Ryu Murakami - Piercing

Chiaki tugged on her nipple ring. She felt nothing, no pain whatsoever. She tugged harder, until her breast stood out like a little teepee and a tiny amount of blood oozed from the hole that passed horizontally through her nipple.

The sound of the shower was like the hissing static of an untuned radio. Kawashima was slipping past irritation into anxiety. He stood in front of the bathroom door and checked his watch: she’d been in there more than fifty minutes now. He’d called to her several more times in the past few minutes but got no reply. Unable to ignore any longer the feeling that something was very wrong, he reached for the doorknob with a gloved hand and was taken aback to find that it wasn’t locked. He opened the door a crack. Steam curled out through the opening, and the shower noise became several times louder.

‘Hey! What’s going on in here? I’m opening the door!’

No reply. He pushed the door wide and stepped into the bathroom. And as the steam began to dissipate, the girl materialised on the edge of the tub. She was sitting there completely nude, stabbing herself in the right thigh with the scissors of a Swiss Army knife. When she noticed Kawashima, she gave him a little smile and spread her legs as if to show him the bits of bloody flesh that had caught in her pubic hair. The wounds weren’t very deep, but she had gouged a good deal of flesh from the thigh, and blood was pooled on the tile floor at her feet.

He instinctively moved to stop her, but at his first step the girl opened her mouth, drew a big breath, and let out a scream that rattled the mirror and chilled him to the bone. After a scream like that, someone might be pounding on the door any minute. He had to show the girl that he wasn’t going to approach any closer. He stepped back into the doorway, and she immediately reverted to her vacant little smile.

If anyone were to search his bag they’d find the knife and the ice pick. Maybe he should call the girl’s office. There was a telephone receiver on the wall right next to him, but it was for incoming calls only. He took another step back, and the expression on her face underwent an immediate change. Terror showed in her eyes and brow, and she opened her mouth wide and sucked in another big breath. She was going to scream again.

‘I’m not going anywhere!’ Kawashima said quickly. ‘OK?’ He leaned against the doorframe. ‘Do you understand?’

She nodded, very slowly and almost imperceptibly.

I’ll be damned, he thought. She’s scared half to death. Just like the little kids back in the Home. She wants me here, but not too close. She panics if I approach, and she panics if I try to leave. Stabbing herself like that because she doesn’t know any other way to ask for help.

The girl had been holding the knife down at her side since he’d appeared, but now she raised it and plunged the scissors into the blood-dark meat of her thigh again. It sounded like when you step in mud — splut . She didn’t look at the scissors or the wound but kept her eyes on Kawashima. And just then the telephone rang, giving him such a jolt that his shoulder slid off the doorframe and he nearly fell down. The girl screwed up her face and laughed in a wet, throaty voice.

‘Mr Yokoyama? Is everything all right, sir?’

The call was from the front desk. No doubt someone in a neighbouring room, or a security guard maybe, had reported the scream. Everything’s fine, Kawashima said over the hammering of his heartbeat, trying desperately to sound calm.

‘As you may be aware, sir, all our rooms are occupied tonight, and some of our guests are already sleeping, so we would very much appreciate it if you could keep the volume as low as possible when enjoying music or television.’ The man went on to thank him for his cooperation and to bid him a formal and courteous good night.

What a roundabout way of complaining, Kawashima thought. Somewhere a little kid was getting his brains beaten to a pulp because he’d wet the bed; somewhere a woman who’d broken some arbitrary rule was being taken to a room where unspeakable things could be done to her away from prying eyes; and meanwhile: Is everything all right, sir? Thank you so much for your cooperation, sir — a complaint that sounded more like an apology.

‘Who are you?’ the girl growled in her wet voice. He leaned back against the doorframe and didn’t answer. ‘Who are you!’

He mustn’t say anything. No matter what he said, she would merely shout him down and refuse to listen. She was like a wounded animal. Try to get close and she’d bare her fangs; try to leave and she’d yowl for help.

Kawashima held his right index finger up to his lips in a silent Shhh . He remembered the way he’d felt when he was first put in the Home, convinced that any adult who came up to him smiling and offering kindly words was the enemy. Right now they’re making nice, he’d tell himself, but sooner or later they’ll be pounding on me, for reasons I won’t even understand. As a little boy, Kawashima had never been able to fathom what it was about himself that made adults so angry, but the thought of being completely abandoned by them was even scarier than the unpredictable attacks. All he’d learned for certain in his few years on earth was that he was powerless, incapable of surviving on his own, and that the people he came into contact with all seemed to despise him. He knew from his own experience that he mustn’t approach this girl, and he mustn’t leave her, and he mustn’t speak directly to her or even answer her questions. She wants help, he thought, but she can’t let down her guard. That’s why she’s staring at me like that, watching my every move.

When he put his finger to his lips, the girl studied the gesture curiously and let the knife dangle at her side again. Kawashima slowly took off his gloves and dropped them in the wastebasket next to the door. He showed her his bare palms, as if to say: Calm down. Calm down. I’m not going to hurt you. As he did this, and without turning his head, he looked down at her open purse, which was sitting beside the sink. He could see cosmetics, a memo pad, and a small envelope of the sort hospitals dispense medicine in. Handwritten in ink beneath the gothic-style printing that said Shiroyama Medical Clinic — Dr Shiroyama Yasuhiro, Director was the name Sanada Chiaki.

He mustn’t speak directly to her, even to answer a question, so he needed some sort of intermediary. He lifted the telephone receiver from the wall unit and held it to his ear, tucking his free hand underneath to surreptitiously hold down the hook. The last thing he needed was to connect to an emergency operator while pretending to speak on the phone.

‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Yes, that’s right. Sanada Chiaki is here with me now.’

He looked over his shoulder at the girl. The hand holding the knife still hung at her side, and she was watching him closely, trying to comprehend what was happening. The first order of business was to get that knife away from her.

‘She still doesn’t really trust me. I’m completely on her side, and I’d never do anything to hurt her, but she doesn’t understand that yet.’

When the man first came into the bathroom, Chiaki had felt her face light up with a smile. This must be him , she thought — the one who always takes me to the hospital. When she began stabbing herself in the thigh, she’d had, as usual, no idea who she was or where she was, and naturally she hadn’t felt any pain. Unfolding the little scissors, she’d remembered wanting to do something fun with them but couldn’t remember what. She knew what she was going to be doing, however. It was what she always had to do whenever that face appeared before her eyes, the face of You-know-who with his bright white shirt. She didn’t know who she was. But she knew what her name was, because You-know-who kept whispering it in her face. Chiaki . My name is Chiaki. I’m someone they call Chiaki. He calls me that, and he’s licking me down there, so there’s no doubt about it — Chiaki is me.