n TV once I saw this weird scene, a Japanese soldier getting pounded on the head with a hammer. He was getting completely worked over—besides the hammer, he was being stabbed with a sharpened stick and pummeled with flying kicks.

The people who were beating him up were an emaciated old Filipino man and woman, most likely taking revenge for what the Japanese had done to them during the war. Their positions reversed now, the old Filipino woman was whaling away at the soldier, putting everything she had into it like that was the only way she could get rid of the hatred inside her. The soldier had on a grubby T-shirt and a loincloth. Somehow he was still wearing his uniform cap. His hands were tied behind him and he stood there, staggering under the blazing sun. Whenever he was about to collapse, someone off-camera pulled on the rope that bound him, so he had to remain standing up straight.

My point is, at a moment like that, what is a person thinking? I was in elementary school when I saw this scene, and I found it incredible that the soldier looked so sleepy, like he was about to doze off. He had these vacant-looking eyes, half closed like he was going to fall asleep any minute, so you couldn’t tell if he was feeling any pain. If it’d been me, I’d have been scared to death and would have cried and begged for it to end.

I remembered this scene because right now I’m so sleepy I can barely stand it. Abnormally sleepy. All the time I’m pedaling my bike I’m about to doze off. Maybe it’s the weather, but it’s weird I’d feel this way as I pedal down the blazing asphalt of the highway, inches from trucks whizzing by. It’s not like I’m tired or anything. All I’ve been doing since yesterday is tooling around on a girl’s bike. It’s been an easy trip so far. Whenever I see a convenience store I stop in to cool off, drink some water, read some manga. So there’s no reason I should be so sleepy.

So maybe the situation I’m in now is like that of the Japanese soldier. Maybe I’m not aware of it, but my unconscious is trying to escape from reality. So I guess there’s something to be afraid of.

Mother-killer. I never imagined I’d do something like that, but there it is. The shock of seeing that news program last night at the convenience store has started to make me jumpy. When I saw an article about it in the paper, I just thought, Hey, look at that! But TV is frightening.

What sort of ominous thing dwells in this suburban neighborhood? What happened to this boy who’s disappeared? Is the same darkness in this boy hidden in this seemingly quiet neighborhood?

The newscaster’s remarks were dumb, but when I saw this, it was the first time I realized what a mess I was in. Newspapers don’t count, but once something hits TV it’s all over. On news programs and talk shows people are endlessly analyzing this “darkness” in my heart. They’ll all join forces and drone on and on about my mental state—commentators and newscasters, all with these know-it-all looks on their faces, gabbing away like they know what they’re talking about. Isn’t that slander? Even if they say something about me that’s completely off the mark, though, I can’t just laugh it off. ’Cause it’s me they’re talking about.

Just like with Sakakibara and those other murderers, I’ll be in all the papers for days, and they’ll gather experts together to endlessly debate changing the juvenile statutes. There’ll be articles with my photo and the message I wrote in my grade school yearbook, some classmate will post my photo on the Internet, and all of it will be just more ammunition for the rumor mill. People who didn’t like me will say whatever they like: “He was kind of gloomy, but never stood out in class, so I don’t know much about him.” “He always said hello, but I heard rumors that he tortured cats in the neighborhood.”

When I think of being on the run all over Japan with everybody in the country trying to track me down, it feels like my fate is to keep on running forever. Not like there’s any place for me to run to. Like in Stephen King’s The Running Man, taxi drivers and convenience store clerks are going to phone the cops, telling them that that guy on TV was just here.

Speaking of Stephen King, I really like him. The Running Man and Carrie. I read The Long Walk twice. Battle Royale isn’t by King, but I read that twice, too. Most of the kids I know read only manga, but I prefer novels. Novels are closer to real life than manga, it’s like they show you the real world with one layer peeled away, a reality you can’t see otherwise. They’re deep, is what I’m saying. Which makes me sort of a weirdo in my class. The guys in my class see only the outer surface. Same with their parents. Guess they find that makes living easier, like that’s the smart way to approach life. What a bunch of assholes.

I have to keep doing something, I’m so sleepy. Half awake, I focus on the scenery passing by. Boring scenery along a main road. A pachinko place, a karaoke place, a used-car lot. A ramen shop, a family restaurant. All of them with their windows shut tight and the AC going full blast. A tin roof of a garage reflects the bright sun, hot as a frying pan.

But it’s like none of this is part of my world anymore. Ordinary scenery has transformed. Or I should say it’s me that’s changed. If I go into a pachinko place or a karaoke place, I know I won’t feel the way I used to about them. I’ll never feel the way I used to—ever again. Do you know what I mean? If somebody had told me all this before, I would have said, What the hell are you talking about? But there’s this gap now between my world and other people’s. And I’m totally alone.

People are part of the scenery, too. The truck driver talking on his CB as he passes me, the middle-aged guy stifling a yawn as he drives a white delivery van. The woman with a small child on the seat beside her, the elementary school pupil crossing the road. It’s like all these men and women—everybody—are in a different world from me. In their world, time just stretches on endlessly, today the same as yesterday, tomorrow the same as today, the future the same as tomorrow.

I feel like I’m racing alone through a desert on some distant planet, like Mars. Everything’s changed from two days ago. Everything’s divided now into before then and after then—then meaning the day I killed my mother. My actions created a turning point, a crossroads, in my own life. And now I finally understand the fear that Japanese soldier felt. People who experience this kind of a crossroads are afraid. And so sleepy they can’t stand it.

As these thoughts kept a lazy pace with my pedaling, I got so sleepy I really couldn’t stand it anymore. I wondered if I should stop my bike by the side of the road and take a nap. I looked around for a good place to sleep, but there wasn’t any, just cheap-looking houses and shops, not what I wanted—a bench or a small patch of grass. God, I’m so sleepy! So sleepy. I want to crawl into my own bed and sleep forever.

My room is a corner room on the southeast side of the house. An eight-mat room with wooden flooring, French bed, double mattress. Plus my own TV. It’s the biggest, best room in the house—not that I chose it myself or anything. Two years ago, when we moved in, when that trouble happened, Mom announced we were leaving the apartment building and moving here to a single-family home.

After we moved she said, “We’ll make Ryo’s room the sunniest one on the second floor.” She always says these “nice” things, taking care of her precious son.

Since that was already decided, my old man said he’d use the Japanese-style room on the second floor as his study. A study? Don’t make me laugh. All he’s got are dusty old sets of collected works. Those aren’t books—they’re furniture. And how about all those records he’s collected since college? He never listens to them. Hello! Ever heard of CDs? We got MP3s and DVDs, too, in case you didn’t know. And don’t give me all that crap about how great analog sounds, okay? You don’t know anything, yet all you do is brag, you clown. Where’d you learn all that useless stuff? From some bar hostess? Women aren’t falling all over doctors anymore. Okay, so you bought a computer, but do you ever use it? You’re just trying to look cool. Do you know that I sneak into your room, surf the Web, and play around on porn sites? As long as you don’t, there’s nothing you can do about it. Stop showing off, you jerk. Why can’t you see that I think you’re a total loser? You always brag about being a doctor, but you just work in a nothing little clinic. No better than some office worker. If you don’t like it, why don’t you become the head of a huge hospital and use your money to get me into Harvard? ’Cause you can’t, that’s why.

Mom doesn’t have her own room. She uses the parlor, but that’s different, that’s public space. Does this mean we have a public park in our house? A public restroom? I don’t need my own room, she said, because I have the “utility room.” Give me a break. “Utility”—what the hell’s that mean? “Identity” I know, but “utility”? What? You’re telling me to look it up in a dictionary? No way. I only want to use an electronic dictionary. And it has to be one that’s an unabridged dictionary and also has an encyclopedia. Don’t you get it? I’m telling you to buy me one!

When I said that, she ran right out and bought one for me. I was sick and tired of being with her. If you’ll give me anything, how about giving me your life? I wanted to say. I didn’t exactly ask to be your son, so give me your life. Did she know how much I despised her? The thought that I had to be with this old hag for the rest of my days depressed me, like my life was already over. You know what that feels like? Total depression.

I feel relieved that my old lady’s no longer here, even though I’m the one who killed her. I still get angry when I think of her and it makes it hard to get sleepy. So thinking of her maybe is a good way to combat this sleepiness that’s come over me.

My mother was a total idiot. I don’t know when it was I realized this. Probably the year after I started cram school, around fifth grade. Every day she gave me a stupid sermon.

The most outstanding people in the world, she’d lecture me, aren’t just intelligent, but the ones who make an effort. It’s easy to substitute other words into this formula. Let’s try it—it’s fun. Not just intelligent, but those who make an effort. Not just stylish, but those who make an effort. Not just athletic, but those who make an effort. Not just those from a good family, but those who make an effort. Not just the rich, but people who make an effort. Not just the lucky, but people who make an effort. In other words, you first have to have the one good quality, and only then can you be considered outstanding.

Which raises the question of whether Mom herself is an outstanding person. When I was in fifth grade, I started to have my doubts whether she’d cleared any of the hurdles on the road to becoming outstanding. Let’s face it, she wasn’t especially smart or pretty. She had absolutely no sense of style. Zero athletic ability. And making an effort? Forget about it. So where did she get off lecturing me? Finally, though, I realized something. Mom was convinced she was an outstanding person. She was convinced she was smart, pretty, from a good family. And besides, she was married to a doctor, with a smart son, and worked hard every day. I was just a kid, but I was shocked all the same. She’s not playing with a full deck, this old lady. Unbelievable.

“Fortunately, Ryo, you’re smart, so I want you to make more of an effort. It’s important to do your best.”

I don’t know how many times I heard this. Somewhere along the line, though, it hit me: I’m really not all that smart. This was soon after I got into K Junior High, which is considered one of the hardest private junior highs to get into. The first exam we had there, of the two hundred and fifty kids in my grade level, I wasn’t even in the top two hundred. That’s weird, I thought. But the next test turned out the same. And the one after that. The whole five years I’ve been in junior high and high school it’s been more of the same.

Mom panicked. I did, too, but she panicked first. You know why, right? ’Cause this smashed to bits the theory she kept pounding into my head. If I put this much effort into it and was never rewarded, then the premise of her theory had to be wrong. I wasn’t as smart as my mom and I had thought. If Mom had only realized how stupid she was herself, she would have understood much earlier that I wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box.

Which is why she blames me, because I’m dumb. One time she stared intently at me, those eyes behind her glasses, sizing me up like she’d never seen me before. Finally she managed this: “Ryo, are you popular with girls?” Are you serious? Since I entered an all-boys school, I haven’t spoken to any girls. Haven’t gotten a phone call from any girl, or a letter. I’m my old man and old lady’s kid, after all. The offspring of a hick and a hag. And wasn’t it my old lady who dumped me in a place where there aren’t any girls? Yet here she is asking if I’m a chick magnet.

She was asking this because she realized her education policy was a failure. She understood that I’m not very smart, not good-looking, and that maybe I won’t have such a happy life after all. What a dolt. Take a look in the mirror, I wanted to tell her. How about considering your own crummy life before you rag on me?

All these memories were getting me angry and upset, and completely got rid of my sleepiness. I saw a convenience store off to my left. Convenience stores are my stations. Can’t live without them. I happily stopped my bike and went inside.

After the blazing inferno outside, the cold air felt better than good—it totally revived me. The store was still new and was spacious. There was one middle-aged woman behind the register wearing a visor and a smock that didn’t suit her. She was glaring at the customers who were standing at the magazine rack leafing through the magazines. An old guy, probably the manager, was bent over some shelves, doing his best to straighten up the bento section. They didn’t look like they were used to the work. A convenience store veteran would never be so angry at people standing around reading magazines and manga for free.

In convenience stores, the entrance is the coolest spot, since they keep the AC at full blast there, shooting out dry, cold air to keep away the heat from outside. So I stood there at the entrance for a while, cooling off my overheated body. The cold air crystallized my sweat. I had the illusion that my whole skin was covered with a thin layer of glittering white salt. With my salt suit on, I was better than any other person around. I am a mother-killer, after all! And I’m on the run! Only a tiny percentage of mankind could do what I did. I can get away with anything.

I grabbed a 1.5-liter bottle of water from the fridge and took it over to the register. Paid for it and impatiently drank it down. I was so parched I couldn’t stop. I gulped down over half before I put the cap back on. Then I turned to the woman behind the register, who was staring at me with a troubled look, hand over her nose.

“Could I use your restroom, please?” I asked.

The woman turned around to the middle-aged guy. He tossed the bentos aside and trotted over.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “We don’t have a restroom.”

“What’s that then?”

I know where the restrooms are in convenience stores, almost always next to the refrigerator. I pointed to a likely door.

“That’s a storage room.”

The man was holding his nose, too. Two out of three convenience stores turn me down when I ask to use the bathroom, so I wasn’t overly disappointed. Five other places in a row had said no, so all I thought was that the percentage was going down. The old guy, though, had to go and add this:

“I’m sorry, sir, but since it bothers other customers I’d appreciate it if you’d drink outside. And please use the restroom somewhere else. My apologies.”

I’m bothering other people? What did he mean? Was it my salt suit? I sniffed my T-shirt, and it did smell kind of gross—a kind of sour, weird smell. It had been two days since I left home. I hadn’t washed the shirt or taken a bath—was that all it took to get like this? I swam in a pool, but I guess that didn’t work. The blazing sun had turned me into this smelly guy people wanted to avoid. Just being at home meant I wouldn’t get smelly—the thought impressed me, somehow, in a weird sort of way. I’d washed my face and hands at a park, but couldn’t wash my T-shirt or jeans. I scratched my head.

“You’re telling me to get out?”

“No, it’s that we’d rather you didn’t drink here or use the bathroom. So if you don’t mind…”

So he was using the restroom as a pretext for getting me out of there. I ignored the old guy and, water bottle in hand, sauntered over to the magazine and book rack. When I got there a fat guy engrossed in a porno magazine gave me a strange look and tossed it aside. Two high school girls also grimaced and edged away. I blithely opened up the latest copy of JUMP and started leafing through it. The fat guy left the store, so I opened up the porno mag he’d been reading. It was full of pretty girls with their legs spread. I wanted the magazine but didn’t want to spend the money on it, so I stared hard at the photos, to burn the images into my brain. “He stinks,” some girl’s voice whispered from the next aisle over. The high school girls. In times like these I always want to say this: “Hey, I go to K High, just so you know!” I’m such an idiot. But the thought also hits me that the guys at K High who really are smart would never brag like that. They’re much too clever.

So in the final analysis the only use for the education my old lady so highly prizes is to brag about it in front of others. Nobody outside K High knows I’m at the bottom of the class, or that the teachers make fun of me. The whole thing’s crappy. But I had to stay there, stay put. Junior and senior high—six years! “You’ll be studying for college entrance exams soon,” my old lady always told me, “so you just have to hang in there a little longer.” Hang in there for what? She didn’t understand me at all. I’d run out of patience a long time ago.

I noticed something and turned around. The manager was standing there, timidly trying to figure out whether he should say something. Remembering I was on the run, I decided to get out. No good for me to stand out too much. My cell phone rang just when I got outside. It was from Yuzan, the girl who helped me.

“Hello. It’s me.”

I probably shouldn’t say this, but talking to her is just like talking to a guy. Doesn’t do a thing for me. Girls should have a higher, cuter voice. Why? ’Cause they’re a different life-form, that’s why. So when I talk to this Yuzan I always feel like complaining. But I guess that makes me just as bad as my old lady—always wanting things to go my way. Guess we share the same blood after all. I smiled bitterly.

“Hold on a sec,” I said.

I looked for a shady place, but there wasn’t any in front of the convenience store. Just the roar of trucks and the blazing sun. I was bowled over by the heat reflecting off the concrete. My salt suit was melting, dripping down my skin, and sticking to it. I found a truck parked in the parking lot and slumped down in its shade.

“What d’ya want?” I asked.

“Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah. I wound up sleeping in a convenience store parking lot last night. Too many mosquitoes when you sleep outdoors. Then I ate some rice balls from the store and have been riding since morning.”

“Where’re you at now?”

“I don’t know. Out in the sticks,” I said, glancing around me. Somewhere out in Saitama Prefecture. “Around Kumagaya, I think.”

“Supposed to be a really hot place. You okay?”

Yuzan spoke very fast. The heat must have been messing up my brain, ’cause I couldn’t talk right.

“I’m okay. But what’s happening with the cops?”

“Toshi says they’re coming by every day. But what’d you expect? I saw your old man a little while ago. They had your mom’s funeral this morning. It was terrible, your old man was bawling.”

He broke down? It felt like it had nothing to do with me. Killing my mom, wanting to kill my dad later, too—under this blazing sun it all felt unreal, like a myth from some far-off land. Were these people really my parents? I’d been thinking about this before, while pedaling my bike—the whole before then, after then thing. As I mulled over my hatred of my mom, it felt like I’d left after then way behind—and had crossed over to a completely different world. What the hell’s going to happen to me? With this salt suit on, am I no longer going to be human? For the first time, I started to feel worried.

“I wonder what’s going to happen to me.”

“Whatever happens, happens,” Yuzan said coolly. That part of her, I don’t like, I thought. I don’t know what her story is, but it’s like whenever I try to get a little closer she gets all cold and standoffish. Still, she’s curious about me. But I can’t figure her out, and I don’t like people I can’t figure out.

“Did anybody from my school come to the funeral?” I asked.

“No idea. I don’t think there were any high school students there.”

“To them I was just a piece of trash they never noticed.”

Yuzan chuckled. “Cooler to be a piece of trash.”

Her words rescued me, and I felt strong all of a sudden.

“So being on the run is cool?” I asked.

“Yeah. What I mean is—what are you going to do now?”

Her voice was filled with sympathy and curiosity. It was like she wanted me to be her stand-in in some great adventure.

“I just have to keep running.”

“Where?” she asked.

“I have no clue.”

I really didn’t. Yuzan gave this big sigh, like a little kid.

“I wanna go with you somewhere.”

“There’s nowhere I can go.”

This time it was my turn to be abrupt. Yuzan had helped me, but it didn’t feel like I was dealing with a girl. Besides, she was a complicated type, kind of unapproachable. A gloomy person who blamed herself ’cause she was convinced her mother’s illness and death were her fault. As I talked with her on the phone I was thinking, You and I are very different. I’m much colder.

“Guess you’re right,” she said. “Hey, is it okay if I tell my friends your cell number? They all want to call you.”

“No problem,” I said.

I don’t know why, but this idea got me excited. When I stole that girl Toshi’s bike and cell phone, what was most fun was being able to talk with all the girls whose numbers were in the contacts list. I’d like to meet the one named Kirarin.

Yuzan acted all cool, like she’d seen right through me. “I see—so you’re a regular guy after all. Okay, I’ll let ’em know.”

Damn, I thought, and was silent. If Yuzan tips off the cops I’m in a world of trouble. I hung up and took another swig of water. I was hungry but didn’t feel like going back to the convenience store. I plopped down next to one of the truck’s wheels. God, some yakiniku would taste great right about now.

“Hey, get outta the way.”

This voice came from above me and when I opened my eyes, there was a young man standing there. Blond hair and sunglasses, running shoes and shorts. The driver of the truck. A tough-looking guy.

“Sorry.”

As I stood up the guy grimaced.

“I think I’m gonna puke, you stink so much.”

“Sorry,” I said again. It pissed me off that I had to apologize to some guy I didn’t even know. I went over to the bike rack. I checked out an old lady’s bike, a black one, saw it was unlocked, and hopped aboard. Yuzan’s silver bike was cool-looking but stood out too much. Plus, it felt good to dump that pushy girl’s bike.

The old lady’s bike was heavy. I pedaled off on the main road again and thought that I’d better go over the day my world changed or else I’d get sleepy again. Just then the cell phone rang. I stopped the bike by the side of the road and answered it. First, though, I hid the bike in some bushes so nobody would spot it and crouched down there.

“It’s me. Toshi. From next door.”

Yuzan didn’t waste any time giving her my number.

“Oh, hey. Yuzan told me they had my old lady’s funeral today.”

“That’s right,” Toshi said, her voice kind of gloomy. “I’m calling from my cram school right now, but your father and relatives were all crying at the funeral. My parents, too, and I couldn’t help crying, either. Hey, I can understand your wanting to run away, but don’t cause any trouble for Yuzan, okay? That’d make her an accomplice.”

Who the hell does this girl think she is? Sounds exactly like my old lady. I was really disappointed. I mean, it’s like I murdered my mother for her sake. That’s why, right after I did it, when I ran across her outside it made me really happy. I offed my old lady for you, I wanted to laugh and say to her, so what’re you gonna do for me now? It was all for you, I wanted to tell her. But all I could get out was “Sure is hot today.” Pathetic.

“I’m sorry, but it’s really hot here, so could you call back later?”

“That’s pretty rude. And after I went to the trouble of calling you. See you.”

She hung up the phone. For a moment, I was afraid she’d rat on me, tell ’em what happened that day, but then I figured that by now everybody knew I’d whacked my old lady, so who cares. I sat there in the bushes, hugging my knees. It was strange, I thought, why all these weird girls like Yuzan and Toshi were interested in me. Was I their hero? That was enough to cheer me up.

A matricidal murderer. I knew I’d done something really huge, but thinking of it in those terms made me feel kind of strange. And the more I ran, the stranger it felt. I lay down on the grass and gazed up at the sky. While I was lying there, I wondered, What was Toshi up to at that cram school of hers? As I imagined her, I got an erection.

From the east side veranda of my room I can just barely see into Toshi’s room. Her desk is near the window and when I’m lucky I can catch a glimpse of her studying there t

hrough a gap in the lace curtains. When that happens, I turn off all the lights in my room and peek out. I can see her face in profile, lit by the lamp beside her. Sometimes, probably when she’s reading manga, she laughs out loud or else she frowns. You’re not so bright, I want to tell her, so why bother with studying? What’s the point? You’re a girl, so that’s plenty! That’s enough to see you through life, right? Who cares if you don’t do well in school? That’s what went through my head. I had a lot of mixed feelings toward girls for a long time. And why not? Girls don’t have to compete—just being a girl means guys will fall all over themselves for you.

Ever since I realized I’m not too bright, I couldn’t help but think that maybe girls are way smarter than me. And thinking about Toshi in particular gave me an inferiority complex, ’cause she wasn’t so bad-looking, and probably a whole lot happier than me. I can’t explain it, but I started to feel that way. Whenever I ran across her at the station, she’d nod a hello, but for some reason I couldn’t nod back. I know you might think that’s no big deal, but I started to feel inferior to her. A cleverer guy would be able to get to know her better, but every time I thought of talking to her she’d give me this indifferent look and then vanish.

I always heard people laughing in her house, like they were having fun. Whenever that happened I’d think that homes with young girls are the cheerful ones, and that’d make my complex even worse. I might go to a school like K High, but that means absolutely nothing to anybody else. Still, my old lady, the moron, is convinced it’s a big deal. The upshot is I’m crushed between the world’s opinion and the old lady’s. It’s like that’s the duty I have to perform.

Soon after we moved into our house I discovered that from the veranda of my old man’s study you can see into the bathroom in Toshi’s house. If the window is open you can see the bathtub. The time I first realized this, unfortunately it was her father who was in the bath. Her mother was always more cautious and made sure to shut the window tightly. Toshi, though, was a little slow on the uptake, and sometimes she’d take a bath without closing the window, especially if her father bathed first and left it open.

Once I found out all this, I started to look forward to watching her when she was studying, and whenever she went to take a bath I’d crouch down on the veranda, waiting. There was only a one-in-twenty chance of success. And it only worked in the summer, when the window was open, when her father had taken a bath before her. Even when everything fell into place, if my old man was in his study, forget about it.

On that particular day it must have been divine intervention, because everything went perfectly. Toshi turned out the light next to her desk and seemed to be heading off to the bath. I quickly went over to the window, stuck my face out, and peeked down at the bathroom. Steam was coming out, so I knew the window was open. Her father must have just taken his bath. Fantastic! Totally excited, I went out of the room and halfway down the stairs to check out what was going on below. Dad had come home already but I could hear him still eating dinner.

I slipped off quietly to his study and sneaked out to the veranda. Down below, Toshi was yelling something. Probably she was pissed ’cause her dad had left the bath a mess. I could hear water splashing. I sat there, waiting in anticipation, concerned a little about what my old man was doing. And the moment I’d been waiting for finally came. Toshi, naked, stepped into the tub, her legs momentarily spread wide. Yes! I did a quick fist pump, and at that exact moment somebody grabbed me by the hair from behind.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

It was my mom, keeping her voice down. Both hands clutching my hair, she dragged me back into the old man’s study, trying not to make any noise. And then back into my own room.

“Nothing special,” I said.

“You were peeking into their house! That’s disgusting. You’re scum, you know. Human scum.”

The old lady had taken off her makeup and was in her pj’s, light blue pj’s she’d bought at Peacock. Without her penciled eyebrows she looked homely and weird, plus her stomach was sticking out. You’re the one who’s disgusting scum, I wanted to tell her, and besides, why do I have to be yelled at by somebody like you?

“Sorry that I’m scum.”

“You should be. This is all you do instead of studying. What in the world are you thinking? What about college entrance exams? You’re a criminal, you know that? Why are you doing this?”

“A criminal?”

“That’s right,” she said. “A peeping Tom. You did the same thing in our old place and that’s why we had to move. We had to get out of there before people found out about you, and it was very hard for Father and me.”

“You just moved because you wanted to build a single-family home.”

The old lady’s face stiffened.

“How can you say that? People were about to find out about what you were up to, so we had to take off. Father and I were worried sick because we didn’t want anything to hurt your future. It wasn’t because of me. Something’s wrong with you. What should we do? What could you possibly be thinking? What should we do?”

What should we do? What should we do? What should we do? The old lady glared at me, demanding a reply. Behind her silver-framed glasses, her eyes were bulged and burned with anger and contempt. It shocked me to think that a moron like this had contempt for me. Her anger was really jealousy, I suddenly realized. I mean, she was so totally angry. Shut up, old bag! Maybe I should just kill her. The thought sprang up in my mind. If she was out of the way, imagine how free I’d be. As long as she’s around I’ll never be free. She’ll decide which university I should go to, pick out who I should marry, and wind up bossing my kids around. You can count on it.

“I’m going to tell Father what happened here,” she said, and left the room. Not that the old man could say anything. He doesn’t scare me. I’m taller than him, and stronger. Predictably, after a while the old man lumbered upstairs and without a word shut himself in his study. Tomorrow, I decided, after the old man’s gone to work, I’m going to murder my old lady. With the metal bat in the corner of my room. Then I’ll really be a criminal. Excellent. The Triple Crown: a criminal, a pervert, and a mother-killer. Imagining the bat humming down on the old lady’s head, I took a couple of practice swings. But what she’d just said was still floating around in my mind.

People were about to find out what you were up to, so we had to take off.

Here’s what happened. Before we came to Suginami-ku, until I was a freshman in high school, we lived in a suburban town with a population of about 150,000. In this huge housing project with about two hundred other families. The kind of huge apartment building you see everywhere, with long open hallways and tricycles and co-op boxes outside every door. But that’s where I was brought up, so I liked that town and our building. There were still fields around our apartment, and my friends and I played baseball there until it got dark. On rainy days we’d chase each other around the building. Most of my friends lived in the building, so we were all pretty much from the same sort of background.

Mom, though, hated the apartment. She said it was constructed shabbily, that you could hear people talking through the walls and sounds from above and below. Her real complaint, though, was that this apartment didn’t measure up to her idea of the good life. Which to her meant a single-family home within the Tokyo city limits. You’re a doctor, she told Dad, but look at us, living in the same sort of place as people who just work down the street. Dad just gave a contented laugh. What a stupid couple. After I passed the exam to get into K High, the old lady complained about this more and more. “I hate this place, I hate it!” she said.

Since I was happy living there, I didn’t want her to get her way. Plus, a young couple moved in next door, which suddenly made me oppose moving even more. Because every single night I could hear them groaning and sighing.

My room and their bedroom were right next door to each other. In most of the apartments, the six-mat room was the children’s room and the Japanese-style room, the same size next to it, was the parents’ bedroom. Which meant that in your typical three-bedroom apartment the kids’ room was separated from the neighbor adults’ bedroom by just a wall. Talk about racy. As soon as I heard them start to groan I’d clap my ear to the wall. The young woman next door was very friendly, with a cute face like a charming little kitten. Her hair hung down straight, like a junior high girl’s, exactly the way I like it. To imagine that young woman giving off groans like that!

Hearing them wasn’t enough. I wanted to see them in the act. So I quietly opened the door to the veranda and leaned out. There was only a plywood partition separating our veranda from theirs, a board that was flimsy, so in case of a fire it could be easily broken through. All I had to do was get around that and I could spy into the couple’s bedroom where they were going at it. Damn, I thought, what I’d give to be the Invisible Man.

Pretty soon I was getting all hot and bothered not just by the nighttime goings-on but thinking about what the woman next door was doing during the day, when her husband was gone and she was alone. Maybe she was getting off by herself? I’d love to see that, I thought. One day I skipped out on school and while Mom was out shopping I went out on the veranda and peeked around the partition. The curtains were closed, though, and I couldn’t see anything. I was disappointed, but just then I noticed that she’d hung out her laundry to dry. Her tiny panties were all hanging from a round little dryer hanger. They were so pretty I reached out to try to touch them. I couldn’t quite reach them, so I went back inside and brought out a dust mop. But I still couldn’t get them. My arms got tired, and just when I was taking a break, a piece of thread wafted down from above. I looked up and two floors above us a lady was airing out her futons. She was a friend of my old lady’s, I’m sure, someone she got to know through the co-op. Unconcerned, the woman went on beating her futon. Damn. I went back inside.

That night my old lady came up to me with this scary look on her face.

“What in the world were you up to during the day? Tell me.”

“Nothing,” I said.

“You were trying to get something from next door, weren’t you?”

“No, I wasn’t. I dropped an exam answer sheet and was just trying to pick it up.”

My mom thought about this for a minute. I thought I’d conned her, but she shook her head.

“You should have just knocked on their door. I’ll do that right now.”

“No way!” I yelled, but off she went. I waited thirty minutes, then an hour, and she didn’t come back. I was getting worried. Finally she came back, her eyes all red and puffy from crying.

“We can’t live here anymore,” she said.

What was going on? I didn’t do anything that bad. I stayed silent, while Mom made a big show of crying.

“Maybe I’ve been a bad mother. I can’t believe you’d do something like this.”

“What did they say?”

“The husband answered the door and said there wasn’t any exam paper around. He said that he didn’t have any proof, but it looked like you were trying to steal his wife’s panties. He said one pair was lying on the ground and it looked suspicious. What if your school found out about this? What then? The husband said they wouldn’t make a big deal out of it or anything because of your age, but I can’t stand living here anymore!

“I can’t believe it, can’t believe it, we can’t stay here anymore,” she kept repeating, crying hysterically. The upshot was we left there soon after and moved here. In the beginning, after we moved, Mom seemed to have forgotten all that had happened and was happy. The nearby supermarket made her ecstatic: “They have my favorite salad dressing there!” she’d say. “And can you believe it—they carry pie sheets! It’s a much higher class of customers here.” When she found out that Toshi lived next door, though, she gradually grew more cautious.

“You can’t see her room from yours, can you, Ryo?” she asked. How stupid can you get, I thought. You’re the one who decided this would be my room! I didn’t bother answering. And then there was this whole new incident with Toshi in the bath. You understand how disgusted I was with my mom? She was constantly smothering me. When I was in the bath myself, for instance, she’d be hovering outside next to the sink and I couldn’t even come out when I finished. God, I hate her!

* * *

On the fateful day, I slept until eleven, with the AC on full blast. Just about the time when my old lady would come and try to get me up. But I was ready for her. The desire to kill her hadn’t wavered since the day before. I got out of bed and grabbed my aluminum bat. I had on an old T-shirt instead of pajamas, in case there was a lot of blood. And a pair of boxers. I thought about doing it naked, but that would look stupid. I heard someone coming upstairs, noisier than usual. The old lady must be pissed about something again. Excellent. She knocked on my door and opened it.

“Are you going to sleep all day?” she complained.

She stopped, surprised at how chilly my room was. As I raised the bat I shouted out and she looked up at my hands. She shouted, too—“Stop it!” she yelled.

I swung the bat down and she leaped back out the door. Strike one. The bat slammed against the top of my bookshelf, banging off the pile of manga on top and shattering the lightbulb in the lamp next to my desk. The old lady scrambled down the stairs. Hey—you’re not bad, I thought. She was pretty damn fast. I slowly came out of my room and came down after her. When she saw that I still had the bat in my hands, she dropped the phone she was holding. I placed it neatly back where it belonged and grabbed her hair. She struggled and finally broke free. I slammed the bat against the back of her head. It made a solid crunch but wasn’t a direct hit. Foul ball. Blood dripping down her head, she staggered over to the bathroom. Probably thought she could lock herself inside. I raced after her and whacked her again on the back of her head. Smush! Sounded good, but it was still a bit off center. Another foul ball. Blood splattered out on my face. The old lady fell forward, head over heels, and collapsed, shattering the glass door to the bathroom. She was still alive. Her hair was matted with blood as she crawled toward the kitchen.

“You’ll…be a criminal…” she moaned.

“I know. And I don’t give a shit.”

She nodded, but I could see the blood drain out of her face. It looked like she was dead. So the last one wasn’t a foul ball after all, but a clean hit. Finally, the woman who gave birth to me, raised me, ordered me around, yelled at me, turned me into a sex maniac, who complained all the time, was dead. And I’m the one who killed her. I suddenly felt light and airy, like a balloon. Puffy. Swollen. I tossed the bat aside and sank down, exhausted, to the floor.

* * *

From the grass I could hear the low electric buzzing of some insects. Something must be up with my brain, I thought. Maybe something’s seriously wrong with me. I don’t feel even a bit of guilt. Holding my head, I stood up. The handles of the bike must be burning hot ’cause of the sun. This random thought was cruising through my head when the cell phone rang. It had to be Toshi.

“Yeah?”

“Hi, my name’s Kirari Higashiyama. We talked before.”

She had a high, clear voice. Different from Toshi’s calm voice, or Yuzan’s attempts to talk like a guy. Or that girl Terauchi with her gloomy voice. It made me happy.

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Yuzan told me the number. So what are you doing now?”

“Just thinking, I guess. Or daydreaming. About all kinds of things.”

“Really? Hey, are the police after you, or can we talk for a while?”

She sounded sympathetic. This girl didn’t seem like she’d be much of a bother. An image came to me of the woman who lived next door in our old apartment building. If this girl was like her, that’d be cool.

“I don’t know. Hey, babe, how ’bout we—?”

“Everybody calls me Kirarin.”

Kirarin. I was too embarrassed to call her that silly name.

“Could we meet?” I asked.

“Are you sure?”

She hesitated, but I could tell she was curious. Maybe I really had become these girls’ hero. Happy and excited, I wiped the sweat off my forehead.