Yasutaka Tsutsui - Salmonella Men on Planet Porno

Whoever it was, they’d need a lot of money. Even a single copy of a newspaper would be expensive to print. Who could it be? Who would go to such bizarre lengths just to get at me?

I couldn’t remember offending anyone that much. Perhaps it was someone else who fancied Akiko Mikawa. But what was the point? She’d done nothing but reject me.

No, this must be someone really perverse , I thought. Trouble was, I couldn’t think of anyone who could possibly be that perverse.

Damn! I should have kept the newspaper , I thought on my way to the station. I regretted losing my temper. If I’d kept the newspaper, it might have helped me to ferret out the culprit. It would have been evidence once I’d found him.

I forced myself onto the packed commuter train and found a place to stand in the middle of the carriage. I thought about all the people I knew. Then I caught sight of a newspaper being read by the man standing next to me. It was a different newspaper to mine, but it also had an article about me. And this time, it occupied two whole columns.

I gasped audibly.

The man looked up from his newspaper, glanced back at the photograph next to the article, then looked up again and stared at me. I hurriedly turned my back.

Who had done this?! I was livid. The villain had actually replaced all the morning papers along this line with fake ones. He wanted to make sure the article was seen not just by me but also by everyone else who took the same train as me. In that way, he could make a complete fool of me and vilify my name. And of course, the ultimate intention was to make me lose my mind. I filled my lungs with the stuffy air inside the packed train. The bastard! I wasn’t going to play his game! No one was going to drive me mad!

I laughed aloud. “Hahahahahaha! Who’s going mad, then?” I shouted. “I’m not!! Hahahahahaha!”

At Shinjuku Station, an announcer was barking over the loudspeakers. “Shinjuku. This is Shinjuku. Change here for the Yamanote Line. The train on Platform 2 is for Yotsuya, Kanda and Tokyo. By the way, Tsutomu Morishita was on this train today. All he’s had this morning is a glass of milk. Mind the doors!”

There was nothing unusual about the atmosphere at work. But as soon as I walked into the office, seven or eight of my colleagues started tapping each other on the shoulder, giving me sidelong glances and whispering to each other. They must be talking about me, I concluded.

After clearing a few memos from my desk, I went over to Admin. In the office were four secretaries, one of them Akiko Mikawa. As soon as they saw me, they changed their expressions and started typing feverishly on their keyboards. It was quite obvious – they hadn’t been working but talking about me until that very moment.

Ignoring Akiko, I called Hiruma Sakamoto out to the corridor.

“Was someone enquiring after me yesterday?” I asked.

She looked as if she were about to cry. “I’m really sorry,” she answered nervously. “I didn’t know they were journalists! I didn’t think they’d put it all in the newspaper like that!”

“They?! Who?”

“There were four or five men. Of course, I didn’t know any of them. They accosted me on my way home and asked all sorts of things about you.”

“Hmmm.” That got me thinking. The conspiracy was clearly much more sinister than I’d imagined.

Just after lunch, I was called to the Chief Clerk’s desk. After issuing a new work assignment, he gave me a knowing look. “I read about it in the paper,” he whispered.

“Oh?” I answered, not knowing quite what to say.

The Chief Clerk grinned and brought his face close to mine. “You can’t trust the media, can you. But don’t worry. Personally, I couldn’t be less interested.” The liar. He was loving every minute.

My new assignment took me out of the building and into a taxi. The young cabbie had his radio on at full volume.

“Ginza 2nd Street, please.”

“Eh? What’s that?”

He couldn’t hear me for the music.

“Ginza 2nd Street.”

“Ginza what Street?”

“Second. Ginza 2nd Street.”

The cabbie finally understood, and the taxi set off.

The music ended. An announcer started talking.

“This is the news at two o’clock. The government this morning ordered all laughing bags to be confiscated from shops throughout the country. Police nationwide have been instructed to clamp down on the illegal manufacture or sale of the bags. Laughing bags are novelty toys that emit a hysterical laughing noise. Today’s move follows a dramatic surge in social unrest caused by nuisance calls using the bags. Calls are often made at two or three o’clock in the morning. When the victim answers, the caller makes the bag laugh into the telephone. There have also been reports of a phenomenon known as ‘laughing-bag rage’.

“Tsutomu Morishita arrived at work on time this morning. Soon after entering his office, he went to the Administration Department and called Hiruma Sakamoto out to the corridor, where the two were observed in conversation. The precise nature of their discussion is not yet clear. Details will be announced as soon as they’re known. Later, Morishita went out on company business, and is currently travelling towards central Tokyo in a taxi.

“The Ministry of Health & Welfare today released the results of a nationwide survey of pachinko game-machine users and designers. The results suggest that playing pachinko after eating eels can be very detrimental to health. According to Tadashi Akanemura, Chairman of the National Federation of Game-Machine Designers-”

The cabbie switched the radio off – he probably wasn’t too interested in the news.

Was my name really that well known? I closed my eyes and thought about it. Could I really be so famous, when there was nothing distinctive about me at all? After all, I was nothing but a lowly office worker, a company employee. No one as unremarkable as me could possibly merit attention in the world of the media.

So just how well-known was my name, my face? Take this cabbie. Was he aware that the person mentioned on the news just now was none other than the passenger in the back of his cab? Had he recognized me as soon as I got in? Or did he actually know nothing about me at all?

I decided to test him. “Er, driver? Do you know who I am?”

He checked me out in the rear-view mirror. “Have we met somewhere, sir?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Well then, I don’t know you, do I.”

There was a pause. “You’re not one of them celebrities, are you sir?” he asked at length.

“No. Just an office worker.”

“You been on telly?”

“No. Never.”

The cabbie smiled wryly. “Then I’m not going to know you, am I sir.”

“No,” I replied. “I suppose not.”

I thought back over the radio news I’d just heard. The announcer knew that I was in a taxi heading for central Tokyo. That meant someone must be following me. They must be watching my every move. I turned and looked through the rear window. The road was full of cars – it was impossible to know which of them was following us. Come to think of it, they all looked pretty suspicious now.

“I think someone’s following us,” I said to the cabbie. “Can you shake them off?”

“That’s a lot to ask, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so,” he said with a grimace. “Unless you know which car it is. Anyway, you’d have a job shaking anyone off in this traffic.”

“I think it’s that black Nissan. Look! It’s got a newspaper company flag on it!”

“Well, all right sir, if you insist. Though, personally, I just think you’re being paranoid, sir.”

“I’m perfectly sane,” I countered hastily. “Don’t go taking me to the madhouse, will you!”