Villain a Novel (2010) (33 page)

The girl pedaled between them and started back to her mother at the squid stall. Mitsuyo watched her, pedaling furiously away.

“Forgive me,” Yuichi said, bowing to her and heading off alone to the parking lot. His back looked as if it had shrunk one whole size. As if he would break down in tears if she touched him.

“Which police station are you going to?” Mitsuyo called out.

Yuichi turned around. “I don’t know. I guess if we go into Karatsu there must be a station somewhere,” he said.

What do you care?
part of her mentally shouted.
Get out of here as quick as you can
. But she also felt terribly frustrated. She had to say something.

“Don’t leave me here alone,” Mitsuyo said. “If you leave me here by myself, what’ll I do? I’ll go with you, to the police. We can go together.”

A blast of wind from the sea blew her words away. Yuichi stared at her intently. And then, without a word, he started walking away again.

“Wait!” Mitsuyo shouted, and Yuichi halted.

“I can’t let you do that. You’ll get in trouble,” he said without turning around.

“I already am in trouble!” she shouted. A middle-aged woman cleaning squid on the other side of the road shot them a glance.

Without replying Yuichi set off again and Mitsuyo ran after him. She’d wanted to say something, but not that.

When he reached the parking lot Yuichi stopped, and clenched his fists as his shoulders shook.

“Why did things turn out like this?” he moaned.

The sound of Yuichi’s crying drowned out the slap of the waves against the breakwaters. Mitsuyo walked around in front of him and took his tightly clenched fists in her hands.

“Let’s go to the police,” she said. “We’ll go together.… You’re scared, aren’t you? To go alone? I’ll go with you. If we’re together … if we’re together I know you can make it.”

Yuichi’s hands trembled in hers. He nodded again and again.
“Yeah … yeah …” he said, and she could feel him trembling, and feel each nod.

It was past two p.m. when it started to get cloudy. After he heard the detective’s explanation, Yoshio Ishibashi had run out of his shop, walked the three minutes to the parking lot where he rented a space, and got in his car. Where he was headed, though, he had no idea.

The Fukuoka college student wasn’t the murderer after all. Instead, it was some man she’d met on an online dating site. That’s what the police had told him, but he still wasn’t convinced. He wasn’t even convinced that his daughter had been part of all this. It had to be some kind of mistake. Somebody, for whatever motive, must be out to get them.

Yoshino is still alive somewhere
, he told himself.
Waiting for me to come and rescue her… but I don’t know where she is. Everybody I ask keeps telling me she’s dead
.

He drove aimlessly. He knew these streets well, but through his tears Kurume looked like a place he’d never seen before.

His car was one that Yoshino had picked out, back when she’d just entered high school. He’d told her he didn’t want any bright colors, but she kept insisting he had to get a red car. “Red is so cute!” she’d said. He finally compromised, buying a light-green compact.

The day the car was delivered, they took a picture of the three of them posed in front of it. Yoshino was overjoyed, and no matter how much Yoshio tried to persuade her, she wouldn’t allow him to remove the plastic protective sheets over the seats.

He drove aimlessly for hours around Kurume. He just wanted to see Yoshino. He wanted to know where she was. He could hear her voice, calling out for help, but where his daughter was, he had no idea.

Before he knew it, he was heading toward Mitsuse Pass. He drove out of Kurume onto the highway, crossed the river, and suddenly
realized he was driving down a road through the fields in the Saga plains. Before him lay the mountains of the Sefuri range.

The weather started to cloud up right about the time he stopped at a gas station. He went to the restroom as they were filling up his gas tank, and from the small window he saw the dark rain clouds moving in over the mountains. The clouds spread out until they hid the peak of the pass and began to approach the plain where Yoshio was.

It began to sprinkle right as he left the restroom. There was an outdoor sink, but he didn’t wash his hands there and instead sprinted for his car, whose gas tank was full now. A girl about the same age as Yoshino trotted over and handed him the receipt. It was wet with the rain. Yoshio paid her and pulled out. In the rearview mirror he could see the girl in the rain, standing there, bowing as he left.

It began to pour just as he started up the road to the pass. The low rain clouds covering the sky turned the road dark and gloomy.

Yoshio switched on his headlights. Beyond the wipers he could see the pale asphalt road rising up. Rain lashed his windshield and his wipers moved so quickly that it looked as if they would blow away.

The headlights of cars descending from the pass lit up the beads of rain on the windshield. The rain drowned out the sound of his engine, and even from inside the car, all Yoshio could hear was the sound of rain whipping against the trees.

On the day of Yoshino’s funeral his cousin, who worked in a factory in Kurume, had said, “Someday I’d like to light some incense in memory of Yoshino at the spot where she died.” So many things had happened to him so quickly, and Yoshio couldn’t reply at the time, but one of his female relatives had added, “If you go, I’d like to go, too. And place some flowers there, and some of the sweets that Yoshino liked …”

He knew they were only being kind to him, but it felt to Yoshio as if accepting their kindness would mean saying goodbye to Yoshino forever.

“I’m not going” was all he said to them. His relatives fell silent.

He couldn’t recall when it was, but at some point after the funeral,
he saw a scene on TV picturing flowers and cans of juice lined up at the site of the murder. Perhaps his relatives had quietly visited the site after all, or maybe complete strangers had gone to offer flowers to Yoshino, who had been the brunt of so much criticism. When Yoshio had seen this, he sobbed. The criticism of Yoshino in the press and on TV had been indirect, but the obscene faxes and letters he’d received were anything but.

Sorry your prostitute daughter was killed? She asked for it
.

I slept with your daughter once. ¥500 for the night
.

No wonder that girl was murdered. Prostitution’s against the law
.

You should have sent her more spending money!

Some of them were handwritten, others printed from a computer. It had gotten to the point where Yoshio was afraid when the mailman arrived every morning. He’d disconnected the phone, but still heard it ringing in his dreams. It seemed as if the whole country hated his daughter, as if everyone in Japan despised him and his family.

The rain grew stronger as he climbed the pass. The fog was thick, mist accumulating a few dozen meters in front of his car.

Just before the entrance to the Mitsuse Tunnel, there was a sign indicating the old road. The sign loomed up for an instant, as if someone had momentarily blown away the fog with their breath.

Yoshio hurriedly turned and started down the narrow old road. As the road narrowed even more, it felt as if his small car would be engulfed in the cascade of water rushing down the cliffs. The rain washing down the face of the mountain struck the cracked asphalt and then plunged to the cliffs below.

On the main road he’d passed a few other cars, but on this older road, he saw not a single one. The guardrail protruded, as if there’d been an accident. And that’s when his headlights lit up the bouquets and plastic bottles lined up on the ground. The bouquets, wrapped in clear plastic wrap, seemed about to be swept away in the rain. Yoshio slowly braked. In the fog, these items placed in memory of his daughter somehow stood up to the pounding rain.

He reached for the umbrella that had slipped to the floor in the backseat, and stepped out into the downpour. The car engine was
still running, but all he could hear was the roar of the rain, as if he’d wandered behind a waterfall.

The umbrella was heavy as the rain beat down on it, and the cold rain stung his cheeks and neck. Yoshio stood in front of the offerings lit by his headlights. The flowers were wilted, and the stuffed porpoise toy that someone had left was drowning in muddy water.

Yoshio picked up the soaked toy. He hadn’t meant to grip it so hard but found cold water dripping between his fingers. He knew he was crying, but in the cold driving rain he couldn’t feel the tears flow down his cheeks.

“Yoshino …,” he said without thinking. The faint voice turned into white breath and left his lips.

“Daddy’s here, honey.… I’m so sorry it took me so long. Daddy’s come to see you. You must be cold. And lonely. But Daddy’s here.”

He couldn’t stop. Once his mouth opened, the words just kept pouring out.

The rain slapped against his vinyl umbrella and flowed to his feet. As it struck near his feet it soaked his dirty sneakers.

“Daddy …”

Suddenly he heard Yoshino’s voice. It wasn’t an illusion, she was clearly calling to him. He spun around. His umbrella slanted to one side but he didn’t care that he was getting soaked.

The headlights of his car shone on the fog. And standing there was Yoshino. She didn’t have an umbrella, but wasn’t wet at all.

“Daddy, you came to see me?” Yoshino was smiling.

“Yeah, I did.” Yoshio nodded.

The downpour was striking his hands and cheeks, but Yoshio no longer felt the cold. The freezing wind blowing down the road, too, went around the light.

“What are you … doing in a place like this?” Yoshio asked. Tears and his dripping nose combined with the rain to flow into his mouth and he could barely get the words out.

“Daddy, you came to see me.…” Yoshino, enveloped in light, smiled.

“What … what happened here? What did they do to you? Who
did this to you? Who? … Who? …” Unable to bear it any longer, Yoshio broke down and sobbed.

“Daddy …”

“Hmm? … What is it?” Yoshio wiped his tears and runny nose with his wet jacket sleeve.

“Forgive me, Daddy.” In the light, Yoshino looked apologetic. Ever since she was a child this was the sort of look she gave him when she apologized.

“You don’t need to apologize for anything!”

“Daddy … I’m so sorry. I’m sorry you had to go through this.…”

“You don’t need to apologize. No matter what, I’m your father. And no matter what, I’ll protect you.… I’ll always protect you.”

The sound of the rain whipping against the trees grew louder. As the sound grew, his daughter looked about to disappear, and he yelled out her name. “Yoshino!” Sobbing, he stretched out a hand toward the light and his daughter, fading from view.

In an instant Yoshino had vanished. All that was left was the headlights illuminating the downpour. Calling out her name, Yoshio frantically looked around him. The wet guardrail stretched out around a curve and disappeared, and beyond that was a dense, dripping forest.

He no longer cared that he was drenched. Yoshio ran to where he’d seen Yoshino standing. But the rain-soaked cliffs stood in his way, and the wet grasses brushed his cheeks. Yoshio touched the cold rock face with his hands and called out Yoshino’s name twice. His voice pierced the rocks.

He turned and saw that his umbrella was lying in front of the flower offerings. He hadn’t noticed that it had fallen, but now it was upside down and filled with rain.

Just then it started to get a bit lighter out. He looked up and saw a small patch of blue sky, far off, barely peeking through the thick clouds. Rain continued to spatter at his feet, and his trousers were soaked to the knee with muddy water.

“Yoshino …”

His soaked body was frozen, his breath white.

“You didn’t put Daddy through anything bad. I can put up with anything if it’s for you, honey. If it’s for your sake, Mom and Dad can put up with anything.…”

His voice gave out and he knelt down on the soaked pavement.

“Yoshino!” he cried out one last time to the sky. But no matter how long he waited, she did not appear again on the foggy mountain road.

It kept on raining and his wet clothes were heavy.

Daddy, I’m so sorry
.

Trembling now in the cold, Yoshio heard his daughter’s voice again in his ear. “Yoshino …” he murmured once more. The name fell to the wet pavement and formed a ripple in a puddle.

“I’ll never forgive him! Never!” Yoshio pounded the wet pavement a few times with his fist. Blood oozed out from his hand, into the freezing rain.

Finally, he stood up in the rain and with his bloody hand picked up one of the wilted bouquets of flowers someone had left by the roadside.