They’d been forced to act charitably, and it made them hopping mad.
“Do you plan on keeping up the lie, then?” the doctor asked, just to remind her.
“Sure, no problem,” she replied. “Just so long as I can keep the money flowing. Those guys are just dogs that will follow along wherever the money runs. If they rubbed me out now, it would be their loss.”
“But sooner or later everyone’ll forget this thing, you know.”
“Sure. And I have lots to do before that happens. The battle’s just begun.” Her eyes held neither uncertainty nor loneliness.
Kita had looked just this way on Friday, the doctor thought. Though he made bad jokes, though he got giggly and stoned on marijuana, the determination in his eyes never wavered. Like her, he had had the will to fight.
Meeting Kita had changed Shinobu. What was it that had brought them together? That’s right, he’d been a fan of hers. He’d paid a hundred thousand yen to meet her, thus fulfilling one of his last wishes before he died. Shinobu must have sensed something at that meeting. She must have understood that within this man dwelled a proud and noble will.
When Kita had decided to end his life on Friday, his feelings must have been those of a soldier headed for the front – a tangle of tension, elation, and an exalted sense of purity. Shinobu’s keen senses would have picked up on this. And it was Kita, yes Kita, who had coaxed her from her cocoon and encouraged her to spread her wings. And Kita who had sent the doctor his dizzy spell.
“Just what is it you plan to battle, Shinobu?”
Neither she nor Kita would really have a clear enemy they needed to fight, after all. Surely there was an element of random willfulness in all this. The doctor couldn’t imagine a battle without an enemy in any terms other than as sheer hard work. But Shinobu had her reply ready.
“It’s simple. Kita and I fight freedom.”
“Freedom? You mean you’re a slave and you’re fighting to be free?”
“No, no. It’s just that I can’t any longer believe in sham freedom. Everyone keeps using the word, but all it amounts to is some limited freedom they’re grateful for being given by someone. Everyone’s ‘free’ on someone else’s terms. Freedom of expression, freedom of occupation, freedom of religion, freedom of living, freedom of movement – it’s all just about the rules of society really, not something I personally have won for myself, see? Look at it this way. No one’s going to give you the freedom to kill others, or to steal, or to commit arson, or to dispose of a corpse, or dig a grave wherever you want, or live on the street. So you may as well stop wanting to do any of those things. No one can actually be ‘free’ without being given the nod to do it. No one can even understand what freedom is. I get the feeling I’ve been deceived into thinking I was free all this time. So from now on, I intend to fight the lie of freedom.”
The doctor listened entranced. He could never have imagined that such an argument could have come from the mouth of this pouty-lipped star with fabulous breasts.
Maybe this realization of hers was due to the experience of having abducted herself along with the kidnapper, and given her own ransom money to sick kids instead of using it in some way connected with herself. It was the old Shinobu, the one who hadn’t yet met Kita, who’d sulked about how she was just a means for other people to make money. But having been abducted from her former self, she had learned the value and use of treating herself as property.
And so – eureka! Shinobu had discovered that she could change in all sorts of ways depending on who used her for what. And that she could change herself, any way she wanted.
She’d arrived at pretty much the same place that Kita had after his week-long travels – hadn’t she? Kita had thrown everything to the winds, and she’d taken on his colors and changed too. Or so it seemed.
“I guess you’re not afraid of dying now, eh?”
Shinobu snorted at this. “By the way, what’s become of my friend? If no one’s found his corpse, that would mean he’s still alive somewhere, surely?”
How was he to answer this? Kita appeared to have killed himself. The doctor had personally witnessed the wreckage. He hadn’t managed to prevent it, so he couldn’t claim payment from her. Miraculously, however, the suicide attempt might have failed. Perhaps Kita hadn’t died. The rest was groundless speculation, but he guessed Kita may have stubbornly tried to kill himself again, by some other means. Or perhaps he’d forgiven himself, given up on the suicide, and was back to his everyday life again?
“If he were alive now, what do you think he’d be doing?”
Shinobu thought for a while. Then she lowered her eyes to the floor, for all the world like a rejected child, and murmured, “I don’t think there’d be anything he could do.”
The doctor agreed. After all, there was nothing he could do himself, and he was beset by dizziness.
“I’d guess he’d be much more miserable to be in the world than he was before he tried to kill himself,” Shinobu continued.
“True enough. After all, if he’s still alive he’ll be wanted for abduction, theft, attempted murder, drug offences, and fraud. He’d be an overnight sensation, like you. I’m an accomplice, after all, so I know what I’m talking about…”
“No,” she broke in, “that’s not what I’m saying.” Then she went on, twisting her fingers as if to weave together into a coherent whole the words that floated insubstantially in her mind. “What I mean is… Kita, well he rejected all the lies about freedom. All he did was plan to kill himself without anyone ordering him about or meddling. But then all these people gathered like flies and tried to use him. Even suicide isn’t a free act. But I think that Kita ended up confronting society without ever intending to; he just let things take their course. It’s just that when he encountered an enemy bent on obstructing his freedom, he could only turn and fight. It’s backbreaking work, maintaining real freedom. If his suicide attempt really did fail, he’d be left living a life that was a hundred times as cruel as his old one. And he’d really and truly be alone this time. No one who’s had a near-death experience can ever return to a world and a life of lies, see.”
It was as if someone from some other existence were borrowing Shinobu’s voice to speak.
“Freedom is lonely. Jesus Christ has taught me that. If you want to be truly free, you have to resist all the temptations of money and fame and nation and society. As long as all you want is your own happiness and the pleasure of the moment, you’ll remain a slave, whoever you are. Christ cut himself off from the world for the sake of those who’d come after him. I want to follow him. If Kita really is alive, I want to be a comfort for his loneliness. I believe that if people who’ve discovered what real freedom is can join hands and work to create the future, the evils of the world will slowly improve. If I didn’t believe that, I could never survive this cruel present.”
This meant that Yoshio Kita had in effect given Shinobu the courage to live in true freedom, didn’t it? He’d shown her that even when there’s nothing more you can do, you have to bear it. The doctor wasn’t inclined to hear any more of her religious confession. She could choose to become her own version of a saint or Joan of Arc if she wished. He guessed she wanted to save her soul from the depressing reality she lived in. But as for the doctor, he’d never had any truck with Freedom, or The Future, or The Soul. He’d lived his life simply in terms of biological life and death. He’d been too busy cutting up others’ bodies, putting them back together again, and sewing them up, to spare a moment’s thought for such deep questions. From Shinobu’s point of view, he’d be classed among the people who go about madly conning and deceiving others.