‘I just played dumb. He doesn’t have proof. Not yet, anyway. He’ll get it, though. Knowing him, he might even hire a private detective.’
‘That’s not good.’
‘No, it’s not. And there was something else I noticed.’
‘What now?’
‘My address book. I think he was looking at it. I had it hidden in my dresser drawer… it had to be him.’
‘Don’t tell me you wrote my name in there.’
‘No name. Just a phone number. But he might have figured it out anyway.’
‘Can you get someone’s name and address from a number?’
‘I don’t know. I bet if you really needed to you could find a way. He’s pretty well-connected, my husband.’
Tomohiko was beginning to form an image of Yuko’s husband in his mind and it frightened him. He’d never imagined what it might feel like to be the target of a grown man’s anger. Now that he knew, he didn’t like it.
‘So what do we do?’ Tomohiko asked, his mouth already dry again.
‘I don’t think we should see each other. Not for a while at least.’
Tomohiko nodded listlessly. Even as a junior in high school he saw the sense in what she was saying.
‘But, since we’re here anyway,’ she said, downing the last drop of her Campari soda and picking up the bill, ‘shall we?’
Their relationship had already been going on for a month, beginning with the encounter at the apartment. Yuko Hanaoka had been the woman with the ponytail.
It wasn’t that he’d fallen for her, Tomohiko told himself. He just couldn’t forget how his first time had felt. When he masturbated, it was her he’d see in his mind’s eye. The sheer intensity of the act had swept away all his other fantasies. He’d lasted three days before he called her. She was only too eager to suggest they meet.
He’d first learned her full name between the sheets of a hotel bed. She was thirty-two years old. Tomohiko told her things, too. His real name, what school he went to, his home phone number. He tried not to think about his promise to Ryo. The reality of it was that her skills in bed had disarmed him to the point where he had trouble thinking straight about anything.
‘It was my friend who invited me to that party,’ she told him. ‘You remember, the one with short hair? Anyway, it sounded like she’d been a few times before, but that was my first time. I was so nervous. I’m glad it was you, Tomohiko,’ she said, snuggling under his arm. She knew how to make him melt like that.
Tomohiko was surprised to hear that she had paid twenty thousand yen for the party. That meant Ryo had taken more than half for himself. No wonder he had been so businesslike about the whole thing.
Tomohiko met with Yuko two or three times a week. Her husband was always busy, she said, so she could come home a little late without raising any suspicions. On her way out of the hotel she would slip him five thousand yen, telling him it was his ‘allowance’.
Even though he knew that sleeping with another man’s wife was wrong, Tomohiko was drunk on the attention and the sex. Their regular routine continued, even when his finals loomed close. Which was what had landed him in his current quandary with his grades.
‘I don’t know if I like not being able to see you,’ Tomohiko said. They were in bed.
‘You think I’m happy about it?’ she said from beneath him.
‘Isn’t there something we can do?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t think now is the best time.’
‘So when will be a good time?’
‘I don’t know that either. The sooner the better, of course. I’m not getting any younger.’
Tomohiko embraced her slender body and went at it again. Thinking this might be their last time, he didn’t want to leave anything undone. He wanted to pour all of his energy into her. Again and again she screamed, each time arching her body backwards like a drawn bow, her hands and legs extending, trembling.
It was after the third round that she announced in her usual languid voice that she had to go and pee.
‘Sure,’ he said, rolling away. She sat up in bed, naked, but then she gave a little gasp and lay back down again. Tomohiko thought she must have felt faint. It had happened many times before. But this time, she wasn’t moving. He wondered if she’d fallen asleep and gave her shoulder a shake. She didn’t stir. A horrible scenario flashed through Tomohiko’s mind. He got out of bed and tried tapping her eyelids with his fingers. There was no response.
He began to tremble violently.
No way. This isn’t happening!
He held his hand to her chest. He couldn’t feel a heartbeat.
Tomohiko was almost home when he realised he still had the hotel room key in his pocket. He gritted his teeth. If the key wasn’t in the room the hotel staff would suspect something. He shook his head. They’ll suspect something when they find a woman’s dead body in their bed.
Tomohiko had considered calling the hospital from the hotel room. But then he would have to admit that he was with her. He couldn’t do that. Besides, what was the point in calling a doctor, he thought. She was already gone.
He had changed quickly, gathered everything that was his, and fled the hotel, trying to avoid everyone he could on his way out.
He was already on the subway when the realisation dawned on him that running hadn’t solved a thing. There was someone who knew about him already, possibly the worst person of alclass="underline" Yuko’s husband. He would put two and two together and realise that a high school student named Tomohiko Sonomura had been with his wife and he would tell the police. Once the police were on it, the truth would come out in a matter of hours.
It’s over, he thought. Once word gets out, I’m ruined for life.
He arrived home to find his mother and younger sister in the middle of dinner. He told them he’d already eaten and went straight to his room. Sitting at his desk, he thought about Ryo Kirihara.
If the police found out about Yuko, they’d find out about what was going on in that apartment and that would be bad news for Ryo. What he was doing was enabling underage prostitution. He was a pimp – even if his prostitutes happened to be boys, and his johns women in their thirties.
I need to talk to him.
He ran out of his room and picked up the hallway phone. The television was still blaring in the living room. He prayed that whatever his mom and sister were watching, it was interesting enough to hold their attention for five minutes.
Ryo answered immediately. ‘What’s this about?’ he asked, his tone revealing that he already expected something was up.
‘It’s bad,’ was all Tomohiko could say before his tongue twisted in his mouth.
‘What’s bad?’
‘It’s hard to say over the phone. And it’s kind of a long story.’
Ryo was silent. Finally he said, ‘This better not be about those women.’
Tomohiko’s mind went blank. All he could hear was Ryo sighing on the other end of the line.
‘Right. Let me guess: ponytail?’
‘Yeah.’
Ryo sighed again. ‘No wonder she hasn’t been coming lately. So, what, she work out a business deal with you?’
‘No, there was no deal.’
‘What was there, then?’
Tomohiko rubbed his mouth. He couldn’t think of what to say.
‘Whatever. You’re right, this isn’t something to talk about over the phone. Where are you now?’
‘Home.’
‘Be there in about twenty minutes,’ Ryo said and hung up the phone without waiting for a reply.
Tomohiko went back to his room and tried to think. But his head was a swirl and time kept slipping by.
It was twenty minutes later on the dot when Ryo arrived. Tomohiko went to the door and opened it. ‘Hey, you ride a bike?’ he asked, nodding towards Ryo’s motorcycle out front.