I left the coffee shop, declining the detective’s offer to walk with me, and went home alone. Even after I left the detective, my heartbeat raced with no sign of abating. I could barely think straight — all I knew was that I couldn’t settle back down again. I returned to my apartment and lit a cigarette to try to relax. But maybe because I had already smoked too much, it just made me nauseous, and I actually vomited a little in the toilet.
13
I spent the next several days mostly thinking about whether I really would get caught the next time I fired the gun. I hardly left the apartment, and stopped answering the phone. I didn’t really sleep much either; I barely did anything other than polish the gun. I did so, quietly, the gun and me in my apartment.
I came to the conclusion that I would never be caught. Connecting me to the gun from the Arakawa case was a matter of speculation, and as long as that connection remained as vague as it was, I didn’t think they would tie me to the another incident. For example, if someone died, even if they discovered a bullet in the body that was similar to the one found at Arakawa, they might be able to connect those two incidents, but they couldn’t tie them to me. I figured I could get by, even if I were under suspicion, assuming no one could place me at the scene of the crime and, just to be on the safe side, afterward I stashed the gun someplace temporarily. I had the feeling there might be flaws in this thought process, but I decided to stick with it anyway. This made me feel liberated, which made me feel better. But at the same time, this also led to a chronic nervousness.
One thing I could not get out of my mind — what kept repeating over and over — was that if I didn’t keep my wits about me, these thoughts would just spin out endlessly. Once I realized this, I was badly shaken up. The silver-black of the gun shone, its metallic luster penetrating deep within my vision, beseeching me. Or, I felt as though it were beseeching me. The woman next door was screaming, and I could hear something bumping against the wall randomly, accompanied by short cries. I tried to distract myself by putting on some music, but somehow, even as I did so, I was still trying to hear what was going on over there.
Yuko Yoshikawa called at one point. Actually, she may have called more than once, I couldn’t really be sure. I just happened to be near the phone, so that was the only call I answered. For some reason, she was extremely worried. She went on and on — Why couldn’t she get in touch with me, and why hadn’t I contacted her? And then she just started crying. I felt as though I had been saved — I suggested we meet up now, and I told her I would come over to her place. I took a shower, got dressed, and went out. It was bitterly cold. I bought a can of hot coffee.
As soon as I was inside her apartment, I took off my coat and drew close to Yuko. “I’ve liked you for a long time,” I said, caressing her face with both hands. Maybe she was surprised — she stared at me with a strange expression and repeated, “What are you saying?” I told her, “I really like you, and I can’t stand it any longer.” I brought my mouth to her lips, but for some reason she tried to avoid me. I told her again, “I’ve really liked you for a long time,” and I tried to push her down onto the bed that was right there. But she resisted fiercely and managed to shove me away. I was quite surprised by how much force she used. She looked at me and asked, “Why are you smiling?” I didn’t know what she meant, so I didn’t say anything. But she asked me again, “What are you smiling about?” She gave me an insistent look, then seemed about to burst into tears. I was sweating, but I doubted that I had been smiling. So I left her apartment. It was still just as cold outside, so I bought a can of hot coffee, just like I had on the way over.
I did not try to dissuade myself from shooting a person. It felt as if it were a matter that already decisively existed in my immediate future. Why the matter had already been decided, I didn’t really understand myself. I was free, and was supposed to be able to control my own actions. I was able to do the things I wanted to do, and not do what I didn’t want to do. However, I could not stop myself from thinking about shooting someone.
The gun was a man-made device, so it stood to reason that it had a purpose and, to stretch the point, a philosophy and an ideology. Musical instruments were created to play sounds, lighters were a simple way to spark a flame. A gun had been made to shoot a person — it was created to make it easier to kill someone. The general impression that people had of a gun, ultimately, was of death and murder. Being in possession of the gun, I was not immune from such associations, and imagining myself shooting someone was an inevitable progression. But for me to actually carry out such an act required negotiating that choice. Although the concept of killing a person was inherent within the gun itself, I had been able to ignore it, and I should have continued to enjoy the feel and the experience of the gun, as I had before. However, the gun burgeoned within me, until it took over all of me, a process that I had willingly tolerated. Even though I probably felt an emotion akin to love for the gun, there were times when, inexplicably, I felt as though the gun hated me — I was under this illusion despite the fact that the gun was an inanimate object. The result of such thinking was that I wondered whether I was ill-suited to the gun. I often felt that someone more cold-blooded, like you see in the movies, someone who coolly committed murder, who conformed with the ideology of the gun, would be better suited to it. The idea was extremely upsetting to me. At this late juncture, I had the feeling that perhaps I had discovered the sadness that one felt when, out of jealousy or despite your love for someone, the object of your desire turns their back on you. At times, I yearned for the gun to find favor with me, regardless of what might happen.
Nevertheless, I still did not see this ache for approval as a reason to shoot someone. Of course it was an influence — I could tell as much from the fact that I was even entertaining these ideas — but I still wasn’t quite convinced, not even theoretically. This kind of thinking was not really my forte. Nor was I particularly good at analyzing myself; in fact, self-study actually inspired a feeling of revulsion. It took me quite a while to work through all this in my mind.
What distressed me the most was probably my own idea of what it meant to shoot someone. That option as a choice — as well as the images and sensations that I imagined went along with it — sought to connect with my real action, to move beyond the theoretical. I was unable to find the basis of that connection within myself. Whether it may have even been my own fundamental desire, I could not tell. Human consciousness is constantly shifting, influenced by various surrounding circumstances and instinctively fluid actions, societal norms, your perception of the outside world during childhood, experiences, the groups that you belong to, unconsciously accumulated information — it goes on and on, but this consciousness is an unstable thing, determined by the interaction of all these things — I knew I had read about it in a book somewhere. But I had to think. If I wanted to avoid shooting someone, these circuitous ideas were necessary.
In order to change the direction of my thinking, I tried taking the opposite position: why shouldn’t I shoot someone? It was difficult to come up with an answer. It was a well-known fact that the world was full of people who didn’t deserve to live, myself included, and the existence of the death penalty was societally accepted — whatever that tells you about society. And, after all, the fact that guns existed was also accepted as a matter of course. Conveniently, there was a person living in the apartment next door to me who would be better off dead. At that moment, it felt as if my thoughts had taken on a concrete movement of their own. Naturally, I would lose my freedom if I were caught, but I just needed to figure out how not to get arrested.