round nine p.m. we went into a small ramen shop along Highway 18. I wanted to go into a regular family-style restaurant, but brightly lit places like that would only show how shabby Worm looked and I didn’t feel like going there with him. I guess I was starting to act pretty cruel to him. To me, Worm was a fallen idol.

The AC in the ramen place was going full blast and was so cold I got goose bumps. My bare arms were freezing. But the cold didn’t bother me as much as my hunger, which tortured me and had me gulping back my saliva. Worm was just sitting there drinking a glass of water, but I was starving and ordered two bowls of pork ramen.

Since last night, Worm’s been moping around, but I’ve been feeling great.

They passed the bowls of ramen to us across the counter. I did like guys do and sprinkled in a lot of garlic flakes and red pepper, pulled over the bowl of minced scallions and red pickled ginger and dumped in some of those as well. Mixed in everything in sight that was edible and then stirred it all together with my chopsticks. From the light pink soup I untangled some of the noodles. Even before I could stuff some in, my mouth was watering so badly that drops of saliva plopped down into the bowl. I’ve never been so starved in my life. I was impatient to gulp it all down but controlled myself and sipped some of the soup. I started to sweat and wiped this away with my hand, downing the noodles without chewing them. I was so desperately hungry it was a while before I even began to taste how good the ramen was.

I left home yesterday in the early afternoon, so this was the first food I’d had in over thirty hours. No wonder it tasted so good. Normally I never touch the fat on the pork slices, but now I gobbled it all down. I ate it all—the pickled ginger with its unnatural red color and all the additive-laden soup as well, glistening with fat under the fluorescent lights. But Worm, seated next to me, just sat there, staring at his bowl, disposable chopsticks still stuck together.

“What’s the matter?”

I didn’t ask this out of kindness but because I figured if he didn’t have an appetite I could help myself to his ramen. He didn’t reply.

“If you’re not going to eat that, let me have it.”

Worm had been spacing out but now he stared at me. He looked at me like, “Are you still here?” Of course I am, I thought. You’re the one who kidnapped me, remember? You’re the one who assaulted me back at the love hotel, so what the hell are you talking about? But Worm had no confidence—he was clumsy, slow on the uptake, didn’t have enough guts to seduce me, a lousy kisser, plus he couldn’t even get me naked. A total loser. An absolute clumsy oaf. Damn. Why was I wasting my time with a guy like this, anyway? I despised him and had already lost all interest. The cool-looking Worm pedaling away under the blazing sun had long since disappeared.

* * *

Last night, all that threatening me and making fun of me made him a little nuts. He was able to get on top of me, but once I stiffened up and he realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere, he suddenly yelled out:

“Why can’t things ever go my way?!”

“Of course they’re not going to,” I said. “What do you expect?”

I was pissed. I mean, come on. When had things ever gone the way I wanted them to in my life? The guys who try to pick me up are all jerks, and the guys I do like won’t give me the time of day. That’s the way it is for everybody—running back and forth between desire and reality, tossed about by life. All of a sudden it made me really angry to have someone like Worm make fun of me, to have a lowlife like him put me down.

“I wouldn’t sleep with you even if you threaten me with your butcher knife,” I said. “I’d rather die first. You’re the biggest loser I’ve ever met. Hurry up and kill me already.”

I was sure I was about to get stabbed, but instead I just heard this pitiful voice.

“How come?”

In an instant the tables had turned. I sat up and sent him flying. Worm fell headfirst onto the grubby stained carpet. I sneered at how stupid he looked. I felt full of courage and power and yelled some more.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, you virgin! I only sleep with cool guys. You’re stupid and gross. If you wanna kill me like you did your mom, then be my guest. If that’s what you have to do, go for it. It’s easy. Blood will spurt out, I’ll suffer, and die, that’s it. I’ll die hating you. So go ahead—I couldn’t care less. I decided to come see a jerk like you, so I’m responsible. Which makes me different from Terauchi.”

Worm was silent, crouched down in the dark. Soon I heard sobbing. What a wimp, I thought. Blubber away. I pulled out the flat box from his backpack that had the butcher knife. The source of his pointless confidence. The guiding principle behind his stupid hopes and dreams. I let the box, knife still inside, slip down in the space between the bed and the wall. No way I was going to let him straddle this bed again. Or get hold of the knife.

“You’re such a loser,” I went on. “You killed your mother, won me over, acted all cute with Terauchi, and said you’re going to go murder your father. You think girls are all pretty dumb, don’t you, and you’re so much brighter. The whole world revolves around you. What a total jerk.”

“Don’t—don’t be stupid.” Worm moaned listlessly. He raised his pointy chin at me. “So what do you want me to do?”

“I’m going to phone my old boyfriend and I want you to threaten him. If you do a good job, I’ll give your butcher knife back. And I’ll pay for the hotel.”

“But what should I say?”

Worm had turned into a good-for-nothing robot. I was ecstatic that I was the one pulling the strings now. It feels good when some guy with an inflated ego gets cut down to size. I felt I could do anything now—no matter how dumb, low, or evil. I picked up the old-fashioned phone from beside the bed. It was this awful pearl pink. I pushed the number for an outside line and punched in the phone number, which I still had memorized. Wataru’s cell phone.

“When this guy named Wataru comes on,” I explained, “tell him this. Say: ‘You jerk. If you don’t watch out, I’m gonna kill you. Better go see if your older sister’s back home safe and sound. And your girlfriend—her, we’re gonna gang-rape. So you better watch your step!’”

I didn’t have time to check whether Worm had gotten all that, ’cause I was dying to hear Wataru’s voice. The voice I still loved.

“Hello. Who is it? Hello? What number is this?”

I suppressed the desire to hear more of his voice and shoved the phone toward Worm. He hesitated at first but after I urged him on, he spewed out all this in a low voice:

“Is this Wataru? Me? I’m a murderer. No kidding. I offed my old lady. It’s true. Smacked her with a bat. Crushed her skull good. You can’t say you haven’t heard about it. It’s in the papers—check it out. What about you? Ever killed somebody? I doubt it. Me, I’m screwing your old girlfriend right now. You don’t know who I’m with? She hates your guts. She wants to kill you. You and your whole family—your old man, old lady, your sister, and your precious girl and all your buddies—she says she wants to annihilate the lot of them. Since you betrayed her, she says she wants you to vanish from the face of the earth. That’s her one desire in life. And she wants me to do it for her. You listening, Wataru? Yep, damn right, I’m serious. Bet you didn’t know someone wanted you dead this much. You thought you were just like any other guy, huh? Don’t make me laugh. After I heard what you did, I’m definitely gonna kill the lot of you. So you better prepare yourself, ya jerk.”

At first I thought, Serves him right, as I listened to this, but Worm went on and on and it started to creep me out. Signaling him we should hang up, I grabbed away the phone and found Wataru had hung up a long time ago. What an ass.

“He hung up. Redial it.”

I punched in the number. At this point I didn’t care whether they traced the call or he reported us to the police or whatever. No matter how much I let it ring, though, Wataru didn’t pick up. Damn—I started to feel really upset and took it out on Worm.

“It’s all your fault,” I said. “You got me involved and it’s made me twisted. You’re the root of all evil, you know that? You’re the cause of all this trouble. I’ve had it. I’m going home. Back to the ordinary world you’ll never be able to return to.”

“The world I can’t return to?” he said. “You mean I’ve been kicked out?”

Worm raised his head and gave me a hard look. In the dark, his eyes glittered.

“But you’re the one who decided to leave that world,” I said.

Worm sighed. “I’m—frightened,” he said. “Please—I need you to stay with me.”

This was the second time Worm had surrendered. What a wimp. How could I not feel superior? Worm was weak, and I was strong—it was as simple as that. This night had been a turning point that had really changed me. I felt victorious, like I’d defeated an enemy. But still I was kind of uneasy. Maybe I’d entered Worm’s world after all. Maybe that’s why I’d made that threatening call to Wataru. But—was this really me? Was I really such an awful person?

* * *

I was just about finished eating, but Worm was still slumped over his bowl of ramen.

“I just realized I don’t have an appetite.”

“’Cause you’re thinking about your mother, I bet,” I said sarcastically, in a low voice. “You regret what you did and it scares you.”

Worm was facing me, but his eyes were elsewhere.

“I wonder. I—don’t know.”

“I don’t really care one way or the other,” I said, “but what happened to all the military talk?”

“Too much trouble.”

Adrenaline surged through me. “I’ll take that,” I said, and switched my empty ramen bowl with his full one. This was the first time in my life I’d grabbed someone else’s food. My parents always led a pretty well-off life, so good table manners were a kind of duty I’d been brought up with. Eat all your meat, don’t leave any carrots. You know the drill. Mom always trimmed all the fat from our beef and pork and removed the skin from chicken. Snacks were homemade cookies or pudding, and she always made a homemade lunch for me to take to school. I didn’t like egg yolks, so Mom always made me special fried eggs using just the whites. But right now, I was a total brat. I held on to the bowl of ramen Worm hadn’t touched and thought, Yes! A strange idea came to me: Is this the kind of girl I really am? Meaning what happened last night, too.

With nothing else to occupy him, Worm sat there, engrossed in the TV. A program was on featuring NaiNai. A commercial for Geos came on next, with Okamura speaking English, but Worm still stared at the screen, like he was fascinated by it. I could understand what he was feeling. Like he was watching a world that he had no connection with anymore. The greasy TV set itself sat on top of this tacky colored box, the kind you could pick up in a supermarket. The cabinet was stuffed with dog-eared manga magazines that the other customers—young guys, truck drivers by the look of them, and the older guy, an outdoorsy type who looked like he ran the local motel—picked up and took back to their seats.

“Something’s wrong with you, you know that?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like you’ve totally lost your confidence.”

“No way.”

Worm acted all tough, but when it came to breaking into a cottage he made a mess of it. He’s the one who suggested that we sneak into a vacant cottage and stay there for a while, but I was the one who actually picked it out. I picked a pretty one with a nice red roof. But just when we broke the window of the bathroom with a rock, this earsplitting siren went off and a caretaker showed up in a four-wheel-drive car. How was I to know that cottages in the mountains had security systems?

We raced back down the mountain road in the dark. We finally came out on the highway but had nowhere to go to. We only had about ten thousand yen left and didn’t want to spend it on a love hotel again, and using a vacant cottage hadn’t worked out. That’s when Worm started acting like all his batteries had given out. He stopped that stupid pretending-to-be-a-soldier routine, and his eyes got all vacant. You’ve got to eat something, I told him, and tried to comfort him by offering to pay for dinner. No matter what spin I might put on it, the reason I didn’t take off for home right then and there was ’cause I found it interesting to watch Worm’s steady decline. Or maybe I should say I enjoyed twisting Worm around my little finger. I never realized I had this streak of cruelty in me. Maybe what I really regretted about my relationship with Wataru was that I wouldn’t have him under my thumb. So there was this side of me I never knew about before. And I was starting to think that maybe I liked it. A Kirarin who’s stronger than anybody else. Stronger than Toshi, than Yuzan, than Terauchi. A woman who was bad. Maybe I’d finally discovered my real identity.

“As soon as you’re done, let’s get out of here.” Worm poked me in the side with his elbow. His elbow grazed my breast, and I frowned.

“Knock it off, you pervert. I don’t want anything to do with you.”

“Sorry,” he apologized meekly.

“Where’re we going when we leave?” I asked.

“To a convenience store. I like them.”

Worm looked uncomfortably around the interior of the ramen shop. We paid for the food, and when we went outside the sky was full of stars. We hadn’t noticed before, maybe because it was still a little light out. I gazed up at the night sky, a mountain in my peripheral vision. It was Mount Asama. I couldn’t see the whole mountain—it was like some huge monster crouching there, melting into the dark. A mountain like that at night is awful. It reminded me of Worm last night, crouched by the bed, his eyes glittering in the darkness. The guy is definitely weird, I thought, and shuddered. Deep down, I wanted to get away from him.

“Do you think I should kill my dad?” Worm asked me as we trudged along the highway, heading toward a convenience store we could see lit up in the distance.

“If you wanna kill him, then why not? It’s got nothing to do with me. You have to do it, otherwise you won’t feel like you got back at him, right?”

“Yeah, I suppose. Yeah, I guess you’re right. But I don’t understand why I have to murder to settle a score. Why do you think that is?”

Worm had become totally introspective and moody. And I’d turned arrogant. Go figure.

“Don’t ask me. It’s something you have to settle yourself. So why did you kill your mother? She’s the one who gave birth to you. So you didn’t want to be anybody’s child anymore?”

Worm came to a halt and let out a deep breath. His loneliness came to me like a vibration in the air, but I turned away from him to show him I wasn’t buying it. Worm, in his own world. Everybody else is still in my world. Everybody except Wataru, that is. Last night I was sure I was in Worm’s world, but I was wrong. I hadn’t killed anybody. I felt kind of relieved. In the dark I could hear Worm muttering.

“You’re exactly right, Kirarin. Maybe what I want is to cut all ties with everybody. The thread or something that keeps me connected to the world, the worthless proof that I exist.”

The instant I heard him say my name I had a weird feeling. An uneasy sense. This side—the other side. Which one was I on? As I walked along in the darkness of this plateau, hemmed in by mountains, I wasn’t sure.

All of a sudden my cell rang. The orange display lit up the sender’s name: Wataru. Maybe he realized it was me calling last night. Worm, up ahead, turned around and shot me a suspicious look. Trying to keep my hea

rt from racing, I answered the phone.

“It’s me. Wataru. You okay?” I missed him so much I was about to tear up.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “It’s been a long time. Maybe a year and a half?”

My voice naturally got higher. Worm was standing a little ways off, looking in my direction.

“Yeah, I think that’s about right. You have college entrance exams coming up next year, right?”

Wataru was in college already, in the law department at Waseda. Which is why I was originally thinking of trying for Waseda myself, but now I’d given that up and decided to settle for some junior college. My guilty conscience was making it hard for me to get the words out.

“That’s right,” I said.

“You preparing for it?”

“I guess…”

“Well, good luck with it. You know something? Last night I got this weird phone call. I thought maybe it had something to do with you, so I started to get worried about you.”

“What kind of call?” I asked.

“Never mind. I don’t want to talk about it. It was just a prank call, but I got concerned, hoping nothing terrible had happened to you.”

“You were worried about me? That makes me happy.”

My eyes started to well up. I still like you, Wataru. I love you. I felt so sad and lonely it hurt. I felt guilty, too, for the ugly thing I’d done out of jealousy. The thing I’d done that had soiled this shining person, Wataru.

“But why are you worried?” I asked. “Nothing’s happened to me.”

“The guy who called mentioned the girl I used to go out with, and you’re the only one. He said it quite clearly—your old girlfriend. So I thought he had to have something to do with you. I thought maybe you’d gotten mixed up with some weird guy. But if you’re okay, that’s great.”

At this moment it hit me: I’d lost Wataru forever. He’s the one who told me he loved me the best of all, so why didn’t I trust him anymore? I wanted to talk with him some more and was searching for the right words when he said, “Well, see you,” and hung up. Devastated, I stared at the screen. The whole call had lasted only three minutes and twenty seconds.

“Who was it?” Worm asked.

“None of your business.”

He was annoyed, and out of spite he called Terauchi. It’s okay, I thought. I get it. We’re not going out or anything, so when it’s just the two of us it’s like I can’t breathe. I need air. I knew it was stupid, but I couldn’t shake this sadness and I got more and more depressed. Here I was, walking in the dark, in this place I’ve never been, with a guy I just met. What’s the matter with me, anyway?

Worm made a show of being all cheerful as he talked with Terauchi. The idiot. “I want it to be really original,” he was telling her. He was discouraged but tried to put on a brave front. While he was talking I got on with Terauchi. She told me she’d seen Worm’s photo on the Internet. In the other world. The world where Wataru was, and Terauchi, and Toshi. The world of exams, hooking up with guys, Shibuya, friends. I can’t go back anymore, Terauchi. That’s what I felt, but I forced myself to sound all bouncy and cheerful as I talked with her, trying to stand the pain of losing Wataru, of being banished from their bright world forever.

Next we stopped by a convenience store, bought some boxed lunches and drinks, and stood for a while leafing through magazines. Worm took a bath last night at the love hotel, but he was smelly already. I was worried I was starting to smell, too. I might not share in his guilt but was starting to think there were some things the two of us shared. As we left the store, I grabbed a can of deodorant and spritzed my underarms when no one was looking. Just then I got a text message from Teru.

Kirarin, what’s going on? You’ve got me worried. Give me a call.

Too much trouble to tell the truth, so I lied: I’m back home now. I’ll tell you all about it later. Don’t forget the concert next week. Not to worry—I’m fine.

Why was I starting to find Teru a nuisance? I’d always been proud of having this nice gay friend whom I could tell anything to. But I’d only been using his friendship for my own purposes. When I was with him it looked like I was with a guy, but it was totally safe and fun. Who knows—maybe having a high school girl as a friend was something he was proud of, too. A typical party girl like me. It had always been a light kind of relationship, where you didn’t share any of your pain or sadness. If Teru had really been a friend, I might have answered him like this: “Being with Worm I don’t know up from down anymore. I always thought I was a good person, but maybe I’m really bad. Maybe even a worse person than Worm. Hey, can you lend me some money?”

“I want you to go home.”

I was staring at the cell phone when Worm, standing behind me, muttered this. I turned around.

“How come?”

“It’s pointless for you to be with me. Besides, I’m a criminal.”

The whites of his slanty eyes stood out as he stared at me. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I realized that the last thing I wanted to do was go home. A weird feeling—like on the one hand I wanted to go back to that other world, but at the same time didn’t care if my connections to it were cut forever. It wasn’t a feeling of being free or anything. I just didn’t want to go back. I wanted to float somewhere in between.

“But last night you said you wanted me to stay with you,” I said.

“So you want to be with me?”

“Not particularly.”

Worm walked on, the plastic bag from the convenience store swishing with each step. And I followed behind him.

* * *

I started to notice that there were a lot of cops around as we were walking along a mountain road toward more cottages thinking we’d try to break into another one. Two patrol cars, one after the other, drove up the road from the foothills. The second one stopped in front of the nearest cottage, and a policeman got out and buzzed the intercom. Worm and I were hiding in a thicket of bamboo grass and he nudged me.

“This is bad. Doesn’t look like they’re just after some sneak thief. Somebody must have ratted us out.”

“But who’d do that?” I asked.

“Your friends. They all know about me. Maybe Yuzan. I don’t like her much and I acted kind of cold to her.”

All of a sudden, Terauchi’s laid-back voice came to me. Whenever she talks that calmly it means she’s up to something. Only when she’s trying to hide her real intentions does she tell all those stale jokes and act dumb.

Dude. Sounds like you and the murderer are getting along just fine.

I hear you’re in Karuizawa?

“It’s got be Terauchi!” I yelled. “I’m sure of it. Toshi and Yuzan both helped you escape. They wouldn’t turn you in. Terauchi’s the only one who didn’t help out.”

“So that’s the kind of person she is?”

Worm looked despondent. Maybe he was regretting giving her that childish order to write his criminal manifesto.

“I don’t know,” I said. “The others I can read, but not her. She’s the only one who’s unpredictable.”

Which means I don’t trust her, I guess. For the first time in my life, I felt like I understood the relationship between Terauchi and me.

“Damn,” I said. “We’re in for it now.”

I tried calling Terauchi but her phone was turned off. That settled it. I had to get out of there. I panicked. I had to escape, no matter what. I mean, if they arrested me now I’d be stuck in this world forever. Floating is fine, but getting stuck isn’t. Before anyone even realized it, I wouldn’t be able to go back to the other world—the one Wataru lived in. The world where the sun shines. But why was Terauchi trying to get me shut away like this? There’s a moment with her when a kind of severe look crosses her nice features, the kind of look that keeps everybody out. No way, Terauchi! I won’t forget what you’ve done! I was burning with hatred.

“What should we do?” Worm said.

I looked at him. He laid his backpack down in

the bushes, tilted his long neck to one side, lost in thought. We don’t have time for that, I thought, and grabbed his arm.

“We’ve got to decide right now,” I said. “If we don’t do something we’re going to get caught.”

“I know, I know. But I just can’t think of anything.”

“Let’s stay over at a cheap love hotel and take a train back to Tokyo tomorrow morning. If it’s a local train we should be able to afford it.”

“But where’re we going to go when we get back?” Worm tossed his boxed lunch on the ground. “I killed my old lady, remember? I don’t have anyplace to go.”

“Then let’s go kill your dad, too.”

I clung to Worm’s ridiculous plan. Instead of debating what was right and wrong, I wanted to get moving and do something. That’s all it was.

“You’d kill my dad with me?”

I shook my head.

“No. ’Cause I don’t hate him.”

My mind wasn’t working anymore. I stood there, feeling like I’d lost everything. A mosquito landed on my bare leg, but it was too much trouble to brush it away. As I sat there vacantly, Worm suddenly hugged me to him. “You stink, you idiot,” I told him. I tried to push him away, but he held me tight and wouldn’t let me go. We plopped down into the bushes. The stems of the bamboo grass poked me. It hurts, I was about to say, but before I could, Worm had mashed his lips against mine, rough and strong. I was faceup and he made a grab for my breasts. The moment I decided he could do whatever he wanted with me, the pain turned to pleasure. I pulled up my T-shirt and took off my own clothes. I was on fire, the first time I’d ever felt that way. How could we be doing something like this, I thought, when we’d been driven into a corner? We laid our clothes down on the ground to lie on, then had wild, frantic sex.

“I’m hungry.”

Worm, naked, was looking around to locate the box lunch he’d thrown away earlier. He finally found it and came back to where I was. He’d suddenly gotten all kind and gentle, and it made me happy. Naked, we ate the lunch together, taking turns swigging sips from the water bottle. After that we did it again, this time standing up with me leaning back against the trunk of a tree. I felt like I was doing it with him forever.

Suddenly a flashlight shone above us and we heard men’s voices. Maybe the police had heard us talking and had tracked us down. Were they combing the hills for us? We flattened ourselves against the ground, avoiding the light. What would we do if they found us? I was scared out of my mind. Not of being chased by adults, but of being discovered like this in the hills, naked, having sex, being scolded and accused. It was a feeling close to original sin. Like Adam and Eve.

“Let’s get out of here,” Worm whispered.

I threw my clothes on; then Worm grabbed my hand and we raced down the mountain path. Every time a car or patrol car passed we hid beside the road in the bushes. When we finally reached Highway 18, there was a patrol car outside the convenience store we’d stopped at.

Just then an empty cab drove up. If I let that cab get away, I thought, I’ll never escape this world.

“Let’s take that cab back to Tokyo,” I said.

“We don’t have enough money.”

I looked Worm in the face.

“Didn’t you tell me you were going to rob a cab?”

I ran out onto the highway and flagged down the cab. The cab slowed to a stop, and I could see a surprised look on the driver’s face as Worm pushed me from behind.

“Let’s do it.”

We climbed in the back of the cab. It was full of cigarette smoke and chilled by the AC. The driver, with his typical white cloth-covered cap, was obviously local, and he turned around slowly. An old guy in his late forties. A plastic bottle of tea lay on the seat beside him.

“When I just saw the girl I figured it was a ghost. So you’re dating, huh?”

“That term’s too old. We’re not dating, we’re a couple.” My voice shook as I spoke, and I laughed to try to cover it up. “Excuse me, but we’d like to go to Tokyo. We have to get back to Tokyo right away.”

“To Tokyo at this time of night?”

“There aren’t any more trains, and someone is very sick, so we’ve got to get back. Please let us out in Chofu, at the Chofu exit.”

The driver checked out Worm in the rearview mirror and looked startled for a second. Did he know who we were? Worried, I looked over at Worm, who was staring down, his face pale. You jerk. Get it together. I kicked him on the foot.

“It’s his father,” I explained. “He’s on his deathbed. So, please, take us there.”

“I see,” the driver said, his expression kinder. But his next question was anything but friendly. “I’m sorry to ask at a time like this, but do you have enough money? Night rates apply now and it should easily be fifty thousand yen to Tokyo.”

“Don’t worry. We have enough cash.”

Still looking doubtful, the driver slowly started to pull away.

“I’m glad to hear that. I was just a little concerned, you being so young and all.”

“Please just take us there. Don’t worry, you’ll get paid.”

The driver pulled the cab over to the side of the road.

“Sorry, but would you mind showing me the cash?”

The driver’s stubbornness really pissed me off. I had only ten thousand yen, so how in the world was I going to pay? Worm suddenly yelled, “If we don’t have enough, my parents will pay the rest! So please—my dad’s dying here.”

Worm’s yelling clearly pissed off the driver. And he stared hard at me, checking out how I looked. My T-shirt was muddy and covered with leaves. I quickly brushed them off.

“Miss, please don’t do that. The cab will get all dirty.”

At a loss for what to do, I glanced over at Worm. With one hand he was rustling around in his backpack on the floor. He’d taken the butcher knife back. I held down his arm and said in an insistent voice, “I’ll phone home.”

I had no choice, so I dialed home. As I expected, my mom, sounding sleepy, answered, grumbling right off the bat. “Where in the world are you? You didn’t call, so I was worried. What are you doing out this late?”

“I’m on my way home, but don’t seem to have enough for the taxi fare. When I get there, can you pay it?”

She was launching into another complaint, so I hurriedly hung up.

“She said they’ll pay.”

The taxi driver must have overheard my mom, so he nodded reluctantly and started to drive. Good—at least we’d get back to Tokyo. I felt optimistic—as long as we got back there, something would work out. Then the enka song on the radio suddenly cut off and a voice came on, full of static.

“A customer has forgotten something in one of the cabs. Something very large. It’s a young male customer. I repeat, a customer has forgotten something in one of the cabs. A young male customer. If anyone finds this large item, please get in touch right away.”

The driver looked up into the rearview mirror. I felt uneasy.

“That was the police channel, wasn’t it?” Worm asked.

“No, it’s from our company.”

The driver didn’t look back anymore. He was driving at a leisurely pace. I drank the rest of the water from our plastic bottle. The bottom of the bottle was muddy, so I wiped it on the seat. Now this was an adventure! My confusion I felt before about having sex with Worm in the woods had vanished, and I was happy with how bold we’d been. As I stared at the taillights of the car in front of us, I got sleepy, and finally started to doze off.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

At Worm’s voice, I jolted awake. The butcher knife was right in front of my eyes, its point aimed at the driver’s neck.

“What happened?” I asked.

“This jerk was going to pull into a police station.”

Flustered, I looked outside and saw a police station pass by on the left side. The driver, looking upset, was facing straight ahead. “You guys better knock it off,” he muttered. “Robbing a cab is a felony. You’ve got to think of your future.”

Worm just s

neered at him. “I don’t have a future, buddy. I murdered my old lady.”

The driver gulped. The butcher knife glittered as the lights from passing cars shone in on us. We were nearing the highway intersection. Several cars were lined up, including a patrol car near the entrance. “They’ve set up a checkpoint!” I yelled to Worm.

“Take the frontage road,” he commanded the driver.

Reluctantly, the driver turned off onto the side road, a country road lined with drive-ins. “You won’t be able to escape forever,” the driver said in a pitiful voice. “I’m not trying to trick you or anything, but I think you should stop it. I’ll give you my money, but just get out of here, okay? You’re still young.”

“Shut up and drive,” Worm replied.

“Where to?”

“I told you a million times, you idiot—to Tokyo!”

The driver clammed up and the taxi continued down the narrow road. The driver’s cell phone suddenly rang, and I was surprised by the melody, the fanfare signaling the start of a horse race. “Don’t answer it,” Worm ordered, and the driver nodded in resignation. The phone rang one more time, but he ignored it. After about fifteen minutes, Worm said to me, “Hold the knife for a while. I’m getting tired.”

He handed me the butcher knife and sank back, exhausted, onto the seat. With a trembling hand I took the handle. Worm must have been pretty tense, because the grip was slippery with sweat. The driver glanced at the knife and then looked straight at me. Miss, stop what you’re doing, his eyes pleaded with me. I held on to the knife tightly with both hands and pointed it at the driver’s throat. An old guy’s dirty throat with veins sticking out. I remembered, when I was a freshman in high school, how middle-aged guys in Shibuya used to call out to me, trying to pick me up.

Hey, how ’bout a cup of tea?

They were such grungy old guys that it made me wonder how they could possibly pick up young girls. Cigarette breath, shabby suits, at most ten thousand or twenty thousand yen on them. They could try to pick us up, girls the same age as their own daughters, because they thought we were fools. Their daughters were in this nice world, they thought, but girls like me were in a fallen world. They made a clear distinction between the two. All of a sudden, I got good and steamed and pressed the knifepoint, which hadn’t been touching the driver, right up against his wrinkled throat.

“Miss, that’s a little too close. You’re scaring me,” the driver begged.

“No way. Don’t screw with me.”

“I’m not. I’m asking because it makes it hard to drive. If we got into an accident here you’d be the ones who’d regret it. I don’t know what you guys did, but you’re going to get in a lot of trouble.”

I was enraged. He didn’t seem afraid, even with the knife to his throat. He really wasn’t scared. Beside me, Worm sat up.

“I was just about to call it a night,” the driver said, “so when you said drive you all the way to Tokyo I wasn’t too happy about it. But at the same time, I thought if you really were in a bind, I’d help you out. Taxi drivers are generally pretty good people, you know. But it really pisses them off to get threatened by punks like you. Me, too. I was thinking of doing this, and I don’t care if I get hurt.”

Suddenly he started zigzagging the car back and forth. I fell over on Worm’s lap and the knife dropped onto the floor. The driver kept on weaving back and forth. Worm and I were tossed left and right, our bodies smashing into each other. A truck coming in the other direction blasted his horn and barely managed to slip by.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

Worm picked up the butcher knife and sliced it across the driver’s throat. Blood spurted out, and I couldn’t stop screaming, “Stop it! Stop it!” But I had no idea what it was I wanted to stop. Probably not Worm cutting the driver’s throat—instead, I was furious that the driver was swerving all over the place. You idiot! Stop making fun of me! You dirty old men. And Terauchi. And Wataru.

“I’m not going to stop. I told you I don’t care if I get hurt.”

The driver unsnapped his seat belt. The taxi continued to race down the road, veering over into the opposite lane. We passed a motorcycle and zoomed up a road into the hills.

“I told you to knock it off!” Worm screamed. I grabbed the driver’s hair from behind to get him to stop, but the plastic screen got in the way. His white cloth-covered cap flew off. At the same time a stream of red blood sprayed against the windshield. I was covered in hot blood—the hideous, filthy blood of an old man. I screamed. And then we crashed hard into something and I felt myself flying off somewhere. Flying through the sky. Such a wonderful, wonderful feeling.