Last Winter We Parted (11 page)

From there, although it seems strange even to me—since I had been drinking very heavily and, in my crazed state, didn’t want to cause trouble for anyone on the road—I took the bullet train. For some reason I put on a suit first. Oddly, it made me feel like I was standing up straighter. And then on the train, even though I already had several coffees that I hadn’t drunk lined up on the table in front of me, I kept ordering more from the vendor girl while people eyed me curiously.

When I got back to Tokyo, I didn’t go to the police to request the details, or give my name as a person involved. I was trying to keep my presence a secret, as much as possible. Probably by that time, something had already taken root in my mind. I met up with my former colleagues, reporters for a weekly magazine, and asked for the details about the incident.
Both the police and the media regarded it as an “accident.” Kiharazaka had been taking photographs, with you as the model, and at one point he had taken a break and gone into another room where he was fixing something to drink. While he was in there, a candle that was being used as a photo prop fell over, setting fire to a rug that was also being used in the shoot, and the fire then spread to the paint. Being visually impaired, you were unable to flee and inhaled the smoke. At the time of the accident, Kiharazaka had suffered burns trying to rescue you, and was still screaming when he was taken to the hospital. But, I thought to myself, was that what actually happened? Really?

I started watching Kiharazaka. I shadowed him, planting myself outside his house when he was home and keeping watch. The studio where the fire occurred was on the same property as his home, and it was left in its burned out state. His new studio was housed in a crude looking shed-like building. He definitely looked worn out. Was it really an accident? I didn’t know what kind of relationship had developed between you and him, but if you were lovers then he would have been a brokenhearted man, just like me. In the midst of my grief, this humanized him to me. Without a doubt, he had been careless, but I too had once almost lost you in a traffic accident. And then,
because I was trying to straighten myself out
, I had let you out of my sight, and I had let you die. I thought about
meeting with him. I was tormented. Unsure of what to do, I lapsed back into old habits, and spent my time keeping watch at Kiharazaka’s house. I also ordered all sorts of back issues of magazines to see his photographs. Most of the subjects in his work were shot at quite close range, and his meticulous fixation on details was apparent, yet I didn’t think he seemed crazy enough to kill someone.

It was around this time when I heard the rumors about the doll creator. Living with a doll … I couldn’t imagine it, but I thought I’d go to see him, just to hear what he had to say. I must have been fascinated by the fact that some people even started to hear their doll’s voice. When I think about the condition I was in at the time, hearing voices didn’t seem like a strange phenomenon at all. I wanted to hear your voice again. I thought that meant I was crazy but it didn’t matter. Maybe I wanted to retreat into madness in order to escape this world.

The man who greeted me was much cheerier than I expected. This was the doll creator, Suzuki. When I nervously showed him a photo of you, his expression changed. He looked at me calmly and asked, “What kind of relationship did you have with this woman?”

“… I dated her a long time ago.”

When I said this, he gazed at me even more steadily. Then he silently got up from his seat and took down an envelope from a shelf.

“These are horrible photographs. Are you prepared to see them?”

Not knowing what they were, I nodded automatically, and the photos were placed in front of me. Photos of you, on fire. Photos of you, engulfed in flames.

My vision narrowed, and it took me some time to realize that the sensation I felt was nausea. Suzuki the doll creator started speaking again.

“The fact is, Kiharazaka and I are close. He said that he hadn’t taken any photographs, but the truth is that he did. He couldn’t show them to anyone, nor could he keep them, so he asked me to hold them for him. He said that an artist like me was the only person in the world he could trust, and he insisted that I absolutely couldn’t show them to anyone. Seeing these photos, I didn’t know what to do. I don’t care much for the police. But I couldn’t just keep them a secret like this either. They were proof that he murdered her.”

He was speaking very deliberately, as if choosing every word.

“I was terribly disturbed, but … I will entrust these photographs to you. To your own discretion.”

However, something seemed strange to me. Something about the photographs. Having worked as an editor, I happened to know a lot about photography. I took the photographs from Suzuki and brought them to a photographer I knew. A few days
later, he told me he was of the same opinion. He agreed that these were composites.

The shot of your face on fire was a composite photograph. As well as the one of you being consumed by the flames. To be sure, twenty-one of the photographs were not composites. Among those were two shots of you, with your legs bound and looking very thin, sleeping on top of a pedestal. There were no flames in either photo, or any sign of fire. The remaining nineteen photos were of flames. But they were all taken from a distance.

If Kiharazaka had burned you to death, in order to photograph the scene in the manner of Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s “Hell Screen,” wouldn’t he have persisted in following through completely, as shown in the composites? If he were going to burn you that way, there would be no point in photographing it as a long shot. By now I’ve seen nearly all of his photographs. These long-shot photographs—all of the ones that were the real thing and not composites—didn’t seem like his work at all.

I wondered if the truth was something else. Judging from the photos, he had been holding you captive. Forcing you to sleep and binding your legs, not letting you move around. That would fit with what the article said, that a candle being used as some kind of prop had fallen over and started the fire. When he realized it, he had hurriedly clicked away with his camera, rather than try to rescue you. Judging by the layout
of the non-composite photos, he could have saved you before the flames overtook you. You would probably still have suffered burns all over your body, but judging from these photos, it definitely seems possible that he could have dragged you out of the flames
—had he not stopped to take nineteen photographs
. In what appears to be the last photo he actually shot, you are already completely immersed in flames.

Yet none of these photographs are successful. Not the least bit stimulating to the viewer—they are no more than mediocre. I can’t help but think that the composition of the close-ups in the composite photographs was motivated by his regret—that these were the photographs he had really wanted to capture.

I tried to verify my hypothesis. I thought if I went to see Kiharazaka, though, I’d end up killing him. So I met with his sister. She was living on her own in Ueno, off an inheritance from her grandfather.

After hearing what I had to say, she bowed deeply. Then she told me that what I had said was probably correct. That her brother may not be a respectable fellow, but he didn’t have the nerve to kill someone. That he may not have killed you directly himself, but morally, he bore an immense responsibility in your death. And that he now seemed destroyed. Then she said, as for what to do with these photographs, that of course she would leave it up to me. She was crying the whole time.

To have a brother like that, one whom she used to love … Kiharazaka’s
sister Akari seemed weary of her life, a woman beset by countless miseries. When I asked her, she said that she had lost two people dear to her, men with whom she had been in love.

I was at a loss. If I brought the photographs to the police, Yudai Kiharazaka would be charged with one crime or another. But he wouldn’t be sentenced to death. The murder wasn’t premeditated, and there was only one victim. Even though he’d go to prison, he’d be out again in a few years. Yet as far as society was concerned, he’d have paid for his crime.

Akari asked me to see her again. She said it might not be her place to say such a thing, but she thought that being with me seemed to make her feel a little better. I started seeing her often after that, all the while worrying about what I should do next. I told her about my relationship with you. She told me about how she had lost one of the men who had been dear to her. A traffic accident, she said. She cried quietly while she told the story.

Some time after I first met Akari, we were just leaving each other at a coffee shop when someone called out to me from behind. The man looked terribly sad. He was around the same age as me, about thirty-five or thirty-six, and he wore an expensive suit.

“We need to talk,” He said to me abruptly.

“… You and me? What for?”

“It’s about Akari Kiharazaka … Please excuse me, but I know all about you.”

Reluctantly, I accompanied this man back into the coffee shop where I had just been with Akari. The coffee that he ordered arrived, and as soon as the waitress walked away, he slid aside the gaudy wristwatch he was wearing. Underneath was a large gash. A suicide scar.

“You should stay away from her. You’ll end up like me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Please excuse me … You are contemplating avenging the death of Ms. Yoshimoto. But right now you’re worried about the best way to do so. Am I wrong?”

“How do you …?”

He was a lawyer. Long ago, he said, his life had been destroyed by Akari Kiharazaka. He seemed like a creepy guy. I even resented him for trying to help me. When it comes to love, there’s no such thing as fair. Akari had told me herself that she had a number of enemies. That she was apt to be misunderstood. There had been times, it was true, when I had detected a creepy quality in her laugh, as it rose to an almost unconscious cackle. But she wasn’t the ruthless woman the lawyer made her out to be. He was probably stalking her. I managed to get out of there without antagonizing him. I didn’t know what he might do to me if he thought I was her boyfriend.

After that I met up with Akari in coffee shops a number of times. When I saw the lawyer from afar, we’d switch locations. Then I went to her apartment and … I slept with her. I
was reassuring her as she cried inconsolably, only to find that I myself was also in need of comforting. The world without you can be a harsh place—it’s unbearable to live on, just going through the motions. I felt guilty about sleeping with someone I didn’t even love, but the two of us each needed the other to lick our wounds. At least, that’s what I told myself.

But I was in for a surprise. I guess I still didn’t realize people could be so unpredictable. After I came inside her, I pulled away and, in the afterglow, I was stroking her hair when she ducked her head and began to quiver. Wondering what was wrong, I tried to peer at her face and was shocked to see that she was laughing. Convulsively. Her face turning painfully red.

“Oh, it’s too much, I can’t take it … I mean, you took such a long time before you fucked me.”

After sex, the expression of her face seemed like it was shifting, little by little. Her attitude toward me, even the way she talked—everything was different.

“I’ve never been with a guy who pays so much attention when he’s fucking a woman. Ah, but what does it matter. Since I set you up like that.”

She said this and once again burst into silent mirth.

Everyone lies. But amid the overwhelming monotony of the everyday, it’s the rare individual who enjoys lying, who indulges and revels in it, who relishes treating others with malice.

“Oh, how strange. Seriously, you really are a simpleton. When I see a guy like you, it makes my skin crawl.”

I looked at her, stunned.

“I’ll tell you something. That girl, Akiko Yoshimoto … I’m the one who kidnapped her.”

“… What?”

“Do you think a woman who’s that cautious would give in to a man’s advances? I snatched her away in a car. At my brother’s request.”

She was still laughing.

“Do you know Greek mythology? Just as Oedipus unknowingly kills his own father, just as Thyestes is unwittingly tricked into eating the flesh of his own sons, you have just slept with the woman who entrapped your lover. Even being so kind as to stroke her hair afterward!”

My heart was now racing. Up until a moment ago, I had been trying to console her, making gentle love to her.

“… So, who killed Akiko?”

“Hm? Oh, your hypothesis was right. My brother wouldn’t kill anyone. But when the accident happened, he took the photos—he said
he thought it was a lucky coincidence
. But apparently the photos were failures. He said the model was no good. It’s not surprising, with a girl like her.”

My vision had narrowed, just like when I found out about your death. But now her body was moving in close to mine again.

“Listen, I’ll tell you something else … You know how you worried too much about Akiko Yoshimoto? That was your obsession. Your own pathological urge. Okay? Get this:
the reason you fell in love with her was so that you could worry about her
. Something in you needed to suffer through the pain.”

At that moment, a tender part of me broke into tattered little pieces.

“But that’s all over now. You pity-fucked the person who entrapped the woman you loved. You are no longer yourself. Now fuck me with your intense hatred. Let’s see which lasts longer. Fuck me. Hard. Fuck the shit out of me. You hate me, don’t you? That’s the kind of guy I like. Come on, you hate me, right? I want you to fuck the shit out of me.”

As she said this, there was a strange dark glimmer in her eyes. With her lips parted, she smiled, still looking me in the eyes defiantly. As if she was lit from somewhere overhead, I was flooded with the feeling that she seemed to be floating before me. She pressed her lips to mine. And then I fucked her hard. At first, it felt like I was moving involuntarily; I was trembling so badly I though I might collapse. But, inside my head, I was very calm and composed. That was the moment when the plan I’ve had in mind all along began to take shape within my consciousness. In that instant, I became a monster. It almost felt as though my body were remotely detached from my self. Like I was quietly slipping away. The moment I had felt that vague fear, my body
trembled as if denying it, but by the time I had the awareness to say to myself,
Right now I am trembling
, my consciousness had already cooled, like it was already falling away. I felt only a momentary fear toward the version of myself that would be left behind. I could no longer sense any sort of braking mechanism that would help me to maintain balance in my awareness. I must have altered something in me so that I might pit myself against this monstrous brother and sister, so that I might outrival them. Despite the steady calming of my consciousness, a smile remained pasted on my lips. Without any brakes, a person’s consciousness was likely capable of transforming into anything. As if circuits had been formed, where they had previously not existed, and were transmitting a strange heat within me. I had sex with her over and over again that night. With intense single-mindedness, and without any hesitation, yet all the while maintaining a strangely cool composure.

The following day, I went to see that lawyer. His sole purpose in life had been vengeance against Akari. He both loved and hated her, and could think of nothing but murdering her. I continued to have sex with Akari regularly while I stayed in contact with the lawyer. In what seemed like a symbolic gesture, he had surveilled me from afar when I first met Akari, but then gradually, almost as if he were tracing a circle, he seemed to have closed the distance as he watched us. Like in Goethe’s
Faust
, the way the demon Mephistopheles draws ever closer to
Faust … He was crazy in that particular way that stalkers are. Together we worked out our plan. Incidentally, Akari had never lost anyone whom she loved. There were only the two men who had been dumped by her and had then killed themselves.

The lawyer guy had found a woman. She worked in the sex trade, and was drowning in debt. Yuriko Kurihara. Apparently she had graduated from a prestigious high school in Tokyo; goes to show you never really know how life is going to turn out. She might have been able to work out some kind of arrangement with her debts, but she had borrowed the money from someone she had a personal relationship with, and this person was connected to gangsters, and so there was no way for her escape unless she paid it back. There were several reasons why the lawyer had taken pains to select her from among the countless unhappy women here in Japan who are buried in debt. She had no relatives, she was similar in height and body type to Akari Kiharazaka, and somewhat resembled her, too.

This was our plan.

Even if the photos of you, Akiko, were delivered to the police, Yudai Kiharazaka wouldn’t be sentenced to die. But if the same thing were to happen again, and if it were clearly a murder, then there was a good chance they’d revisit the first “accident” and it would be ruled a homicide. What’s more, together with the long-shot photographs of you that he actually took—not the composites—it’s likely that the first accident
would also be acknowledged as premeditated. Yuriko Kurihara wanted to acquire a new identity. I wanted revenge against Yudai and Akari Kiharazaka. And the lawyer wanted revenge on Akari. And so …

We would burn his sister Akari, right before his eyes, so that Yudai Kiharazaka thought it was Yuriko Kurihara.

By doing this to Yudai Kiharazaka, the exact same fate that befell you would befall his sister, Akari. When it happened to you, his photographs didn’t capture it. If we planted Yuriko Kurihara with him, even had them living together, and if Yuriko Kurihara were set on fire before him, would he just keep taking photos as before, never realizing she was really his sister? Until she were no more than ashes? Acknowledged as having brutally burned two women to death, the media would have a field day covering the murders, and he would get the death penalty. We would create the evidence that proved he was the one who did it. No one would think that two fires in a row both just happened to be accidents. I knew it. He was in a precarious situation, easy to frame. In short,
we could get him sentenced to death without his having actually killed anyone
.

However, there were obvious objections raised regarding this plan.

The lawyer and I, we weren’t planning simply to kill them. Our intention was to inflict cruelty on them. That was why we devised this plan, yet Yuriko Kurihara was quite opposed to it.

For one thing, what would we do if Yudai Kiharazaka, faced with Yuriko (actually Akari) on fire before him, went and tried to save her?

Another factor was, in this day and age of such scientific forensic investigation, would it really be possible to switch the murder victim?

If he were to save Yuriko (actually Akari), then our plan would come to nothing. He would discover that it was his sister who had been burned, and with Akari’s testimony, everything would be brought to light. The lawyer, Yuriko, and I would be charged with attempted murder. I was certain that Yudai Kiharazaka would just take photos without trying to save his model, and the lawyer—who was pretty familiar with Kiharazaka’s tendencies at this point—was of the same opinion, but Yuriko didn’t know Kiharazaka well and kept up her objections. That was how we decided that if Yudai Kiharazaka tried to save his sister, the lawyer would shoot him with a pistol. Then the lawyer would set his sister on fire again. The course of our plan would fall through but, ultimately, the two of them would both be dead anyhow. As it happened, Kiharazaka did just go on taking photos, so there was no need to kill him with the pistol. The ironic thing is, because he took those photos of his sister burning, he was able to extend his life, at least until his execution. Had we killed him with a gun, it would have been quite an inscrutable crime scene. A burnt corpse,
the photographer who had apparently filmed it, yet the photographer had been shot dead … The investigation might have found us out, or we might have been able to get away. But at least for the lawyer and me, it didn’t matter what happened after our plan transpired.

The second factor was the viability of switching the murder victim. But this was comparatively simple. All I had to do was marry Yuriko Kurihara.

She and I were married for appearance’s sake. That’s how she went from being Yuriko Kurihara to Yuriko Kobayashi. If Yudai Kiharazaka was going to take the photos, then accordingly the building would be severely damaged in the fire. Left at the scene would be Kiharazaka, camera in hand, and a completely burned corpse that had been slowly and carefully doused with kerosene and fire accelerant. The woman’s body would be wearing Yuriko Kobayashi’s clothing. The clothing would burn completely but maybe the fragment of a button might remain. Naturally, Yudai Kiharazaka would think the burnt body was Yuriko Kobayashi. That’s what he would tell the police. But they wouldn’t know for sure that it was Yuriko Kobayashi just by someone seeing it firsthand.

In order to officially confirm whether the burnt corpse was Yuriko Kobayashi or not, they would contact Kobayashi’s family. That was me, her husband, since she didn’t have any parents or siblings or relatives. Bawling my eyes out, I’d stoop
over her dead body. This was the ring she was wearing, and this button on her clothing, I’d say tearfully. But the police, seeking conclusive evidence, would probably ask if I had something that might contain a strand of her hair or the like. So that, if possible, they could test it for DNA. Without any protest, I would then hand it over to them. A strand from Akari Kiharazaka’s comb. I’d say it was Yuriko’s hair … Of course the DNA would match.

There was one last thing to make sure of. Verification of her dental records.

I thought it would probably be enough for the distraught husband to identify her body, but we needed to make doubly sure.

Dental records are often used as a means of identifying bodies. Although the theory often used is that if the position of the teeth are the same as in the records then it probably is safe to say they are a match, the fact is that dental records are not always treated as incontrovertible evidence at trial. What’s more, dental records in Japan are not compiled in a nationwide database. Each dentist still has their own method of keeping patients’ charts. That means the police have to go to the victim’s dental clinic to see the records.

So I made a point of telling Akari that she would be even more of a beauty if she fixed up her teeth. Then I sent her to get a simple teeth whitening at a small dental clinic run by
an acquaintance of the lawyer, and while she was there, even though she didn’t have any cavities, he checked her teeth to make sure. Now they would have Akari’s dental records. All we had to do was change the name on the chart to Yuriko Kobayashi. Then those teeth would be registered as belonging to her. The police would go to the dental clinic. They would see the chart there with Yuriko Kobayashi’s name on it. Those dental records would of course be identical to those of the burnt corpse. I didn’t think it was necessary to go to those lengths and, as it turned out, it wasn’t. But the lawyer and I, we were caught up in our own kind of madness. Sometimes madness gives rise to tenaciousness and an obsession with details. I now applied the same fixation as when I had insistently worried about you to the task of strengthening our plan.