Koji Suzuki - Edge

“Life is full of traps, catastrophe is never far away. The contract between God and the Devil has always been in force, but cleverly kept secret. That’s why people put things down to luck, whether good or bad, unable to see the truth. It’s easy to wrap inevitability in the guise of coincidence.”

Seiji pulled the crutches around from behind him and placed them on his lap. He rested his elbows on his knees and bent forward, cradling his head in his hands. The movement was designed to arrest her attention, but Saeko caught a glimpse of something like fatigue. The threatening, challenging look that had been there when she first entered the room seemed to be fading away.

Saeko seized the opportunity. “You said just now that you killed the family. That was a lie, wasn’t it?”

Seiji raised his brows and opened his eyes wide. He scratched at his throat as though it ached under the skin. With what vigor he had left he let out, “What makes you say that?”

“You wouldn’t dirty your own hands. It’s clear, listening to you talk.”

“Well, you’re entitled to your opinion I guess.”

“Just answer me one thing,” Saeko was pleading now, holding her anger in reserve. “What happened to my father?” If nothing else, she at least wanted to know that.

“You sure you want to know?”

“Please, just tell me …”

“You already know what happened.”

“Don’t jerk me around.”

“Think about what happened here, those eighteen years ago. You work it out yourself now. Think about the order of events.”

Saeko’s eyes darted around.

Work it out yourself. Grasp the logic …

It was her father’s teaching. Only when she was completely stuck, he’d provide an image in the way of a hint. Visualization was indispensable; reasoning that wasn’t accompanied by any tended to be bankrupt.

She decided to take Seiji up on the challenge. In order to replay her father’s movements on that August day eighteen years ago, she tried to picture details as vividly as she could.

For some reason, after 8 p.m., at a hotel in Narita, he had suddenly changed his plans and decided to head for Takato. At that time of day it would have been impossible to get there by train; the only possible mode of transport would have been a cab. Kitazawa had confirmed that her father hadn’t rented a car for the trip.

Saeko didn’t have much to work with to guess what his companion, Haruko, might have been thinking. Traveling in Bolivia, perhaps she’d fallen in love with Saeko’s father, but just how serious was their relationship? Had Haruko resolved to throw away everything? Or had she just been out to play around a bit? What were her feelings for her husband?

Saeko stopped there. Why had she never considered Haruko’s husband in the equation? If her father had fallen in love with Haruko, then it was her husband, Kota, that he needed to confront. It just hadn’t crossed her mind to think of him. She tried to visualize Haruko and her father leaving the airport hand in hand. And then, waiting at their destination, Haruko’s husband: Kota Fujimura.

And now she saw something else too, realizing her error as soon as she pictured her father and Haruko in an embrace. Both image and logic indicated that it wasn’t Seiji who had the third nipple, but Kota.

Considering the scene between her father and Haruko all of eighteen years ago in conjunction with her own experience, her hunch became conviction. They had met in Bolivia and decided to travel together, but they hadn’t consummated their relationship. Perhaps mindful of Haruko’s marriage, her father had managed to hold back his passion and not cross that line. In other words, he loved Haruko deeply enough to respect her situation.

There was no other way to explain the timing of her father’s sudden change of plans. The two of them had come back to Japan and booked a hotel room for their last night together. Haruko had been planning to return to her husband the next day. Maybe the impending sadness of parting had pushed them to cross the line. After he called Saeko, something happened and they moved to consummate the relationship. Caught up in the moment, they tore each other’s clothes off, but something stopped them — just like with her and Hashiba.

The fragmented images ran across her mind like a cinematic flashback. She saw two bodies, tangled together in a passionate embrace, fumble their way to bed. Haruko’s hands traced her father’s chest and came to a halt. Discovering his third nipple, her thoughts immediately returned to her husband, the tactile sensation dissipating her lust, as with Hashiba when he found the lump on her breast.

Seiji was right. Saeko was surprised at how easy it was to see the links between each event. Haruko would have explained why she’d stopped, whispering into her father’s ear, “My husband also …”

What if the locations of the third nipple were a mirror image? If Kota’s was on the right side, while Saeko’s father’s was on the left, what would he have made of the reverse symmetry? Matter and anti-matter — those were the words that came to Saeko’s mind, and she was sure her father had thought the same.

Despite having the same mass and spin, matter and anti-matter had opposing electrical charges. If her father and Kota were somehow mirror images of each other too, then the analogy was nagging. The revelation must have astounded her father, who interpreted alignments of numbers and phenomena not as mere coincidence but as signs of a higher force.

By falling for the same woman, he’d discovered the existence of his mirror image. He would have been convinced that this fact concealed an important secret that could wreak havoc if ignored. The key to finding out its meaning was Kota himself. That was why her father acted right away.

So that was it. Her father’s purpose in coming to Takato on that August day eighteen years ago had never been to confront Seiji. It had been Kota all along.

“It’s something to do with Kota Fujimura.”

On the mention of the name Seiji broke out into a coughing fit. His convulsions jangled the crutches balanced on his lap. “Atta-girl. You’re getting warm now.”

He still wanted her to get to the answer herself. Saeko tried to imagine what might have happened next.

It would have been sometime after two in the morning when they finally arrived at the Fujimura house. What happened then? Did her father get in a fight with Kota over the love triangle with Haruko? A horrifying image crossed her mind and she shuddered. Crimes of passion, of a jealous husband killing his wife’s lover, weren’t uncommon. Could Kota have killed her father that night? Was her father murdered and tossed into the lake? She could hardly bear the thought of it, let alone put it into words, but the only way forward was to ask.

“Was … Did Kota kill my father?”

“What a mundane answer,” Seiji’s grin was full of scorn. He shook his head.

Saeko’s instincts told her that he was telling the truth. So Kota hadn’t killed her father.

What else could have happened? If there had been no violence, perhaps the two of them had been able to talk. In fact, Saeko already had something to help her work out the contents of their discussion.

She clearly remembered the words that had come to her during the filming, when she’d placed her hand on her father’s notebook on the table in front of her.

If that’s what you want, go right ahead. I won’t stop you .

She hadn’t known the voice at the time. Now she finally had an idea whose it might be. She’d been thorough in her research into the Fujimura family, but since they’d gone missing, she’d never heard their voices.

At the time, she’d assumed that the words referred to the notebook. But now that she was able to picture the scene between her father and Kota, their point became clear.