Масахико Симада - Death by Choice

“If there’s someone I want to meet I just go and do it really. There’s quite a few novelists I like, so I just go along to some lecture or signing session they give, and go up and ask a question and shake their hand.”

“Is that all it takes to satisfy you?”

“Sure. It’ll do. I did get a free meal out of someone once.”

“That’s a special privilege you young girls have. I don’t imagine any pop star would bother to meet me.”

“Who knows? If you really beg them, they may well go for it. I’ve managed it. I telephoned Junichiro Nabefuta and begged him to see me, and he didn’t bat an eyelid, just told me to go to the Imperial Hotel bar at nine on such and such a day.

“You’ve slept with Junichiro Nabefuta?”

“Yep. He said I was the three hundred thirteenth.”

“I’d die to be able to have sex with stars as easy as that.”

“So who’ll it be?”

For the last ten years Kita had been a secret fan of Shinobu Yoimachi, and he’d always been comforted by her photos and CDs whenever he felt gloomy. He’d had intimate conversations with her in dreams, even gotten her to clean his ears for him, but still she was no more than a fiction. Her breasts had always been the object of lust for men, but voluptuous as they were, somehow they left you with a D-cup’s worth of emptiness .

“I’d love to bury my face in Shinobu Yoimachi’s boobs before I die.”

Mitsuyo had returned to the room in time to hear this muttered confession. “You’re after some pretty high-class boobs there,” she said with a laugh.

“D’ya think I could get her?” Kita was beginning to warm to the idea.

“Well with your money you’d probably beat down the competition if they were up for auction, anyway. Shall we have a try? We can try using Yashiro’s connections, you know.”

At last, Kita was getting the feeling he could spend his remaining time before his execution just as he chose. Mitsuyo quickly rang Yashiro. They talked, and it was arranged that Yashiro would call back.

Kita took Yashiro’s return call while the two girls were out taking a walk on the beach.

“Hey there. Having fun?”

Kita wasn’t keen on the idea of Yashiro stepping back into the story again, but he had to admit the guy was useful. “So what was the answer?” he asked, getting hastily to the point.

“The production manager suggested a figure of a million. How about it? A million yen just to bury your face in her boobs… I’d say it was a bit steep.”

“My budget won’t run to that. Couldn’t they halve it?”

“That wouldn’t be easy, I’d say. It seems she won’t do a special deal for just the boobs, you gotta pay the full package rate. If you pay a million, she’ll spend the night with you, see. Shinobu’s on the way out as a star. She’s a third of what you’d pay for the likes of Naomi or Norika. Judging from the way the guy was talking, I’d guess you could beat them down to eight hundred thousand.”

“I see. Good. I’ll be needing the money for other things yet, see .”

“Hey, cool it. Cool it. Mitsuyo’s all you need, surely. Her market price is just fifty to a hundred fifty thousand a night, after all.”

“Last night was free.”

“Wow, that’s rare. She must like you. I’d say she wants to give one last warm glow to a guy who’s made up his mind to die.”

“You’re wrong, that’s not how it is at all. Well anyway, if that’s the deal they’re offering then I’m out.”

“Wait a moment there, just hold your horses. The guy said if all you wanted was to have a cup of tea with her, it’d be only one hundred thousand. You can negotiate things from there and see how you go. So why not just pay the hundred grand to the manager and at least have tea together?”

Kita took up the offer on the spot. “OK, go ahead then please,” he said.

Yashiro seemed to want to continue the conversation, but Kita hung up on him, and set off still wearing his bathrobe to chase down the two girls. As he wove his way through the crowd around the lobby shop, he heard a child sobbing. A boy of around three was plumped down on the floor refusing to move, clutching a big box containing a combination robot. His mother had evidently run out of patience, and simply left him to it.

“You want that?”

At Kita’s question the boy tensed up and stopped crying. Still hiccupping up a sob or two, he nodded. Kita slipped a ten thousand yen note from the sleeve of his robe, handed it to the child, and said encouragingly, “You go and hand this over to the lady and buy it yourself.” The boy looked bewildered. “Go on,” urged Kita, and at this the boy simply nodded, and ran off to the counter holding the robot and the note.

There were kids running all over the place in the lobby. Anxious parents were calling names all around, and in among them Kita heard one he recognized.

Mizuho – that was the name of the woman who’d left him six years ago and gone off and gotten married. Suddenly he found himself wondering just what sort of life she was leading these days. It hadn’t worked out between them, but if his plan to die went according to plan, she was the only woman in his life who could’ve been his wife. But in all these six years he’d never tried to imagine how that phantom life with her might have been. He’d simply done everything he could to forget her. It would be a lie to say he didn’t feel anything for her any more. But he knew it only made you miserable to go on yearning for someone, so he’d done his best to tell himself that he’d never had a relationship with her.

Six years ago, Mizuho had chosen to marry a bureaucrat on her father’s advice . There would certainly have been calculations about the future involved in her decision – she would have assessed her probable future with the both of them. But Kita had been fool enough not to notice the third party in this triangle until she passed her judgment on him. It embarrassed him to remember how he’d half mistaken as a sign of acceptance that little smile on her face when he brought up the subject of marriage. That was no smile, he told himself, it was a sneer. “Marry you?” it was really saying. “You must be joking.”

Ever since, whenever he saw a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, he was sure she was actually mocking people. It made him angry. It was useless to add a moustache to her lip, or rearrange the portrait so her teeth were exposed. He couldn’t shake the belief that cruel malice lurked behind that subtle smile.

One day as he was walking around the Shinjuku area, he came across a signboard with a Mona Lisa who had an astonished look on her face. It was actually an advertisement for a shop selling artists’ supplies at reduced price, but it made Kita think that he’d like sometime to freeze that little sneering smile of Mizuho’s and change it to just this shocked expression. All such thoughts of revenge faded after about six months, however. He fell ill, and during the two months he spent in hospital even his hatred for her disappeared and he finally moved on. It was easier to just tuck his tail between his legs and accept defeat, he decided. He got to thinking that in fact, once this bureaucrat husband of hers had made his mark in the world, Kita would be able to feel pride in the fact that he’d once been in a love triangle with the fellow.

From Mizuho’s point of view, he could see he must have been a piece of cake to handle. First off, she announces her parents are making her go through a meeting with a prospective arranged marriage partner; next, it’s “Alas, my parents are dead set against me marrying you,” declaimed in the tones of a tragic heroine; and finally, all she has to do is round things nicely off with the punch line, “When I’m married I’ll still treasure the memories of our time together.”