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Most importantly, the truth was that I felt as though the gun had brought me back to life. Since having the gun, that fulfilling — you might even say thrilling — progression, probably formed as the gun insinuated itself into my life, became something automatic, and by tracing this transformation, I felt a pleasure that shook my existence as well as gratitude, and to deny that meant denying everything about myself. I wanted to experience every aspect of the gun thoroughly, and to abandon the firing of it that now loomed before me would mean there would be nothing left to do but to relinquish the gun. That was an impossible option, one that I couldn’t even fathom. Losing the gun would turn me into an empty shell of myself, and the prospect of carrying around that lifeless husk for the remaining years of my life seemed like endless torture. I had often heard it said that humans lived to achieve what they chose to do, and I believed that. Putting one’s soul to the flame, in order to experience such fullness, was essential for humans, and I had no reason to think that I was an exception. Thoughts of how to avoid doing so had gotten in my own way. I no longer felt the need to contemplate it. If I continued to brood over it, I would become paralyzed. And if I couldn’t do anything, I would lose whatever value there might be to living. With this realization, I decided to pursue the idea of how, specifically, I would fire the gun. At that moment, I felt decidedly more at ease.

14

I began to shadow the woman from the apartment next door every so often, and I got to know the general pattern of her movements. She spent the daytime in her apartment, she worked nights at a kind of local bar; Saturday and Tuesday were her days off, but there were times when she worked on Tuesdays. She came home at five o’clock in the morning; sometimes she had a man with her, and when that happened, she made the kid go outside. She was around her late twenties, she was thin, her eyes slanted upward, her hair was dyed brown, most of her clothes were garish but, on her days off, she often wore the kind of brand name track suits that were trendy with people younger than her. One day while I was shadowing her, I remembered how, when I first imagined firing the gun, I had envisioned shooting a young woman. At that moment, it felt as though this was something that had been decided all along; I had the impression that I was following, very precisely, a process that was integral to the gun itself. The place where she worked was in Itabashi in Tokyo, but she often went to a supermarket on the edge of the neighboring prefecture to do her shopping. I took note of this, and actually went to the supermarket myself to determine its exact address, which I got from a receipt. The store was in fact located in Saitama prefecture. Realizing that it would fall under a different prefectural police jurisdiction, I hit upon the idea of shooting the woman on Saitama turf. It seemed like this might confuse the police somewhat. To make the connection between incidents involving a woman in Saitama and a man from Itabashi in Tokyo would take some time, I thought — maybe not long, but a while, anyway. Perhaps it was only trivial, but it seemed to be in my best interest to complicate things however I could for the police.

The woman often went to that supermarket on Thursday, or sometimes Tuesday, between eight and nine in the evening. At that hour, the area was already dark, so it seemed to me like the perfect time. I began to consider the act from various angles, carefully investigating the neighborhood around the store to determine the best place to shoot her, along with my own escape route. I bought a black jacket from a local shop, and hung it on a hanger in my apartment. The dark color would be less conspicuous at night, which was absolutely critical for what I was about to do. The jacket was one of those reversible types — it was white on the other side — which I also liked. After the deed, I thought it would be extremely useful to be able to turn it inside out as I made my getaway. When I purchased the jacket, I also bought a pair of black leather gloves. They weren’t a practical necessity, but I paid good money for them, in order to add to the excitement.

I placed the leather gloves and the gun on the table, and I gazed at the reversible black jacket suspended on the hanger. I also had a small flashlight that was still packed in its cardboard box, one of the things my mother had bought for me when I passed the university’s entrance exam and moved out. I had taken the flashlight out a few days earlier and lined it up on the table along with the rest. The reversible jacket, the leather gloves, the small flashlight, the gun — these four items constantly reminded me of the fact that I was a criminal. Sometimes I liked the way this made me feel, sometimes I didn’t. Yet these shifts in mood, this ambivalent consciousness that could be swayed by whatever vague reasons did not matter much to me. This was a simple process that I needed to follow, and what was important was whether I would succeed.

The toast girl called, and I yielded to temptation when she asked me to come over to her place. The truth was, I was more inclined to turn her down, but it felt almost like an automatic response when I agreed to go. I took a shower, smoked two cigarettes, and got dressed.

When I went outside, for some reason I felt slightly dizzy. After walking for a little while, I realized that all along I had been staring at the top of a utility pole far off in front of me. I took a puff on my cigarette, threw it on the ground, and lit a new one. Several of the people on the street eyed this repetitive behavior with suspicion as they walked past me. A bicycle that appeared out of nowhere completely startled me — I almost collapsed on the spot. For whatever reason, the agitation from being caught off guard like that made my mind go momentarily blank. Lately, at least, minor things often startled me. The phone ringing surprised me, or someone knocking on the door made me terribly nervous. Even when I was on the train, I scanned my surroundings, my eyes darting restlessly around me. This may have been an affectation, but I must have felt a need to check one thing or another. Looking out the train window in front of me, I waited patiently for the station where I would get off to be announced, as nervous as if I were threatened by something.

Once inside the girl’s apartment, I pushed her down on the bed. For some reason, she laughed, and told me to hang on a minute. But it made no difference to me. I could wait a bit, or I could do whatever right then and there. I felt thirsty, so I opened the refrigerator and drank a Coca-Cola that was inside. After helping myself to it, I felt a little guilty and apologized to the girl. She said something to the effect that those kinds of things really didn’t matter to her, but I didn’t quite hear her. She kept talking, now with a more serious look on her face, asking me if there was something wrong. I don’t know why, but I reacted to her words with irritation. Wanting to have sex, I pushed her down on the bed vigorously, took off her clothes, and ran my lips over her body. The girl laughed and said, “Guess I have no choice,” and she let me have my way with her. Or perhaps I should say, I let her have her way with me. In the middle of things, my mind was somewhere else. Once I realized it, though, I couldn’t remember what I had been thinking about. At the time, I had been toying with her sex, putting my fingers inside her. I didn’t know how long I had been doing this for; I was staring vacantly at her sex as my fingers moved unconsciously. She was making sounds, her body repeatedly shuddering in short bursts. When I increased my efforts, the sounds she was making grew heavily, and I wondered if they could hear her next door. As she quivered with these convulsions, finally she said, “Enough already!” It made no difference to me, but I held down her torso, pinning her legs so she couldn’t move them, and continued to move my fingers deep inside her. She kept shouting, “Stop!” and her husky voice reminded me of the black cat’s cry from that night. I persisted in what I was doing, but eventually she struggled enough to shove me off her. I had the feeling that was going to happen all along, but somehow I was still surprised. She was breathing hard and sweating, and she called me a pervert. The word penetrated me, as if without resistance. Ridiculous as it may have seemed, it felt as though something about me had been defined for the first time. That seemed funny to me, so I chuckled a little. Then I left the girl’s apartment.