Part 27 (2/2)

Illuminated in its glow was a middle-aged businessman in dispute with an older, obese security guard.

If Tos.h.i.+aki could just get through that entrance, he could sneak inside to the patients'

ward. He wanted to slip in unnoticed, but the two men did not look like they were going to end their dispute anytime soon. He could not quite catch the details of what they were saying.

He tried to run past them.

”Hey you! Hold it right there,” shouted the guard upon noticing him. But Tos.h.i.+aki ignored him and bolted for it. The guard left the other man and intercepted Tos.h.i.+aki, who tried to push him away.

But the guard was much stronger than anyone would have thought. He had an amazingly st.u.r.dy frame for an old man. Tos.h.i.+aki struggled, but it was no use.

”What's your business? You need emergency attention?” the guard growled.

”Something terrible's going to happen,” said Tos.h.i.+aki by way of appeal, as he struggled to pull himself free. ”I'm here to save a patient. It'll be here any minute now. Please, I beg you.”

”What're you talking about?”

The guard looked him over from head to toe.

With sleeves and cuffs singed, s.h.i.+rt torn open, and small pieces of dried flesh stuck to his pants, Tos.h.i.+aki certainly looked like a vagrant or worse. The guard strengthened his grip.

”You come with me now. Sure are a lot of weirdoes out tonight...”

”There's a young transplant patient in there!”Tos.h.i.+aki shouted. ”A girl! She had a kidney transplant in July. The child is in danger, I swear. Someone's after her. Hurry up and help me before it's too late!”

At that moment, a voice asked from behind: ”You know Mariko?!”

Tos.h.i.+aki turned around to see the suited man standing there with terror on his face.

14.

Mariko could not tear her eyes away.

She could see nothing else. Her entire field of vision was confined to the faucet. The old faucet had only the width of an index finger, and two grooves circled around it near the bottom as though the thing had tried to excrete something but had given up. From its hp something transparent peeked out ever so slowly. Its surface reflected the entire scene.

Everything from the sink to the white walls to Mariko s face was trapped in it. As she watched, it grew to an almost obscene size; taking the shape of a teardrop for a split second, it fell.

Flap.

The sound reminded her of those footsteps.

It was the sound from her dream, the flopping like vinyl slippers, the same lagging cadence. She understood now. The dream was about this. Those footsteps were the sound of dripping water.

Flap.

Another drop fell. At that moment, the next one began peeking out. Again and again, the same. The drop grew, quivered, and fell like the tip of a dying firework stick, with a Flap! The next one appeared. A tiny droplet, hardly hanging on, absorbing the next one, dangled as a bubble, and broke Flap off swiftly from the faucet, and the next one there already, swelling out in a semicircle, trembling once as it grew and falling as another like a teardrop in its wake followed Flap and another no less quickly too Flap and before it was gone Flap and more Flap and still flap so fast flap like flap on flapflapflapflaplaplaplaplaplaplaplaplaplpl pppplapppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp With an explosion, something burst out of the drain.

Mariko screamed for her life, but her eyelids were still glued open. She couldn't blink; her line of sight was frozen. For a moment, she was unable to comprehend what was happening, just that something was moving in her vision with terrible speed. The footsteps had actually been the dripping of water, they had come faster and faster, they had come to her room, wanting to burst out from the faucet. Or so Mariko had thought. Instead it had emerged from further below out of the sink, through the drain, bursting out with a rust-red column of water that shot up to the ceiling. She thought she could make out something moving inside it, but her eyes were pinned on the faucet. She clenched her teeth and tried to force her eyes to move. Someone let out a wail like a siren. The drain spouted water intermittently like a geyser, splas.h.i.+ng coldness on Mariko.

Her kidney was beating with joy... THUMP!

And the beating reverberated through her body.

15.

”Who are you and how do you know about Mariko?” Anzai asked the man. She was surely the only young girl who had received a transplant in July at this hospital. This strange man somehow knew about her, and also seemed to know that she was in some kind of danger.

Despite his tattered clothing, the earnestness in his eyes proved he was not joking. His face also showed intelligence. Anzai judged him to be anything but an incoherent man off the streets. The worried father stood before the man, who looked at him inquisitively.

”How do you...?”

”I'm Mariko's father. She's the patient you were talking about.”

”She had a kidney transplant...?”

”Yes. Now tell me what's going on.”

The man's face filled with relief.

”Perfect! So you know where she is then?”

”Of course.”

”Take me to her! It's urgent. Your child's being hunted.”

”...First tell me who you are and why you know about Mariko.”

”My wife was the donor.”

Anzai was speechless. He had never seen the donor's face or even known her name. He was told by Yos.h.i.+zumi only that she had been a 25-year-old woman who had died in a car accident. He never asked about the donor again and had not thought about her at all since. To see a man before him who professed to be her husband felt slightly unreal.

But Anzai decided to believe him, if only because his daughter's life was possibly at stake.

The man introduced himself as Tos.h.i.+aki Nagas.h.i.+ma.

”Something terrible has happened because of me. We can't afford to just stand around like this. Will you please just take me to her room?”

”What's going to happen to her?”

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