Fuminori Nakamura - Last Winter We Parted

It was not good that, after setting fire to “Yuriko Kobayashi,” he had tried to destroy the evidence. The truth was, after seeing the photographs, he was stunned he had failed yet again. But he still couldn’t bring himself to throw away his work, and just like before, he had simply sent the film to the doll creator. Among those photos, there were more composites. This time they were from before the incident. Composite study photographs, almost like practice shots for the kind of photographs he wanted to create if there were a next time, when Yuriko Kobayashi would be on fire. He did that kind of thing, preparatory composites before a shoot, a lot. But his fatal move was not contacting the police or the fire department right away.

His “sister” didn’t come to see him; she was admitted into a psychiatric hospital. The only ones left who would know she wasn’t Akari when they saw her were her brother and the guys whom she had dumped, but just to be on the safe side, it was better not to let anyone see her. She wrote a letter, the contents imitating what Akari would write. Of course, she couldn’t write exactly the same way. A specialist would have seen through it right away. But who’s going to avidly remember such details about their own sibling’s exact handwriting in this age of email? If she made the appropriate effort in her mimicry, no one would notice.

This is something I found out later, but apparently he wanted to die. He may have even attempted suicide. When the incident with you occurred, despite the fact that it was an accident, even though he was saved, I bet a part of him felt like he had “murdered” you. He said as much to his sister, that afterward it was just as if he had killed you himself. And then he did it again. The exact same thing. He didn’t have the courage to actually die, so they were going to kill him. That must have been the way he thought about his death sentence.

I think that the real reason for his death wish was probably because of his slump. At the time, he couldn’t seem to take any more decent photographs. Butterflies was his last one. The photography that drove him mad was his whole life. And then, he had failed at capturing someone’s death in a photograph. Even when faced with such brutally compelling “raw material,” he managed to take only mediocre photos.

He would never be like the painter he so admired in “Hell Screen.”

In the end, he would never ultimately become “authentic.”

In other words, this “incident” has revisited upon the brother and sister the same acts that they did to us. I had slept with his sister, not knowing that she had collaborated in the death of my beloved. Blindfolded, the sister had gasped and panted with the guy she herself had oppressed. We did the exact same thing to the dear sister of the brother that he had done to you, Akiko. And then, by this very act, boldly confronted with the drying up of his own talent and awash in the public’s hatred, the brother was sentenced to be executed, without having actually killed a single person.

I thought, when this was all over, I would experience some kind of revelation about good and evil, but it’s strange … I don’t feel anything at all.

It’s funny, even though I’m sure I’ve become a monster … I still love you, even now.

THE HUGE CLOCK hanging on the wall seems to have stopped moving.

“I think I want to quit working on this project.”

The moment I say it, I feel a small pang of regret, along with a calm sense of release. My editor gazes across at me, looking slightly dazed.

“Why …?”

“… It’s too much for me. I’m sorry.”

“I want you to explain to me, specifically. What happened?”

We are at my editor’s apartment. I stare at the glass of whiskey on the table. My editor is staring at the same thing. He lights a cigarette. I remain silent.

“… You mean, you’re in over your head?”

I look at the unmoving clock on the wall. It seems disproportionately large for the room. He opens his mouth to speak.

“Have you read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood? ”

“… I have.”

“After he completed his nonfiction novel, he couldn’t write another decent piece of work. His spirit was broken. Then again, at least he did finish that book.”

Yudai Kiharazaka’s sister had said something very similar to me. My heart starts to race. My editor raises his voice slightly.

“Sure, the way that I do things may be relentless. Some have even called me pathological because I always push a writer beyond the limits of his abilities. And as a result, some writers’ spirits have broken. But I just want to make a good book. That’s all. It may sound callous, but I’m not thinking about the writer. The only thing I care about it is the work.”

“I understand that.”

“Really?”

The editor looks me straight in the eyes.

“Capote managed to write his all. He put his heart and soul into it. And you — you’re going to give up at this point?”

He still isn’t finished with what he has to say.

“Well, this is frustrating. I’m disappointed to hear your position. It sounds like you’re putting your personal life above your own work. Get out of here.”

He takes another drag from his cigarette.

“Don’t bother sending me your expenses. This will be a major loss for us. And I don’t want to deal with you anymore.”

“I might have walked away, pretending that I didn’t know anything …”

Despite what I say, the editor is still puffing on his cigarette. I take a deep breath in order to calm my growing nervousness.

“Akari Kiharazaka showed me the photograph.”

My throat feels dry as I speak.

“The photo of her from long ago, the only one that Yudai Kiharazaka had kept … It was of a girl I didn’t recognize. It was completely different from the photo of her and her brother that Akari Kiharazaka had shown me previously. That is to say … the first photo was a composite. To make it seem like she was Yudai Kiharazaka’s sister. To fool me.”

The editor is looking me in the face.

“That’s not all. The photos that you first showed me of Akari Kiharazaka were of her passing herself off as the ‘sister.’ You made sure to make them seem like they had been supplied by the Kiharazakas. Actual photographs that show what Akari Kiharazaka really looks like probably don’t exist anymore. Except for elementary or junior high school yearbooks and that one photo of her when she was a girl that she still has, the one that her brother saved. And so I had no reason not to believe, as I was told, that she was Akari Kiharazaka … Also there were no photos of Yuriko Kobayashi released to the public. The media withheld them due to the strongly expressed wishes of the ‘bereaved family.’ And in the archives I received from you, the one person there weren’t any photos of was Yuriko Kobayashi. And even the photos of her after she had become Akari — you only showed me those briefly, you didn’t hand them over.”

The temperature in the room grew chilly.

“She told me. That she was only pretending to be the ‘sister.’ That she had been blackmailed by a man. Save me, she said … It was creepy, it didn’t make any sense. I went to see the doll maker, too. He had the photographs of Akiko Yoshimoto and Yuriko Kobayashi on fire. And there was a doll in his collection that looked familiar. A doll of the first victim, Akiko Yoshimoto. He drew me a portrait of the person who commissioned its production — the face of the man who was Akiko Yoshimoto’s former boyfriend. It was you.”

The editor lowers his gaze and brings the glass of whiskey to his lips.

“I realized that you were involved in this incident. It occurred to me that perhaps it might be some kind of revenge. When I looked at the photos again, the ones of Yuriko Kobayashi when she was on fire, her eyes were quite different and the impression was completely different too, yet I thought she bore a vague resemblance to the ‘sister.’ I was confused and, at the same time, I had a terrible foreboding. Having been shown the ‘composites’ once, something told me that these photographs of Yuriko Kobayashi burning might also be composites. But I didn’t know why these photographs existed. If I was right, that would mean that Yuriko Kobayashi was alive. The truth was, a woman who looked a lot like her was living as Kiharazaka’s sister. That meant that, all along, I had been seeing Yuriko Kobayashi posing as the sister. Yuriko Kobayashi, who was supposed to be dead, was pretending to be Kiharazaka’s sister. So the person who was actually burned … There was only one answer. Identifying the body is done by the family. I had thought it was a mere coincidence that you and Yuriko Kobayashi had the same family name.”