Shigeko’s face looked sunken and pale under the stark, fluorescent lights of the room. The manager looked dejected as he bent forward and spoke into the old woman’s ear. He called out to her a couple of times, but not only was there no reply, she also wasn’t breathing. He put a hand to her neck to check for a pulse, and shook his head.
“I’m afraid she’s passed away.” The manager probably would have preferred to keep the matter quiet, but that wasn’t exactly an option when someone discovered a dead body in a hotel. “I’ll notify the police,” he informed them.
He called the authorities from the room’s phone. As he explained the situation everyone else stood completely still, stunned, while Saeko staggered over to the sofa by the window and collapsed down onto it. It was then that she noticed letter paper, the kind provided by the hotel for free, sitting on the coffee table in front of her. It bore words, and Saeko leant forward and began to read.
I’m so tired now, just exhausted.
I’m so sorry not to have been of more use.
When my son died, the ability to read memories etched into objects just by touching them was given to me. I don’t know by whom, but looking back, it’s been an annoying talent. Sometimes I would touch something and it would reveal its essence to me. Other times, I would get nothing. My gift was incomplete and worked only capriciously. As people came to expect results, there were times when I had to make things up.
But lying to others is less trying than lying to oneself.
At the park this afternoon, I realized my powerlessness, my smallness. What have I been doing until now? The world is falling apart. All I’d do by putting myself forward is further compound my shame.
Is it possible for me to withdraw from this one? My soul is worn, my energy drained. My body doesn’t listen to me anymore.
I apologize for my selfishness. I am grateful for all you’ve done for me.
Mr. Hashiba, I thank you for your many kindnesses. But now, at least, your wish seems ready to be granted.
Saeko, I hope from the bottom of my heart that your wishes come true too.
Myself, I look forward to finally being reunited with my son.
December 22, 2012
Shigeko Torii
It was a suicide note — that much was unmistakable. Saeko indicated the stationery to the others and took another look at Shigeko’s face. There was no sign of pain, only the dignity of a natural death, akin to an ebbing tide. This was in complete contradiction to the fact that there was a suicide note. If the old woman had taken an overdose of pills, there would have been salient signs of a struggle between life and death on her countenance. Instead, Shigeko looked as though she had simply died of old age.
Once the police and ambulance staff arrived Saeko knew that she and the crew would have to stay to answer any questions that may arise. If the police suspected the possibility of foul play at a hotel, they would order an autopsy, and that would drag this mess out for even longer. Saeko wanted to speak with Hashiba before that happened. She left Shigeko’s room and walked back to her own.
She checked the time on her wristwatch. Hashiba would certainly have arrived at the television station by now. She summoned up his number on her cell phone and punched the call button. It went straight through to his voicemail. Strange — he must have turned his phone off for some reason. Even when he was busy, Saeko knew that Hashiba made a point of keeping his phone on. Why would he have turned it off tonight, of all nights? The words in Shigeko’s suicide note came back to her as she stood holding the phone in her hand:
But now, at least, your wish seems ready to be granted.
Somehow Shigeko must have known something that Hashiba wanted. If only she could hear his voice, she knew she would feel better. But it was no use — the dead tone served only to intensify her growing anxiety.
The police investigation was pushed back to the next day, and Saeko spent a tense, mostly sleepless night in her hotel room before waking to meet them at nine the next morning.
The initial tests had shown that there was no possibility of a crime having being committed. “Heart seizure” was the term that came to Saeko’s mind, but she thought “old age” more apt in the absence of any discernible pain. If a full autopsy was carried out they would be able to ascertain whether or not she’d had any other illnesses, especially of the heart, but in any case it was clear that her death was of natural causes. It was the presence of the suicide note that threw confusion over the situation. Sitting with the police now, she realized that their line of questioning was based on the trouble they had reconciling the contradictions implied.
Saeko answered their questions as faithfully as she could. She told them that last night she had gone to close her window to ready herself for bed and seen a white figure out on top of the Nishikigaura Cliffs and that the figure had been that of Shigeko Torii. At that point, one of the detectives interviewing her cut her off mid-sentence.
“You do realize that it would be impossible to make out that kind of detail at that time of night, and from the distance you describe?”
What he said was true, Saeko couldn’t deny it. It had been too dark; she had been too far away for that kind of detail to register. “Still,” she said, “I just knew it was her.”
The two cops cast their gazes out of the window then back to Saeko. “Hrm,” one of them grunted, “so you think it was some kind of premonition?”
That could be it, she supposed. A premonition, a hunch. Shigeko had sent Saeko a message from her deathbed in the room next door. The vision hadn’t been real; rather, the image had been delivered straight into her mind. The cops seemed to have intuited that interpretation.
One of the men was in his thirties, the other in his fifties. With sufficient years on their jobs, they’d probably come across a few instances where a “premonition” was the only explanation. Surprisingly few people dismissed such supernatural phenomena outright as being unscientific; it was more common not to doubt that they were perhaps a possibility.
“What did you do next?” the older one continued.
“I was in shock for a moment. Then I called Kagayama and told him what I saw.”
“Did you feel any uncertainty about what you had seen?”
“I did think that it might have been a hallucination. But after seeing Ms. Torii earlier in the day, I had a bad feeling about her.”
“A bad feeling?”
“I worked with Ms. Torii once before. This time, she looked completely exhausted to the core, like she’d lost the will to live.”
“You saw the suicide note I assume.”
“Yes, I was the one that found it, on the table in front of the sofa.”
“A strange woman. Something about her defies the common understanding of our like.”
The note obviously didn’t sit right with the two, who said as much to each other. Saeko felt the same, but perhaps because she knew something of Shigeko’s nature she found herself less surprised than she might have been.
It was Saeko who asked, “Do you know what Ms. Torii did for a living?”
“I’d seen her a few times on TV.”
“A few people accused her of being a fake. But from what I’ve seen, I believe that her powers were real.”
“And that’s why she could’ve done something like that?”
Leaving a note alluding to suicide and then, immediately afterwards, dying naturally in bed with no signs of an overdose was a feat completely beyond common sense, but Saeko nodded. Shigeko had willed her life to end, and with that clear goal in mind, had made it happen.