She broke down midway, and handed the phone over to my father. The first thing he asked me was if I was surprised, and my response was, “Yeah, I guess so.” Then he said, “Take your time, give it some thought about whether or not to go see him.” Curious as to why he was home at this time of day, I asked him. He was getting close to retirement age, he said, and lately he’d been getting home early.
“If you don’t want to go, that’s fine, I mean, well, this is all of a sudden, isn’t it. Sorry — well, take your time and think about it.”
“No, well, I’ll go. He’s about to die and he wants to see me, right? It doesn’t really matter to me either way, but I’ll go — honestly, it’s kind of annoying. I’m afraid if I don’t go, he’ll resent me for it. Oh, right, sorry — things are a little tight this month, so. . I wonder if you could send me ten thousand yen or so. I’m really sorry to ask. When I go out — ah, no, I’ve got a lot going on, I spent all my money buying a new dictionary.”
“You just said you’ve been going out, huh?” my father said with a little laugh.
“Not at all, that’s not what I meant. Really, I’m telling you — but, sorry though — I really need you to send it to me.”
“I understand, what else can I do? Make sure you’re studying. Oh, and if you do go to see him, I think Mr. Yamane will go with you. I think you’ll likely hear from him too.”
“Got it. Oh, listen, give Mom a hard time because it seemed like she was crying. Tell her she must be getting sentimental in her old age, okay? Ah, class is about to start,” I said and hung up.
I thought about my biological father a little, but in all honesty, the whole thing made no difference to me. I had virtually no memory of the man, so I really didn’t harbor any sort of grudge against him. I had heard that the woman he had married had left him and all he had done was drink. And I also remember being told that, for a small child like me, it had been dangerous to live with him when he was in that condition. But as far as I was concerned, that was simply common sense dressed up in other words.
Keisuke had been watching me with concern, but there was nothing to say. In the past, I would have taken this opportunity to tell him that neither of my parents were my real parents, that I had been in an orphanage, and then enjoyed watching his reaction, but of course I didn’t do that now. For whatever reason, Keisuke kept trying to be nice to me. He probably guessed something was up from what I had said on the phone.
“All right, then, I’m going to go to that girl’s place now,” I said, thinking I would leave Keisuke there.
“Huh? Oh, the cute one? What’s her name?”
“Ah, not that one — I meant the girl I slept with the other night, go over to her place. And, her name is Yuko. The one you were talking about. Yuko Yoshikawa. I’m just telling you so you’ll keep your hands off her.”
“What? Why are you going there? I thought you were in love with this one? Hey, what are you doing? Break it off with the other one.”
“Come on, nothing wrong with getting what I can, is there? I mean, I’d rather be with Yuko. I’m serious about her, man.”
“Well, then, if you’re serious, what else can you do? Guess you’d better go. But you’d better not let Yuko find out.”
“Yeah, guess you’re right.”
From there, I decided to actually go to that girl’s apartment. I didn’t have any particular desire to see her, but since I was the one who suggested it, I figured why turn back now? In fact, I often acted according to the idea of “why turn back now?” I searched for the girl’s number on my cell phone, then called her. I hadn’t known her name, so I had put her in under T for “toast.” She answered cheerfully, and when I said I was coming over now, she breezily accepted. She asked if I was hungry, but I said I didn’t need to eat. Actually, I wouldn’t have minded eating something, but I wanted to see what would happen if I just went there to have sex. There was no reason for it, that’s just what I decided to do. I went to her place, and after a brief conversation, she and I had sex. But it didn’t go that well at the beginning. At first, I wasn’t all that into it, maybe because she didn’t feel new and exciting to me. I didn’t get fully erect until I was inside her. She moaned a lot, but I kind of doubted it was entirely for real. It made me wonder whether she had actually come, this time as well as the first time we had sex.
Afterward I fell into a dream-filled sleep. Several times, within the dreams, I was aware of the fact that I was dreaming, yet I was unable to control my own actions. When I awoke, just like the last time, the girl was preparing something on the other side of the curtain. I figured it might be toast again, but the only thing she had made was coffee. According to her, I had been asleep for sixteen hours. At first I thought she was making this up, but it was true. The gun sprang to mind, and my eyes hurriedly searched for my bag. But I quickly remembered that I hadn’t brought it with me that day. My cell phone rang: it was Yuko Yoshikawa. I hesitated for a moment, then decided to let it ring, waiting for the sound to stop. The girl showed no interest in my behavior. It seemed to take a very long time for the phone to stop ringing.
9
By the time I left the girl’s apartment, it was already getting dark, and I was too exhausted to do anything else. When I said I was leaving, the girl had pressed her body up against mine and thrown me forcefully onto the bed. I let her have her way with me, thinking that she must not have been able to satisfy herself the day before. She liked sex. There probably weren’t too many people who disliked it, but she seemed to particularly enjoy it.
I gave up on going to scout out the mountain, aware that I was merely postponing it. Having made that decision, I was terribly relieved that it was still off in the future, and I could feel myself start to relax. Yet this seemed rather strange, because I had thought that I wanted to fire the gun.
As if the act of shooting the gun had taken on a character of its own, the impending realization of this deed loomed over me, and from time to time this awareness gave me the creeps. I had the feeling that this summoning would gradually become unbearable, and that the only way to silence it would be to hurry up and fire it. But I also felt the need to establish some distance. It was in response to this inner awareness that I had come up with the idea of first going to scout out the mountain. But I worried that, when I was up there, the desire to fire the gun might drive me mad. Or rather, that I might be overcome by the reality of shooting it. I lit a cigarette and pondered this for a while. I knew that I wanted to fire the gun, and now I grew curious about where that desire originated. However, there seemed to be no doubt that I wanted to fire it.
I wondered if I might be afraid. Scouting out a place would make me want to shoot it. And if I wanted to shoot it, at some point I definitely would do so. Shooting it once would make me want to shoot it again. I had the feeling that I was afraid of this cycle continuing, that it was this cycle itself that I feared. But just what, I wondered, was the reason for my fear? It couldn’t have just been about shooting the gun. Most likely I was afraid of being caught, which was why I was going to check out the mountain first, and I wasn’t going to fire the gun unless it was entirely safe to do so. I recalled the excitement I had felt when I first discovered the gun. In the midst of my exhilaration at the time, I had still made an effort to retain a clear awareness. The effort came from trying to keep a certain distance from my own enthusiasm. It felt as though now I was trying to maintain an objective opinion, as I had before, about my part in this process as it took its course. However, it had become more difficult to simply appreciate the feel of the gun without firing it. Once again, I thought about going back. Going back to the time when I discovered it, when it seemed as though we were, I don’t know, on equal terms. But that was impossible. The gun was already a part of me — it may have been an exaggeration to say this, but it had penetrated my sense of reason. Firing the gun was in the nature of the gun itself, and it would always motivate me to do so. By making the choice not to shoot it, I felt as if I must choose to return to my former self. Meaning going back to my previous existence, to when I didn’t have the gun. Not only would that be difficult, I also found the prospect extremely unpleasant. I could no longer imagine my life without the gun. I now experienced a boundless joy from my daily routine, built around the gun, and it seemed to me that enabling that process would at the same time advance my own development.