ould we meet?”

Worm sounded just like the guys I meet through text messaging when they phone me. Kind of fawning and brazen, like they know exactly what I want. Like all they’re thinking about is getting it on.

“Are you sure?” I asked him hesitantly, but I was disappointed as usual. Hmm…so even a pumped-up young mother-killer like Worm wants to hit on girls. I’d been hoping he’d have a bit more backbone than that. Yet unconsciously my fingers started moving like I was typing out a text message. Sure, I want to meet you, too. I’m all by myself today and kind of lonely. A total lie.

I’ve only recently started playing around on chat-room sites. I’d type in a message like, I’m hoping to hook up with someone right away. I’m sixteen, and going to a private high school. In a flash I’d get nearly a hundred replies. From guys who are pretty sure this wasn’t really a high school girl, but who are still dying to hook up. Idiotic.

I’d like to meet you. I’m eighteen, six-foot-one, and am into karate—sometimes you get those types. And then I type back: You’re really tall. That’s cool. I’m only four-ten. Do you like small girls? It’s a game of mutual lies flying back and forth. I wondered if Worm wanted to play this game with me. If he does, I thought, he’s a total idiot. I decided I’d tease him a bit.

“Where can I meet you?”

Worm hesitated. “It’s not like I don’t trust you or anything, but you won’t tell the cops, will you?”

“Sounds like you don’t trust me.”

I said this in an intentionally high, weak voice like he really had hurt me. I’ve gotten pretty good at using my voice like this. It’s a phone call, after all, so you can’t see the other person’s face. Guys are all suckers for a sweet, high-pitched voice. And Worm was typical. He started to get a bit flustered.

“No, I trust you,” he said. “It’s just that I have to be careful. They’re after me.”

They’re after me—he sounded almost proud. You don’t have any guts at all, I wanted to tell him. You killed your own mother, didn’t you? What do you expect? Of course they’re going to be after you. You’re a criminal!

“Well—okay, then.”

In situations like this I always act a little disappointed but keep it short and sweet. I don’t pursue it any further because girls have guys after them all the time, so I know how it feels to be pursued. If you play too easy to get, you’ll regret it. The kind of guys I’m attracted to are the ones who don’t dig too far either.

“Kumagaya. Do you know it?”

“How come you went that far away?”

“It’s superhot.” Worm sighed. “I’d like to lug around an air conditioner with me.”

Well, you’re the one who ran away, I felt like saying. I started to feel a little cold and cruel. Give me a break—you murdered your own mom. So don’t complain about a little heat!

“Come to the station,” he said. “I’m on a bike, so I can’t go too far in this heat.”

Well, Worm, you’ve got a bit of an ego, don’t you think? Asking a girl you’re meeting for the first time to go all the way out to Kumagaya? Can’t be many guys who’d do that. I gave him one of my patented lies.

“I’ll come over right now. I’ll call you when I get to the station.”

“Cool. I’ll be waiting.”

Go all the way to Kumagaya when it’s ninety-five degrees out? Not in this heat. Still, you don’t get many opportunities to talk with a mother-murderer. This might be my only chance. Plus, Worm doesn’t seem to like Toshi or Yuzan that much. I guess I should consider this a kind of honor, if I’m the only one he’s asked to meet. I suddenly got all excited at the chance, and decided I’d better ask Teru for advice before I did anything.

Teru’s a good friend of mine. A different kind of friend from Toshi, Terauchi, or Yuzan. We always have a lot to talk about, so it’s fun to be with him. So much fun I’ve even thought we should do a make-believe marriage. Teru’s gay. He’s twenty-one and a freelancer. Until a while ago he drove a delivery truck, but then he landed a job creating Web sites. I knew he was in the middle of work, but I went ahead and called anyway.

“Hey, Teru, what’s up?”

“I’m making a home page for this artist who makes these strange dyed fabrics. Soybean-flour and squid-ink colored fabrics. I saw some of the actual works and they were a really sickening color.”

“But you’re lucky you have work,” I said.

“You’re on summer vacation, right? You’re the lucky one.”

I loved Teru’s sort of helpless, slow yet gentle way of talking. I first met him one day when I was wandering around Shibuya. He’s the one who stopped me, and I was sure he was going to proposition me.

“I want to be a girl just like you,” he told me. “You’re beautiful. Could we be friends?” I guess it was a kind of proposition after all.

Teru seemed to have some time on his hands, so I brought him up to speed with what’d been going on. Was he surprised! I could imagine his eyes, with their green contact lenses he’s so into now, wide open. I love his eyes. They’re different from most Japanese eyes, or men’s or young people’s eyes. More like the weird eyes of some alien from outer space. Like on that commercial, you know? I think it was for ACOM?

So, anyway, I didn’t like Teru as a guy, but I still wanted to watch him all the time. It’s like when I see him I feel calm, unafraid. Most guys want to get it on—you don’t know what they’re going to do to you and deep down that scares me. Maybe I don’t really trust them. But Teru is kind, more fragile than Toshi and the others, and a very good guy. His kind of hurt-by-the-world look is cute. Teru’s into role-playing, and I love that part of him, too. I don’t think he’s been doing it lately—it’s too hot—but this spring he was always dressed up like characters from Battle Royale. He’d wear a school uniform with one of those high, round collars.

“Kirarin, do you mean that murder that was in all the papers yesterday? Is this the same guy who beat his mother to death and ran away?”

Teru seemed worried about being overheard and kept his voice down.

“That’s the one. He lives next door to Toshi. At first he stole Toshi’s cell phone and bicycle and took off. He’s a weird guy, and started calling all the girls listed in her contacts. Yuzan seemed to like him so she helped him, gave him a bike and new cell phone. He called me, too. When I dialed the number the guy was so happy and said he’d like to meet up with me.”

“But why would Yuzan help him out?”

“I think because her mother is dead, too. It made her sympathize with him. He called me, too, but I just led him on.”

“That’s pretty risky, Kirarin,” Teru said, sounding worried. “That kid must be pretty desperate by now.”

But would a desperate guy sound like one of those horny guys who e-mail me?

“I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s more like he feels free and ready to get it on.”

“What are you thinking? It’s terrible.” Teru sounded more like a girl than me. “And why does he want to meet you? Why not Toshi, Yuzan, or Terauchi?”

Teru’d never met any of them, but I’d told him all about them.

“Maybe ’cause I used my cute voice. Like always.”

Teru didn’t like it that I played around in online chat rooms. Everybody just tells lies on those sites, he said, all serious, so what’s the fun in that? I knew that but still held out the slim hope that I might actually hook up with some hot guy. That slim hope always drove me to the sites. Maybe I’m boy crazy or something.

“This is sounding worse and worse.”

“But how many chances do you get to meet an actual murderer?”

“Mmm,” Teru said, thinking it over.

“Yeah, I suppose,” he said. “Let me think about this and get back to you during lunch. See ya.”

I was thinking about getting Toshi’s advice, too, and was about to press the speed dial, but decided against it. I could always depend on her, but I knew she’d get all serious on me. She didn’t really understand me that well.

* * *

Of the four of us in our group I’m the only one who isn’t a virgin. I’m also the only one who has made other friends, people I go out with outside of school. The only one who posts all kinds of lies on online chat rooms, the only one who has a gay friend. The other three girls, though, just think I’m a cute, cheerful, what-you-see-is-what-you-get type of girl. When Toshi told me that just looking at me calms her down, that made me feel all squirmy. I’m not deliberately trying to fool them, it’s just that I’m not as simple as they think.

The other group I’m in is a bunch of girls who do a just-okay job of studying for college exams, figure they’ll get into some easy junior college, and love to party. Girls who, when the time comes, will marry some so-so guy, raise some kids, and continue to shop and have fun like they did when they were single. They’re very matter-of-fact about going out with guys, and just let life take care of itself. They don’t smoke, but carry Zippo lighters and when a guy takes out a cigarette, they love to say, “I have a lighter. How ’bout I give you a light?” All they think about is how to please guys.

So, anyway, I’d go with these girls to Shibuya, get picked up by guys, go with them to a karaoke place, go drinking, spend the whole night having fun. If I run across a guy I like, I might go to a hotel with him, but I absolutely never do it for money. Once a guy finds out you’re selling it, his attitude does a one-eighty. I like fooling around with guys, but hate being used like a toy. That makes me sad and miserable. Fooling around with guys is thrilling, like walking next to a busy highway. If you fall off the curb, it’s all over.

Teru never says anything about me playing around with guys. I think maybe he’s jealous, wanting to do the same himself. Gay guys like regular guys, just like girls. In that sense it’s a shame that we can’t go to Shibuya together and get picked up, ’cause we get along so well.

I’m in these two groups because I feel like I belong right in the middle between them. Toshi, Terauchi, and Yuzan are nice girls, but they’re so serious sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe. I feel kind of on edge, like I’ve always got to say something clever or they’ll make fun of me. Which doesn’t mean I think the same way as the other group, that you can kind of just muddle through life. I want to study and get into a decent college and get a good job. When it comes time to marry, it’s got to be somebody I really like, and my partner’s got to love me most of all. That said, this is the best time of my life, so I figure I’d better enjoy it and not get all hung up on the consequences.

Two other girls in this Good Times group are in the same year as me in school. They come to school with dyed hair and makeup, like they’re announcing the fact that they’re out for a good time. They figure if they flaunt it, the guys will flock to them. I find this all kind of courageous and their flirtiness kind of sneaky. I’m more the serious and “healthy” sexy high school girl—which, I guess, makes me courageous and sneaky, too. We want to get guys to pay attention to us, and when we’re together we help each other stand out. That’s probably why we get along so well. When I run across those girls at school, though, they don’t say anything to me. We pretend to be strangers and signal each other with glances. If we have something we want to talk about, we do it by cell phone or text message. It’s a secret relationship, in other words.

So the friends I can meet in front of everyone are Toshi, Terauchi, and Yuzan—our little foursome—but it’s much more complicated than that, ’cause I have underground roots branching out in lots of directions. What I talk about changes depending on the type of friends I’m with.

The Good Time girls never talk about the future or anything even remotely serious. It’s clothes, makeup, and guys, twenty-four/seven. With Toshi, Terauchi, and Yuzan I can talk about school, college, but when it comes to discussing guys, I can’t talk with them, and don’t want to, either. So each group is kind of one-sided. I guess Teru’s the one who overlaps with both.

Teru says he can relax with me ’cause he doesn’t see me as the opposite sex. We’re such good friends that, like I said before, we even joke about pretending to be married, but Teru said if we did that he’d worry about what’d happen if we were both after the same guy. That’ll never happen, I told him. That kind of situation would only make both of us unhappy, so I’d never do it. “You wouldn’t do it, either, right?” I insisted, and got him to promise. I did this because when I was a freshman I had a terrible experience. A guy betrayed me.

There was this guy I was crazy about. I could talk about everything with him—what I wanted to be when I was older, problems I was having, even chatty stuff like clothes and hairstyles. Talking with him made me feel free, like all the bad things about me didn’t matter and everything was on a positive track. As long as he was with me I felt like I didn’t need girlfriends for the rest of my life. Maybe I never would have become friends with Teru, either. But he slept with another high school girl and when I found out we fought and split up.

When I think about him now I get all sad and teary. I guess I really did love him. When we were having sex, I could barely keep myself from yelling out, “I love you! I love you!” Still, getting stabbed in the back like that was the first crushing experience I’ve ever had. I’m sure Toshi and the others have never experienced that. When things were going well with that guy, I felt completely superior, like I was a grown-up woman. And I wish I could get that feeling back.

One time when we were eating lunch together I asked the other girls for their advice. I was desperate and wanted see what my three serious friends might have to say about the situation.

“I have this friend,” I began, “and she’s going out with a boy from a city high school. She says he’s a senior and pretty busy studying for college entrance exams, but he’s also in a band, plays soccer, does everything well, and is cute, too. This girl says they really get along well and have even exchanged rings.”

Terauchi plunged in at this point: “How far have they gone?”

Toshi answered for me. “Of course they’ve done it. They’ve exchanged rings and everything.”

“Dude. By getting along do you mean sex?”

“I guess so.”

“You mean they’re compatible size-wise?”

“Or maybe like how passionate they are?”

After Terauchi and Toshi finished their little dialogue, they looked at me. They were very intuitive, so I had to watch my step. I went on, hiding my confusion.

“So, anyway, the guy slept with another girl. And my friend just can’t forgive him, and it’s really hard on her. The guy says he was just having a fling, it didn’t mean anything, that she’s the only one he loves. But my friend can’t believe him. It’s really tough on her, she’s so miserable she feels like her chest is going to rip apart, so she can’t forgive him. She asked for my advice about what she should do, but I have no idea what to tell her.”

Toshi had this weird look on her face. “How did she find out he was having an affair? Did she catch them in the act, like in a drama?”

“There were tons of gushy e-mails on his cell phone from the other girl. About fifty every day.”

“So you’re saying this ‘friend’ of yours checked her boyfriend’s cell phone.”

The best I could do was nod. “That’s what she told me.”

“That sucks,” Toshi declared. “Checking somebody’s else’s cell phone really sucks.”

“But if she really loves him, don’t you think she might do something like that?”

I was on the verge of crying. Toshi looked surprised but went on vaguely: “Well, you could be right. That might happen, I suppose. I don’t know, I never liked any guy that much.”

Taking a sip from her water bottle, Terauchi made a sour face. “If this friend can’t forgive him for the affair, why doesn’t she just forget about him? There’re lots of other guys out there.”

“Sure there are other guys out there,” I said, “but my friend loves him. So what do you expect? She got worried and checked out his text messages. She loves him so much—that’s why she’s in agony wondering whether she should forgive him or not.”

“What she should do is forgive him, for the time being, then make some prank calls to the other girl to get back at her. Payback.”

Up to this point, Yuzan hadn’t said a word, so when she muttered this I was shocked. I’d already done what she suggested a long time ago.

“That’s an idea. I’ll pass it along,” I said.

“I don’t think she should do that. It’ll just make her feel dirty, and she’ll hate herself.” Toshi shook her head. She always comes up with the right answer. She was absolutely right. I was already struggling with a guilty conscience. When I told the other girl she was ugly, she yelled back this: “You idiot! You’re just angry ’cause I stole Wataru away from you!” So it was obvious I’d called her out of jealousy. It was like having mud thrown all over my face. And that mud is still there, plastered on.

Terauchi shrugged, agreeing with Toshi, and the three of them went back to eating their lunches like they’d had enough of the topic. It hit me right at that instant that they knew I’d been sleeping around with guys.

When I told all this to Teru, he held my hand and said, “You must have felt awful, Kirarin. Your pride got in the way then and you couldn’t be honest. Pride’s such a pain in the butt. Who needs it, anyway?”

“You’re right, I did feel awful. I didn’t know what to do. I was so stubborn I made a fool of myself. Maybe I should have just put up with it, but I couldn’t. I-I want to see him! I still love him….”

I burst out crying at this point, and after I had a good cry I felt better. I needed a friend like Teru, someone who could sympathize with me. My three girlfriends and I might get along, but they just kept on growing up, unaware of the pain I was feeling. I think that whole incident changed me, but to them I was still the same old Kirarin: cheerful, cute, well raised. And we were all going to grow up and this gap between who I really was and their perception of me was never going to be bridged. Friends are a weird thing. It seems like they know all about you, but then they don’t understand you at all. Maybe Teru is the friend I really need, but since he’s a guy, at least biologically, I feel like someday even he might betray me. Maybe deep down I just don’t trust guys.

* * *

I lost my virginity when I was a sophomore in junior high. It’s embarrassing, actually, to use a phrase like “lose my virginity.” The whole act was meaningless. I don’t even remember what the guy looked like. He was a student at a private high school and had dyed reddish brown hair. Sometimes when I remember him it makes me feel depressed, wondering why I did it with a guy like that. He was a rude, stupid guy who liked to lecture me on how girls should act. They shouldn’t lounge around naked, they shouldn’t smoke, et cetera.

Ever since then I can tell right away if a guy’s a moron: like if, during sex, he’s not gentle with me. It’s weird, but there’s like a law that idiocy and kindness are in inverse proportion. If, for instance, a guy goes into a club and goes straight to the back to sit down—you’re talking moron. When he’s doing karaoke and insists on selecting only the songs he likes—another moron. Guys who go out to pick up girls are morons, too, ’cause they’re so self-centered. So why do I like to be picked up, then? I can’t figure it out. Sometimes I think how great it would be if Terauchi and Toshi and I could discuss all this, but Toshi’s too serious and Terauchi is too good at hiding who she really is, so I just can’t bring myself to open up to them.

Yuzan, though, is different. Sometimes I feel like asking her advice. But I know she’s a lesbian. Her feelings are different from those of a girl like me.

When we went on our school trip sophomore year in high school, we got hold of some whiskey. Yuzan got drunk and crawled into bed with me. When I screamed, she said, “I’m just pretending to sneak into a lover’s room!” and tried to explain it away. But her eyes were serious. She must have regretted getting wasted and letting her secret out, ’cause in the middle of the night I saw her crying. Ever since then I’ve sympathized with her. Since she doesn’t have a Good Times group to play around with like I do, she doesn’t have an outlet for her feelings. She should just come out and let everybody know, like Teru did. And have a guy as a friend.

It was after one when Teru finally called me. The train was pretty empty, so I went over to the door and we had a long, whispered conversation. The AC blows hard next to the door and I was freezing. My teeth were chattering.

“I was thinking about it,” he said, “and I don’t think you should go.”

“I’m already on the train.”

I was riding the Takasaki Line out of Ueno. It was just like when I go to see my online friends. I go out because I’m curious about who I’ll meet. For fun. Just a game to kill time. When I get to the arranged meeting place, I stand off to one side, dial the guy’s number, and figure out which one he is. I check him out and if I don’t like what I see, then I go home. If the guy looks okay, then I go over and say hello. Most of the time it’s a bust. It’s kind of fun, though, to see through their lies. It’s even more interesting with Worm, since he’s a murderer. I want to watch him from a distance for a while.

Teru sounded betrayed. “I can’t believe it. Why are you doing this, Kirarin? To get to Kumagaya you need to take the Joetsu Shinkansen, don’t you? Why are you doing this?”

“I’m not on the Shinkansen. I’m taking the Takasaki Line.”

“But it’s a long way away, isn’t it? Why go all the way out there?”

“The guy’s a murderer. Wouldn’t you like to meet him?”

Teru was silent for a while, and finally replied: “I feel sorry for this guy—Worm? But I don’t want to see him or have anything to do with him. And I can’t figure out why you’d want to. You sound like one of those stupid talk shows.”

I like Teru a lot because he can give these kinds of serious replies. And I respect him, too. Still, I had to see Worm with my own eyes.

“Maybe I don’t even know why myself,” I said, and stopped. “Maybe I wanted to feel superior to Toshi and Terauchi, too.”

“You already do,” Teru said calmly.

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. Because you’re part of a hidden world that doesn’t include them. Because you have me, a gay guy, as a friend. Because you hook up with guys. Am I right?”

He was on the right track, but it wasn’t exactly like that. I thought I knew about guys, but I really didn’t. I should have stayed longer with that guy who betrayed me. It was like there was a door there, and no matter how hard or awful it was, I should have opened it and stepped into another world. Then I would have been able to understand him. But I got angry, slammed the door shut, and ran away. Toshi and Terauchi might not be like me, since I only know guys in a shallow way; when the time comes, I think they’d be a lot stronger. They would have opened the door. Which gives me kind of an inferiority complex.

“Sorry if I went too far,” Teru continued, “but I’m worried about you. Do you want me to meet you there?”

“No, you can’t do that. You’re working.”

“It’s okay. I can take off early.”

I hung up, then sat down in an empty seat and gazed out the window at the endless stream of houses passing by. The roofs of the houses lined up on the west side glittered in the hot summer sun. If you were looking down from an airplane, it would be even more dazzlingly bright. I have to be strong enough to reflect back light myself, but why do I go out at night to Shibuya and play around, why do I go on those online chat rooms? I know that relationships with guys are superficial, but still I do it. Complicated relationships with friends just wear me out. Why can’t I just be strong and simple? Thoughts like these get me a little depressed.

When I got to Kumagaya, I went straight to the restroom. I might go home without actually meeting him, ’cause I was afraid he’d be disappointed when he saw me. It’d be annoying, too, if I found out I’d been fooled. My face was sweaty, so I wiped it with my handkerchief and redid my eyebrows. I checked my pink T-shirt for sweat stains, spritzed on some more deodorant. Only after these preparations did I phone Worm from inside the station.

“Where are you?” he said. “I’m at the station.”

The guy’s pretty fast. I hadn’t expected him to be there already. I was startled and looked around for a place to hide. I had to check him out first, to see what kind of guy he was, otherwise there was no way I was going to meet him. I circled back behind the kiosks and looked around the station to see if there were any high school–age guys on cell phones.

“How are you dressed?”

“What kind of clothes do you have on, Kirarin?”

“You tell me first.”

“No, you first.”

What the—The guy must be hidden somewhere himself, trying to check me out first. Just what you’d expect from a criminal. But he was no match for me when it came to maneuvering on the phone.

“I’m wearing a bright red swimsuit,” I said boldly, “and black high heels, and I’m carrying a huge Louis Vuitton bag.”

“Pretty gaudy outfit. I’m dressed like an old-time Japanese soldier. I’ve got a cap on, and gaiters, even in this awful heat. I’m a private. I have a carved wooden rifle, too, not a real one, though, ’cause that’d be dangerous.”

A Japanese soldier? What a jerk. I stifled a laugh. My eyes kept moving, scanning the people walking through the station. Young part-timers, grade school kids, a middle-aged lady, high school girls, station employees, married couples. But not any guy who looked

like he was in high school.

“What do you mean, a carved wooden rifle?” I asked.

“What kind of swimsuit do you have on? A bikini?”

“Sorry, but it’s one of those school one-piece swimsuits. You can tell ’cause it’s got a nametag on the chest. It says ‘Higashiyama.’”

“A school swimsuit, huh?” he said, his tone changed. “You’re just screwing with my head, aren’t you?”

I got flustered since he was right on target. How did you know that, Worm?

“No, I’m not.”

“Really? Experienced guys who target young girls like those school swimsuits. It’s obscene. So you know what that kind of guys like?”

“Whatever. Where are you?” I asked.

“Where are you, babe?”

So it was no more “Kirarin,” but “babe”? He was making fun of me, and I didn’t like it one bit.

“Who gave you the right to call me that?”

“Enough with the attitude. You want to meet me, right? Want to check me out? ’Cause I’m a murderer on the run. Babes like you enjoy checking me out. Put it on your blog, right? I know the type.”

“If that’s what’s you think, fine by me. ’Cause I’m out of here.”

“Suit yourself. I’m leaving, too.”

“How can you leave when I came all this way? Okay, have it your way—I’m going to go into a police station and tell them the boy they’re looking for is right around the corner. Give them your cell phone number, too.”

There’d been this echo like he was inside somewhere, but now I sensed he was leaving. His breathing got a little ragged, so I knew he was walking. I heard the sound of cars. Sounded like Worm was exiting the station. I stretched, looking outside, but didn’t spot him.

“We don’t have to meet today,” he said. “I’m out of here. Sorry.”

The phone clicked dead. It made me so angry. He wasn’t just going to leave me like this after asking me to come, was he? After all the money I’d spent on train fare? I ran outside, completely ignoring my ironclad rule about not pursuing things too far. There was a line of taxis outside the station, but no people. It was so steamy out that everyone was staying inside. I stood there, blankly, outside this nearly deserted entrance of the station. He wasn’t anywhere around. I’d been this close to seeing him. An oddly dry wind was blowing, messing up my long hair. My body had been cooled down by the AC inside, but now my arms and legs were getting hot. My back was all sweaty.

“That’s not a swimsuit,” a voice said from behind me.

Damn, he got me, I thought, my head getting hotter than the temperature outside. More than anything I hated to lose the game. Worm must have been watching me from a distance, thinking, This is Kirarin, checking me out before he made his move. Just like I do to guys.

I slowly turned around. This guy smiling at me was tall and thin, but terribly stooped over. Gone was the challenging attitude on the phone. He was totally casual now. I’d pictured Worm as this haunted-looking, sweaty, smelly guy, confused and saddened by what he’d done. But the real Worm was tanned and healthy-looking. He looked neat and tidy, with a clean white T-shirt on and oversize black shorts. Hoisting a dusty backpack. His hair was disheveled, cowlicks everywhere. Could he really have killed his own mother? He looked like some local high school kid on his way to cram school. I stood there, vacantly looking at Worm’s face, dizzy with the heat and frustration at having lost the game.

“So you’re Kirarin. You’re not like Toshi or Yuzan at all.”

“Really? I don’t know about that.”

“Come on, you know what I’m talking about. You play around with guys. I can tell by your face.”

“I don’t play around,” I said.

“You’re cute, but tough.”

“No, I’m not.”

I scrunched up my lips and made a sulky face, turning into flirty me. I like nothing better than to twist guys around my little finger, but when I meet a guy I turn all passive. Which might be because, like I said, I basically don’t trust guys. I hate it—here I am acting all flirty even with a criminal. Teru, get here quick! I thought. This guy’s the overbearing type I can’t deal with. What if he murders me?! Kind of calculating of me to rely on Teru, though…

“You’re not really going to go to the police, are you?” Worm asked.

“I just said that ’cause all of a sudden you said you were leaving.”

“Why are you lying? Lying’s a waste of energy.” Worm watched me, a hand held up to shield his eyes from the sun shining behind me. “Anyway, it’s too hot—why don’t we find someplace cooler to talk.”

Worm pulled a cap out of his back pocket, put it on, and set off down the street.

“Wait a second—what did you do with Yuzan’s bike?”

“I threw it away and grabbed another one.”

“You shouldn’t just throw it away, it’s hers. Don’t you feel bad?”

Worm glanced back at me, his eyes fixed.

“Nah, I think it’s okay. It’s an emergency. I’m in a war. So I don’t have time to think about things like that. The whole country, all one hundred million people, is in an uproar about this high school student who whacked his mother.”

I was wondering how such a skinny guy could have done it, killed his mom. They said he beat her to death, but with puny arms like that, could he really have killed a woman all by himself? What would it feel like to murder somebody, anyway? And your own mother? I was scared of Worm, but at the same time I had all kinds of questions I wanted to ask him. Worm pointed to a mall just ahead.

“That should be cool, let’s go there.”

As I followed after him I looked all around me like some gawking tourist. I felt okay, though, since I figured he wouldn’t dare kill me in a crowded mall. Worm motioned with his chin toward a bargain store.

“When I heard you were coming I washed up in the swimming pool and bought a new T-shirt and boxers in the store over there. Four hundred eighty yen for the shirt and three hundred for the underwear.”

“How much money do you have on you?”

“Not much. I started out with twenty thousand, but I’ve used it all.”

“What on?”

But Worm didn’t reply.

“Finding food and a place to sleep isn’t so tough, but what’s hardest is taking a bath. There aren’t many public baths around, and even if I found one they probably wouldn’t let me in ’cause I’m too filthy. So it’s a real headache. Now I know why homeless old guys stink so much. They won’t let ’em into public baths. If I could solve that problem I could keep running forever.”

“You wouldn’t be able to run away for the rest of your life.”

“Yeah? You really think so?”

Worm spun around and faced me. His eyes were sharp, penetrating, and he looked pretty intelligent. I remembered my old boyfriend, the one I was so crazy about who stabbed me in the back. His eyes looked like this, too, sometimes. From way down inside me, hatred still boiled up. I hate him, I really do. The guy who made me suffer. Since I was quiet, Worm went on.

“Why do you think I won’t be able to run away?”

“Why don’t you try it, then, if you think you can?”

“I’m going to.”

“But you couldn’t your whole life. I mean, you’re only seventeen, right?”

“You probably think you’re going to have a long life.”

I froze.

“Yeah, I do,” I replied.

“That all depends on the person.”

Worm went into the mall ahead of me. It was a huge one, with a movie theater inside. In the middle of the building was some sort of sculpture that was supposed to be angels all intertwined, I guess, and around it were benches filled with high school couples making out. I bought a can of iced tea from a nearby vending machine. I thought about it for a bit, then sprang for a can for Worm, too. He’d long since plunked himself down on one of the benches and accepted the can of tea from me like he’d been expecting it all along.

“I don’t think any of these people would believe me if I told them I killed my mother. It’s amazing they kept my photo out of the media. It’s all over the Internet, though. Do you use the Internet?”

“On my phone, yeah,” I said, flashing him my clamshell phone. “That’s about it. I don’t own a computer.”

The couple next to us stopped kissing and, hand in hand, walked off, so I used this chance to ask him what I’d been wanting to know. “Why did you kill your mother?”

“I forget why. Reasons don’t matter, anyway. I just got pissed off. What’s more important is how an experience makes you go off to another world, how you live your life there. In that other world. And what you think about the world you left behind. Know what I mean?”

“‘Know what I mean?’ Stop acting so stuck-up.”

Worm stared at me in surprise.

“It’s strange that girls like guys who act all big and then get angry about it. Kind of inconsistent, if you ask me.”

“I’d think it’s strange if it wasn’t.”

To tell the truth, I liked talking like this. It got me excited. Sure, Worm wasn’t that appealing on the outside, but he did think about all sorts of things. And more than that, he was a guy who’d killed his mother, who’d seen this “other world,” so talking with him kept me on my toes. I was wondering how far my experiences would take me in a sparring match with him. This was another kind of game.

“So you’re never going back home?” I asked him.

“I was thinking about going back. How I’d need money to get back. But I won’t do that until after I’ve run away some more. It’d be a waste if I don’t experience being on the run some more.”

Worm stretched out his skinny legs and gazed up at the ceiling. The domed ceiling had a stained-glass picture on it depicting most of the city, and the midsummer sun tinted the white floor in darkish, dirty colors.

“Why would you go home?”

“I want to kill my old man,” he said, shooting me a glance. “How about you? Anybody you feel like killing?”

I thought it over for a while. I wouldn’t mind killing that jerk, the guy who destroyed my trust in men. I wonder what he’s doing now. The sadness and frustration I felt when he betrayed me changed me forever. He just split, leaving me behind, never the same again.

“Well, I guess there is.”

“Why do you want to kill him? ’Cause his existence makes you suffer, right? ’Cause you’d be better off if he wasn’t alive?”

“I don’t know….” I said, tilting my head. “I’d like it if he died, but what I’d really like is to get revenge on him, make him suffer, make him regret he did a stupid thing like betraying a great girl like me.”

“Nah, that’s too wishy-washy. You have to make him totally vanish from the face of the earth. Otherwise, if he’s still alive, you won’t ever get rid of the darkness that’s in your heart.”

“But killing him will make that even worse, won’t it?”

“No. You’re saying that ’cause the darkness in your heart isn’t that deep. The deeper that darkness gets, the more you have to get rid of it. No matter what.”

Worm was so weird. He was starting to scare me.

“Aren’t you sad that your mother died? And you’re the one who killed her? Don’t you feel sorry for her?”

Just then my cell phone rang. It was Teru.

“Kirarin? Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m in a mall in front of the station.”

“I’m going to get on the Takasaki Line pretty soon. I’ll call you when I get there.”

So Teru was coming to be with me. Relieved, I opened my bag to put away my cell phone. Worm reached out and grabbed the phone away.

“The army’s requisitioning this.”

“Stop it. What do you think you’re doing?”

I tried to grab it back, but he stuffed it in his pocket. Desperately, I looked around. There were two young mothers nearby with small children. They were smiling at us, probably thinking we were a couple having a little spat. No! I wanted to scream. This guy’s nuts! He’s the guy who beat his mother to death. He’s running away on a bike. How could I make them understand the situation? I stood up, thinking I’d find a security guard, but Worm grabbed my arm and pulled me back. He held both my arms tight and looked into my eyes.

“Kirarin, you really like me, don’t you?”

“You’ve gotta be kidding. No way.”

“I’ll make you like me. Come on.”

What the hell did he mean? I didn’t know how to react. Pulling me by the arm, Worm headed for the exit.

“You told somebody you were going to meet me, didn’t you? You came to see me ’cause you wanted to see something scary, so why don’t we get changed together? I can make you into a new person. And we’ll wipe the smug smile off your old boyfriend’s face.”

“How’re we going to do that?”

As I said this, I was thinking there was nothing in the world I’d rather do.

“We’ll do some bad things together. Then we’ll go back to Tokyo and kill my old man. And I’ll take you to a whole different world.”

A whole different world. The world that lay just beyond that door I never could open. It was appealing and frightening, all at the same time. Worm stamped hard on the welcome mat at the entrance of the mall and the cheap automatic doors slid open. My skin was hit by the blazing heat outside.

“Okay—first we gotta grab a cab.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re near the Nakasendo Highway and that goes to Karuizawa. It’s nice and cool there.”

“I thought you said you don’t have any money.”

“It won’t cost anything. I’m tired of riding around on a bike.”

“But it won’t work.”

“Well, check this out. I bought a knife.” Worm shook his backpack proudly. “Paid ten thousand yen for it. Totally sharp.”

So he was planning on hijacking a cab.

“I don’t think you should do that.”

“How come?’

Worm stood still and looked at me. He had that metallic, rusty sort of smell that young guys have. Sometimes there’s a guy like that among the ones who try to pick me up in Shibuya. They’re always the ones who are dying to have sex. With Worm, though, it isn’t sex so much as some other desire that’s driving him. Something I can’t figure out. Still, I remembered that guys with a smell like that didn’t particularly turn me off.