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  With a single glance the pattern was burned into her retinas. It felt as if a long and slender creature had forced its way into her eyes.

  Taken aback, Akane stared at the boy’s face. At the same time, he noticed someone’s eyes were on him, and his fingers, which had been crawling on the sketchbook, halted. Retaining his posture, the boy raised his hands slightly higher and then twisted to show her his picture, placing it right in front of her face as if to say, You wanna see? Here, I’ll show you.

  It was an abstract picture, far removed from realism. It reminded Akane immediately of the drawing exercise that her counselor had conducted. Just before graduating from elementary school, she’d been told to draw a picture. That was why it registered right away.

  In her elementary school days, she’d experienced something so terrifying that it was too much to remember. After she’d become unable to go to school, she was immediately taken against her will to see a counselor, who instructed her to draw a picture. The themes she was given were “house,” “tree,” and “animal.”

  She easily drew a house and a tree but couldn’t come up with any animals she might draw. She drew an alien as a last resort, at which point the counselor labeled her as suffering from schizophrenia.

  The boy’s picture wasn’t unlike the one that Akane had attempted. The incongruity between its primitiveness and its sophistication threatened to destroy the entire composition, perfectly depicting what was in his mind.

  There was a swirling sun floating above an apple tree, and two triangular houses which were interspersed in a vacant field. The peaceful scenery of the grassy field was flat and had no depth. That was why it came across as primitive; the composition lacked any sense of perspective. The houses and tree were drawn well, but there were no people. Instead, there was a snake wriggling around the root of the apple tree, forming an S shape.

  As the snake occupied most of the space in the center of his picture, it must have been the thing he wanted to draw most.

  It looked as though the snake had swallowed something large, much larger than itself, and was unable to move. Seeing how bloated its belly was, Akane imagined that the snake surely must have swallowed something other than a living creature. It didn’t have the slightest warmth or roundness, or any kind of suppleness to it, and the corners of the thing in its belly were so sharp that they almost tore through the skin from inside and popped out. In this flat picture, the snake’s distended belly alone had a certain grotesque realness.

  Whatever was inside its stomach, it seemed to be a rectangular object. Its considerable weight was working inside the snake’s belly and pressing its whole body against the ground, leaving the snake cruelly immobilized.

  Akane held her breath without thinking. She couldn’t help dwelling on the intention channelled into the picture.

  It had to have something to do with his background.

  He was a patient at this hospital, that much was certain. Since he was wearing a hat in early summer weather—warm enough to make one perspire—she assumed that he was undergoing chemotherapy.

  Most of all, she wanted to know what the snake had swallowed. Given the shape, it could have been a brick or perhaps a concrete block, but the boy’s intention must have been otherwise. He’d put something in the snake’s belly that normal people would never be able to imagine, and had given it real meaning.

  The snake…had reached out intentionally to this thing and put it in its stomach, rendering itself immobile.

  Akane was gripped by an ominous feeling. What if the snake symbolized her own future? What then?

  By showing her his picture, it seemed like the boy was making a mockery of her.

  Feeling nauseated all of a sudden, she held her mouth with the back of her hand and moved her eyes right and left in search of a restroom.

  She saw the sign for one hanging from the ceiling just a few dozen feet ahead. To her it felt so far away, the contents of her stomach seemingly on the verge of bursting out.

  When she tried to stand up, she heard the boy’s muffled laughter coming from right behind her. It overlapped with her own name, Akane Maruyama, being called out.

  “Ms. Akane Maruyama, Ms. Akane Maruyama, please wait outside Exam Room 3.”

  Not knowing what she should do first, Akane remained seated in the waiting room chair, unable to move.

  2

  When he stood in the open-air corridor and opened the door, a foul smell poured out of the room. Although it was an odor that he was used to smelling, it spoiled the pleasant mood he’d been in that morning.

  Takanori Ando turned his head back outside and took a single deep breath before stepping into the entryway and removing his shoes.

  The whole time that this studio apartment—located in a prime section in the heart of Tokyo—was being used as a production office, the smells of the industry had been seeping into the place. The room was full of videotapes, cameras, and editing and digital-info devices that were scattered about…The smells they gave off had blended with those of the cigarettes that the company president Yoneda smoked, along with the coffee and tea that had been spilled on the carpet, producing a distinctive odor that filled the room. Yoneda, who was both president and producer, had quit smoking one week before, but the cigarette smell showed no signs of going away.

  Sitting with his legs crossed in the middle of the cramped room, Yoneda beckoned with his hand.

  “What kept ya?” he asked. “Well, anyway, come and sit.”

  Takanori sat down in front of him.

  Whenever he wanted to discuss some new project, Yoneda always sat cross-legged on the carpet, shaking his knees. It was a peculiar motion: he violently shook his knee joints up and down, quite unlike the slight jiggling people sometimes did. The way he was shaking now was different than usual, perhaps as a side effect of having given up smoking.

  Takanori could anticipate what Yoneda was going to say.

  Honestly, I want to get your thoughts on this.

  Trying not to look at Yoneda’s shaking, which was gradually growing more pronounced, Takanori turned his eyes to the calendar on the wall. The note for that day’s date read tai-an, meaning it was an auspicious day. Something flashed in his mind when he saw this, and at precisely that moment, his cell phone rang. On the display was Akane’s name.

  “Excuse me, I have to take this.”

  Takanori stood up with his phone in hand and stepped outside from the entryway. With the office being so small, he had to do so if he wanted to have any privacy.

  As he rushed out the door, Takanori pressed the answer button and put the phone to his ear.

  This time, too, he could guess what she was going to say. Based on the changes that were happening to Akane’s body, and the positive on her pregnancy test, the result was already obvious.

  “How’d it go?” Takanori asked, eager to hear what the doctor had said.

  “‘You’re with child,’ apparently.”

  Coming from the mouth of a twenty-four-year-old woman, the old-fashioned expression seemed to carry a special sort of nuance.

  Phew.

  That was his honest and heartfelt reaction.

  “We should file the marriage paperwork right away,” he said. “I gotta get a copy of my family register.”

  “Me too.”

  Just then, Takanori felt a sudden urge to meet her and talk, like he couldn’t wait. He wanted to hold her close and to feel the tiny heartbeat of the child they had conceived.

  “Where are you now?” he asked.

  Akane was about to head to her job. She had only taken the morning off and had classes to teach in the afternoon.

  Takanori for his part was keeping Yoneda waiting, having stepped away before he could hear about the new project.

  “Let’s talk about it tonight. Take our time.”

  It looked as though the two of them wouldn’t get off work until after seven that evening. After making sure that she would pack some things and spend the night at his apartment
, Takanori hung up.

  When he stepped back inside, he was reminded once again of the foul odor. Despite all the effort he’d made to adjust to it, after stepping out and inhaling the fresh air he found himself right back where he’d started. Each time he went in and out, the vile smell would greet him anew.

  “Your errand done?”

  Yoneda was still in exactly the same pose, siting with his legs crossed on the carpet. Judging by the plastic tea bottle placed in front of his knees, he must have made a round-trip to the refrigerator. Knowing Yoneda, he’d probably crawled there without even getting up. Takanori could picture it.

  “I guess you could say I found the motivation to work.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  Takanori sat down facing Yoneda, who then tossed over a USB stick.

  “Then this one’s all yours.”

  Picking up the USB stick—which looked just like any other—Takanori asked, “What’s on this?”

  “There’s a brief video.”

  “What kind?”

  Takanori could at least surmise that some kind of video was saved on it. He was a director specializing in video processing.

  “You remember about a month ago, when that weird short film was uploaded to a certain video site?”

  “A weird film uploaded to a video site? There’s tons of those.”

  “I mean that live video of the suicide.”

  “Oh, yeah, that one.”

  Takanori knew about it. It was around the middle of May. After announcing his intentions, a man in his forties hanged himself, broadcasting the whole scene live from his computer camera. There had been a number of similar cases overseas, but this was the first such instance in Japan, and it had caused quite a stir online.

  Takanori had only heard the gossip surrounding it—he hadn’t seen the actual footage. Yet even those whispers about it had seemed to vanish so quickly. As for what had transpired afterwards, he knew none of the details.

  “What happened with that?”

  “Right after the live broadcast, the video feed was cut off.”

  Whenever a video got uploaded that was contrary to public order or morality, it was typically deleted by the site administrator. A live feed showing a suicide by hanging was so graphic that it could give viewers a violent shock.

  “That makes sense.”

  “In cases like this, what do you think usually happens next?”

  “Someone’s bound to have dubbed the video, so even if it gets deleted, there’ll be copies popping up online one after another. It’s like a whack-a-mole game that goes on and on.”

  “But that’s not what happened here. The only recording of it that exists is that one, on there.”

  Yoneda’s manner of speech was so exaggerated that Takanori reflexively tossed the USB stick onto the carpet. “Why do we even have this in the first place…If this were a real suicide video, the cops would’ve gotten involved already.”

  “Huh? You mean you really don’t know?”

  To be sure, Takanori had heard about a suicide being broadcast live on a video site about a month earlier. Then again, the buzz hadn’t lasted very long and had fizzled out almost immediately.

  “Was the video a fake?”

  “Once people started talking about it online, a certain amount of information got into the hands of the police, but they couldn’t even identify the guy’s address or name. Obviously, not even the body was found…and it still hasn’t been.”

  “So, it was a fake after all. The cops must’ve thought so, and that’s why they let it go. They’re busy enough without wasting their time looking into some dumb farce, right?”

  Even without professional equipment, it was very easy to manipulate a video. With the steady stream of shock vids being uploaded to the internet these days, once it was revealed to be a hoax made by a fanatic, a live suicide broadcast would be forgotten right away.

  And yet, if that was so, what was Yoneda driving at by bringing it up?

  Takanori picked up the USB stick once more and asked, “What do you want me to do with this?”

  “I want to use it for a special summer program.”

  Whenever Yoneda said that Studio Oz—the CG production company of which he was president—was going to do a “special summer program,” it could only mean the two-hour slot on KTS TV, a key network channel based in Tokyo.

  “What’re you talking about? That’s impossible. There’s no way we can play footage that was deleted from a video site on a commercial TV station.”

  “Scratch that. I meant to say, I want you to find out whether we can use it for the summer program.”

  “Mr. Yoneda, have you watched it already?”

  “I have,” the president replied, grimacing.

  “So, you think we can use it?”

  “Like you said, not as-is. But if you work some editing magic on the original here, we can make a convincing CG film that could be mistaken for a real suicide by hanging. If we change the face, we’ll be able to get around the problem of portrait rights. More than that, though, I’m curious about the background behind how this was made, you know? Who created it, and for what reason? We might even be able to add that story into the film as a segment.”

  For a smaller production company such as Studio Oz, a two-hour slot for a special program was a mouthwatering prospect. Naturally it was their wish to be a part of that somehow. Even a minor involvement in the CG process would aid their precarious financial situation.

  As long as the company was certain to receive compensation—even a pittance—Takanori would be compelled to contribute to improving its finances.

  “Understood. Anyway, I’ll take a look.”

  Takanori picked up the USB stick and put it in the inner pocket of his bag.

  3

  The distance between the Studio Oz office and Takanori’s apartment was walkable. If he opted not to walk, his only alternative was to go by taxi, and his choice depended on his mood.

  He decided he would walk and enjoy the early summer weather, getting some sunlight while casually surveying the street scenery. When he stepped out onto the sidewalk, he heard the chirp of a car horn, and turning toward the sound, he saw an empty taxi slowing down. From the way the driver approached, he seemed eager to pick up a customer.

  Takanori involuntarily raised his hand and stopped the taxi. Why, when he’d already decided to walk, he wondered.

  Oh well, it’ll save me some time.

  He got in the back seat and gave the name of his condominium, which everyone knew.

  “Wow. You live there, sir?”

  Takanori quietly clicked his tongue. Not this again. Every time he got into a taxi and provided his destination, he was invariably asked this same question. If he answered yes, there were always follow-up questions, with the driver wanting to know if he was rich and what he did for a living. Since Takanori tended to wear more casual attire like T-shirts and jeans, his appearance hardly gave off an aura of affluence.

  “No, I’m just visiting a friend,” he evaded, hoping to cut off the conversation.

  People got nosy whenever they spotted an incompatibility. They often overreacted when something seemed to be out of place but didn’t bat an eye if they could immediately tell you were well off.

  Takanori was often taken to be younger than his actual age of twenty-eight. It was a sign that he didn’t look very mature, and it wasn’t something to be pleased about. He had an air of good breeding, and something about him seemed naïve, which only belied his desire to be a real adult male.

  That was why he wanted to tell the taxi driver that he was going to be a father next year…

  He had a serious romantic partner, who was now pregnant; this was a happy accident that he welcomed with all his heart. Taking on the role of husband and father would allow him a proper sense of responsibility, and it seemed he would be climbing his first step toward true adulthood.

  He felt no hesitation about marrying Akane or about living togethe
r with her openly. Her pregnancy was a major incentive for him to take a step towards marriage, which he had been putting off.

  The only problem was that he didn’t know how his parents would receive a so-called marriage of necessity. But foreseeing that they probably wouldn’t oppose it, Takanori could afford to take in their reaction from a position of safety.

  Thus far, his parents had never sought to stop him from doing anything he wished, leaving him free to make his own choices in all things. They always respected his free will to the point where he had to wonder why. From around the time he was a high school student deciding on his future path, he was made to feel that his household was different from others, and his doubts only multiplied.

  His parents’ attitude was the exact opposite of a lack of affection—he felt that he had been cherished to an excessive degree. Takanori had never doubted that in the least. Yet their attitude in dealing with him seemed reserved somehow. At times, he really sensed a certain nuance in their manner, as though they were treating him gingerly.

  That was how it was during his first year in high school, when he had to select the humanities or the sciences track. Although his grades were reasonably good, always falling within the passing range, his parents never pushed him too hard to enter medical school. His mother’s parents had owned a private general hospital, and his father, a former lecturer at a university medical institution, had succeeded them and currently served as director. While it was obvious that Takanori’s parents wanted an heir to the business, his mother seemed to anticipate his feelings and even gave him her resigned reassurance.

  “Uh-uh…if you don’t want to be a doctor, that’s fine.”

  And so Takanori had entered an arts college, where he’d studied drawing and video processing, and upon graduating he’d joined a small production company to pursue the path of a film director.

  While he’d freely chosen whatever he wished to be, as for whether that pattern applied to his sister, four years his junior, the answer was no. She’d always been prodded to attend medical school and was currently enrolled in one. Takanori was mystified about the origins of this difference. It wasn’t as though they’d abandoned him, nor had they given up on him because he wasn’t intelligent enough. And yet…