Koji Suzuki - Edge

Perhaps because she had connected the voice’s timber to its speaker, the sequence of events flowed like a dam had broken. Eighteen years ago, her father had faced Kota in this room. The cabinet, the table, the chairs, and everything else in it stimulated her imagination now, and a conversation began to play out in her mind.

It was late, two or three in the morning. Perhaps having gone to bed, Haruko wasn’t with them. Kota was in the living room, her father in the dining room.

Kota was doing all the talking; her father listened in silence. Kota sat on the floor, legs outstretched, his back against the living room wall. Her father was half obscured in the shadows, but she imagined him leaning against the wall, too. They were back to back but in different rooms with a thin partition between them.

A single light shone from above in the darkened living room, a spotlight illuminating Kota from above. Saeko’s image was three-dimensional, like a hologram, but the light was weak and hazy, the outlines blurred. She couldn’t discern Kota’s expression. The tone of his speech flitted randomly between the formal and informal; its content, too, seemed full of contradiction, courtesy and insult and resignation and excitement intertwining. One moment, his tone would be loud and mocking. The next he would speak almost too quietly to make out the words, suddenly more serious, even solemn. The random fluctuations were enough to instill a deep sense of unease in Saeko.

The night was quiet, and the low rasp of Kota’s monologue filled it:

You should be grateful. I mean, if you don’t want to, then just turn me down. Although I don’t think you’ve got that in you …

I’ve got to say, though, I feel pretty damned lucky. Meeting you like this. It was worth putting out the bait. I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life in this place, this dull place, accomplishing nothing as a serpent stripped of its wings. But here you are, and now I can finally take flight. I can take back my wings, fly as high as I wish. It’s not all bad for you, either. If you hadn’t met me, you’d have been informed of a loved one’s death. We both stand to gain .

You know what I’m talking about. If you choose to do nothing, your pretty, sweet little daughter is going to die tomorrow morning. She’ll set out for the library, then out of nowhere — a speeding truck. She’ll be dragged, half-alive, a hundred meters under the wheels of the thing. What a pitiful sight, torn to pieces like that. There’s only one way to alter that fate .

Just swat down United Airlines Flight 323 that took off from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris .

Don’t look so surprised. Your daughter’s life and UA323 are tied together with an invisible string and are related, taking one means losing the other. You know very well how the world’s structured — the relationships that obtain behind it all .

All we have to do is make an agreement. A contract, if you will. You give me your powers. It will save your daughter. And you get a nice little prize called Haruko in the bargain .

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

Saeko’s heart felt like it would burst, and she stroked her chest. Was it true? She had indeed seen an article that UA323 had crashed; it had said that all 515 people on board were presumed dead. But she’d had no way of knowing that she was fated to die if the 515 had not. If her father had called her the evening before — at eight o’clock, as he never failed to — then she would indeed have gone to the library the next day. He hadn’t called, she’d worried, and her schedule had changed as a result.

Saeko often found herself asking what would have happened if she’d made a different decision. What if Hashiba hadn’t discovered the lump? They would have made love, and that would have seriously altered her subsequent path. It was the same with her father. If he hadn’t embraced Haruko that night in Narita, he would never have obtained the information about Kota’s third nipple. He would not have traveled to Takato and would have had his daughter’s death on his hands.

The sound of rasping laughter filled her ears. Again she heard Kota’s voice fill the room:

The number of people? Why get hung up on that at this point? Have you got it all wrong? What the invisible string connects isn’t one life and another, but phenomena — a traffic accident and a plane crash. There just happens to be a disparate number of victims .

Now, don’t get so huffy. It’s not like you to fret over the imbalance. You can’t possibly not know that it’s not about the head count. Are you feeling a little confused? Are you telling me that if the price of your daughter living were just one stranger’s life, then you’d take the deal without batting an eye? In that case, what if the number was ten? Or a hundred, or a thousand? Where do you draw the line? The number of people sacrificed doesn’t change the choice .

This is business as usual behind the stage, just unknown. Accidents, illnesses, disasters, terrorism, you name it. A lot of people die every so often. Ever wondered why it should have been them and not you? Well, it doesn’t matter who. Death rains down arbitrarily. It just happened to be them and not you. If what’s going on behind the stage became known, I bet humans wouldn’t be able to take it. Life, in the first place, rests on the sacrifice of others. Knowing the sacrifices’ names and faces, though, would easily unhinge people. It’d be hard not to picture the sorrow of the bereaved. Not knowing allows people to go about their lives not caring .

As I’m sure you know, you can choose to strip me of my power. But doing so will bring about the death — the appalling, tragic death — of your beloved daughter. There’s only one way to save her. You give me your power, and the man that is Shinichiro Kuriyama disappears from the face of this planet, for good. Sure, to make phenomenal ends meet, a plane will have to crash too, but I couldn’t care less .

Please don’t just die, though. In any case, you couldn’t even if you wanted to. You’ll just have to keep falling .

Shinichiro Kuriyama ends here. From now on, you live as Kota Fujimura. You’ll get Haruko for yourself. You have to become my successor for this to work smoothly. My departure will leave a gaping hole. It’s your job to stay and fill that hole. You’re the only one that can, after all, since you understand how this works. All that studying you’ve done, all that physics. Hell, I’m just preaching to the choir here, right? Clear as day to you, I’d imagine .

It’s just so exciting! All the possibilities, all the things I can do. In the world I alight upon as a god, I’ll be able to conduct all sorts of nifty experiments .

Say, I could jump back 50,000 years to the point where language is about to emerge and insert a self-referential contradiction in the system. How do you like the idea of tampering with calculus to inject the tricks of zero and infinity? The more humans wield language and describe nature, the more contradictory it would all become. Each little step on the path of development would effectively tighten the noose around humanity’s neck. Eventually, the contradiction would grow so extensive it would reach the point of no return. What happens to the universe then? I bet the fireworks will be spectacular. Gets me hard just thinking about it .

That’s why I’m just so hugely grateful to you for coming to me. Only one of us can wield power at any one time. So I’d like to have it. What would you do with it anyway? Just selfish stuff .

Anyway, it’s getting late. I think I’ll be on my way now. You can look after everything. Stay here as a puny demon and be a good husband, live a quiet life, raise a happy family, and all that. It suits you .