Fuminori Nakamura - Evil and the Mask

“I don’t stare. Why’d you suddenly bring that up?”

I was tall by then, and I had to look down slightly to see Kaori’s face.

“Mari is sad. She can’t compete with Ms. Yoshimi, and she looked like she was going to cry.”

She was watching me with a grin.

“What are you on about?”

“Well, it looks like Mari’s going to tell you she’s got a crush on you, so you should go out with her.”

Mari was a quiet girl who was always drawing. Once when we were cleaning the classroom after school, the bucket she was carrying was about to tip over, so I carried it for her.

“No, I won’t. Sorry, but …”

“What? Do you like someone else?”

Still smiling, Kaori was looking right into my eyes. Her face, bathed in orange sunlight, was lovely. I was still too young to be able to face her directly.

I was in a turmoil. I remembered the girls’ comics Kaori read, TV dramas. Couples were always breaking up because of misunderstandings, or missing each other through bad timing, or going at it all wrong. I hated them. Before I knew it, my body went rigid.

“I can’t go out with her because I like you.”

In those days I was probably a little odd. Kaori was startled. I was also taken aback by my own words, but I couldn’t unsay them.

“I don’t mean I want to go out with you or anything. What I mean is, I planned to tell you when we were older, so I hope we can put it on hold till then, carry on the same way we’ve always been.”

“Carry on the same? That’s impossible. But you’re so brave.”

She sighed admiringly. Then she said that if I liked her I should kiss her. Noting my surprise, she corrected herself, telling me that she liked me too, so I should kiss her, please.

We walked to a nearby shrine, hand in hand and staring at the ground. After waiting patiently for a drunk lying on a bench to leave, we kissed, just a little. I felt like I was entering an unknown world. As we walked back we kept holding sweaty hands until we saw the gates of the estate. It was six months until my fourteenth birthday, when my father had promised to introduce me to hell.

AFTER THAT SEVERAL things happened far, far away from me.

In line with the Western powers’ hidden agenda, the civil war ended in the small African country where my father’s second son — my brother, in other words — had been working to make money through reconstruction. The Japanese government announced a large aid budget. The surviving members of the religious cult that had occupied the nuclear power plant and then committed mass suicide appealed against their sentence. A shadowy citizens’ group was holding demonstrations outside the courthouse, calling for the death penalty for those involved in planning and preparation. These events sailed quietly over my head. Father had gone to Tokyo and wouldn’t be back for quite a while. Kaori and I passed the time lost in our own little world.

Every day after school she came to my room. We turned on some music so that people wouldn’t wonder why it was so quiet, and then we’d kiss. We spent hours in each other’s arms, tongues locked together, me touching the bulge of her breasts, though without removing her clothes. I felt that maybe we were still too young to be doing this, but I didn’t care what anyone else thought.

Before long I managed to undress her and kissed her nipples. Then she started sneaking to my room every night. Naked under the bedclothes, we explored each other’s bodies with our fingers and tongues, full of curiosity and desire. The only reason we didn’t go all the way was that Kaori was scared to, but for me it was more than enough. To my immature mind, the reality of sex was overwhelming. While the news was causing a stir in the rest of the world, we were alone in my tiny room. I came many times in Kaori’s hand, and I often kissed her and licked her private parts. We smothered our cries, soaked with sweat in my little bed. Over and over she told me that it felt good, as though I was filling a gap in her life, and I told her the same. Until then she had been moved from one institution to the next and had endured many things, wearing a mask of cheerfulness. Her urgent fingers and tongue touched me delightfully all over and, copying what she must have seen or heard somewhere, she took my penis in her mouth.

Several of the girls a couple of years older than her in the volleyball club, and one girl who was only one year ahead, had already had sex with their high school boyfriends. With them as her guide, Kaori told me that we could do it the following year. But for me, I didn’t care if we actually had sex or not. What we were doing was the height of happiness.

Kaori wanted me with her whole body.

“I’m only happy when you’re here,” she said, touching me with her hands as though checking my shape. “When you breathe like that, when you’re thinking, just because you’re there.”

For the first time I felt that I was allowed to exist without excuse or darkness or distortion. Apart from the hours I spent with her, everything was a waste of time. The TV news, lessons, my classmates’ conversations, all forms of entertainment, they all seemed dull and didn’t touch me. But as long as Kaori was there, as long as she was in the world, that was all right. If I had her glossy, black hair, her small face with large eyes and narrow lips, her budding breasts, her slender legs and ankles, her voice, our idle chatter, that was all I needed.

One day, however, Kaori didn’t come. I thought this was strange and went to her room. She was asleep and I didn’t want to wake her, so I returned to my own bed. The next day, too, she was sleeping. On the third day I couldn’t stand it anymore and I roused her with a whisper. I kissed her, feeling that I shouldn’t but unable to resist. At first she responded, but soon she suggested quietly that we’d better not do it that day. She was trembling slightly, and I got the impression that it was because of me. Dumbfounded, I had no idea what to do. I apologized over and over, and then left, wondering if I’d done something wrong. When I finally got into bed my head was churning, reviewing my recent behavior for faults. Even though I was still bewildered, I found myself growing hard. I dealt with it, imagining Kaori’s body, and then lay there vacantly. Whatever the reason, I thought, I had to know, and once again made my way hesitantly to her room. She wasn’t there.

I waited, but she was away too long just to be in the bathroom. Perhaps she’d gone into the garden. I went into the hall and headed towards the back, careful not to wake the servants. Recently several cats had made their home in our yard, and Kaori often fed them from the kitchen door. For some reason I paused outside my father’s room. He had come home about two weeks ago. Heart pounding, I quietly opened the door. The yellow light from the desk lamp was shining on Kaori, standing there stark naked, while my father lay fully clothed on the bed some distance away, staring at her.

I nearly cried out, thought I actually did cry out, but somehow no sound came out. Kaori stood shaking in front of my revolting father. When he told her to open her legs, she sat down where she was and did so, face averted. On the table beside the bed was a bottle of whiskey. He ordered her to look at him and she obeyed with a shudder.

I couldn’t move. This was the fear I had forgotten. My pulse grew painful, my arms and temples went numb, my legs became horribly weak. But I had to overcome this terror and kill my father. I didn’t know how, but I had to kill my father right now. With a sudden feeling of hatred that I’d never experienced before, I opened the door. No, I thought I did, but in reality my arms didn’t move. Just as I was wondering why it was still only open a crack, even though I was sure I’d pushed it, Father told Kaori that was it for tonight, and she started getting dressed. I didn’t understand what was happening, but I stood rooted to the spot.