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“… That woman, Manami Midorikawa, always making passes at my Kobayashi-kun. It’s not like Kobayashi-kun would actually fall for a bimbo like her … Kobayashi-kun is not a strong drinker, but he always drinks way too much. He was slumped in front of the bar again today vomiting. I couldnt even go and rub his back in pity. Even so, I want him to understand. I could even put his vomit into my mouth and swallow it. 1 bet Manami Midorikawa couldnt do that, but I could … Vm not like her. I cant approach Kobayashi-kun so openly. Even so, I believe

  that Kobayashi-kun knows my feelings for him … Today, Kobayashi ordered Lunch A at the school cafeteria for three hundred and seventy yen. After he finished eating, he got a cola from the vending machine and chatted with Sato and Suzuki until 1:30. Then, Manami Midorikawa strutted by and invited Kobayashi-kun to the coffee shop. I followed them. I saw them holding hands under the table at the coffee shop … This morning, I was waiting by Kobayashi-kuns apartment as usual, and what did I see but Manami Midorikawa come out with him, holding his hand … M^ mind went blank and I slumped down where I stood. I wont, I cant forgive that woman …”

  He had no idea. He had no idea until just now that Kayako Kawamata had such feelings, such strong feelings for him. He didn’t feel happy at all. No, he felt frightened.

  That woman was always watching him. She was always in the shadows behind him, like some kind of stalker, watching him and recording his every move.

  “This woman is insane,” muttered Kobayashi, instinctively throwing the scrapbook back on the desk. He slowly backed away and was about to leave the master bedroom. Just then—

  He heard a woman’s soft voice call out his name, and he heard the sound of something heavy falling inside the closet. Yes, he clearly heard it.

  < Kobayashi-kun. >

  His mouth went dry and his legs felt weak. But he had to make sure.

  He crept closer to the closet. He noticed for the first time that the sliding doors o{ the closet had been sealed shut with brown packing tape. He wondered who, and why, someone would do something like that.

  After hesitating for a moment, he peeled the tape off the door. Then, ever so carefully, he opened the sliding door. The futon bed-

  ding that had been thrust in the closet carelessly fell out at his feet. The futon was stained with what looked like soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce.

  Stained with soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce?

  Perhaps Kobayashi realized that those stains were neither soy sauce nor Worcestershire sauce. Yes, those stains were …

  But he didn’t want to accept the truth, that those stains were not soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce … They couldn’t be blood … They just couldn’t be human blood … He never, ever, ever wanted to accept such an absurd idea.

  He slowly looked inside the closet. It was so dark he couldn’t be sure, but it looked like one of the planks in the ceiling of the closet was out of place. Looking up, he thought he could make out some-thing, something wrapped in plastic.

  Licking his dry lips, Kobayashi thrust his hand into the pocket of his trousers and wrapped his fingers around his lighter. Licking his lips again, he pulled the lighter out and flicked it.

  He lifted the lighter up so that it would illuminate the hole in the ceiling. There he saw—

  He saw a woman’s face.

  Takeo

  He had killed her and ripped open her stomach with his knife. The fetus that he had so violently ripped out of the woman’s womb already had the ability to breathe. The bloody baby gave off a weak, thin cry.

  “Waah!”

  You re still hanging on . . . after all I’ve done to you, you’re still trying to live . . .

  An unspeakable anger welled up from within Takeo’s being. He jammed his bloody thumb into the mouth of the fetus. That’s all he did, but it was enough to effectively block the baby’s air passage.

  At that moment, this fetus—the baby who was to be named Anju Kobayashi, who would have lived for another eighty or even one hundred years, who would have loved people, enjoyed life, who would have seen her children, her grandchildren, and her greatgrandchildren—lost all of that. She died.

  Still holding the bloody fetus, Takeo looked up. He saw the white telephone on the table in front of him. He touched the phone with his bloody hand, and saw a small piece of paper taped to the phone. It was the speed dial numbers. He saw that the first number on the speed dial was Shunsuke’s cell.

  Picking up the phone, he looked at the bloody body of Manami, lying on the floor with her stomach cut open. Her open eyes were staring up at the ceiling, as they were when she died. She was so beautiful, with the body of a fashion model, that Takeo briefly thought it was a waste to have killed her.

  Takeo recalled Manami telling him, just before she died, that her husband was out visiting a student’s home, a student named Toshio Saeki.

  Yes, Kobayashi was in that house right now. He was in that house, where Kayako was.

  “Oh, yes, I have to tell Kobayashi Sensei the news …”

  Takeo Saeki’s face, smeared with blood and his oily sweat, distorted into a horrific grin.

  Kobayashi

  This… this was Kayako Kawamata.

  The woman was lying face up in the attic, smeared with blood, her eyes forever open.

  “Ugh,” Kobayashi groaned.

  In that instant, her long, black hair slithered down through the hole in the ceiling, reflecting dully in the dim illumination of his lighter.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaah,” he screamed, half out of his mind with fright. He tumbled back into the Saeki master bedroom.

  “Toshio-kun! Toshio-kun,” Kobayashi shouted, turning around and running into the boy’s bedroom right next door. Toshio was still on the floor, drawing on his art paper with his black crayon. Kobayashi scooped him up from behind. He ran down the stairs frantically.

  “We can’t stay here.”

  Still holding Toshio in his arms, he tried to step into his shoes left at the entrance, when suddenly, the melody of “Last Christmas” spilled out from his cell phone in his shirt pocket. From the ring tone, he knew the call was from his wife, Manami.

  He hesitated for a moment, but decided to answer the phone. He was out of breath, and screamed into the phone, “Hello! Hello? Manami! Manami!”

  Strangely enough, the voice on the other end was not Manami’s.

  “Kobayashi Sensei, right?”

  It was a man, who sounded as if he was moaning into the phone.

  “It’s Saeki… Takeo Saeki… Kayako’s husband.”

  The man’s voice was raspy and low; it was hard to pick out what he was saying.

  “Kobayashi Sensei, now … you’re in my house, right… ? Have you met Kayako yet… ? She’s in the attic on the second floor …

  If you haven’t met her yet, you should really go see her. She loved you, you know, so much that she couldn’t stand it… “

  The man’s voice was broken, but from what he said, Kobayashi knew that this man had killed Kayako. He remembered his old college classmate, who was lying dead upstairs, her eyes wide open.

  Kobayashi could not find the words to reply to the man. His heart merely pounded wildly in his chest.

  “Kobayashi Sensei… you can have Toshio back now,” the man said.

  “Wha … what the hell are you talking about?” Kobayashi finally replied.

  “You heard me right. Toshio’s your kid, isn’t he … ? I’ve raised him for you until now … It’s about time we traded places.”

  “Raised him for me … what do you mean trade places?” Kobayashi was completely confused. The dead face of Kayako Kawamata, in the attic with her eyes open, kept swirling through his mind.

  The man on the other end of the phone didn’t answer him. He merely chuckled in that low voice of his.

  “Oh, yes … Kobayashi Sensei… there’s been a birth.”

  “A birth? What the hell are you talking about,” Kobayashi asked, reflexively. In that very instant, the realization that this phone call was com
ing from his own home hit him like a ton of bricks.

  Yes, his cell phone had clearly rung with the melody of Last Christmas, Manami’s favorite song. If that was true … if that was true, then this man was now in the Kobayashi love nest, apartment 205! This man claiming to be Kayako Kawamata’s-husband was now gripping that white phone that Manami was always using.

  “Your baby, Kobayashi Sensei.. . the baby of you and that beautiful wife of yours … uh, it doesn’t have a penis … this was a girl …

  I envy you, Kobayashi Sensei. I wanted to have a daughter, you know …”

  Saying this, the man laughed shrilly. He kept on laughing, laughing, like an insane man.

  Kobayashi’s strength drained from his body. His vision went black and his knees folded under him as he collapsed on the spot.

  He didn’t know why. He had no idea why, but Kayako Saeki’s husband had killed his wife Manami and their unborn baby still in her belly. Their future, which had been laid out before them like a road, had been taken brutally away in a single instant.

  … I’ll never see Manami again … I’ll never hear her voice, see her smile, hug her slim body … I’ll never see our daughter’s face either …

  Kobayashi slumped against the wall of the entrance, staring off into space. He had no sense of reality, as if he was in a dream.

  Why me? I haven’t done anything wrong … why me … 1 It’s a dream, it’s got to be a dream . . . Nothing this absurd could actually happen . . . Nothing this insane is allowed to happen …

  He had no idea how much time had passed. It could have been thirty seconds, or it could have been five minutes. Or, it could have been much, much longer. Kobayashi saw the six-year-old boy standing next to him pick up the cell phone that Kobayashi had dropped on the floor. The phone was not connected, but the boy put it to his ear, and spoke.

  “Hello, Mommy … are you coming here … ? Yeah … yeah … got it.”

  Just then—Kobayashi heard a THUD from the second floor, as if something heavy had fallen onto the floor.

  Reflexively, he looked up. Coming.

  Something is coming.

  From the top of the darkened stairwell, SHHH SHHH SHHH, SHHH SHHH SHHH, a sound like someone was dragging wet plastic on the floor. SHHH, SHHH, SHHH.

  Coming? What the hell is coming?

  Kobayashi did not have the strength to stand. Still slumped on the floor, he looked up the stairs. The stairwell was bent at ninety degrees in the middle, with a wide landing at the bend. He could not see above the landing. But, he felt that some creature with slimy skin—like a giant salamander or even a humongous slug—was crawling its way down the stairs.

  SHHH SHHH SHHH. .. SHHH SHHH SHHH. .. SHHH SHHH SHHH . .. SHHH SHHH SHHH … It was not a hallucination, and he definitely was not hearing things.

  Kobayashi kept staring up the stairs … and then … he saw. He saw something completely incomprehensible crawling down the stairs.

  SHHH SHHH SHHH.

  From the shadow of the stairwell, it appeared. A huge, red slug. Yes, a gigantic slug. But—but the slug had a woman’s head! A woman’s head with long hair, sticky with blood. It had a human head!

  It was crawling, like a caterpillar, down the stairs, its bloody head first, dragging its body wrapped in clear plastic behind it. Human? No, it definitely did not look human. The skin on its forehead was split vertically, its huge bloodshot eyes open wide, its long, black hair wrapped around its neck and body, its swollen lips, its jaw dripping with blood … no, this was no human. This was a monster.

  Its body shiny with blood and wrapped in clear plastic, it opened its mouth halfway, dribbling fresh blood and emitted a croaking sound from the back o{ its throat.

 

  Emitting this horrific croaking sound, it slowly, but surely, crawled its way down the stairs.

  “Waaahh,” Kobayashi screamed a wordless scream. Still sitting on the floor, he frantically scrambled backward.

 

  The red, red blood that flowed down the stairs, trickled very close to Kobayashi. Its slender, white, blood-streaked hands reached straight out, toward Kobayashi. Its lips, swollen as if having been struck repeatedly, were moving as if it were trying to say something. More blood flowed unchecked from its mouth.

  “Ah, ah,” Kobayashi groaned while still sliding backward. That’s when he noticed, its mouth was forming the words,

  Kobayashi-kun. Yes, that’s definitely what it said.

  “Wah, stay away … stay away!”

 

  It> finally at the bottom of the stairs now, reached its hand out, making contact with Kobayashi’s foot.

  “Stop it! Stay away!”

 

  Still lying on the floor, it twisted its neck like a snake and looked at Kobayashi, with eyes open in an expression that looked almost like a plea for help.

  “I don’t know you,” Kobayashi screamed in a panic, kicking at its hand. “I don’t know anything about you!”

  In that very instant, its bloodied face changed. Yes, it changed from a pleading, pitiful face … to one filled with such sadness it looked on the verge of tears … to that of a demon filled with hatred and rage.

 

  He didn’t hear its voice, oi course. But Kobayashi clearly under-stood its silent intent. At the same time, he resigned himself to his destiny, from which he knew there was no escape.

  Takeo

  Almost like a soccer goalie about to throw the ball back into play, Takeo Saeki lifted the bloody fetus high over his head with both hands. With all his might, he slammed it down beside the dead body of Manami Kobayashi.

  There was a dull popping sound, and the bloody fetus bounced off the bloody straw tatami mats on the floor like an airless soccer ball might. It rolled several times, leaving new blood on the floor, before finally coming to a stop.

  “Take that,” Takeo spat, as he wiped his sticky hands on the seat of his trousers. Turning on his heels, he headed to the door.

  He still couldn’t forgive Kayako, who had betrayed him. However, after killing her lover’s wife and pulling her unborn child from her belly, his rage toward Kobayashi subsided ever so slightly.

  “Serves you right… take that, you son of a bitch!”

  Stepping over the mess he made, he headed for the door, through the kitchen. Now it was Kobayashi’s turn.

  It was then, that he felt a terrible pain, beginning in the middle of his back and coming through his stomach.

  “Aagh,” he groaned, doubling over with the pain. He saw the point of a blade sticking out of his gut. In an instant, his shirt was soaked, blood dripping into a fresh puddle on the floor.

  Reflexively he turned around.

  There, in front of his very eyes, stood his wife Kayako, covered with her own blood.

  “Kayako … what are you … doing here?”

  He felt around to his back. There, the knife that he’d left stuck in the body of Manami Kobayashi was deeply imbedded in his own body.

  His body felt weak from the rapid loss of blood, and he fell to his knees. He slowly collapsed where he kneeled.

  “Why … are you here … how?”

  Blood welled up in the back of his throat and he could say nothing more. He felt his life seeping out of his body with his blood.

  Out of the corner of his rapidly narrowing vision, Takeo saw his dead wife Kayako, smiling. And, that was the last thing Takeo Saeki ever saw.

  The next day, Kobayashi’s coworker, worried because his colleague did not show up for work, went to Kobayashi’s apartment complex. He found the door of apartment 205 locked.

  Kobayashi’s colleague rang the doorbell several times, but there was no answer. Feeling uneasy, the colleague found the superintendent of the building, who brought his key to the apartment, and unlocked the door. But, when they got the do
or open, they found the door chain secured in place.

  The door chain cannot be locked from the outside. So, someone had to be in the room. But, no matter how many times they called out, there was no answer. And there was that raw, bloody smell coming from the open door.

  Kobayashi’s coworker and the superintendent called the police. When the police arrived, they cut the chain and entered the apartment. They were shocked by the unbelievable sight before their eyes. On the floor, they saw the body of a woman with her stomach slit open, a man lying next to her with a knife stuck in his back, and the corpse of the woman’s unborn fetus on the floor.

  The woman was Mrs. Manami Kobayashi. The detectives on the scene had hypothesized that the man had killed her, and then cut her fetus out of her body. But, they could not figure out who had killed the man.

  All of the windows were locked from the inside. The door was not only locked, but chained as well. In other words, the apartment was completely shut. From the scene in the apartment, they ruled out the possibility that Manami, after being cut open, had chased down and stabbed her attacker, but there was little evidence to support this theory. On top of that, the prints on the knife were not those of Manami Kobayashi.

  In time, the dead man was positively identified as Takeo Saeki, a thirty-four-year-old illustrator who lived in a house about fifteen minutes on foot from Kobayashi’s apartment. An officer was immediately sent to the Saeki home. He found the body of Shunsuke Kobayashi, a local school teacher, at the entrance, and the body of Kayako Saeki in the attic.

  The cause of death of Kayako Saeki was determined to be shock due to an excessive loss of blood. There were not only dozens-of cuts on her body, but also dozens of blunt-force trauma injuries as well. Her left leg and right arm were broken. The floor of the second story bedroom, where the murder was believed to have taken place, was caked in dried blood.

  However, the cause o( death of Kobayashi remained undetermined. They could find nothing on or in his body that would have caused him to die.

  “I’ve never seen a body like this,” the doctor who performed the autopsy said, shaking his head in puzzlement. “I have no idea how this man died.”

  Other things about the deaths defied rational explanation. One of them was the child. Takeo Saeki and his wife had a six-year-old son named Toshio, who was Kobayashi’s student in school. He was nowhere to be found. They searched the entire house, including the attic where Kayako’s body was found, but no matter how hard they searched, they could not find him.