inside. The tabloid show was on TV in our living room. Dad was sitting in front of the TV, his face swollen, chuckling to himself.
“Hey, you were just on TV.”
The screen showed the road in front of our house with the caption “Live from the Scene” in white. You could see our house and the one next door, lit by the morning sun. It looked cramped yet showy at the same time. Ah, I thought, stunned, too late now. Now that it was such big news, I had to keep quiet about what I knew. That ominous sound, meeting Worm right afterward, the contented look on his face, the fact that he stole my bike and cell phone. I didn’t think I’d be telling anybody about any of these things. The word accomplice ran through my mind again.
My dad folded up the newspaper and said, “I wonder why it happened. When I was young there were times I wanted to kill my old man and some of my teachers—but I never thought of killing my mom. It was like she was part of a totally different world from me. I never thought my mom was controlling my life or anything. Have you ever thought that?”
“Never.”
Which was a lie. I think about it every time I fight with my mom, and there are tons of people I hate so much that I wouldn’t mind taking them out. Even Terauchi and Yuzan—sometimes I hate them and want to kill them. But killing them wouldn’t get me anywhere—that’s the conclusion I always come to. If I’m going to have to pay for it in the end, I might as well let them live.
“The man next door apparently worked at the Kanto Fukagawa Hospital,” Dad said. “In internal medicine. The poor guy. What was the son’s name, anyway? It’s not in the paper.”
“Of course not. He’s a juvenile,” I said, depressed. Dad gulped down his coffee and exhaled, spewing coffee breath all over the place.
“I guess it’ll be a big story for a while.”
Mom called out from the kitchen: “Those people will be out there until the boy comes home. What should we do?”
“Just carry on as always,” Dad said.
“If we could do that, there wouldn’t be a problem.”
“We’ll just have to work around it. We’re not involved.”
But your daughter is! I wondered how astonished my dad would be if he knew that.
* * *
After my parents went to work I watched some of the tabloid shows on TV. They were all the same. Is he involved in his mother’s murder? The high school son vanished. Midsummer madness—what happened with this seventeen-year-old? While I was watching TV we had two sets of visitors. The first was this middle-aged couple who said they were the older brother and sister-in-law of the man next door. We’re so sorry to cause you all this trouble, they said, bowing and scraping like crazy, and handed me a heavy box of sweets. I opened it and found thirty mizuyokan sweets inside.
The second set of visitors were the detectives from the day before. The old detective, wiping the sweat off with an oversize handkerchief, asked, “About the boy next door…we have a witness who saw him walking on the road to the station around noon yesterday. You told us you went to the station at about the same time. Didn’t you see him?”
“I was riding my bike.”
Damn! As soon as I said this I realized I shouldn’t have. They’ll find out my bike isn’t there. Unconsciously I looked down.
“Didn’t you overtake him on your bike?”
The female detective asked this. This day she had on a white blouse and a heavy cloisonné brooch near her collar. Like yesterday, her hair was loosely done up. The color of her face and the skin of her neck were five degrees off. I shook my head.
“I didn’t notice him,” I said.
“Aren’t you going to cram school today?”
“Yeah, I am.”
The phone rang. The two detectives motioned for me to get it. Heart slamming in my chest, I went to answer it. For all I knew it might be Worm. Whoever was on the other end didn’t respond.
“Hello? Hello?”
The two detectives, standing at the entrance,
“Hey, you were just on TV.”
The screen showed the road in front of our house with the caption “Live from the Scene” in white. You could see our house and the one next door, lit by the morning sun. It looked cramped yet showy at the same time. Ah, I thought, stunned, too late now. Now that it was such big news, I had to keep quiet about what I knew. That ominous sound, meeting Worm right afterward, the contented look on his face, the fact that he stole my bike and cell phone. I didn’t think I’d be telling anybody about any of these things. The word accomplice ran through my mind again.
My dad folded up the newspaper and said, “I wonder why it happened. When I was young there were times I wanted to kill my old man and some of my teachers—but I never thought of killing my mom. It was like she was part of a totally different world from me. I never thought my mom was controlling my life or anything. Have you ever thought that?”
“Never.”
Which was a lie. I think about it every time I fight with my mom, and there are tons of people I hate so much that I wouldn’t mind taking them out. Even Terauchi and Yuzan—sometimes I hate them and want to kill them. But killing them wouldn’t get me anywhere—that’s the conclusion I always come to. If I’m going to have to pay for it in the end, I might as well let them live.
“The man next door apparently worked at the Kanto Fukagawa Hospital,” Dad said. “In internal medicine. The poor guy. What was the son’s name, anyway? It’s not in the paper.”
“Of course not. He’s a juvenile,” I said, depressed. Dad gulped down his coffee and exhaled, spewing coffee breath all over the place.
“I guess it’ll be a big story for a while.”
Mom called out from the kitchen: “Those people will be out there until the boy comes home. What should we do?”
“Just carry on as always,” Dad said.
“If we could do that, there wouldn’t be a problem.”
“We’ll just have to work around it. We’re not involved.”
But your daughter is! I wondered how astonished my dad would be if he knew that.
* * *
After my parents went to work I watched some of the tabloid shows on TV. They were all the same. Is he involved in his mother’s murder? The high school son vanished. Midsummer madness—what happened with this seventeen-year-old? While I was watching TV we had two sets of visitors. The first was this middle-aged couple who said they were the older brother and sister-in-law of the man next door. We’re so sorry to cause you all this trouble, they said, bowing and scraping like crazy, and handed me a heavy box of sweets. I opened it and found thirty mizuyokan sweets inside.
The second set of visitors were the detectives from the day before. The old detective, wiping the sweat off with an oversize handkerchief, asked, “About the boy next door…we have a witness who saw him walking on the road to the station around noon yesterday. You told us you went to the station at about the same time. Didn’t you see him?”
“I was riding my bike.”
Damn! As soon as I said this I realized I shouldn’t have. They’ll find out my bike isn’t there. Unconsciously I looked down.
“Didn’t you overtake him on your bike?”
The female detective asked this. This day she had on a white blouse and a heavy cloisonné brooch near her collar. Like yesterday, her hair was loosely done up. The color of her face and the skin of her neck were five degrees off. I shook my head.
“I didn’t notice him,” I said.
“Aren’t you going to cram school today?”
“Yeah, I am.”
The phone rang. The two detectives motioned for me to get it. Heart slamming in my chest, I went to answer it. For all I knew it might be Worm. Whoever was on the other end didn’t respond.
“Hello? Hello?”
The two detectives, standing at the entrance,
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