“So, you really don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?”
“I mean, really, you don’t remember me, do you? You’re forcing yourself. This whole time, you’ve had this full-of-shit look on your face,” she said, studying me.
I stared at her, a little taken aback. A faint smile played about her lips as she watched my eyes. I had no choice but to admit she was right. I realized it might be possible that I had slept with this girl, but that was unlikely. In the first place, I didn’t sleep with girls whose faces I’d forget, and I had never been so drunk that I’d blacked out. I apologized to her, and she laughed out loud.
“It’s no big deal if you say you don’t remember me. Really, it happens. It was ages ago anyway, now that I think about it. Like, when we were freshmen, there was a party for some club. It was a welcome party for incoming students or something. We left together and got something to eat, didn’t we? I’m Yuko, Yuko Yoshikawa. Do you remember now?” she said, looking at me with a smile.
Hearing her describe it, I had a faint recollection of that time. I had definitely snuck out of that party with a girl named Yuko, and we had gotten dinner at some chain restaurant. And then something else had suddenly come up that I had to do, and I had forgotten all about her. But, as I recalled, that girl had had short black hair, and she seemed like a different person from the one here now. Obviously I didn’t really remember, but there was something about Yuko’s air that gave a much different impression from how she had been back then.
“A lot has happened since then. I was in America for a while. I took a leave of absence from school. I was doing something like a homestay, but I recently came back to school. Which I majorly regret now, really. I was bored over there too, but it’s probably worse here. I guess it’s the same, after all, wherever you go,” she said, smiling again.
For whatever reason, I decided against asking her out. It might have been because I felt like she had called me a liar — I wasn’t sure. But in any case, it was annoying to go through the same thing all over again in such a short time — it was exhausting, really. She ordered a coffee, apparently intending to sit and chat with me for a while. Her big eyes were her defining characteristic, and I couldn’t stop staring at them. I lit yet another cigarette, and drank my already cold coffee.
“But, you know, you seem very different, really. Wasn’t your hair short back then? I remember now. No, seriously. That must have been amazing, going to America. I mean, my English is terrible.”
“English? Oh, well, it’s really no big deal to be able to speak it. Basically now I can have a conversation with an English-speaker, you know? It’s not as if I started studying it because I liked it. That was all my parents. They forced me to take English classes when I was little.”
“Hmm, but didn’t that work out for you in the end though?”
“Well, I guess, but I don’t really know. One day they’ll probably make an automatic translator or something, and then there won’t be any need for it. Right? I’m sure that will happen. So, enough about that, what have you been doing? Did you repeat a year or something?”
“Nope. I’ve just been going to class, same as usual.”
“Hmm, really? Sounds pretty boring.”
Then she said she felt like doing something fun. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, so I asked her specifically what she wanted to do. She said that she didn’t really know herself, so she would leave it up to me. She added that she remembered that she had fun the first time we hung out. I figured she’d be awfully surprised if I were to suggest that we have sex. I had a habit of wanting to turn what seemed like was about to happen into something unexpected — a slight yet distinct fascination that I occasionally indulged. I hesitated for a moment, then decided to forget about it for now. She continued to make vague requests of me, which seemed to amuse her in some way. The fact was, I felt like she was trying to drag me down into her own boredom. I gave it some thought but I didn’t come up with any good ideas. And I figured that, when bored people got together, they would only beget boredom. Something about that line appealed to me, and I wanted to try to remember it. The image of the gun flitted through my mind but it wasn’t as if I was going to share that with her. Yuko and I continued to just hang out like that for quite a while.
She asked for my cell phone number, so I asked for hers too. Just then, an idea occurred to me, a sort of game. I would take my time, and in due course, become close friends with this Yuko Yoshikawa. I liked the idea of it taking a long time. Rather than trying to have sex with her right away, I would try, little by little, to proceed along the course. It may have sounded ridiculous, but something about it appealed to me. If at some point, a boyfriend of hers were to appear on the scene, I might even try to act jealous. I felt my mood gradually begin to improve, and I was happy about that. And, for some reason, I still attributed the root of this shift for the better to the gun.
Outside the light was slowly fading, and little by little the air around us grew faintly blue. On campus, the outdoor lights came on, glowing orange, and crowds of students came and went among them, in conversation as they walked. The orange orbs glimmered as they cut through the dim blueness, and I may have stared at them too long, because an afterimage lingered in my vision. The imprint went from yellow to green, following my gaze wherever I looked. Trying to focus on the afterimage itself, the background appeared blue, then orange. As I did so, I experienced a slow, dreamy sensation. The feeling steadily enveloped me, and the next thing I knew, the moment slipped away. I had fallen asleep right then and there.
Yuko Yoshikawa was talking about something, and smoking one of my cigarettes. I nodded at what she said, and drank my coffee.
6
I polished the gun inside my apartment.
Of course I used the black cupro cloth that I bought previously, holding the gun in my left hand and the cloth in my right hand. While I moved around the apartment, I always carried the gun and the cloth with me, polishing it as I listened to music or watched television. I polished it with both elbows propped on the table, or while I was lying in bed.
Time went by surprisingly quickly this way. I took pleasure in the monotony of the task, repeating a conversation with the gun. Needless to say, I didn’t actually speak aloud to the gun, or even carry on a conversation in my head. The gun was a device, so talking to it was the same as talking to myself, and if the gun were to reply, that would mean I was crazy. I simply polished the gun in silence, constantly aware that I was near to the gun. As I did so, however, at times I felt an inexplicable twinge of sadness. I don’t really know why, but it had been a very long time since I had felt that way. I wondered what the cause might be, but I couldn’t figure it out. The day turned to evening, and eventually night.
These past few days, I had often seen the police in the neighborhood. I realized I might have noticed them more because I was hyper-alert to their presence, but it really did seem as though there were more of them around. I overheard a group of women near the convenience store saying that they had seen a lot of cops, and I eavesdropped on some male students speculating about the Arakawa murderer. One time I even saw a uniformed policeman accompanied by a dog, near a nature park about a kilometer from my building. That really shook me up. I had heard about sniffer dogs that could detect the scent of drugs, but I didn’t know whether they were used for guns as well. It was unlikely, but there was no way to know for sure. The gun was metal, and other than that, I didn’t think it gave off a particular scent. When I saw them, I watched the dog for a while, but it paid no attention to me, keeping its snout to the ground and sniffing at something intently.