The Gate of Sorrows Page 10

  “Did they shoot here?”

  “Not Drug Island. I think they were down filming BB Island at work.”

  “Bet you wanted to be on TV.”

  “Ugh, don’t say that. No interest at all. I’m a serious student.”

  The president had never struck Kotaro as having any interest in media exposure. Seigo once mentioned that more than one magazine had asked for an interview, but they’d always been refused. “A company in our business doesn’t need publicity,” he had added.

  Maybe there was a reason for the change in policy. Maybe it had something to do with the move to Sapporo? Kotaro was thinking about the president again. He had to get to work.

  There was a forty-minute break at eight. Kotaro didn’t feel like inviting anyone to eat with him. As he walked down the stairs to the front door, he ran directly into the person he couldn’t stop thinking about.

  “Hello, Mishima.”

  Ayuko Yamashina was wearing a white polo-neck shirt under a black business suit and matching three-inch stiletto heels. She was carrying a large briefcase and a fawn-colored coat over her arm.

  “Oh, hi.” Kotaro still didn’t know how to address her properly. “So, um, heading home? Take care.”

  “Is this your dinner break?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded and cocked her head curiously. Her raven hair was braided and gathered on top of her head. Loose, it reached to the middle of her back. The source of this intelligence was Kaname.

  Ayuko Yamashina was thirty-five years old, five-foot-eight and slender, with long, shapely legs. During her days at one of the top prefectural high schools in Nagoya, she’d been captain of the women’s ballet club. She still loved to exercise and made it to the gym whenever she could. She always used the stairs except when she was with clients.

  “I was just leaving, but …” She smiled. “Are you a soba guy, Mishima?”

  “A what?”

  “Ehh, wrong answer. ‘Yes, Ms. President, I love soba.’ That’s what you say. Let’s go.” She gave Kotaro a hearty slap on the shoulder and led him to the basement of a building just behind the office.

  Instead of the simple eatery he’d expected, Kotaro found himself in an elegant, expensive-looking restaurant. The room was half full. The atmosphere was relaxed and quiet. Classical music played softly in the background.

  Ayuko glanced at the menu and ordered from the chef, whom she seemed to know, without consulting Kotaro. “We’ll be here an hour,” she told the chef. She took her smartphone out and wrote a quick mail.

  “I let Sei-chan know you’re in an interview with the president. Don’t worry about the time.” She certainly was efficient.

  “Oh. Uh, thanks.”

  Ayuko looked across the table at Kotaro, a cup of soba tea in one hand. “Sei-chan tells me you’re working hard for us.”

  She calls him Sei-chan, as if they’re still in school. Kotaro had never heard Seigo call her anything other than Yamashina. What was their relationship? Business partners? Friends?

  “I think it’s more than that,” Kaname had told him once. She didn’t usually show much interest in people’s private lives, but she made an exception for Ayuko, whom she admired in every way.

  Were Seigo and Ayuko lovers? They didn’t seem to be living together, but from the way Seigo talked, it sounded like they were in and out of each other’s homes fairly often.

  Kotaro thought a lot more about Seigo and Ayuko’s relationship than Kaname did. It wasn’t mere curiosity. It had reached the level of an obsession.

  Kotaro was struggling with his feelings. He certainly admired Ayuko, but he was in a different position than Kaname. Ayuko was much older, and their relationship was that of company president and part-time employee. In his own mind, Kotaro wasn’t enough of a male to have the right to say he was in love with anyone … yet.

  But he was in love. That hot summer day, standing in the bookstore reading Kumar of Jore, he’d been moved; he wanted to know more about the person who cherished that story. When he met her at his employment interview, he was startled to discover that the company founder was a woman. Moreover, he’d never met a woman so beautiful, so masterful. No wonder I feel the way I do, he thought, though it wasn’t as if anyone had asked him to explain.

  Kotaro’s hands were trembling now. He sat stiffly at attention, hoping to hide them. He also hoped Ayuko would attribute his flushed cheeks to the warmth of the room. Here he was, having dinner with the president. He doubted the chance would come again.

  “I’m still learning the ropes.”

  “Really? Sei-chan says you’re an asset to the team.”

  The first course arrived, several small dishes on tiny individual trays. “Let’s eat. You must be hungry.”

  She took up her chopsticks smoothly. Kotaro’s hands wouldn’t work; he almost dropped his chopsticks, which made his cheeks burn even hotter.

  “It must be hard, balancing the kind of work we do with your studies. Is everything all right?”

  “It’s okay. Kaname covers for me.”

  “She’s smart, like you.” Ayuko began to laugh, her eyes sparkling at the memory. “She eats a lot, doesn’t she? I couldn’t believe it. Where does she pack it away with that slim figure of hers?”

  “So you knew?”

  “I found out six months ago. We went to an all-you-can-eat Korean restaurant.”

  That must’ve been her interview. Ayuko was vetting each part-timer herself.

  And that’s all this is. An interview. It wasn’t special treatment. The only reason he was sitting here was because he’d run into Ayuko on the stairs.

  Kotaro was crestfallen. It was stupid, but he was still disappointed. What had he expected?

  “I hear Sei-chan had you working with BB Island on the Toe-Cutter Bill case. He has this thing about serial killers.”

  How can she eat, talk, and look so beautiful at the same time?

  “I’m concerned about him. He’s been worrying for ten years now that serial killings like the ones in America are going to start happening in Japan.”

  “There are some strange things going on.”

  “But the circumstances are different. The scale is different too. They say there are maybe thirty serial killers at work in America at any given time, killers no one knows about yet.”

  After only three days on the case, Kotaro suspected there were at least that many people in Japan with the potential to become serial killers. Some of the amateur detectives posting to the forums obviously derived intense pleasure from visualizing the killer’s point of view.

  “I don’t think it’s just the serial killers we don’t know about,” Kotaro ventured.

  “You mean people with the potential to kill who haven’t acted on it yet?” Ayuko asked. Kotaro chewed his soba sushi and nodded.

  “Unfortunately, I agree,” she said. “That’s why I try not to think about it.” Chopsticks in midair, she gracefully placed a slender elbow on the table. “If people think about something long enough, sooner or later they’ll do it.”

  Can thinking make things real?

  “I haven’t studied psychology,” she continued, “so I don’t know if this fits, but have you heard of the collective unconscious? It’s like everyone having the same software installed in their subconscious minds. I think serial killers all have the same MO. How they operate, what motivates them. Information comes across the ocean and affects certain people, triggers something in their minds. If people in Japan were isolated from the world, they might never end up committing certain types of crime. But with outside influence, it can happen.”

  Sashimi was followed by the main course, cold soba noodles with shrimp tempura. The rich aroma of sesame oil rose invitingly to Kotaro’s nostrils. His stomach rumbled.

  “Things happening elsewhere in the world will happen here soo
ner or later. We’ve been saturated with American culture.” Ayuko sighed as she moved their empty dishes to the side.

  “That’s why we need to be prepared. But the information we collect could uncover patterns that become self-fulfilling. It’s like two sides of a coin, or chicken and egg. I don’t want to dismiss Sei-chan’s concerns out of hand, but I also think we could end up causing exactly what we’re trying to prevent.”

  Kotaro’s stomach rumbled again despite the serious tone of the discussion. He was perspiring with embarrassment. If that weren’t enough, he was also feeling giddy over something he knew was surely trivial. Ayuko was using the familiar “I,” atashi, with him. In their few exchanges until now, she had always used watashi, the formal first person.

  “Don’t you care for tempura?”

  “What?” Kotaro was startled from his reverie.

  “It’s better when it’s hot.”

  “Yes. You’re right. Thank you.”

  I’m blushing big time. This is so stupid. What’s happening to me?

  Ayuko laughed cheerfully. “Sorry for going on and on about this.” Little laugh lines spread out from the corners of her eyes. Kotaro had never imagined wrinkles could make a woman look so captivating.

  “I was actually talking to Sei-chan about this just before I ran into you. Things got kind of heated. He sent me packing,” she added indignantly. “Said he was too busy to talk more about it.”

  “I guess you needed to talk to someone.”

  “Right. Maybe it’s not fair to you, but just listen anyway. Sei-chan actually laughed and said I was the one thinking about it too seriously.” She gracefully inhaled a mouthful of noodles. “Do you know why they’re calling the killer Toe-Cutter Bill?”

  Kotaro had wondered about this. The name was already a fixture on the textboards, but he hadn’t found an explanation.

  “There’s this novel called The Silence of the Lambs. They made a movie out of it.”

  “A murder mystery? I’ve never been that interested in mysteries.”

  “Really? It’s about a serial killer. Every time he kills a woman—” Ayuko glanced around the room and lowered her voice. “He flays his victims and sews the skins together to make a kind of girl suit. His nickname is Buffalo Bill. That’s how they came up with Toe-Cutter Bill, except this killer is real, and he doesn’t kill women only. I guess it was inevitable.”

  That’s not much of a similarity. …

  “The villain in the novel was inspired by a real killer, named Ed Gein.” Ayuko looked at Kotaro solemnly. “Toe-Cutter Bill is the nickname of a real killer based on a fictional killer who was based on a real killer. Real incidents give birth to stories. The stories are incorporated into real events, and they snowball. If an observer can grasp the underlying theme of the story, he might be able to predict the killer’s next move.”

  Ayuko forgot to keep her voice down as she warmed to her subject. “Serial killers in the United States almost always start out as copycats. First they imitate, then they try to go their model one better—claim more victims, cook up fancier MOs. They’re looking for attention. Without attention they can’t get the satisfaction they crave. If the crimes don’t tell a story, no one will pay attention.

  “The whole phenomenon is about acting out a story. To catch a serial killer, professionals look at the crimes he’s committed, deduce motivations and behavior patterns, and build up a profile.”

  All Kotaro could do was nod.

  “The thing is, the whole profiling thing strikes me as basically unhealthy. Killing is fundamentally unhealthy, however you look at it. How should I put this—I can’t help feeling that trying to understand something like murder in terms of stories is causing murders that never would’ve happened.” She suddenly clapped a hand over her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” Kotaro stared at her with surprise.

  “See? I’m doing it again. Lecturing,” she said in a small voice. “That’s why Sei-chan laughs at me.”

  “No, I thought it was really interesting. I never thought of it that way.”

  You really did need to talk to someone about it.

  Kotaro hesitated. “Is that what you talked about to the media?”

  Ayuko took her hand from her eyes and shook her head with surprise. “Not at all. That was something completely different.” She sat up straight in her chair. She was the president of Kumar again. “I want to start something new, but to do that I need investors. I’m just working with the media to generate buzz.”

  Kotaro’s skeptical expression prompted her to laugh reassuringly.

  “Don’t worry. It doesn’t have anything to do with Kumar. It’s completely separate, just my personal project. I can’t talk about it yet, but I’ll announce it soon.” She was back to the formal first person.

  “Oh, look at the time.” She glanced at her watch and signaled to the chef.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t have more time to eat.”

  “No, it’s okay. The food was great. Thanks for inviting me.”

  The manager brought the check. Ayuko handed him her credit card. She signed the slip and turned to Kotaro.

  “Seigo told me you’re using our spider software.”

  “Yes.”

  “Be careful about patrolling too much outside office hours. You should concentrate on your studies.”

  “Seigo says the same thing. I’ll be careful.”

  “How’s the work? Is it affecting your outlook?”

  Kotaro considered carefully before answering. “Until I started this job I never spent much time on the web. I don’t know if what I think is really valid. I’m still a beginner.”

  “That’s all right. Tell me.”

  “There’s so much information, or maybe knowledge on the web. So much that’s important. But it’s scattered around, like islands.”

  Ayuko nodded. “I know what you mean.”

  “The rest of the web—the part that’s like the ocean—is for killing time and blowing off steam. Not that it’s all bad, of course.”

  Chatting idly with friends. Encountering people who share your interests, but who are so far away that you’d never have had the chance to meet them otherwise. The chance to complain and be comforted, confess your fears and get advice, exchange opinions about your favorite movies and comics, gossip about celebrities and their scandals.

  “There’s not much truly useful stuff on the web, and not a lot that’s really dangerous. The web ocean is rough and chaotic, but it’s full of energy. That’s how it seems, anyway.”

  “Interesting.” Ayuko smiled. “Do you post on textboards to blow off steam?”

  “Oh, no. Seigo’s always reminding us about confidentiality.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Ayuko rested her chin in her hand and looked at him closely. “Some people are really aggressive all the time.”

  “You mean they like to pick fights?”

  “Not exactly pick fights. Maybe it’s a film you saw or an actor you’re sizing up. What you have to say is right on target, but you put it in an edgy, aggressive way. Everything you say comes out sounding aggressive.”

  Kotaro nodded. “I know what you mean. When I was dredging the textboards for BB Island, most of the people posting used this kind of nasty tone.”

  “I have friends like that—very straightforward and responsible, good at what they do, good home life. But they get stressed, and they blow off steam by posting aggressive comments on the web. Their web personality is different from their real personality. They keep them separate. They just laugh and say it’s okay to write whatever you can’t say in the real world, no matter how critical or negative it is. That does seem to be one purpose of the Internet for a lot of people.”

  Kotaro nodded.

  “But I think my friends are wrong. Their posts will never disappear. They think they’re
just putting opinions out there. They don’t use real names. They say what they think. They assume no one pays attention for more than a few moments. That’s a big mistake.”

  “Most of what goes on the net, stays on the net—somewhere.”

  “That’s not what I mean. No matter how carefully they choose their words, whatever they say, the words they use stay inside them. Everything is cumulative. Words don’t ‘disappear.’

  “Maybe they post a comment saying a certain actress should just die. They think they’ve blown off steam by criticizing someone no one likes anyway. But those words—’I hope she dies’—stay inside the writer, along with the feeling that it’s acceptable to write things like that. All that negativity accumulates, and someday the weight of it will change the writer.

  “That’s what words do. However they’re expressed, there’s no way people can separate their words from themselves. They can’t escape the influence of their own thoughts. They can divide their comments among different handles and successfully hide their identity, but they can’t hide from themselves. They know who they are. You can’t run from yourself.”

  Mom would say, “What goes around, comes around.”

  “So be careful, Kotaro. If the real world is stressing you out, deal with your stress in the real world, no matter how dumb you think it makes you look. Okay?”

  “I’ll remember,” said Kotaro.

  A day that began like any other had ended amazingly. It had been wonderful, but it had also left Kotaro feeling exhausted. He punched his ID code and departure time into the clock. It was just past eleven, and it was all he could do to suppress a giant yawn.

  Somehow his dinner with Ayuko had left him feeling hungry for more. He headed for the lounge to pick up something from the vending machines and found Kenji at a table by the wall, scarfing instant ramen out of a Styrofoam cup.

  “Hey Kotaro. Working late?”

  “Just getting off. How about you?”

  “Graveyard shift. I’m not off till morning.”

  Kotaro bought a can of coffee and sat down across from Kenji, who started talking about the day’s visit from the media. The camera crew had also visited School Island, and the reporter from the TV station had been quite hot.