e took one of the private railroad lines and got out on the outskirts of Setagaya Ward, at a station so small there was only one platform. Kazue turned down a residential street that looked exactly as I expected it would—quiet, peaceful, and lined with moderately sized houses. Although there were no expensive mansions to be seen, neither were there any clumps of cheap apartment buildings.

Tasteful plaques graced the gatepost to each residence, and just beyond were small lawns. On Sundays the fathers in these houses would no doubt stand on those lawns practicing their golf swings while the sound of pianos wafted from the living room windows. I’d heard that Kazue’s father was a salary man, and I imagined he’d probably taken out a thirty-year loan to finance his house. Kazue stomped sulkily ahead as if she were annoyed to have me tagging along with her. But before long she started pointing out all the important landmarks along the way. “This is the junior high I attended; it’s a municipal school,” she said proudly. “Look at that old house over there, that’s where I took piano lessons.” Her tour through memory lane really got on my nerves.

Having come to the end of the road, Kazue waved me over to the front of another house. “This is my house,” she announced triumphantly.

It was a large two-story structure surrounded by a dingy gray wall of tani stone. The house was painted brown and the roof was covered with heavy tiles. The garden was planted thickly with shrubs and trees, the lot larger and more established than those of the neighboring houses.

“What an impressive house! Is it a rental?”

Kazue looked startled by my question. Then she thrust her chest out and replied, “We rent the property, but we own the house. I’ve lived here since I was six.”

Diamond-shaped cutouts lined the stone wall, perhaps for ventilation. I peered through the holes into the garden, which was dotted with azaleas, hydrangeas, and other common shrubs. Potted plants were jammed in nearly every nook and cranny.

“Hey, you have bonsai too!” I blurted out without thinking. But upon closer inspection I saw that what I had taken for bonsai were nothing more than “poor man’s planters,” as my grandfather called them, just small potted marigolds, forget-me-nots, daisies, and other flowers you see lining the front of any old flower shop.

A woman wearing glasses was squatting down tending to the flowers, waving away mosquitoes as she pinched off the withered blooms.

“Mom.”

The woman turned around when Kazue called out to her. I stared into her face with curiosity. Her glasses were silver-framed, and she had the same coarse black hair as Kazue, cut in a bob that came to a point alongside each cheek. Her face was narrow and her features were more symmetrical than Kazue’s.

“Did you bring a friend?” She smiled perfunctorily, and the rim of her glasses leaped up over her eyebrows. She had a conspicuous overbite; wasn’t there a fish somewhere with that same kind of face? What, I wondered, would the father look like? Curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to stick around until he arrived home.

“Make yourself at home.”

“Thank you.”

The mother turned back to her pots. Her greeting wasn’t particularly warm. Maybe she frowned on the idea of my turning up just at dinnertime. Maybe Kazue hadn’t told her she was bringing a friend home. Maybe it wasn’t even her birthday. Had Kazue lied to me? I wanted to ask, but before I could, she put her hand on my back and practically pushed me through the front door.

“Go on in.”

Kazue’s childish way of conducting herself was really getting on my nerves. Besides, I hated being touched.

“Want to go to my room?”

“I don’t care.”

There were hardly any lights on in the house. I smelled nothing to suggest dinner was ready. It was as quiet as a grave, not even the sound of a TV or radio. Once my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could see that though the house was impressive on the outside, on the inside it was constructed with cheap veneers. Even so, it was extremely tidy. I didn’t see a speck of dust anywhere—not in the hall, not even on the stairs. And throughout the house wafted the smell of frugality. In living with Grandfather, I had already learned to scrimp and save, so I knew frugality when I smelled it. In this house, every corner reeked of it, and yet from somewhere also seeped a sense of lewdness. It was the devotion to frugality itself that was permeated with lewdness, as if the very effort applied to economizing was wanton.

Kazue started up the stairs ahead of me. They creaked. There were two rooms on the second floor. The large room above the hall was Kazue’s. Her bed was pressed up against the wall, her desk in the middle of the room. She didn’t have a TV or stereo set. Her room was spartan, like a dorm room. Here and there were scattered items of clothing. Her bed was also a mess, covered with a wrinkled futon quilt.

Textbooks and reference books were stacked roughly into her bookshelf, and she’d stuffed her gym wear onto one gapingly empty shelf. Kazue’s room was as cluttered and chaotic as her house and garden were trim and tidy. It suited Kazue to a T.

Completely ignoring me as I stood there staring around in disbelief, Kazue threw her school bag on the floor and sat down at her desk. There were memo cards stuck to the wall with slogans. I read them off in a loud voice:

“Only by your own power is victory possible! Trust yourself. Set your sights! Be a Q student!”

“I put them there after I did well on the entrance exam. I got in, so they’re a testament to my success,” Kazue said.

“Well, looks like you’re quite the victor!” I said, letting a hint of cynicism seep into my voice.

But Kazue just sneered. “I really worked hard, you know.”

“I didn’t write any peppy slogans.”

“Well, you’re weird.” Kazue focused her eyes on me and stared hard into my face.

“Why am I weird?”

“You do everything your own way.” She spoke each word with precision and left it at that. I wanted to get out of there and get home as soon as I could. I was worried about my grandfather and the shock my mother’s death had had on him. Why on earth had I come here? Regret swept over me.

I heard the sound of footsteps stealthily drawing near, like a cat climbing the stairs. Kazue’s mother called her from just outside the door.

“Kazue, dear. May I have a word?”

Kazue left the room and the two of them spoke in whispers in the hallway. I pressed my ear to the door to eavesdrop.

“What do you want to do about dinner?” her mother asked. “I wasn’t expecting company and I don’t have enough.”

“But Daddy said he’d come home early this evening, so I should bring a friend.”

“Oh, I see. Is she the one who’s ranked first in your class?”

“No.”

“Then what rank is she?”

Their voices slipped so low I couldn’t hear. Was that story about her birthday just a ruse? Had Kazue just wanted to show Mitsuru to her father? Had she tried to use me as the bait to lure Mitsuru over? I was of absolutely no value to this family, not being much of a student myself. Kazue’s mother tiptoed back down the stairs. It was as if she didn’t want to wake someone.

“Sorry,” Kazue said, as she came back in. Leaning against the door to close it, she added, “You’ll stay for dinner, won’t you?” I nodded without an ounce of shame. After their little powwow I was curious to see what kind of meal they’d produce for such an unwelcome guest as myself. Kazue started flipping through a reference book, looking ill at ease. The pages were marked up and nearly black with ink stains.

“Are you an only child?”

Kazue waved her hand at my question. “No, I have a younger sister. She’s studying for the high school entrance exams now.”

“Will she go to Q High School, too?”

Kazue shrugged her shoulders. “She’s not smart enough. But she tries so hard it would break your heart! Too bad she’s not as bright as I am. My mother always says it’s because she takes after her. But my mother graduated from a women’s college herself, so she only says stuff like that on account of my dad. She went to a really good women’s college. Still, I’m lucky to take after my dad, because he went to Tokyo University, the best school in Japan. What about your dad? What university did he go to?”

“I don’t think he went to a university.”

Kazue stared at me in stupefaction, just as I knew she would. “Well, what about high school?”

“Don’t know.” I had no idea what kind of education my father had had in Switzerland.

“Well, what about your grandfather then, the one you live with?”

“He didn’t even go to high school.”

“And your mother?”

“I think she only got as far as high school.”

“Then you’re their star of hope!”

“Their what?”

What could we possibly hope for? I cocked my head to the side. Kazue stared at me as if I’d suddenly transformed into an alien. Up to that point, I’m sure she thought we both shared the same desires. But Kazue was not the kind of person to care that other people might have different ideas.

“Well, you have to try your best, right? If you really, really try, you’ll make it.”

“Make it? Make what?”

“Why, success!” Kazue looked in confusion at the mottoes plastered over her wall. “Ever since I was in elementary school, I was determined to get into Q High School for Young Women. It’s just such a perfect school. If you apply yourself, and if you’re from a good family, you can get into Q High School and then you can go to Q University. It’s practically automatic. And if I can finish in the top ten in the class, I can get into the Economics Department at Q University. I’ll pile up a string of A-pluses, and then I’ll be able to get a job in a really good company after I graduate.”

“And once you enter a good company, what then?”

“What then? Well, I’ll work there, of course! Perfect, isn’t it? We’re living in an era when even women can work at whatever they desire. My mom came of age at a time when that wasn’t possible, so she wants me to do what she couldn’t.”

I heard Kazue’s mother call up from the foot of the stairs. Kazue left the room, and as she did I detected the sharp scent of chilled soba sauce. A few minutes later Kazue came back in carrying a tray with chipped paint, the kind a delivery service would use to carry prepared food. The tray was loaded with two bamboo-slatted plates piled high with soba noodles and two little cups of dipping sauce.

“Since you went out of your way to visit, we wanted to treat you to a feast. Mother just ordered soba for the two of us, so let’s eat here.”

Not exactly my idea of food for guests, but I didn’t say anything. I guess every household has a different concept of hospitality. I was reminded again of the miserliness that I sensed when I first entered the house.

Kazue went out and came back into the room clutching a chair with a pink cushion tied to the seat, the kind of chair that accompanies a student’s desk. It was probably her younger sister’s. Kazue had me sit in that chair. We lined up next to each other in front of her desk and began slurping down the noodles.

Suddenly the door burst open. “What are you doing with my chair?” Her sister, noticing me, hung her head timidly. Her eyes landed on the plates of soba and her face flashed with resentment when she realized there wasn’t any for her. Her face and body were a shrunken version of Kazue’s, but her hair was long and hung down her back.

“I’ve got a friend over. I need to borrow it for a bit. Don’t worry, I’ll return it when we’re done eating.”

“How am I supposed to do my homework?”

“I said I’d bring it back when we’re done.”

“You ought to eat standing up!”

The two of them squabbled without a glance in my direction. After her sister left, I asked, “Do you like your younger sister?”

“Hardly.” Kazue plucked awkwardly with her chopsticks at the gummy noodles, picking them up and plopping them down. “She knows she’s not as smart as me, so she’s jealous. When I took the entrance exam I know she was hoping I’d fail. And if she flunks her test you can bet she’ll blame it on me for taking her chair! That’s the kind of brat she is.”

Kazue finished her soba before I did and then proceeded to gulp down what was left of the pitch-black sauce. I’d completely lost my appetite by then and distracted myself by slipping the cheap disposable wooden chopsticks back in the paper wrapper they’d come in, pulling them out, and then sticking them back in again. Eating soba noodles in Kazue’s disheveled room suddenly struck me as incredibly pathetic. The room teemed with dust, not having been cleaned for who knows how long, and it smelled like an animal’s lair. I thought again of Yuriko’s phone call that morning and the way she’d described my mother’s recent behavior.

My mother: sitting with her eyes wide open in the dark, shut up in a room without lights. Her fragile nerves—I wonder if I’d inherited them. It would have been a blessing if they’d gone to Yuriko, but compared to me Yuriko was uncomplicated and overly forthright in her own desires. I was the one who took after Mother.

Kazue turned to me and asked, “Do you have any brothers and sisters?”

“I’ve got a younger sister.” I answered bitterly. Just thinking of Yuriko made me bitter. Kazue swallowed. She looked like she was going to continue to ask questions, but I cut her off with one of my own. “You weren’t really going to have soba for dinner tonight. What would you have had if I hadn’t come?”

“Huh?” Kazue jerked her head back as if to say, Why do you have to ask such bizarre questions?

“I’m just curious.”

I was interested in what kind of meal Kazue and her mother would fix. Would they make bean cakes of mud and mashed hydrangea leaves and salad of dandelion greens? Kazue’s mother looked like the kind of woman who only enjoyed “playing house.” She seemed so detached from the real world, performing her household tasks but more like a robot than a real person.

“Father and you and I are the only ones eating soba tonight. My mother said that she and my sister would eat leftovers. We hardly ever order out; just that little bit of soba cost three hundred yen. It’s so stupid! But we got it specially because you came to visit.”

I stared up at the light fixture, beginning to notice that the evening’s darkness was creeping into the room. In the center of the yellowish veneered ceiling was the kind of stark fluorescent light you’d see in an office building. When Kazue had switched it on, it made a slight hissing noise, like the sound of a flying creature flapping its wings. The light ringed Kazue’s profile in a black outline. Unable to resist, I asked, “Well, why did only you, your father, and I get the soba?”

Kazue’s tiny little eyes sparked. “Because in our house there is an order to things. There’s that test you do with a pet dog, right? You line up all the members of the family and release the dog to see who he goes to first. And the first one is the boss. It’s like that. Everyone automatically knows the order of things—who has the most prestige and authority, I mean. And you accede to that order accordingly. No one needs to explain it, but everyone obeys it. Everything is decided according to this order—like who has the right to take a bath first and who gets to eat the best food. My father’s always first; that’s only natural, right? And then I’m second. My mother used to come second, but once I made it into the top tier on the national scholastic rankings for my age group, I got to be second. So now my father goes first, I’m second, then my mother, and my sister’s last. If she’s not careful, though, my sister’s going to pass my mom.”

“You determine the pecking order in your family based on your scholastic scores?”

“Well, let’s just say we go in the order of effort expended.”

“But since your mother’s not ever going to take any entrance exams, isn’t that unfair to her?”

Mother and daughters lined up in competition with one another. Wasn’t that absurd? But Kazue was deadly serious.

“It can’t be helped. Mother lost out to my father from the very start, and there’s no one in the family who can best him. I’ve studied as hard as I could ever since I can remember. My greatest joy in life is trying to improve my scores. For the longest time I set my sights on trying to outdo my mother. You know, my mother always says she never had career aspirations, but I think she wanted to become a doctor when she was young. Her father wouldn’t permit it; besides, she wasn’t smart enough to get into med school. But she always regretted it. Being raised to be a woman is pathetic, isn’t it? That’s what she always says. She uses being a woman as her excuse for not getting ahead in life. But if you really try your best, you can succeed even if you’re female.”

“Are you saying that—no matter what—all you have to do is try your best and you’ll succeed?”

“Well, of course. If you try hard enough you’ll be rewarded.”

Yeah? Well, you’re in the world of Q High School for Young Women now, my dear, and no matter how hard you try you’re not going to get your reward! We live in a world where almost anything you try to accomplish will be met with failure. Am I wrong?

I wanted to say this to Kazue. Moreover, I wanted to teach her a lesson. If she should ever set eyes on a girl like Yuriko and her monstrously perfect beauty, Kazue’s efforts—no matter how prodigious—would just be laughable, wouldn’t they? But Kazue stared at the mottoes on her wall with a look of utter determination.

“Do you think it’s true because it’s what your father tells you?”

“It’s like our family code. My mother believes it, too. And the teachers at school, they’ll tell you the same thing. It’s the truth, that’s all.” Kazue looked at me in surprise, her little eyes mocking me, flashing with color.

“Speaking of mothers, do you know what happened to me today?”

It seemed like the right time to spring this on her. I glanced at my watch, wanting to go home. It was already past seven.

“All I know is that it was Hana-chan’s birthday,” Kazue replied with a laugh, and then, as if remembering homeroom, her face crumbled into a frown.

“My mother died,” I said.

Kazue leaped up from her chair in surprise. “Your mother died? Today?”

“Yeah. Well, technically it was yesterday.”

“Shouldn’t you go home?”

“Pretty soon. May I borrow your phone?”

Kazue pointed wordlessly to the stairs. I inched my way quietly down the dark stairs toward a thin stream of light that leaked out from under a closed door. I could hear the sound of a TV. I knocked.

A man’s voice called out irritably. “What?” Her father. I opened the door. The only noticeable feature in the cramped sitting room was the wood-paneled walls. Kazue’s younger sister, her mother, and a middle-aged man sitting on the couch in front of the TV turned simultaneously to stare at me. The dishes on the shelf directly across the room were all the kind you would buy at a supermarket. And the dining set, sofa, and chairs were the cheap preassembled kind. If the Q gang were to see this they’d have a field day, I thought. Kazue would be toast!

“May I borrow the phone?”

“Certainly.”

Kazue’s mother pointed toward the darkened kitchen. There, just out-side the entrance, was an old-fashioned black rotary phone. There was a small handmade box next to the phone with the words ten yen. Kazue’s parents just sat there looking at me expectantly. Neither bothered to tell me I needn’t worry about the cost. So, I fished around in the pocket of my school uniform skirt and finally came up with a ten-yen coin to drop in the box. The coin made a dry sound as it fell. Apparently, few visitors stop by this house. To charge a fee for the phone was like a sick joke, I thought, as I dialed the numbers on the stiff rotary while carefully scrutinizing Kazue’s family.

Kazue’s younger sister—who had been deprived of her precious chair on my account—was now sitting at the dining room table busily scribbling in a notebook she had spread out in front of her. Peering over her shoulder, her mother was pointing something out to her in a low voice. They both glanced up to check on me and then once again began to stare fixedly at the notebook. Kazue’s father was watching some kind of quiz show on TV—and looking quite relaxed in his undershirt and pajama-type pants. I could tell at a glance that he just happened to have the channel turned to that particular program and although he was looking at the TV, he wasn’t really paying attention to the show. He jiggled his legs up and down nervously. He seemed to be in his late forties. He was short, his complexion was ruddy, and his close-cropped hair was thinning. At a glance he looked like a pudgy little country bumpkin. I felt cheated. Since the only Japanese man I knew was my grandfather, I was curious about Japanese fathers. Besides, I’d been dying to see just what kind of person this father of Kazue’s was—especially since he ruled over wife and daughters from his exalted position as Number One in the family ranking. And yet here he was, just a gloomy middle-aged man. What a letdown.

The phone rang and rang and finally someone picked up.

“Grandpa?”

“Where’d you go traipsing off to?”

The person on the other end wasn’t my grandfather. It was a neighbor, the insurance saleslady.

“We’ve got a problem. Your grandpa’s blood pressure has skyrocketed and he’s taken to bed. It seems your father and your sister in Switzerland had an argument, and that’s what brought it on. They’ve called any number of times and have got him all stirred up. Your grandpa’s always been a real sucker, you know. They both managed to calm down but then he started to feel sick, and then, when you didn’t bother to come home, he started worrying about you!”

“I’m sorry. Is Grandpa okay?”

“He’s okay. He had the super call me, and I ran over right away. That helped calm him down. He’s sleeping like a baby now. It’s too bad about your mother. It’s for times like this that you need insurance, you know.”

It sounded like the conversation was going to go on indefinitely, so I hurriedly blurted out, “I’m coming right home.” But to get home from Setagaya would require that I cross Tokyo proper. It was going to take forever.

“How long will it take you?” she asked.

“At least an hour and a half.”

“In that case, you’d better call your sister before you leave.”

“Call Yuriko? Is it that urgent?”

“It is. She said they have to go to the funeral parlor and she’s very impatient. Anyway, she has something she has to discuss with you, she said.”

“But I’m at someone’s house right now.”

“So? Tell them you’ll pay for the cost of the call. There’s no time to wait until you’ve gotten home.”

“Okay.”

What on earth would my father and sister be arguing about? All I could think was that something horrible had happened. “I’m sorry, but I need to make an international call to Switzerland,” I told Kazue’s mother. “An emergency has come up.”

“An emergency?”

Kazue’s mother looked at me warily, her eyes narrowing behind her silver-rim glasses.

“My mother died last night and my younger sister needs me to call her.”

Kazue’s mother looked shocked, and she turned to look at her husband. Kazue’s father looked back at me abruptly. His eyes turned up at the corners and seemed steeped in irritability. The light that flashed from them was strong and suggested an intent to take on anyone who met their gaze. “That’s awful,” he said, in a dark, insinuating voice. “I wonder if you would dial the operator first when placing your call. That way you can ask for the charges when the call is complete. It will be best for both of us.”

The first to pick up the phone when the operator placed the call was my father, who was still in a state of shock.

“We’re in turmoil here; it’s just terrible!” The last word he spluttered out in English. “The police came and asked all kinds of questions. They think it’s odd that your mother died while I was out, but it’s only natural under the circumstances, don’t you think? Your mother had lost her mind, you know. It’s got nothing to do with me. I got mad and had to argue for my own security. It was an awful conversation. Just terrible.” Again with the English word. “It’s so sad but also very, very bitter. It’s so painful to be under suspicion like this.”

“Father, you mean innocence, don’t you? You had to argue for your own innocence.”

“Illness? What?”

“Forget it. Why do they suspect you?”

“I don’t want to discuss it. It’s not something to discuss with a daughter. But they’re sending a detective over at four. I’m angry as hell.”

“Well, what about the funeral?”

“It’ll be the day after tomorrow, at three.”

My father barely managed to finish his sentence before Yuriko got on the phone. I wondered if she’d yanked the receiver out of his hand. I could hear him scolding her in German.

“It’s me, Yuriko. As soon as the funeral’s over I’m coming back to Japan. Father’s being impossible. He said the shock might cause his Turkish girlfriend to suffer a miscarriage, so he’s brought her here—to this house! With Mother’s body still here! So I told the police about her. I told them Father’s girlfriend was the one who was most responsible for Mother’s death. That’s why the detective came. It serves him right!”

“That was really stupid, Yuriko. You’re turning this whole thing into a soap opera!”

“Maybe so, but this time he went too far!”

Yuriko started to cry. It seemed like they’d been in an uproar since I talked to them this morning.

“Mother’s death was so sudden, no wonder Father’s in shock. I don’t care how many women he brings home with him, you need to lighten up. At least he has someone to help him through this.”

“What are you talking about? Have you lost your mind?” Yuriko was furious. “How can you be so cold? Mother’s dead! And you’re not here, so you can’t possibly understand what’s going on. Mother commits suicide and yet he brings that woman here. In a few months you and I are going to have ourselves a little brother or sister. Of course I’m furious! Mother’s death might have been caused by Father’s affair, you know. It’s as if he killed her himself. Or you could say it’s as if that woman did it. It’s the last straw. I’m cutting my ties with that man once and for all!”

Yuriko’s shrill voice raced over the six thousand miles separating Switzerland from Japan and seeped out of the black telephone receiver, entering the gloomy living room in Kazue’s house.

“Mother died on account of her circumstances.” I laughed through my nose. “You say you’re going to cut all ties with Father, but you don’t have any money. If you come back to Japan, you won’t have any place to live and you won’t be enrolled in school.”

I was trying my best to block Yuriko’s return. But what the hell was my father thinking, bringing his pregnant girlfriend into the house the very day Mother died? Even I was shocked. I noticed Kazue’s family sitting there in the living room holding their breaths, their eyes riveted on me. I met Kazue’s father’s stare head on and refused to look away. Shame on you for bringing such a conversation into my house! his eyes accused. I tried to end the call as quickly as I could.

“Okay, well, let’s talk later.”

“No, we have to decide this now. The police are coming any minute, and I have to go with them when they take Mother’s body to the funeral parlor.”

“Get your mind off Japan,” I screamed at her. “It’s out of the question!”

“You can’t tell me what to do, you know. I’m coming back.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t care. If I can’t stay with you, I’ll ask the Johnsons.”

“Fine by me. Ask away.”

“You think only of yourself, don’t you,” Yuriko said.

That ridiculous Johnson couple: they’d be perfect for Yuriko! I felt like a huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders. As long as I didn’t have to see my sister, I didn’t care if she came back to Japan or stayed in Switzerland. All I wanted was to preserve the quiet life I had with my grandfather.

“Call me when you get back.”

“You don’t give a damn. You never did.”

Upset, I hung up the phone. It seemed like we’d talked for over ten minutes. Kazue’s family averted their eyes. I waited for the operator to call back and inform me of the charges. And I waited and waited and waited. I had assumed the call would come any minute. When the phone finally rang, Kazue’s father got to it before I could, leaping across the room with amazing agility.

“It’s ten thousand eight hundred yen. If you’d called after eight it would have been cheaper.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t carry that kind of money with me. May I give it to Kazue tomorrow?”

“Please be sure to do so.”

Kazue’s father spoke in a very businesslike tone. I thanked him and left the living room. I heard the door open behind me as I stood in the gloomy hallway looking up the dark flight of stairs. Kazue’s father had come out after me. The light from the living room filtered out into the hallway in a long narrow stream through the crack he’d left in the door. But no one said a word. It was as quiet as a crypt in the living room, as if the two sitting there were holding their breath trying to hear what Kazue’s father would say to me. Shorter than I am, her father pressed a scrap of paper into the palm of my hand. When I looked, it was a reminder of the amount I owed for the phone call: ¥10,800, written in crisp clear marks.

“There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Yes?”

The light from Kazue’s father’s eyes was intense, as if challenging me to bend to his will. It made me feel slightly dizzy. At first he spoke in insipid tones as if trying to butter me up.

“You’ve been admitted to Q High School for Young Women, so I imagine you’re a very fine young lady.”

“I suppose.”

“How hard did you study for the exam?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Kazue has been a diligent student ever since elementary school. Fortunately she’s a smart girl, and she enjoys studying. So it’s only right that she’s made it this far. But I don’t think just studying is enough. She’s a girl, after all, and I want her to pay attention to how she dresses. And since she’s now at Q High School for Young Women, I want her to become more ladylike. To try, you know. And for her part she’s still doing all she can to meet my expectations. So she’s very dear to me. I’m praising her blindly because I’m her father. Both my daughters are so submissive that I worry about them. But you. You’re different. When compared to my daughter, you seem much more sure of yourself. I work for a major corporation, and I’m a good judge of character. I can spot a person’s true character a mile away. What does your father do?”

Kazue’s father leered at me. He did not try to conceal the fact that he was sizing me up. I was sure he’d find my father’s work of no value whatsoever. So I lied.

“He works for a Swiss bank.”

“Which bank, I wonder, the Swiss Union Bank? Or perhaps the Swiss Credit?”

“I’ve been told not to divulge that information.”

I was completely clueless and confused, but I did my best to answer with care. Kazue’s father let out a short snort and nodded. A slight wave of respect washed over his face. Did he feel somewhat humbled? It surprised me to realize that I found the encounter quite enjoyable. Yes, laugh at me if you will, but I found myself saying exactly the sort of thing my grandfather, the con man, always said about my father’s work. I had managed to adapt myself to this man’s sense of values. I knew of no one else who was as clear-cut as he on what was worthy and what was not. But it terrified me that he would force his biased logic on me. I was only sixteen at the time, after all.

“Kazue told me you were the one who put her up to the discussion about the clubs. My daughter’s the type to take everything seriously and do her best as a result. She’ll apply herself naïvely to anything anyone tells her to do. And you knew this, didn’t you? But I’m the one who controls my daughter, see? It’s best if you stay out of it.”

I tried to meet him head on. “Sir, you don’t know what it’s like at our school, and you don’t know about my friendship with your daughter, so why would you say such a thing?”

“There’s friendship, is there, between you and Kazue?”

“There is.”

“But you’re not an appropriate friend for one of my daughters. It’s a pity about your mother. But from what I can tell, the circumstances of her death are not what one would call normal. I selected Q High School for Kazue because I knew I couldn’t go wrong there. I knew Kazue would be able to make friends with good girls. Kazue’s a wholesome girl from a normal family.”

What he meant was that my family was not normal. Yuriko and I were not wholesome. I wonder what he would have said if Mitsuru had come.

“I don’t think that’s fair. I—”

“That’s enough. I’m not interested in what you have to say.”

I could feel the anger burning in his tiny upturned eyes. His anger was not directed at me as a child but as a separate force that threatened his daughter.

“Of course, a friendship with a girl like you might prove to be a good lesson for Kazue. She could learn more about society that way. But it’s still too early for her, and you have nothing to do with our family. Besides, I have my younger daughter to think of, so I’m sorry to have to say this but I don’t ever want to see you here again.”

“I see.”

“Please don’t hold a grudge over what I’ve just said, either.”

“I won’t.”

This was the first time I’d ever been so clearly rebuffed by an adult. He might as well have said, You’re worthless. It shocked me.

My own father had of course wielded paternal authority within the home. But because he was a minority in Japan, he had never really been able to communicate that authority to the outside world. My grandfather was a timid convict who did whatever I told him to do. If anything, it was my mother who represented our family to the rest of society. But my mother had no influence in the home and gave in to my father on everything. Therefore, when I saw a person who used the rigidity and absurdity of social conventions as steadfastly as Kazue’s father did, I was impressed. Why? Because Kazue’s father did not really believe in the social values he represented, but he clearly knew that he had armed himself with them more or less as a weapon of survival.

Kazue’s father obviously paid no attention to the internal affairs at Q High School for Young Women. He was utterly unconcerned with the impact this would have on Kazue or the way it would make her suffer. He was one self-centered son-of-a-bitch. That much I understood with crystal clarity, even as a high school student. But Kazue, her mother, and her younger sister lived in complete ignorance of this man’s intentions or his character; yet he was able to apprehend the evil intentions that Mitsuru and I nurtured, take them for his own, and use them to protect his family. Protecting the family was nothing short of protecting himself. In that sense, I couldn’t help but envy Kazue and her strong father. Dominated by her father’s strong will, Kazue trusted his values implicitly. When I think about it now, I realize that the power he had over her was tantamount to mind control.

“Well, then, take care on your way home.”

I started to climb the stairs, feeling as though Kazue’s father were pushing me from behind. After he had watched me for a bit, he went back into the living room, slamming the door closed behind him. The darkness in the hallway felt all the deeper.

“You took long enough!”

Kazue was annoyed to have been kept waiting. It looked as though she’d been trying to stave off her boredom by doodling in the notebook she had spread out in front of her on the desk. She’d sketched a picture of a cheerleader in a miniskirt hoisting a baton. When she saw me looking down at the drawing, she quickly covered the page with her hands, just like a child.

“He let me make an international call.” I showed Kazue the bill her father had written out. “I’ll give you the money tomorrow.”

Kazue glanced at the amount. “Wow! That was expensive. I was wondering, How’d your mother die anyway?”

“She committed suicide—in Switzerland.”

Kazue dropped her gaze and looked like she was searching for the right words, then looked up again. “I know this sounds awful, but I kinda envy you.”

“Why? Do you wish your mother were dead too?”

Kazue’s answer was barely more than a whisper. “I detest my mother. Recently I’ve begun to notice that she acts more like she was my father’s daughter than his wife. What a way for a mother to behave! My father only has hopes for his daughters, you know, for us—so having her around is really annoying.”

Kazue brimmed with joy at the thought that she was the only one able to measure up to her father’s expectations. Kazue was a “good girl,” a filial daughter whose only reason for living was to please her father.

“Yes, I suppose he doesn’t need another daughter,” I said.

“You’ve got that right! And I could do without my little sister too!”

Without thinking I let out a sympathetic laugh. My own family was far from normal, a fact I well understood without having Kazue’s father point it out. I realized this was something a die-hard disciple like Kazue would never understand.

As I was stepping out of the house into the dark street, I felt someone clutch at my shoulder. Kazue’s father had followed me out.

“Just a minute there,” he said. “You lied. Your father doesn’t work for the Bank of Switzerland or anything of the sort, does he?”

The streetlight bounced dimly off his little eyes. He must have learned that from Kazue. I stood there petrified. He continued. “It’s wrong to lie. I’ve never once lied in all my life. Lies are the enemy of society. Do you see? If you don’t want me to report you to the school, you’ll not come near Kazue ever again.”

“I understand.”

I could tell that Kazue’s father was staring after me until I turned the corner at the end of the street. Four years later he would suffer a cerebral hemorrhage and die on the spot, so my chance encounter with this man would be my first and last. After her father died, Kazue’s family fortunes plummeted. I suppose I was a witness to the fragility of Kazue’s family, having observed it only years before its drastic demise. And yet I can still feel the way Kazue father’s glare bored into my back like a bullet that night.

After a week had passed, my father called to tell me the funeral had gone smoothly. I didn’t hear so much as a peep from Yuriko. Convincing myself that her plans to return to Japan had been dealt a setback, I spent the next few days walking on air. And then one evening not long thereafter, an evening so warm it felt like summer vacation had already arrived, I got a phone call from the last person in the world I was expecting to hear from: Johnson’s wife, Masami. Three years had passed since that time at the mountain cabin.

“Hii-aaai! Is this Yuriko’s seesta? It’s meee! Masammy Johnson!”

She stretched her vowels inordinately long and pronounced the s’s in her name just as a foreigner would. Just hearing it made the flesh on my arms crawl.

“It’s been a while.”

“Well, I didn’t know you’d stayed behind by yourself in Japan! You should have told me! I would have been happy to help you any way I could. How silly for you to be so reserved. Look, I was really sorry to hear about your mother. What a shame.”

“Thank you for your concern,” I managed to mumble.

“Actually, I’m calling you about Yuriko-chan. Did you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Yuriko’s going to stay with us! At least while she’s in junior high school. We have a spare room and we’ve been fond of Yuriko ever since she was a little girl. She has to change schools, of course. She said she wanted to go to Q School, where you are. So I checked into it, and found out what was required to get her enrolled as a student returning from abroad, and they’ve agreed to admit her. I just got the news a little while ago. Isn’t that great? You and Yuriko will be going to the same school! My husband’s really happy about the way it’s all worked out. He says Q is a really good school, and it’s not far from where we live!”

What the hell was happening? I’d studied my butt off in the hopes of finally getting away from Yuriko, and now here she was seeping back into my life like some kind of poison gas! I sighed in despair. Yuriko was as dumb as a doornail, but her beauty would forever entitle her to special treatment. On that score, the Q School system was no different.

“Where’s Yuriko now?” I asked.

“She’s right here. Just a minute. I’ll put her on.”

“Hello, Sis? Is that you?”

I had told Yuriko not to come back to Japan, but here she was. Her carefree voice on the other end of the line was quite a contrast to the distraught girl I’d heard just hours after our mother had died. Clearly she was now eating up all the attention the Johnsons were dishing out and rolling in the luxury of their swank house in upscale Minato Ward.

“So are you transferring into Q Junior High?”

“Yes, from September. Isn’t that great? We’ll be in the same school.”

“When’d you get back?”

“Hmmm, about a week ago, I guess. Daddy’s remarrying, you know.”

She said it casually, without the slightest bitterness, as if whatever was okay with her was okay in general.

“How’s Grandpa?”

Gripping the phone tightly in my hand, I glanced back at my grandfather. He was engrossed in his bonsai, completely unaware of the conversation taking place right next to him. He’d calmed down over the previous few days.

“He’s fine.”

“Mm.” Yuriko’s response, if you could call it that, betrayed her complete indifference. “I’m really glad I didn’t go stay to with you in P Ward. I’m going to try really hard to get along on my own over here.”

Yeah, right. She was really going to be on her own. What a farce. With no interest in pursuing the conversation further, I hung up, utterly dejected.

• 6 •

The events I’ve narrated up to this point were those I experienced personally. Yuriko and Kazue—and Kazue’s father—still live in my memory. It’s something of a one-sided story, but what can you expect? The only one left to relate the events is me, and here I am as healthy as can be, working in the ward office. My grandfather, as I’ve mentioned, has Alzheimer’s and is off enjoying himself in never-never land, where neither time nor place holds any relevance. He doesn’t even remember how he once devoted himself to bonsai. He sold off his beloved oak and his black pine; either that or the trees withered long ago and were dumped in the garbage.

Mention of bonsai makes me remember that there was one more thing about my encounter with Kazue’s father that I’ve forgotten to mention: the need to pay back the cost of that international telephone call, ¥10,800.

Since I wasn’t carrying much money on me at the time, I had promised to pay it back later. But that became a problem. At the time, my allowance was a mere ¥3,000 a month. After I got through buying all my necessary school supplies—notebooks and pens and such—there wasn’t a whole lot left over. My father sent ¥40,000 a month in addition to tuition fees. But I handed all that over to Grandfather. I mean, after all, I was living in his apartment. Of course he squandered it on his bonsai, either buying new plants or new paraphernalia for the plants he already had. At any rate, I’d never imagined an international phone call would be so costly, and as I made my way home from Kazue’s house that night, I racked my brain over how I was going to pay for it.

From time to time we’d get phone calls from Switzerland, but of course my father always covered the charge, and besides, we never talked very long. We just weren’t the kind of family to have long chats. Even if I asked my father to send me the money for the charge, it would take time for it to reach Japan. I figured I had no choice but to ask Grandfather to lend me the money.

But when I got home that evening from Kazue’s, my grandfather was already snoring away in bed, trying to sleep off the sudden surge in his blood pressure. The neighbor, an insurance lady, was there looking after him. “You have to pay how much? Why on earth didn’t you call collect?” she snapped, when she heard about the phone call.

“You’re the one who told me to call from there, remember? You should have told me then to call collect. How’m I supposed to know about international calls?”

“You’re right.” The insurance lady sucked on her cigarette and blew the smoke out the corner of her mouth so it wouldn’t go in my face. “But still, it’s awfully expensive. Who spoke to the operator and confirmed the actual charges?”

“Her father.”

“What if he lied? He probably figured he could pull a fast one on you, since you’re just a girl. Even if he didn’t try to cheat you, most people would have felt sorry enough for you—losing your mother and all—to have covered the cost, kind of like offering a condolence gift. I know I would have. It’s really the only decent thing to do. But I suppose it’s a question of character.”

The insurance lady was particularly stingy. I had a hard time believing that she’d actually extend charity to anyone. But still her words caused a shadow of doubt to spread across my heart. Did Kazue’s father lie to me? But even if he did, I had no proof. I looked at the scrap of paper I’d stuffed in my pocket: the statement of the telephone charge. The insurance lady snatched at it with her thick fingers. The longer she stared at the figure, the angrier she got.

“I just can’t believe someone would write out a sum like this and hand it to a child: a child whose poor mother has suddenly been taken from her and whose old grandfather has taken to bed ill. What a monster. What line of work is he in? If he can send his kid to that school he must be rich. I’ll bet

their house is nice.”

“I couldn’t really say. He told me he worked for some major corporation. They did have a nice house.”

“Figures…the greed of the wealthy!”

“It didn’t seem like that.”

The atmosphere of stingy frugality permeating Kazue’s house floated before my eyes, and I shook my head from side to side.

“Well, then, I get the impression that he is just a run-of-the-mill salary man with a low income trying to pretend to be wealthy. If not, he’s a real cheapskate!” Once she reached this conclusion, the insurance lady hastily collected her things and left, obviously wanting to clear out before I could get around to asking her for a loan. I felt an uncontrollable anger and hurled the scrap of paper with the phone charges at the wall.

The next morning when I saw Kazue in class, she immediately started to press me for the money. “My father told me to tell you to be sure not to forget about the money you owe us for the telephone call.”

“Sorry. Can I pay you tomorrow?”

I can still remember the way Kazue’s eyes panned over my face. She clearly did not trust me. But were they being honest with me? Still, a loan’s a loan. I knew I had to pay it back. So as soon as classes ended, I rushed home and picked a plant from among my grandfather’s bonsai collection—a nandina tree, one that was small enough to carry. My grandfather was particularly proud of it; he used to describe with pleasure the beautiful color of the red berries that it bore in winter months. Luxuriant green moss, as thick as a carpet, covered the soil at the base of the little tree. It was planted in an enamel-glazed pot of somber blue.

My grandfather was engrossed in a sumo bout on TV. I couldn’t hope for a better chance than now, so I quietly walked out of the apartment with the bonsai. I put it in the basket of my bicycle and pedaled as fast and furiously as I could to the Garden of Longevity.

Night was falling and the garden was closing. The probation officer stood at the front gate seeing off customers. He looked surprised to see me ride up with the bonsai.

“Good evening,” I said, as politely as I could. “I was wondering if you would buy this bonsai from me.”

The man looked annoyed. “Did your grandfather put you up to this?”

I shook my head from side to side.

He smirked. I realized he wanted to get revenge on my grandfather. “I see. Well, I’ll give you a fine price for it then. How does five thousand yen sound?”

Disappointed, I held up two fingers. “Can’t you give me two bills for it? Twenty thousand yen? My grandfather says it’s a fine nandina.”

“Young lady, this bonsai is not worth that much.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll take it to someone else.”

The probation officer immediately doubled his price, offering ¥10,000. I countered that the pot itself was worth that much. After he thought that over, he offered in a wheedling voice, “It must be heavy,” and put his hands over mine, encircling the pot. The hard skin of his hands had the luster of finely polished leather and was strangely warm. Repulsed, I drew my hands away instinctively, letting go of the pot. When I did, the bonsai slipped between us and struck one of the garden stones, smashing to pieces. The roots of the nandina, released from bondage, sprang out in all directions. The young people who’d been cleaning up around the garden stopped what they were doing and looked up in alarm. The probation officer bent over and began picking up the pieces in great agitation, glancing at me with nervous apprehension as he did so.

In the end I got thirty thousand yen for the deal, broken pot and all. I decided to deposit the money I had left after paying the phone bill in my savings account. I never knew when I’d need to come up with quick cash for a class field trip or something. At Q High School for Young Women we were always being pressured to contribute to events, from the annual school festival to some birthday celebration. None of the other students thought anything of it. The extra cushion in my savings account would be for my own protection.

My grandfather didn’t notice a thing that night, but the next morning, when he stepped out onto the veranda, he let out a heartrending cry.

“Mr. Nandina! Where have you gone?”

I went about fixing my lunch as if I hadn’t noticed. Grandfather rushed into the cramped sitting room and raced around in search of the nandina. He opened the closet and then peered up on the shelving along the ceiling in the smaller room. He even went out in the entryway and rummaged through the shoe cupboard.

“It’s nowhere to be found! And such a nice bonsai it was. Where could it be? Come out, come out, wherever you are! Please, Mr. Nandina. I’m sorry if I neglected you. I didn’t mean to. But my daughter just died, you see, and it’s been hard on me. I’m heartbroken. I’m sorry, really I am. Please come out. Please don’t pout.”

Grandfather searched the house like a madman, until I guess he just wore himself out. Crestfallen—his shoulders curling inward—he stared off into space. “He went off to guide her to the next world.” My grandfather was much practiced in the ways of swindling others. But it never once occurred to him to doubt me or the insurance lady or the security guard or any of the other people who were around him all the time. He hadn’t even the slightest suspicion. It looked like this was the end of the absurd event, so I went off to school feeling relieved. Visiting Kazue’s house had been the cause of one misfortune after another.

When you think of it, though, my mother’s sudden suicide resulted in the scattering of the entire family. I stayed with my grandfather, Yuriko ended up with the Johnsons, and my father remained in Switzerland, where he started a new family with that Turkish woman. For my father, Japan would always be associated with my mother’s death. Later I learned, to my great surprise, that the Turkish woman was no more than two years older than me. She gave birth to three children, I learned, all boys. The oldest child is now twenty-four, and I’ve been told he plays for a Spanish soccer team. But since I’ve never met him and have no interest in soccer, it’s as if we’re from completely different worlds.

But in the world of my hypothetical chart, Yuriko and I and our stepbrothers are all swimming vigorously in the bright blue of the brackish sea. If I draw another analogy to the Burgess diagram of the Cambrian Period I love so much, Yuriko, with her beautiful face, is queen of the watery realm. So she has to be one of those animals that devours all others. That would make her the Anomalocaris, I suppose, the ancestor to the crustacean, a kind of creature with massive forelegs, like a lobster’s. And then my younger brothers, who must certainly have dark heavy eyebrows on account of their Middle Eastern blood, would be those insects that live all clumped up in a pile—either that or jellyfish-type creatures that cruise through the sea. Me? Without a doubt I’d be the Hallucigenia, the thing that crawls through the mud of the ocean floor covered in seven sets of quills, looking for all the world like a hairbrush. The Hallucigenia feeds on carrion? I didn’t know that! So it survives by eating dead creatures? Well, then, it fits me to a T, since I live by soiling the memories of the corpses of the past.

Oh, about Mitsuru and me? Well, Mitsuru went on to pass her boards at Tokyo University Medical School, just as she’d hoped. But after that her life headed in a completely different and entirely unpredicted direction. She seems to be well—but she’s in the penitentiary. Once a year I get a New Year’s card from her, heavily excised by the censors, but I’ve never once replied. Do you want me to explain? I’ll be sure to do so as soon as I’ve wrapped up this part of the story.

To continue, then, just the other day something completely unexpected happened. I haven’t wanted to talk to anyone about it, but if I’m going to continue with my account I have no choice but to reveal everything. It was about a week before the opening day of the trial. The two murders had been linked—for convenience I suppose—and were being dubbed “The Case of the Serial Apartment Murders.” At first the mass media had a field day over Kazue’s murder, which they referred to as the “Elite Office Lady Murder Case.” But once they connected Zhang to Yuriko’s murder as well, they changed their headlines. Yuriko had been murdered first, and when the case initially involved just a middle-aged prostitute, there’d been no reason even to create a headline.

We’d heard reports that an off-season typhoon was threatening to move in on Tokyo. It was a disquieting day. An unseasonably warm wind rattled through the city, growing increasingly loud and strong. From the window of the ward office I watched the gale tear through the leaves of the sycamore trees outside as if to rip them from their branches. It toppled the bicycles in the parking lot like dominoes. It was a nerve-racking day, let me tell you, and made me feel somehow on edge.

I took my seat at the Day Care consultation counter as usual. But no one came to apply for day care, and I lost myself to my thoughts. With the typhoon approaching, all I could think of was how I wanted to head home. Then an elderly woman appeared at my counter. She was wearing a smartly tailored gray suit, very subdued and classy. A pair of silver-rimmed reading glasses were perched on her nose. She seemed to be in her mid-fifties. Her graying hair was pulled back in a tight bun, and she had a severe manner, like a German woman. I was used to seeing no one but young mothers with children in tow at this particular window. I figured this woman must have come to inquire about putting a grandchild in day care, so with obvious reluctance I said, “May I help you?”

At this, the woman let out a short snort and pulled her lips back. There was something about her teeth that struck me as familiar.

“My dear, don’t you know who I am?”

Even when I stared long and fast at her face, I couldn’t recall her name. The skin on her face—which bore not so much as a trace of makeup—was brown. She wore no lipstick. Here was an elderly woman wearing no makeup with a face like a fish. How was I supposed to distinguish her from any other woman her age?

“It’s me, Masami. Masami Johnson!”

I was so startled I let out a little gasp. I would never have expected Masami to turn into such a subdued modest-looking woman. The Masami of my memory would forever be a garish woman out of sync with her surroundings. She was the woman who strolled along the mountain paths of Gunma Prefecture sporting a humongous diamond ring, the one who wore bright red lipstick out on the ski slopes. She was the one who put her fuzzy mohair cap on Yuriko’s head. A woman who wore a designer T-shirt printed with the snarling face of a leopard so realistic it terrified young children. And she was the one who spoke English with such a trill she might as well have shouted “Hey! Look at me!” But even so, I was readily convinced by her transformation that she’d come to inquire about a nursery school. So I pulled out the registration book and said, while trying my best to conceal my bewilderment, “I didn’t realize you were living in this ward.”

“Oh, no, I’m not,” Masami responded, in all seriousness. “I live in Yokohama now. I’ve remarried, you see.”

I didn’t even know she and Johnson were divorced. In my mind, both Masami and Johnson were people I had never expected or wanted to see again.

“I didn’t know. When did you get a divorce?”

“It’s been more than twenty years.”

Masami pulled a very elegant name card out of what appeared to be a solid-silver case and handed it to me.

“This is what I do now.” COORDINATOR AND CONSULTANT: PRIVATE ENGLISH LESSONS, the card read. And her name had changed from Masami Johnson to Masami Bhasami.

“I’m married to an Iranian who’s in the export-import business. And I have my own little business enlisting English tutors and dispatching them to various assignments for private conversation classes. It’s really a lot of fun.”

I pretended to study her name card while I mulled it over. Why had she shown up here to see me after twenty-seven years? More to the point, why on a day like today? It was just too strange for words. To top it off, Masami was standing there beaming at me, her eyes dancing with nostalgia.

“Oh, it’s so good to see you, dear! Let’s see. The last time we spoke was when Yuriko called to tell you she’d gotten into Q Junior High. That must have been more than twenty years ago!”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Well, how have you been?”

“Very well. Thank you for asking.”

Thank you for asking indeed, I thought to myself bitterly, as I replied with the expected formality. It was so odd that she’d turned up here. She hadn’t come all the way to tell me about her private English classes, surely! When I could hide my dubious expression no longer, Masami finally blurted out the truth.

“After Johnson and I broke up, he really hit rock bottom. He’d once been a rising star as a securities trader, you know, but once his career took a nosedive he sank to becoming one of those dime-a-dozen English teachers. And then, of course, Yuriko was murdered.”

There was an edge in Masami’s voice—an effort to contain an inappropriate emotion: hatred. And then, looking straight at me and my bewildered expression, she said, “You didn’t know, did you, dear? Johnson and I broke up because of Yuriko.”

I suddenly remembered the expression on Johnson’s face as he sat in front of the fireplace in his mountain cabin on that night so long ago with Yuriko leaning against his lap, playing sweet with him. She was just a primary school student then. Johnson had always looked so handsome and self-possessed, with his tousled brown hair and faded blue jeans. I found myself imagining what the face of a child born of those two would look like. The image I concocted was so endearing, so charming, it was enough to paralyze my mind. Yuriko might have died, but she still managed to exert control over me. I couldn’t stand it.

Sensing my own hidden loathing, Masami said, “Then you really didn’t know. And I was so good to her, looking after her. To have her stab me in the back like that! Really, it made me so crazy I had to seek psychiatric counseling at the hospital for a while. I mean, I went to so much trouble to get her into the Q school system, and then every day I fixed her lunch, making sure it was so wonderful that none of her little friends would ever make fun of her. And the allowance I gave her was no pittance either, plus I was always certain she had money whenever she went out. Then there was the money it took to get her into the cheerleader squad, which was quite a sum, let me tell you. If I could get it back now, I would certainly try!”

So that was it. She’d come to get the money! I lowered my head in confusion, trying to avoid her eyes.

“I’m terribly sorry.”

“Forget it! There’s nothing you could have done about it. You and Yuriko were never close anyway. I guess you were the clever one. You saw through her all along.”

I might as well have been a fortune-teller the way Masami praised me. And then she reached in her bag, pulled out a notebook, and plopped it on the counter in front of me. The cover of the notebook was plastered with a sticker of a white lily and looked very girlish. Where the seal had peeled up, the edges were dirty and stained.

“What’s this?”

“It’s your sister’s. I guess you could call it her diary. It looks like she kept it up until the very end. I’m sorry to spring it on you like this, but it gives me the creeps. I came here today to hand it over to you. I think it would be best for you to keep it. Johnson kept it for some reason, and then one day he sent it to me out of the blue, saying he had no use for it since he couldn’t read Japanese. When Yuriko was murdered I guess he suffered from a bout of guilty conscience. But he must not have realized she’d written about him in it.”

Masami’s lips curled down when she said this.

“Did you read it?” I asked her.

“Certainly not.” Masami shook her head vigorously. “I have no interest in other people’s journals—and especially not in something as riddled with filth as this one.”

Masami didn’t seem to notice the contradiction in what she said.

“Very well. I’ll take it.”

“Oh, what a relief! I thought it would be strange to turn it over to the police. And I hear the trial will begin soon, so it did cause me some concern. All right, then. I’ll leave it with you. Thanks. Take care of yourself.”

Masami waved a suntanned hand at me. She glanced out the window at the sky and turned briskly on her heels. I’m sure she wanted to get home and out of this unfamiliar place before the typhoon set in. Or perhaps she didn’t want to spend a minute more talking with someone related to Yuriko. At any rate, she fled down the hall.

The section chief came up behind me and peered down at the notebook. “Was it a claim? Or was something wrong?”

“Neither one. It was nothing, really.”

“Really? Well, she didn’t look like she had any connection with day-care centers.”

I quickly placed my hands over Yuriko’s notebook. Once the Serial Apartment Murder Case got under way, I’d again become the target of curious stares. The section chief was already certain I was withholding information.

“Boss, would it be okay if I wrap up early? I’m sorry, but I’m worried about my grandfather.”

The section chief nodded wordlessly and he returned to his desk by the window. On account of the strange dampness in the air today, even the sound of his sneakers along the floor was dull and leaden. With the section chief’s permission, I rushed home, battling the wind with all my might. The gusts were so strong they practically lifted both wheels of my bike off the ground. It wouldn’t be long before fall set in and we could anticipate the cold north winds. But the dampness today made my skin feel warm and sticky. And the queasy feeling in my stomach had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the fact that someone like Yuriko had left behind a journal.

When she was in grade school, Yuriko was so bad at composition she had to ask for help. And she never paid attention to anything around her because she completely lacked any spirit of inquiry. A journal written by such a self-absorbed dim-witted girl had to be brimming with puerile self-portraits. Yuriko could hardly compose a coherent sentence; how could she possibly have kept a journal? Surely someone masquerading as Yuriko had written it. But who? And more than who, what? What could she possibly have written about? I was beside myself with curiosity and wanted to delve into Yuriko’s journal as quickly as possible.

Well, here it is. This is Yuriko’s journal. To be perfectly honest, I would rather not show it to you. It is teeming with rubbish about her own messy life, but it is also replete with lies about me and our mother. Yuriko, of all people! It just amazes me that she could write such garbage. Certainly the handwriting resembles Yuriko’s. Someone must have forged it.

If you promise not to believe a word of it, I’ll let you see what she wrote. But you really must not believe it. It really is a complete fabrication. A number of the Chinese characters she used in the journal were written incorrectly. And then there were places where she left out characters, and others where the characters she wrote were just plain ugly or else really hard to decipher. I’ve rewritten those parts.