Evil and the Mask Read Online Free PDF Page A

wouldn’t matter if it was small. In the evenings we’d go for walks along the beach. When we quarreled I’d always apologize, and if I thought she was in the wrong, I’d just keep my mouth shut. Maybe even then I’d be the one to say sorry. For me to marry Kaori, however, I’d have to be good enough for her. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but for the time being I persevered with my tedious, day-to-day studies. I took pains with my appearance, and thought up stories to make her laugh. I squeezed my darkness into this tiny piece buried deep inside me. All my pent-up energy, which had been trapped by my depression, burst forth directly, even obsessively, towards Kaori.
    Almost every night I imagined having sex with her. If I could do it for real, I thought, that would be the happiest thing in the world. Seeing Kaori’s body, touching her all over, entering her. It seemed like a miracle, and it never occurred to me that most adults were enjoying the same pleasure. I thought it was only for me, in love with Kaori. Just as she had been in elementary school, she was listed as my relative, but for some reason walking home together had started to feel awkward. She joined the volleyball club, so we left school at different times and went home separately, but she still came to my room every day.
    My entire happiness was right there in front of me, and Icouldn’t touch it. Still, at least it was close by. While it was trying at times, all in all it was a good thing. It was enough to fill the mind of a junior high school boy like me. Gazing at her body as it grew soft and round, at the swelling of her breasts, was painful, but at the same time I was happy. My thoughts were fixed solely on her, to the almost total exclusion of everything else.
    Kaori teasing me by hunting for my adult magazine became a regular game. I hid it in the bookshelf. I took volume Sa-Su of my encyclopedia out of its case and put the magazine in the box in its place, so she never found it. But I hardly needed it any more. My youthful sexual desires were fixated entirely on her.
    “I know you’ve still got it, and I’m going to find it,” she said as she opened the closet, still in her school uniform.
    “I don’t.”
    “Aren’t you interested in girls anymore?”
    “That’s not what I mean, but it isn’t here.”
    That’s how we spent the year before I turned fourteen. Before Father was going to show me hell.
    “YOU DON’T LOOK much like your father, Fumihiro.”
    I don’t remember exactly when she told me that. She was staring at me intently, and I felt quite uncomfortable.
    “Maybe not. His face is horrible.” I turned away, unable to look her in the eye.
    “Yeah, you could say that.”
    We were walking along a dirt road one evening, just after the rain had stopped.
    “Somehow I feel like his face isn’t his alone.”
    She was beautiful when she was thinking.
    “It’s like there’s a whole lot of history and other people’s faces piled one on top of another. Sometimes I get really scared when he just looks at me. Like all this stuff, Kukis from the past, ancient events, come floating to the surface, all mixed up. It’s so freaky. I’m sorry, it’s just really scary somehow.”
    She suddenly lowered her eyes, as if she was afraid. I noticed again how long her lashes were. If I was her boyfriend, I thought, at times like these I could put my arm around her. In reality, though, I couldn’t even touch the tips of her fingers.
    “YOU’RE ALWAYS STARING at Ms. Yoshimi,” said Kaori, just before the summer holidays in our first year of junior high. “You like her, don’t you?”
    Ms. Yoshimi was our music teacher. She always wore tight-fitting clothes, so all the boys liked her. Based solely on her dress, we’d already decided that she was a slut.
    “I don’t stare. Why’d you suddenly bring that up?”
    I was tall by then, and I had to look down slightly to see Kaori’s face.
    “Mari is sad. She can’t compete