Kojo Suzuki - Spiral

Now it was Ando’s turn to be annoyed. What right did Miyashita have to criticize him for watching movies when he was going to plays? But that wasn’t what Miyashita was up to.

“I’m at the offices of Theater Group Soaring.”

The name rang a bell. Where had he seen it before? He remembered-in Ring. It was the name of the troupe Sadako Yamamura had belonged to prior to her death.

“What the hell are you doing there?”

“Yesterday I realized that the descriptions in Ring were so precise and objective that it was like they’d been observed through the viewfinder of a video camera.”

“Me, too.”

Why were they going through all that again? Ando spotted the Shotoku pamphlet on the table and pulled it over next him so he could take notes on it. It was a habit of his to take notes while he was on the phone; it calmed him down. His customary phone-conversation posture was receiver wedged between his ear and left shoulder, ballpoint pen in right hand.

“Well, I realized today that there was one more thing to check on. I mean, if we wanted to look at faces, we didn’t need to go all the way to Atami, did we?”

Ando was getting impatient. He couldn’t see where Miyashita was going. “Just tell me already.”

Miyashita finally came out with it. “I’m talking about Sadako Yamamura.”

“Come on, she died in 1966.” But wait… Ando suddenly realized why Miyashita had visited the theater group. “The photograph.”

He remembered reading in Ring that Asakawa’s colleague Yoshino had visited the troupe’s rehearsal space and seen Sadako’s portfolio. This was something she’d submitted when she’d joined the troupe, and included two photos, a full-length one and one from the chest up. Yoshino had made copies of them.

“Finally got it, huh? All along, it was easy as pie to feast our eyes on Sadako.”

Ando summoned up his mental image of Sadako. Thanks to Ring, he had quite a strong impression stored away in his brain. Tall and slender, with only a modest bustline but perfectly balanced in her proportions. Her facial features were somewhat androgynous, but she had perfect eyes and a perfect nose, with nothing about them he would change if he could. He imagined her as an unapproachable beauty.

Ando whipped up some courage and asked, “And how about it? Have you gotten them to show you the photos?”

Miyashita had probably seen them, and the face in the photos and the one in his mind had probably been identical. That was the reply Ando expected.

But what he heard from the other end of the line was a sigh.

“It’s different.”

“You mean…”

“The face is different.”

Ando didn’t know what to say.

“I don’t know how to put it. The Sadako Yamamura in the photos is not the one I pictured. She’s beautiful, no question, but… How can I put it?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? Hell, I’m just confused. But I did remember something. I had a friend who was good at drawing people’s portraits, and I asked him once what type of face was the hardest to draw for him. And he told me there wasn’t any particular type of face he couldn’t draw. He said all faces had peculiarities that made them easy to capture in convincing portraits. But if he had to pick one, he said, the hardest type to draw, for him, was his own face. Especially when the self-portraitist is a very self-conscious sort, it’s next to impossible to make the picture match the reality. It always comes out looking like someone else.”

“So?” What did that have to do with the question at hand?

“Nothing, I guess. I was just reminded of him, that’s all. But take the videotape. It wasn’t shot with a camera, right? Those images came from Sadako’s eyes and mind. And in spite of that…”

“What?”

“It captured places and people accurately.”

“We didn’t actually see the video, you know.”

“But we read Ring.”

Ando was getting annoyed. Miyashita seemed to be dancing around the subject. He was like a child who wanted to go somewhere but was afraid to take the first step.

“Look, Miyashita, why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind?”

Ando could hear Miyashita take a deep breath.

“Did Kazuyuki Asakawa really write Ring?”

Who else could have? Ando started to say, but heard a beep signaling that Miyashita’s phone card was about to run out.

“Crap, my card’s almost used up. Can your fax machine handle photos?” Miyashita spoke fast.

“That’s what the guy said when he sold it to me.”

“Great, I’ll fax them to you. I want you to check right away to see if she’s different from what you imagined, or if I’m just—”

And with that they were cut off.

Ando sat there for a minute with the receiver still on his shoulder, in a daze. The noise of the shower stopped, and the apartment was wrapped in stillness. Feeling a chill breeze, he looked over to see that the window was open a crack, admitting the wintry night air. In the distance, a car horn sounded. The dry, harsh noise testified to how desiccated the outside air was. In contrast, the air inside his apartment was almost wringing with moisture as steam seeped out from the bathroom. Masako was taking a long time.

Ando thought over what Miyashita had said. He could understand his friend’s state of mind. Probably he’d spent the whole day on pins and needles, and rather than just sit around and wonder whether the ring virus had entered his body because he’d read Ring, he’d decided to act.

When he’d remembered that the acting troupe had kept photos of Sadako, he’d gone over to check. Surprisingly, the photos hadn’t matched his mental image. Unable to judge whether this was simply due to some blockage on his part, he’d copied the photos, so he could get Ando’s opinion. And now he was going to fax them over.

Ando glanced at the fax machine. No movement yet.

He looked away from it. His eyes came to rest on the publisher’s pamphlet. He picked it up and started to flip through it while he waited. Upcoming publications were listed in the back. Under the heading “New in February” fifteen or so titles were listed, each one followed by the name of the author and a dozen or so words describing the contents. About halfway down Ando saw Ryuji’s name. The title was still The Structure of Knowledge, and the summary said it represented “the cutting edge of contemporary thought”. On the list it was sandwiched between a romance novel and a collection of behind-the-scenes essays about the television industry, making it seem even more eggheaded. But this was his friend’s last work being published posthumously. Ando would give it a read no matter how difficult it was. He circled the entry.

He felt something click in his mind. He couldn’t figure out what. Still holding the pen, he thought hard. It seemed to him that he’d seen a familiar word on that page of the pamphlet. He looked again. The bottom half of the page was taken up with a list, in smaller type, of books coming out in March. He looked at the third title from the end.

And then his eyes grew wide with shock. At first he wondered if it was just a coincidence, but then he saw the name of the author.

New in March:

…

…

RING by Junichiro Asakawa. Bloodcurdling cult horror.

Ando let the pamphlet slip out of his hand. He was going to publish that?

Now he understood why Junichiro had been so standoff-ish that day when Ando had run into him in the Shotoku lounge. He’d decided to tweak his brother’s reportage and publish it as a novel. And since Ando was the one person who knew Junichiro was using his brother’s work without consent, it was no wonder he’d been so cold that day, fleeing after hardly the most perfunctory of greetings. Had they talked for long, the subject of the report would have come up, and his editors might have found out. Junichiro obviously wanted to claim the book as being entirely his own.