Part 2 (1/2)

”Kiyomi is dead.”

s.h.i.+nohara s.h.i.+vered. He looked unconsciously around the empty room. The fluorescent light flickered, then regained radiance, casting its usual shadows on the floor, each particle of light falling like rain.

”What?”

s.h.i.+nohara surprised himself with the volume of his voice. Two minute globules of his saliva traced arcs in the air before descending out of sight.

”But Kiyomi lives.”

”Hey, back up...”

”Extract Kiyomi's liver cells for me. I'm not a doctor, so I'd never be able to handle it.

But I can count on you, right?”

”Kiyomi? What happened to her?”

”I'm coming there right now. You'll do this for me?”

”What are you talking about? Where are you right now?”

”I'll be there soon.”

And with that the line went dead.

s.h.i.+nohara stood in place for a while, grasping the receiver tightly. Frozen in bewilderment, he was unable to make heads or tails of this. The only thing he could say for sure was that his old pal was not himself.

He thought of Tos.h.i.+aki's last statement, I'll be there soon, and frantically looked about the room. Did he mean to this office? He had called from an outside line. Where was Tos.h.i.+aki now?

Just then, not even one minute after the call, the door opened behind him. Startled, s.h.i.+nohara looked over his shoulder. Tos.h.i.+aki was standing there, a faint smile upon his face.

The cup slipped from s.h.i.+nohara's hand and shattered into pieces.

6.

Mariko Anzai was in her room, poring over the math homework spread out across her desk. She was singing along to a tape of her favorite pop singer that a friend from school had made for her. Her a.s.signment was surprisingly difficult for a change, but since this was her favorite subject, she was up to the challenge. Just when she had figured out the problem she was working on, the phone rang.

”Alright, alright...” she muttered, receiving the interruption with mild irritation. She stood up and went out into the hallway.

The clock showed 8:20. Outside her own room, the house felt all too cold and silent.

Her father had yet to return home from work, but these days it was not unusual for him to be out until 11:00. Since becoming the head of his department, it was always like that. He was quick to attribute his lateness to his busy schedule, but Mariko knew the real reason. You just don't want to look at me more than you have to.

The phone's ringing threaded into the patter of her slippers on the hallway floor. These seemed to be the only two sounds in the house. She picked up the receiver unceremoniously.

”h.e.l.lo?”

”Good evening. My name is Odagiri. I am a transplant coordinator. I must apologize for the unexpected call, but is s.h.i.+genori Anzai at home?”

Mariko held her breath and looked reflexively at her left wrist. The sleeve of her sweats.h.i.+rt was rolled up, exposing the IV hole to which her eyes were drawn. Further up along her arm was another hole concealed beneath the sleeve, and both began to tingle.

”Dad hasn't come back from work yet...” she replied unsteadily and with an uncomfortable smile.

”Is this Mariko by any chance?”

”Um, yes... this is Mariko.”

”Ah, good. Actually, I'm calling because a donor for your kidney transplant has been found and I wanted to pa.s.s along the good news.”

Her heart skipped a beat. A kidney transplant... The words ran along her spine and pocked her skin with goose flesh.

When Mariko's first kidney transplant failed, her father was insistent about registering her on a waiting fist for kidneys from nonliving donors. Only a year and a half had pa.s.sed since then. She was amazed that an organ had surfaced so soon. Mariko retraced her memories of the past eighteen months...

”Suitable nonliving donors are rare, which means we'll just have to be patient and wait.”

This is what a doctor named Yos.h.i.+zumi had told her with a pat on her head. But to Mariko, still in elementary school at the time, these words were meaningless. She never planned on going through a second transplant. She'd only heeded her father's request to save his face.

When her father heard Yos.h.i.+zumi's words, he asked the doctor uneasily, ”Wait? For how long?”

”I can't say for sure. At the larger metropolitan area hospitals, over ten transplants from cadavers are performed every year, but that's because Tokyo itself produces a relatively ample supply of donors. Hereabouts, we carry out only a procedure or two a year. There are also those who are 'brain dead' but the idea of extracting organs from them doesn't sit well with most of society, at least here in j.a.pan. So all we can do is wait for a kidney from a heart failure patient. We need the freshest organ possible, but the way things are now, many obstacles stand in our way that significantly narrow down the number of available kidneys.

Compatibility is also a concern. There's a waiting list, but it has an order that must be strictly adhered to out of fairness to all potential recipients. If a suitable kidney is found in another region, it's possible to have it s.h.i.+pped here. Even so, it's not so uncommon for patients to wait five, even ten years.”

”Ten years...”

Mariko could still remember clearly her father's hopeless expression at that moment.

”Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could do it right this time...” Yos.h.i.+zumi said with a hint of bitterness.

Mariko simply looked downward, biting her hp.

She was sure they blamed her. They thought the operation had failed because she wouldn't listen. They all acted nice towards her, but actually hated her so much they wanted to hit her. What did they know, anyway?

”Have you gotten sick at all recently? A cold, maybe?” said the woman on the phone, yanking Mariko from her unpleasant reverie. Mariko curtly replied that she had not come down with anything. She pressed her left hand to her chest, trying as much as she could to calm the heartbeat rising inside of her. Am I really going to have another transplant? This time, it would not be her father's kidney as before, but one from a complete stranger's lifeless body. The idea sank into her guts like a stone into water.

Images of the fish she dissected in a science cla.s.s experiment and of a cat run over in the street came to her mind. The organ of a dead human being, a corpse's kidney, was going to be placed into her body. A dreadfully cold sensation ran through her.

No way.

I don't want a transplant!

Unaware of Mariko's pained thoughts, Odagiri continued in her fast-talking manner.

”Do you know what time your father will return from work?”