
    
My name is Yuriko Kobayashi, and I live in apartment 408 of the Alude Mansion, my address is 2-2-19 Kamogawa-cho, Nerima-ku. I’m being held captive by a photographer named Yudai Kiharazaka. My legs are tied to a pillar and I can’t move. I haven’t eaten anything for days
.
    
I’m in a small blue building like a shed. If you happened to find this note somewhere away from where I am, you may not see this building anywhere nearby. He drives a blue car. His name is Yudai Kiharazaka. He’s thin, he has long hair, and a mole on his cheek
.
    
Please help me. Please notify the police. I’m enclosing a button from my clothing and a lock of my hair. The button is
from a favorite shirt, and one of my friends will recognize it. As for my hair, most of it has been burned, and I hardly have any left. He’s going to kill me soon. But I want to live. I want to live. Please help me. Please help me. Please help me
.

Yuriko Kobayashi is sitting on a diagonal sofa
.

She is in Yudai Kiharazaka’s studio. With a frightened look, Kobayashi touches the hem of her skirt. There is a camera in front of her, a stationary camera mounted on a stand. Behind her there is a huge light reflector. On screen, she and the camera she is facing are seen from the right
.

Looking even more frightened, she starts to touch the ends of her hair. She isn’t wearing any makeup, even though in a corner of the room there is a makeup vanity for her. It is gothic in style, likely expensive, and looks to be quite old. Kobayashi stands up, then, seeming at her wit’s end, she sits back down on the sofa. She looks at what is around her. Her eyes still look frightened
.

Suddenly, the door behind the camera in front of her opens. A man enters. He is dragging a trunk. Seeing him with the trunk, her face contorts with even more fear. The man stands in front of the stationary camera, peering through the viewfinder as if he is checking the composition. He smiles cruelly. She says something, over and over again. Her mouth grows wider as she speaks, as if she is raising her voice. She looks like she is venting her anger. There is no sound on this picture
.

The man crouches down and opens the trunk. It is massive. There is a woman inside. It is Kiharazaka’s sister
.

When Yuriko Kobayashi sees her, she starts to say something to the man. She looks relieved. She and the man take Akari out of the trunk. Akari seems to be in a very deep sleep
.

Yuriko Kobayashi takes off her clothes, removing even her underwear, and then she dresses the naked Akari in her underwear and clothes. She takes another set of clothes from the man and puts them on. Kobayashi puts her own ring on Akari’s finger. The diagonal sofa is long enough for someone to sleep on. The two of them cover Akari’s face with a towel and lay her down on the sofa, placing a cloth over her body. They leave only her arms hanging limply outside of the cloth. They douse her with kerosene, much more than one would have thought necessary, and with some other kind of chemical. They also douse the sofa, as well as the rug under the sofa
.

Yuriko Kobayashi looks like she isn’t entirely over her fear. Both she and the man turn toward the door at the same time. Using the chair beside her, Yuriko Kobayashi exits the room by climbing through a window that opens easily. The man strikes a match and tosses it in Akari’s direction. The cloth laid on top of Akari catches fire, little by little by little. The man stands there for a moment, then steps up onto the chair and climbs through the window. As he goes, he kicks over the chair, then hurriedly closes the window from the outside. Akari is left alone in the room, slowly burning, her right arm hanging limply off the sofa
.

The door opens. A different man enters. Stunned, he looks at the fire burning before him. The flames grow steadily more intense. The man keeps standing there. He begins to sweat
profusely. He starts to tremble, as if he is having convulsions. Smoke gushes forth, and the sofa is engulfed as the fire rages. Suddenly, the man lunges at the stationary camera. He clicks the shutter, over and over again. From the way his mouth is moving, one can see he is crying out Yuriko Kobayashi’s name. Yet even as he calls her name, he continues to squeeze the shutter as if he were obsessed. But there is no one else there besides him and his sister
.

The screen shifts to the window frame covered by the curtains in the room. The building that houses the studio recedes slowly, farther and farther away. It becomes clear that this picture is being filmed with a small camera, through a gap in the curtain no more than two centimeters wide. But then, as if remembering something, the scene closes back in on the studio. Someone’s right hand comes into the picture—a man’s hand. In it he holds a bundle of notes of some kind. The hand isn’t trembling at all. He scatters the notes under the window of the studio, and then the building again recedes from view
.

The camera approaches a car. Inside it are Yuriko Kobayashi and the first man. He hands her Yudai Kiharazaka’s sister’s apartment key, her insurance card, and her pension account book. Also doctored photographs and her diary, for practicing her handwriting. Yuriko Kobayashi has regained her composure and is smiling at the man. From here it is impossible to see
his expression. The camera gets into the car. The door closes and the car slowly begins to drive away. The picture abruptly ends there
.

I wonder how long I’ve been wrong.

But, when I look back on my life like this, I always get confused. Just when exactly did I screw up? Sometimes I get depressed and can’t help but feel that, ultimately, it goes all the way back, and I should have just been born differently. Maybe life is just like that. Even if my life has been wrong, I’m going to wait and see what happens at the very end. Whatever I am, I’ll be until the end. I guess …

Let’s talk about us. Because there’s little else in my life that has any meaning. Do you remember the first time we met? It was at the library. At a small symposium on Braille. I had never seen anyone experience someone’s words so beautifully.

You accessed the words written in books through the tips of your fingers. Now and then, as your fingers slid forward, you smiled. You never believed it, but you were a very beautiful woman. At the time, you were reading
Snow
, by Orhan Pamuk. It’s one of my favorite books. Back then, when I asked you what you were reading, you smiled as you replied to my question.

After that I quickly apologized. For disturbing you while you were reading, for disrupting the world of the book and rudely calling you back to this world. You gave me a puzzled look as I apologized. At that moment you … you were so lovely.

“I’ve read many books,” you said to me. “I think something happens when you read—it’s like the passage of your own life
becomes immersed within something else. I’ve spent my life amidst the words of so many writers. Among well-chosen words, the various life stories, the frustrations and sorrows experienced by other people, as well as their hopes … I consider myself very fortunate.”

I wonder if you remember the first time we kissed. It was on a bench in front of a fountain that was lit up. But it wasn’t romantic at all. They were trying to conserve water so the fountain was turned off, and the bench was in disrepair. I was a little worried about people around us seeing, but you said, “It’s all right, no one is looking.” It was so strange. You, the blind one, seemed to know exactly what was going on around us.

“I love your book.”

That’s what you said to me. You meant a book that I edited, a biography of Michel Petrucciani. You told me that it was as though the letters you touched on the page were flooded with the unearthly melodies he played on the piano. I was so happy. But I had been pathologically obsessed with making the author rewrite that very passage, over and over again. It must have been tough on the author. Yet in return for all his hard work, he had been able to impress a woman as beautiful as you.

Making love with you was like a miracle to me. You had been worried about your own body, but you were really, truly beautiful. I was wild with excitement, and you were wild for me too.

“One’s bigger than the other.”

You said this to me sheepishly, while cupping your own breasts with your hands.

“Don’t worry, everyone’s are.”

“Really?”

“Really, take your hands away.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Ha ha, take them away.”

I was so excited, I couldn’t wait. I touched my lips to your breasts over and over again. Looking at your body, I thought to myself: What a gorgeous creature. What a gorgeous creature, right here before my very eyes. And someone this gorgeous wants to be with me. The body of the person you love is the most wonderful. And I was in love with you. From the bottom of my heart. So much that I didn’t care what happened to me.

It seems like people who can’t see are generally thought to be quiet and meek. But you were quite the opposite. You went everywhere. You told me you had been to Nepal, to Jamaica, to Singapore. When we went to Kyoto together and stood before the temples, you explained everything about them to me. The quality of the materials they were built with. Their shape and appearance. The expressions on the faces of the tourists who had come to see them. You even explained my own impressions to me. Listening and breathing it all in, you seemed to be comparing the knowledge you learned from books with everything
around you, seeing it all recreated in the back of your mind. At the time, you wore a faint smile. I think it’s possible that the temples you imagined in your mind may have been more beautiful than the real things.

You went everywhere. To concerts to hear the jazz you loved, to author readings and amusement parks, on walks to nature parks and to restaurants you had discovered in magazines. In places that aren’t public institutions, there isn’t any yellow tactile paving on the walkways. There you were with your walking stick, and I was right beside you, when a car rushed recklessly past us. Worried about you, I followed you wherever you went. You seemed so amused by my concern. You even made me stop when I tried to insist on walking on the street side to protect you. You laughed and said, “I’m worried about you.”

One time we were having dinner at the apartment when there was a report on television about a murder. As you heard this on the news, you suddenly put down the chopsticks in your hand and touched my arm. Then you said, “I don’t know what I would do if you were murdered,” as if whispering to yourself.

“Here I am with you now, in this cozy apartment,” you went on softly. “But if this reality were shattered by an event like that, I don’t think I could go on.”

I had been staring vacantly at the television. A young man had been stabbed numerous times in a robbery homicide. The
amount stolen was only ¥12,000. The perpetrator had been arrested and was expressing his remorseful plea.

“If you were murdered, I would want revenge. Of course, that’s not right, and if anything, I’m against the death penalty. But … if someone I cared about were murdered, I don’t think I’d have a choice but to consider revenge first. I mean, it’s not really to say whether it’s right or wrong. To lose someone I loved would destroy my life, and in that state, I don’t think I’d listen to anyone.”

You were clasping my arm tightly, as if to assure yourself that I was still there with you. I didn’t say anything at the time, but I was thinking the same thing as you.

I was at work when you were in the traffic accident. I had just left a big publishing house for a smaller one, and I was caught up in the dizzying pace. I rushed madly to the hospital, to find you there in bed, your leg suspended in traction, and you smiled at me in greeting. I was forced to face the possibility of losing you. Of you disappearing from this world. That terrified me. My entire world would become worthless. Grasping your hand—such a slender, warm hand—I could only be grateful that you were here now. Such a soft, irreplaceable thing … I would go on holding your hand forever.

After you left the hospital, I asked you to stay at home while I was working. But you just smiled at me and, as always, went everywhere. Sometimes when I was stressed out from
work, I raised my voice at you without thinking. You looked at me with such sad eyes that I immediately apologized. But I couldn’t stop myself from worrying about you.

I started leaving work as early as I could. When I’d get home and not find you there, I’d feel a slight panic. I’d call you and, ignoring your protests that you were all right, I’d drive over to get you. You kept telling me you could do things on your own. That you only get one life. That you didn’t want to limit yourself. You wanted to experience it all. And that you didn’t like it when I interfered too much in your life. Everything you said was true. Yet I couldn’t control myself. “It’s because I can’t see,” you said at last. “You worry about me because I can’t see, don’t you? In that case, maybe you ought to go after one of the other girls walking around out there.”

But that’s not what it was about. Of course, it’s true that I had been worried about you because you couldn’t see. But the problem was mine.

Six years before I met you, I was involved with someone else. I won’t tell you her name, but we were very much in love. All she said was that her stomach hurt a little bit, and I started to worry and asked her to go to the hospital. When she came back from the local clinic and said that it was nothing serious, I still wondered if she was all right, and I begged her to go to a bigger hospital where she could have a more thorough examination.

She gave me a strange look but, seeing the state I was in, she acquiesced and went to another hospital. When she returned and again said it was nothing, I was assured for the time being but—that’s how I always acted toward her.

If she said that she wasn’t feeling well, I became overly concerned that it was really the flu. I even asked her not to ride in cars. Me, who would never go to the hospital when I was ill. I made her go to the hospital so many times. I wore her down. That was the reason she left me.

After that, I started to think that maybe I ought to just avoid falling in love with anyone. I lived my life, taking care not to let anyone get too close to me. As far as I was concerned, having someone to love was too much to deal with. I could feel a quiet madness within me. If I loved someone with all my heart, my worries became unbearable, to the point where they got the better of me. I was powerless against this anxiety. There was no way for me to ignore even the slightest little worry. But … then I met you.

At the time, the doctor said that you were very lucky to have only broken your leg in the accident. Often, I took off from work and watched you when you left the house. To make sure you made it back home without getting in another accident. I shadowed you. I have no doubt that when your friend happened to spot me walking behind you, she must have thought it was creepy. You were so angry with me when she told you
what I was doing. You had every right to be. “Did you think that I wouldn’t find out, because I can’t see?” you demanded. I was impossible. For some time now, a rift had been forming between us that would be difficult to repair. I followed you everywhere you went. When a car passed too close to you, I forced the driver to stop and got into an argument, while you cried and pleaded with me to stop. I forbade you to take the stairs. Or to go out. Or even to boil water.

I took my eyes off you.
In that moment, I couldn’t guarantee your safety
. Your life—and within that life, your self, which I could never quite perceive—went on, survived second after second. I don’t understand why, in the face of those we love, we can only acknowledge the one part we can see. I can’t help wondering about the you I couldn’t see.

When you told me that you wanted to live apart for a while, my vision receded to the point where I could only see a blurry version of your face. You had grown weary of putting up with the suffering I inflicted on myself. You, who had always been so active and lively, had been negatively impacted by my stubborn persistence. You still cared for me, you said softly, but if we didn’t spend some time apart, it would be bad for the both of us. With tears in your eyes, you tried to hold back your sobs. Your idea was unacceptable to me. But then again, it was also unacceptable for me to be a burden to you. From that day on, I always watched you from a distance.

The yellow tactile paving follows in a straight line from the station. When the yellow line meets the sidewalk along the main road, though, it suddenly disappears. This is your way home from the station. Every day, I was lying in wait for you as you made your way home along that yellow line. And that day, I waited all day to make sure that you were safe.

What made you notice me that time? On that day, I was sitting on a bench in the plaza in front of the station, and I saw you as you moved along the yellow line with your walking stick. I was relieved that, once again today, you were safe, and I watched for a while as you passed right by me. That was when you stopped in your tracks and turned to face me.

Was it my scent? Or was it just some sort of feeling? You were definitely aware of my presence. Of me, who was still watching you like a chaperon, even though we lived apart. Who would always follow you around. Who was unwilling to leave you. That day, your expression betrayed a trace of fear. Your face contorted, as if you were afraid of me. The next day, you did not walk along the yellow line. You chose another way, one that did not have tactile paving, a more dangerous route, in order to avoid me. So I stopped watching you.

It seemed better for me not to love anyone because I became a burden to the person I loved. I decided to throw myself into my work. To try to forget about you. I thought I could change myself. I forced myself to stifle my worries about you, trying
to withstand the regular bouts of nausea that accompanied the effort. The nausea tended to well up around the same time in the evening that your traffic accident had occurred. I took time off from work and made myself go on a trip alone. Despite all this, I knew that I’d never be able to change, but it was the only thing I could do. When I returned from my trip, I was still the same, of course. But without a doubt, I knew that, at the very least, I absolutely needed to stop brooding about you. I even went to see a psychosomatic specialist, but he told me that I was “normal.”

But if I stopped worrying about someone, and then if I were to lose that person, then just who exactly would be to blame? When it comes to relationships, the more I love someone, the less I know what is appropriate. I thought about quitting my job and living somewhere far from Tokyo. If I stayed close, I’d end up looking for you again. And I didn’t want to frighten you any more. But, in my mind, I would never be able to move on from our time together.

It was about two weeks after I had left Tokyo and gone back to my hometown in Sendai, where I found a job as an editor at a local free paper. That’s when I found out about your death.

Fire at the home studio of photographer Yudai Kiharazaka. Female model dies. It was an article that I just happened to read in the newspaper. The moment I saw your name written there in small print, my heart started to pound, then it was
helplessly racing and, the next thing I knew, my colleagues were holding me up. You were dead …? How could that be …? A photographer’s model …? The feel of my colleagues’ hands touching me suddenly made me sick. They felt like the hands of strangers. I was aware of the many fingers of my colleagues’ hands. I didn’t want anyone touching me. I shook free, stood up, and went to the bathroom, where I threw up. You were dead? My vision narrowed—all I could see was a tiny portion of tiled floor around the toilet. I quit my job right on the spot. I know it was unfair to my colleagues, but at the time, I couldn’t think of anything else besides you.