Fuminori Nakamura - Evil and the Mask

I switched taxis at a shopping mall, and then again outside a railway station. Finally I got out in a residential area I’d never seen before. It was gradually growing dark, and the tall apartment blocks seemed to loom over me. I passed the watery lights of a gym, the harsh glare of a convenience store. I turned into a claustrophobic alleyway, and a cat emerged from the shadow of an abandoned bicycle. As I approached the condo, I buttoned up my new coat, pulled a large beanie down over my ears and put on a pair of sunglasses and a white paper mask, as though I had a cold. The scrawny cat stared at me. I entered the building, conscious of the weight of the bag I was carrying.

Just as the detective had said, there was no sign of any security cameras. Inside it was new but poky, and totally silent. I pushed the button for the seventh floor and the elevator doors slid closed. The building was full of tiny rooms that rich people rented for various reasons, no questions asked. Surrounded by apartment blocks, it was apparently used for storage and secret gang meetings, and women were also often seen coming and going.

I pressed the doorbell. There was no answer. I’d come prepared with lock-picking tools, but when I tried the handle the door opened. I noted that it was a lever type. My throat was dry, my fingers clammy inside my gloves. Putting the hat and sunglasses back in my bag, I moved along the cold hallway to another door. When I opened it I could see an orange light casting a feeble glow. In the middle of the room, Mikihiko Kuki was slumped on a couch, drinking. Bile rose in my throat, and I forced it back down. There was a strong smell of a woman’s perfume. Walking slowly, I went and sat on the opposite sofa, facing him. He must have seen me, but he gave no sign of recognition. I placed the bag carefully on the floor.

“I’ve been waiting. I thought you’d come here. My private eye told me he’d lost you.”

I kept my face blank.

“Anyway, you turned up at just the right time, because I was planning to meet you soon, and I can’t get my secretary to bring you here. This place is secret, and my wife’s bribed him to keep an eye on me. Stupid.”

He took a mouthful of whiskey. The way he poured it slowly into his mouth bore an almost sickening resemblance to Father.

“I bet you’re plotting something. Unfortunately, though, I’m not remotely interested in your schemes. Something to drink?”

“I’ll have the same.”

I needed a drink — there was no way my tension would thaw out without one. There was no woman in the room, but I suspected there had been until a few minutes ago.

“I hear you’ve got in touch with Kaori. Good. I don’t mind giving you the privilege of ruining her. Go and destroy her completely.”

I drank my scotch. My throat grew hot, and then a warmth spread through my whole body.

“She looks a lot like her.”

Suddenly he looked at me with a taunting expression. The temperature in the room dropped sharply. His limbs were as relaxed as ever, but his gaze grew sharper.

“You know you killed her, your mother?”

It felt like someone had stabbed me in the heart. I sat there, right in front of him, staring at his face. He smiled faintly.

“Well, sort of. Didn’t you? She died giving birth to you. What? You didn’t know?”

The only thing I could see was his mouth moving.

“The old house has a room hidden under the cellar, like this secret room here. The room where you killed Father. Yeah? But there’s another room below that, an even smaller one.”

He took a slow breath.

“That’s where all your mother’s belongings were. Did you know that? The clothes she was wearing, some odd keepsakes like the glass she was drinking out of, locks of her hair and so on. Why? Because your mother was the only woman that Shozo Kuki, our monstrous father, ever loved. Apparently he tended to become fixated on mementos. The only people who know about that are me and the housekeeper Tanabe.”

He was tapping his glass with his fingernails.

“I’ve already found Father’s body, you know. When I heard that he’d gone missing, I thought he’d killed himself. Buried under relics of his dead lover. I visited the estate, called Tanabe, who’d been dismissed, and got her to open the underground room. Father had drunk the poison he carried on him. It appeared to be suicide, but it wasn’t. There were strange scratches on the door handle, and it looked to me like he’d been locked in. Tanabe thought so too. She also found a child’s footprints in the dust. She suspected you, but I wasn’t sure, because you were still just a kid. Could you have done something like that? But as soon as I saw the torment in your face as you lay in bed, I was certain. I thought, ‘Wow!’ You looked absolutely identical to him, as though you’d murdered him and taken on his features. Last time we talked I told you it was the first time we’d met, but actually I watched you when you were having a nightmare way back then.”

I was finding it hard to breathe. I forced myself to look at him. He laughed.

“What happened to Koichi Shintani? You had some kind of scheme in mind when you walked in here, didn’t you? Don’t say you’ve forgotten? Well, it must be hard to keep up the act when you’re faced with the truth. But don’t worry, Tanabe got rid of the old man’s body, along with all your mother’s stuff. The suicide of the chairman of the Kuki Group would have been too much of a shock for the affiliated companies. Even worse if they found out that he was killed by his own son. It’s better to leave it unclear, whereabouts unknown, just treat him as dead. Like he had an accident while he was enjoying a hike in the mountains or fishing in a river somewhere. Tanabe was Father’s mistress, and mine too. She hated your mother, so she burned all her things. And she was devoted to Father, so she dealt with his body as well. Cleaning up your mess.”

He kept drinking his whiskey. His eyes were glazed with alcohol, and the smell was gradually drowning out the lingering scent of perfume. I couldn’t keep up with what he was saying.

“Kaori looks like your mother. Not so much her face, just her general aura. I saw her once, and that’s what I thought. I haven’t been able to find out who her parents were, no matter how hard I looked, but I’d say they had some loose connection to the Kukis. Because Father was attracted to her, and so am I, even though she’s not all that good-looking. She doesn’t look anything like my mother, but somehow she’s got under my skin. I’ll tell you a story.”

He stood up and took another bottle from the liquor cabinet. He couldn’t be bothered getting ice, so he poured the lukewarm scotch into the glass just as it was.

“Several years ago, in Shinjuku in Tokyo, there was a traffic accident.”

He slouched heavily onto the sofa again.

“Just a typical accident, and the person who died had nothing to do with us. An ordinary collision between a car and a cyclist. The driver hurt his wrist slightly and the woman on the bike was killed instantly. The driver took his eyes off the road, just for a second, distracted by his cell phone, which he’d tossed on the passenger seat. Hundreds of accidents like that happen every day. But when I looked into it, some eerie facts came to light.”

His thick lips twisted at an angle, though whether he was smiling or grimacing I couldn’t tell.

“The driver’s ancestor and the cyclist’s ancestor came into contact once, a long time ago, during the war with China in the 1930s. The man’s grandfather was a soldier. The woman on the bike was Japanese, but her relatives on her mother’s side were from China. The driver’s grandfather was in the Japanese army and during the war his unit was ordered to attack a particular Chinese village. Pillage, slaughter, they did it all. The man himself didn’t actually take part in the looting, but since he was the youngest member of the platoon he couldn’t put a stop to their folly and just had to endure it. And the cyclist’s grandparents were caught up in the massacre and lost their lives. In other words, many years later the descendant of the man who had witnessed the carnage in China ended up killing the descendant of two of the victims, here in Shinjuku. This sounds like some kind of fate passed down through the generations, but there are four things about the story that are quite creepy.”