Vol 2 Chapter 5 (2/2)

“Aren’t you fucking listening?” I inadvertently shout “I’ you

‘cause I can’t go back to my house! Maybe you could, oh, I dunno, take me

to your house, asshole!” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop

theto

regret saying that, but the girl just nods in understanding, letting the entire

thing slide

“That it? Well, that’s a simple request If my house is fine with you, then

you’re welcome to stay”

Without even helping

hand, she starts to walk again, theme to

keep close and follow With renewed strength to my step that I didn’t know

from where in my battered body I obtained, I pursue her The sound of her

clacking steps, and the sensation of the asphalt and broken bottle glass

beneath my feet seemed to make both the pain on my body and mind ebb

Though I haven’t even asked her if she lived alone, or even what her name

was, I think it too insignificant for the moment I only see her silhouette,

di I can see

/ PARADOX SPIRAL - II • 57

Paradox Spiral - II

I hear the sound An o from the other

room

The ti my job

into the late hours of the evening, I ined myself to the

safety of ot home But it isn’t even a few minutes

before I am stirred from sleep by the sound I heard it only once, but that

is enough

The door to ht into my darkened

roo sloith each inch of the door that is parted A shadow

occludes the light, and I turn to towards it only to see my mom

It’s always around this part that I realize, and wish that I could never see

this scene again

The light ure save for

the fact that she is standing However, what little I can see of the scene

beyond the doorway is clear to

room table It isn’t clear at first whether he is merely unconscious or dead,

but it isn’t long before I see what I first perceive to be some sort of spilled

coffee It slowly dawns onthe varnished brown

table into a deep red It is then that the shadow in front of the door speaks

“Die, Tomoe”

I remember what comes afterwards My mother advances, kneels in

front of s it down on

ain, too many times for me to count Then

I see her taking the sale, determined

es it deep into her neck

All of htmare, the worst I ever have

I hear the sound An oh which I wake up

I turn one I lift up my

bruised and battered body to observe where I find myself in: a house in the

nook of the second floor of a four-floor low rise, the house of the kimono

wearing girl Well, better to call it a room than a house, really A one-meter

long corridor barely deserving the label separates the front door and the

s as the bed which she slept in is also there,

probably also doubles as her bed rooht

is the door to the bathroo room leads to

58 • KINOKO NASU

another, presuht after

an hour’s walk The name plaque that rested beside the entryway bore the

nai”, so that must be her last name

That girl—Ryōgi—never said a thing e entered her room, only

taking off her leather jacket and heading straight for her bed to fall asleep

Her apathy al I wanted to

do was hbors be curious After some consideration,

I took a cushi+on lying discarded on the floor and used it as a pillow,

then slept away

And noake up with her nowhere to be found I wonder what she

could be up to It looks like our ages are quite close Considering her age,

maybe she went to school? And yet, that wouldn’t be at all fitting for such

a drab rooerator, a

phone, a coat rack with four leather jackets, and a closet, which I assume is

for clothing No TV, no radio, no throay azines, and consequently,

no table to read them on

I suddenly reht When I said I’d murdered

someone, she said she was the saht,

but seeing her rooht actually be true Her pad seems to be set for

functionality, like a rooned not to be lived in, but instead for someone

who could suddenly be on the run at any time and could leave the

roo about what she said makes a chill run up my spine

Did I think luck would allow me to draw the ace of spades, but instead

brought me the joker?

In any case, I don’t plan on staying any longer than I have to I want to

at least give a word of thanks to Ryōgi for helping me out in a pinch, but

since she’s out, there’s really nothing I can do With silent and careful steps

lar than a visitor, I make my exit from the mysterious

girl’s room

Without heading toward any particular place, I loiter around town to kill

the ti to make myself as

inconspicuous as possible, and think at first that Idecision

But it soon beco like it always

did, with no one giving o on with all the

haste and weight of the hour hand on a clock Somewhat disappointed at

the realization, I make my way to the main avenue

It is here in thearound

for a Toht throw me the “I saw him

/ PARADOX SPIRAL - II • 59

on the 6am news” look, but there are none Maybe the bodies haven’t

been found yet Still, ive myself too much credit There’s no way

someone like ree with

such a half-bakedat least,

I’oing back

Noon coht next

to shi+buya Crossing I find a bench to rest on and feel content to spend

an hour or two just looking up at the neon lights set upon the buildings

stretching high into the sky When the lights turn green, the cars stop to

give way to thelike water from a burst dam

across the large avenue I can’t even iine what it’s like when it’s a holiday

The people areand with a

levity to their walking pace, looking like they’re the most blessed individuals

in the universe It’s the face of people in their world: a world where they

don’t aspire to anything anyood future There’s

no need to Their life is all laid out for them, and they know that’s all they

need to get by in their world So how many of those smiles are real? All of

the to figure out,

but it’s impossible to tell the real from the fake I should have known better

than to try, since that realization comes from your own self

Tired of looking at all the peopleto and fro, I instead cast my

eyes toward the sky Let’s be frank I’m as much a fake as the rest of them

Maybe at soood and real, but

reality soon stripped that away

Junior high school was my time I was a sprinter in the track and field

club, and I kicked ass in it I participated in all of the inter-school competitions

and I never, ever lost I never even saw anyone’s back No one could

say anything aboutmy time, and

even a few h to make me happy I was an

engine built for the sport, and I cherished it

It follows, of course, that all this ca halt

My family was never one blessed with an abundance of money Dad lost

his job back when I was still in grade school, and never got one back again

Mo out with them after she

ran away toabout what

happens after that I think that broken faht for

le jobs after

school, lying about et in, all so I could scrape out money

to pay the tuition I needed I stopped trying to care about the antics of my

parents, and began to focus only on what I could do right by myself: sustain

60 • KINOKO NASU

o to school, and workas

expenses and my

parents who toof the sort, the only reason

I kept paying for school and going to the club activities without giving a

heed to how tired I was

Our troubles only truly began when my dad took the car out without

a license one day He was never really good with driving, but it had never

bothered hi the

car That day, however, whatever luck that had compensated for his skill

ran out, and he got involved in an accident He ran a pedestrian over It was

apparently a quick death for the unlucky guy It forced o back

to her fa for money just to pay the cost for

indemnities To me it was yet another fuckup that I needed to look away

fro too deep What eventually concerned

for everyone at school to

find out about the incident, and though I thought nothing of it at first, I

found that the attitude of everyone at school had changed My coach, who

had always been more helpful than anyone I could remember, suddenly

started to ignore me The upperclassmen ere so proud to have me

as the rookie star of the track and field team pressured me to quit All

because of so I had no part in; all because I was their son

My fa what little money he’d saved

over to help pay for the accident, my dad was far from fit to keep a family

together Mom started to work part-time in jobs society hadn’t prepared

her for and she had no real idea how to do, but even that only paid for a

portion of the gas and electricity bills Ruan

to infestits own embellishments,

to the point that dad couldn’t even get out of the house without so much

as an angry neighbor trying to give him a piece of their mind Mom still

tried to work, but the ruht up to her, and it never made

her stay in one place for too long I re

around when some random nobody threw a rock at me And always, there

were the threats

Yet even though the abuses got worse and worse, I never could muster

thethe car, the

one really at fault then was my dad It’s all his fault But then it’s not like I

hated my folks in particular back then either, because it’s when I realized

that whatever you do, even if you try as hard as you can, no matter how

fast and how far you run, it’ll all be the same You can’t escape your family,

your past, or what you are I mean, my folks walked their own path, tried

/ PARADOX SPIRAL - II • 61

to live a life as best they could, and look where it got them That’s when I

stopped trying to fight it I figured if I just accepted it, then I wouldn’t have

anything to cry about It’s the moment when you’re a kid and you throw

away your fantasies because they’re useless, and in its place grows a kind

of new, self-crafted wisdom

After that, feeling that there was little else it could teach me, I quit school

Besides, I had to hole days now for the money If you aren’t picky

there’s plenty of work to be done even for peoplesomeone

still straddled with at least half a conscience, I couldn’t completely abandon

my family, and so I had to put money in the house Still, that didn’t

h school Slowly,

like a poison, the joy and exhilaration in running and sprinting that I’d once

found essential faded into di with the faces of the people

who once cheeredpast my face It was

soht I couldn’t ever live without at one point, and to find

that I’d essentially thrown it away gave me no small measure of surprise

My mind made its customary excuses: I didn’t need it anymore, there were

ave up

That’s the proof that I’in, a

cosmic impetus laid out for the boy known as Tomoe Enjō, then I had failed

it And s would have turned out better if I

had just indulged that call

My parents took me to see a stud farm once when I was little There I

looked at all the naures built

solely for the singular act of running, and I cried, thinking that if such a

thing as a previous incarnation was truer than a tale spun for the naïve

idea of destiny, then I must surely have been one of those beautiful beasts

My passion was born there And it was killed by the weight of the real I

ulti more than a sham, imbued with dreams

that only lie

And in the end, I beca

truly funny about it The sky I look at hardly changes, and I turn my eyes

back to the spectacle of the city, where at least the people move, never

stopping, with their s and content faces, all of us dolls as fake as

anyone else with no real purpose Or maybe they do have a real purpose:

to fool around They are in shi+buya after all That’s the brand of reality I

can’t really tolerate, though

The collective footsteps of the throng bring me back to reality Positioned

above the entryway to a nearby building is a clock, showing the ti

evening Not wanting to loiter here any more than I’ve already allowed

62 • KINOKO NASU

myself, I push myself up and out of the bench and leave the mass of people,

heading for no particular direction

Even here in the housing district the streetlahter than

in any other part of the city I’ve been walking aimlessly for the past three

hours, and the autu me that I still

need a place to stay for the night Without thinking about it, I find myself

back in the fah I always

thought that I could let go of lingering affections easily when the situation

de feet took me, it seems that’s

not the case I look to the second floor, and find that heris dark

Looks like she isn’t home

“Well, since I’m here anyway…” I mutter under my breath as I start to

cli myself with the fact that the

only reason I’ on pathetically to the last person that

helped s a harsh sound as

I ascend as if to announce i’s

room, I find that the newspaper that was slipped under her door as I left

thisis nowhere to be found At first I think that she’s inside, but

when I rap on the door, no response follows So she came home at least

once Deciding to leave if the door is locked, I reach for the doorknob and

turn it

But it htly open As

I saw back in the street, the lights inside look like they aren’t turned on

In the silence, even theof the doorknob is audible,

and for a moment, it freezes my hand and blanks my mind in hesitation

Thinkingfor such a long

ti I’ve made and creep inside I probably

would never have thought as a kid that I would be co trespass

after killing someone not a few days earlier, and yet here I am Well, she did

say I elcome in her house, but I don’t know if this is what she meant

by that

Whileforward,

closing the door, going past the entrance, past the short corridor, and

finally into her living roo can be heard

except h respiration Man,

this makes ht

The lights, where the fuck are the lights? I start to take a hand to the wall

and feel around for the switch

/ PARADOX SPIRAL - II • 63

At that point, I hear the distinct sound of the front door opening The

person turns on the lights faster than I could even begin to consider who

it is As the fluorescent lalow over the room, she looks

at htly surprised eyes that blink twice before she starts talking

“Oh, you’re here I hope you weren’t doing anything inappropriate,

ith lights being off and all,” she says in the manner of someone just

berating a classmate She closes the door and takes off her jacket, then sits

down on her bed, rifling through the plastic bag she’s holding and producing

a ss just don’t do it for me”

She tosses the cup toward me, and up close I can see that it’s a cup

of Haagen-Dazs strawberry Why she doesn’t care about

is asshe doesn’t even

like Taking the cold cup in my hands makes me think She knows I’m a

h I don’t kno seriously she takes it And yet she

offered her roo: that her

rooitive ready to run at a moment’s

notice

“Square one thing with i,” I say to her “Are you someone I

should be keeping one eye open for when I sleep?”

Contrary to what I expect, she laughs quite heartily at my question”You’re

a strange one, aren’t you? A nice way to phrase that question, I have

to say,” she says in between bouts of raucous laughter that throws her

already ht only tells me

to be hter finally starts to die

down, and she exhales one long breath before she continues to talk “Hah,

well, it’s true that this place has a shortage of people that can carry themselves

in a fight better than I can But hey, you’re here aren’t you? Since

we’re both stuck with our respective pieces of wood in each other’s eye,

let’s just leave them in there and keep our peace Is that all you wanted to

talk about?”

The kierously calm countenance

of a child expecting to get a new present, her grin laden with

“No, there’s so else I need to ask Why did you help me?”

“’Cause you askedat the

time anyway, so hey, what the hell By the way, you don’t have a place to

sleep right? I meant it when I said you could use my place for now Not like

Mikiya’s going to come by in a while, anyway”

Because she wasn’t doing anything? What the hell kind of reason is that?

My brain ht be a bit frazzled lately, but not to the extent that I’d believe

what she just said I glare at her, which seearner no reaction She

64 • KINOKO NASU

only ignores nified sort

of oblivion that just co paradox Still, I

realize that Ryōgi hasn’t given me any real reason to lie to me Maybe she

does have no particular reason to take me in She could have invented any

nu this, but she didn’t

But even so…

“Are you serious? You take

suspicious of h?”

“You are seriously daoodwill here, buddy And to answer

your question seriously, no I don’t take drugs, and to answer the question

percolating in your

Although I will if you tell me to”

Well, nothing to worry about on that front Besides, just the thought of

this person talking to the police in polite tones seems like an impossible

picture to paint in my mind “Then what are you after? Is it a quick fuck,

because—”

“Huh? There’s far better places a o to for sex in this town than

my place, that’s for damn sure”

“Well, see, what I’ is—”

“Alright, fine, whatever man! If you don’t like it here and you’re just

gonna stand there and criticize me then you know the way to the door,

buddy I absolutely do not understand why you feel the need to judge every

word out of my mouth, you know that?”

Her words brook no refusal A silence hangs between us, but is broken

by her ruain, pulling

out a triangularly-shaped tomato sandwich Well, if I had any doubts about

whether or not she thought nothing of me before, I don’t now

“Well…then I’ over! You said it was fine, didn’t you?” I say

i, for her part, doesn’t even seery,

even though her words seem to indicate otherwise

“Yeah, go ahead I’ll be sure to tell you if your asshole glands are working

up again,” she says while nibbling on the sandwich At that, I suddenly

realize how tired I am and promptly sit myself down on the floor Time

passes, but I can’t see or how short that lasts

I turn i to more practical

matters I’d found a place to sleep, if only temporarily The 30,000 yen in

loose change I hastily took with me should last me the month for food, but

finding so from the cops

is going to be key

Wait Now I rei How could I

/ PARADOX SPIRAL - II • 65

forget?

“Hey,” I call to her “Why ain’t your door locked?”

“Lost the key, obviously” Her answer is almost like a blow to the back

of , and I just close the

door when I’m out Works for me, and as you can see, not much here for a

burglar to burgle”

Sowasn’t just some lucky coincidence Her

not locking the rooht even be the reason for why she barely has

anything in the roo

what isn’t nailed down It’s too ular sensibility

that I have to tell her off

“Christ, girl You could at least ask for a spare one from the landlord”

“Lost the spare too C’mon, it’s not as if you have to worry about it, and

it’s not as if I need one”

It’s really starting to grate onin stride

I can’t have any sort of peace of i

here seems to lack the part of your brain that’s supposed to sound warning

alaret about

o and replace it orry for this

reckless girl

“A house without a key ain’t a house Just you wait; I’ll get you a new key”

An idea suddenly fored

to hold down, until two days ago at least, was in a ot

to learn a few things about fixing some household related stuff, so a simple

doorknob replacement wouldn’t be beyond me They must have some

kind of regular doorknob in that warehouse of theirs “No, scratch that I’ll

replace the whole da”

“Well, whatever floats your boat Do you have money for it?”

“Of course I do It’s the least I could do for you In fact, I’ll even do it

tonight, so you’ll have no problem tomorrow!”

And on saying that, I stand up immediately, filled with a force of will

whose origin even I couldn’t even begin to guess I run towards the entrance,

twist the doorknob, swing open the door, and break out into a run into the

city canopied by night, barely allowing Ryōgi a word in edgewise Here I

a company

I planned to rob in the dead of night, putting soht into

how I could slip in without getting caught Forget Ryōgi Going on this little

excursion for a girl whose first name I didn’t even know pretty much makes

me the certified crazy one

66 • KINOKO NASU

Paradox Spiral - III

I’ve been living with Ryōgi for close to a week now Over time, we’ve

established a simple pattern to our lifestyle She wakes up, sometimes

going out earlier than o out for the day as well, and

we only really see each other’s faces again when I come back to sleep at

night It’s strange business to be sure At soave each other

our nae to not know each other’s

names when it’s obvious I’d be over for some time

shi+ki Ryōgi A repeating high school student…well, on paper at least,

considering her current truant history That’s pretty much the sum total of

what I know about her

She calls iven to

referring to her sii She’s said more than once that she didn’t

like being called by her surna myself to call her shi+ki

It’s a pretty si someone by their first name has always

seemed to me to be like soht

now is as teine, which means someday, me

and Ryōgi will part ways At any given time I could be actively hunted by

the police I could be forced to run Calling her shi+ki, with all the baggage

that the first nah me dohen that

day comes

“Don’t you have a girlfriend, Enjō?”

On this night, like all the other nights, Ryōgi sits cross-legged atop her

bed, and as always, asks ht out of

nowhere As for ht next to her bed, I’ve

long become accustomed to them

“If I had one, I wouldn’t need to swing by this duht, would

I?”

“That’s kind of strange, considering you’re not all that shabby looking”

“That actually sounds

froh of women”

“Interesting Why, I wonder?” She lies down on the bed, which from my

position on the floor next to it, h she

soon pops her head out directly above mine She’s actually kind of cute like

this “Are you gay?”

I take that back Seeing her as anything rese cute must have been

/ PARADOX SPIRAL - III • 67

a trick of the mind

“No way It’s just that, well…I’ve got a history with girls, and it didn’t

work out too well” Before I know it, I’ with her “Back

in high school, I went out with a girl for two months, and we spent most

of that quality ti special from the relationshi+p,

but she certainly did She wanted all the cool, fancy things that

also happened to be expensive I could practically hear

at the tis, she

was happy When I couldn’t, she complained That didn’t warm me to the

experience And the sex wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be, honestly Besides,

I could’ve just jacked off if I wanted to feel good”

I thought this story would bore Ryōgi, but she actually see

on every word, so I continue with a sigh “Eventually, I started to dislike

her All the ave her slowly looked more like a waste

of tiiven her more of my

time, but as it stood then, I didn’t have that kind of freedom The hours

I spent with her started draining any hours I had left for sleep Without

the free tiuess it was doomed from the start But, stupid as I was, I

never tried breaking up with her