Kojo Suzuki - Spiral

Mai felt herself relax, now that she’d hit upon a solution. And as though to seize upon her relaxation, the videotape leapt into sight. She’d brought it back from Ryuji’s parents’ house without telling them. Ever since she’d discovered it there in the study, she’d wanted to see what was on it. But there hadn’t been a TV set in the room, and the deck hadn’t been hooked up. The only way she could watch the tape was to bring it home with her. At first she’d fully intended to ask Ryuji’s parents if she could borrow it. But when she’d finally decided to leave, having given up on finding the pages, all the phrases she’d prepared vanished, and she couldn’t figure out how to broach the subject.

Excuse me, but this videotape has really got me intrigued. Would you mind if I borrowed it?

What a vague way to put it. What did “intrigued” mean, anyway? If they asked her, she wouldn’t be able to answer. So at last she’d simply left with the tape hidden in her bag.

Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr/1989. Chances are he’d just recorded a music show; the cassette itself was totally ordinary. And yet it had taken hold of her. She couldn’t even remember when she’d taken it out of her bag. There it was, sitting on top of her fourteen-inch combination TV/VCR, tempting her. Even in Ryuji’s room, when it had been shut inside the deck, that mechanical box, the tape had been attracting her in some way. Now, out of its shell, exposed, it seemed almost to have the power to suck her in whole.

The title didn’t seem to mesh with Ryuji’s taste in music. As a matter of fact, as far as she knew, he didn’t listen to music all that much. When he did, it was light classical. In any case, from the handwriting on the label it was clear enough that the tape hadn’t belonged to Ryuji. Someone else had made it. In the course of events, it had been taken to Ryuji’s apartment in East Nakano. And now, it was in Mai’s own apartment.

Without getting up, Mai reached over and put the tape in the VCR. The machine switched on automatically. She turned to the video channel and pushed PLAY.

Mai heard a thunk as the tape started to roll, and she hurriedly pressed PAUSE. What if it was something she was not meant to see? She balked. Once certain images were burned into your brain, she knew, it was impossible to wipe them away- to ever return to a state of purity. Maybe she’d better stop now before she regretted it. But in the end her doubts couldn’t overcome her curiosity, and she released the pause button.

There was the sound of static as the picture wobbled. A second later, the screen went black as if ink had been splashed over it. There was no going back now. Mai braced herself. What then unfolded before her eyes was a series of scenes whose meaning she could not understand and whose nature she could never have guessed from the title.

As soon as she’d finished watching it, Mai felt like throwing up, and she ran into the bathroom. She wished she’d turned it off halfway through, but she couldn’t resist the power of the images. She’d watched until the very end. No, it was probably more accurate to say that she was shown it. She simply couldn’t press the stop button.

She was drenched with sweat and was shivering. She felt something force its way up from her stomach into her throat. She felt more revulsion than fear-something had come inside her, deep inside her. She knew she had to get it out. She stuck her finger down her throat, but she only vomited a small amount. She choked on the taste of bile, and tears streamed from her eyes. Turning a hollow, helpless gaze around the room, she slumped to her knees. For a while she could feel herself being destroyed-and then her consciousness receded, to some place far, far away.

It was already fifteen minutes past the time they were supposed to meet. Ando started to fidget. He took out his planner and checked the schedule again.

There it was: Friday, November 9th, 6:00 pm, in front of the Moai statue at the west exit of Shibuya Station. Meet Mai for dinner. He hadn’t misremembered.

Ando inserted himself into the flow of passersby and made a brief circuit of the area. Each time he saw a woman of roughly Mai’s age he peered at her face, but none were hers. Half an hour had passed now. Thinking maybe she’d forgotten, Ando called Mai’s apartment from a pay phone. He let it ring six or seven times, fancying he could hear from the echoes how small her apartment was.

It’s really tiny, she’d said. Less than five mats!

Ten rings. Obviously, she wasn’t home. He brought the receiver away from his ear. No doubt something had happened to make her late. She was probably on her way. At least he hoped so, as he hung up.

His gaze kept stealing back to his watch. It had been almost an hour now.

At seven I’ll give up.

It had been so long since he’d dated that he didn’t even know if it was proper to wait any longer. Come to think of it, he’d never been stood up before. His wife had been pretty punctual when they were dating. He’d kept her waiting occasionally, but never she him.

He spent a while thinking back over various times he’d waited for people in the past, and as he did so, seven o’clock came and went. But Ando couldn’t make himself leave. He couldn’t give up while there was still some slight ray of hope. As he kept telling himself, Five more minutes. … All week long he’d been looking forward to this. He couldn’t give up now.

In the end, Ando waited in the Shibuya throng for an hour and thirty-three minutes, but Mai never appeared.

He entered the hotel lobby and headed straight for the front desk to ask where the farewell party was being held. Funakoshi’s send-off. Now that Mai had stood him up, he had no reason not to come. Plus, after standing in the chilly evening air in a throng of countless young people, he just couldn’t bear to go straight back to his empty apartment. Seeking some way to salvage the evening, he’d hit on the idea of showing up at the party after all. It wouldn’t hurt to kick up his heels with his friends for the first time in a while, he reasoned.

The organized-gathering part of the evening was just ending, and people were getting together in groups of threes and fives to hit the bars. This was how it always worked. The professors would go home after the main party, allowing the younger faculty to speak freely in their informal post-party binge sessions. Ando’s timing was perfect; he’d come just in time to join in on one of those sessions.

Miyashita was the first one to notice him. He came over and put a hand on Ando’s shoulder. “I thought you were out on a date?”

“Oh, she stood me up,” Ando forced himself to say cheerfully.

“Ah, sorry to hear that. Hey, come here a second.” Miyashita grabbed him by the cuff and led him over to the space by a door. He didn’t seem interested in pursuing Ando’s strikeout.

“What is it?” Something seemed fishy.

But before Miyashita could tell him anything, Professor Yasukawa from the Second Internal Medicine Unit walked by. Miyashita whispered, “You’ll come drinking with us, right?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Great. I’ll tell you later.”

And then Miyashita was off to make nice with Yasukawa. As organizer, he thanked the professor for attending. Miyashita smiled and joked, his jowly face glowing. Ando couldn’t but admire the way his friend managed to find favor with all the profs. If anybody else acted in such a way it would have come across as smarmy, but Miyashita knew how to carry it off.

Ando stayed by the door, waiting for Miyashita and Yasukawa’s conversation to end. In the interim, several familiar faces passed by, but none did more than offer a greeting. Nobody cared to stop and talk to Ando.