“For now, let’s leave. I don’t think they traced the call, but nothing good will come from staying here for long.”
Juri silently nodded.
We went back to the car, and I turned on the engine. When I was about to promptly depart, Juri said, “One sec.” I stepped on the brake.
“I have a request,” she continued.
“What is it?”
“There’s a place nearby that I want to go to.”
“Do you have something else you need to do?”
“It’s not that, it’s a place I like. Somewhere my mother who passed away took me once. Because I want to calm myself down…Please.”
I saw Juri put her hands together and was taken aback a little. I didn’t think the girl had it in her.
“Is it far?”
“I don’t think it’s that far.”
“But I’d prefer to get as far away from this place as possible.”
“Then it should be fine. It’s not that close. I just meant it’s not far by car.”
“Hmm.” I took my foot off the brake pedal. The car slowly moved. “Do you know the way?”
“Yeah, I think.”
I let out a sigh. “Then I’ll leave the navigation to you.”
“Got it. First, go back to the original road.”
“Okay.” I made a wide circle on the steering wheel and stepped on the accelerator.
I followed Juri’s directions and continued down the highway. Soon, we got to a coastal road. On the left was the ocean, on the right were a chain of tall hills. After some time, Juri instructed me to turn right. As I turned the wheel and continued on, the road became steeper.
“We’re going pretty high. Are you sure this is the way?”
“Yup,” Juri answered confidently.
As I drove, the houses thinned out again. Nothing obstructed our view all around, and it was as though we could see the horizon. Apparently we’d gotten up the hill and what followed was flat road.
“Stop around here.”
Since Juri said so, I stepped on the brake. The place was pitch dark. It didn’t seem like there were cars coming from either direction, but I parked on the roadside at least.
“Hey.” Juri looked at me. “Could you open this?” She pointed to the roof.
“Here?”
“Because we’re here.”
I hesitated for a moment but eventually pressed the open switch for the hood. It quietly retracted. A chilly wind brushed my cheek. It was mixed with the smell of grass and soil.
“See? It’s amazing.” Juri looked up and pointed with her index finger.
Ohh, I let out a dumb gasp. The night sky was that beautiful. On the infinitely large, nearly jet-black display shone countless lights. Their positions were flawless. My heart was getting sucked in just from looking. “It’s cliché but—”
Juri warned before I could finish, “Just don’t say it looks like a planetarium.”
I grinned, still looking up. She was right, I should stay away from that simile. “I don’t know much about constellations. I’m regretting it.”
“I just know Orion, pretty much. But that doesn’t matter.” She raised both her arms, stretched, and breathed deeply. “This feels great. It feels like it’s not Japan.”
I looked at our surroundings anew. The hills and valley were submerged in darkness. There seemed to be fields spread out in front of me.
“I wonder which way the ocean is,” the words slipped out of my mouth though I didn’t particularly need to know.
“That, that, and even that’s the ocean.” Juri pointed to three sides. “Because this is around the tip of the Miura Peninsula.”
I nodded. The impressions I’d had as I’d driven agreed with what she said.
“Well, do you feel a little better?” I asked her.
“Yeah, thank you.” Juri looked at me with a beaming smile. She blinked twice. “Is it okay if I ask you something?”
“What is it this time?”
“You tried to get closer to me back there, didn’t you?”
For a moment, my breathing stopped. I averted my eyes from her and slowly breathed out. “You’re the one who hugged me.”
“That’s not what I mean…” After pausing, she repeated, “You know that’s not what I meant.”
I didn’t answer. I put my right hand on the steering wheel and fluttered my fingertips.
“Why did you stop? Because it’d be dangerous if we stayed there too long? In that case, would you have gone ahead if we did have the time?” she asked in a near whisper.
I hadn’t seen these questions coming. “Then let me ask you.” I turned to her, wearing a smile. “Why did you hug me? You might have gotten scared calling home, but I’m supposed to be nothing more than an accomplice to you.”
She cast down her eyes before looking up at me again. “Because I decided to trust you. Because now that it’s like this, I thought the only person I could trust was you.”
The gleaming sincerity in her eyes confounded me. The tricky emotions that had threatened to sprout back at the love hotel were crawling into my heart again.
“Stockholm syndrome,” I said.
Her lips opened as though to say, Huh? It was an incredibly childish expression that she hadn’t shown until now.
“When a terrorist and hostage are together for a long time, supposedly a sense of solidarity will develop between them. Both parties do want the situation to be resolved quickly. It’s a term for that state of mind. They mentioned it in a Bond movie.”
“I’m not a hostage. You’re not a terrorist.”
“It’s the same. You’re isolated under abnormal circumstances. Even though it’s staged, we’re both hoping that the ransom exchange goes well, and that’s just like the terrorist-hostage relationship.”
Juri shook her head. “There’s something that’s completely different.”
“What?”
“The solidarity that develops between the hostage and the terrorist is originally unnecessary, right? You can even say it’s unnatural. But that’s not the case for us.”
I licked my lips and gave a small nod. “Certainly, our solidarity is a must.”
“Right? So I wanted to feel it. My solidarity with you.”
Juri’s eyes caught me and wouldn’t let go. I was growing weary of putting on the brakes. They even started to seem superfluous.
I drew her face closer with my left hand and our lips came together. Just before they did, she closed her eyes.
—
It’s called flow. If you kiss, you want to put your tongue in. If the woman doesn’t put up any resistance, you also want to touch her breasts, and if that continues, next you want to reach your hand into her underwear.
I wanted a change of venue but never got the chance to suggest it. Saying something like that could cool her passion. While I indulged in her lips, I thought this was a case of the syndrome after all. The act of calling home and talking to her father had wrecked something in Juri. As a result she was feeling hopelessly anxious. She couldn’t deal with it without telling herself that she needed the man who was with her.
Well, what about me? Did I love the girl? No, that would have been stupid. It wasn’t why I’d become interested in Juri, and my motive for staying with her belonged to a completely different dimension. I felt a very natural sexual desire simply because she was a young woman. I knew pursuing that was foolish, so I hadn’t let it show in my behavior, and I still didn’t mean to give that away to the very end.
But things turning out this way wasn’t something that I could never welcome. I needed to dispel my anxiety no less than she did. Completing a game as big as this required absolute trust. For a man and woman to establish that, a physical connection was perhaps essential. It could even be an illusion, actually. It didn’t matter if the emotions were momentary or false. Stockholm syndrome was precisely such a phenomenon.