Awaken from a Dream

  STORY 1

  Wake Me from this Dream

  A pulsing, numbing pain ran from the deepest folds of Toshihiko’s brain into the tangled tendrils of his nervous system. On the back of his retinas, dull reds and blues pulsed and flashed, their faded hues like washed-out dollops of distempered paint. A strange sound filled his ears, like the grinding of unoiled gears.

  Toshihiko awoke.

  Fat beads of sweat clung to his forehead. They felt cold on his skin.

  Sitting up on his thin, single-layer futon, he quickly shook his head a few times before taking in a deep breath.

  He felt a pain in his chest.

  Lowering his head, he pressed his fingers against the back of his neck and was met with a sharp jolt of displeasure.

  He felt like he’d just had a bad dream. He couldn’t remember what it was, but somehow, he was sure it hadn’t been pleasant. He thought he remembered there being a woman with plastered-on makeup; her bright red lips had twisted into a crumpled smile as she let out a shrill squeal of a laugh.

  His forehead was sticky with sweat. His heart was beating fast.

  Beside his bed stood a table whose plywood veneer had begun flaking at the edges. On the table was a twelve-inch tube TV, left on. The screen glowed in monochrome static, the snow-like pattern punctuated by pulsing flashes in the signal, each flash accompanied by an abrasive noise like a cicada’s call.

  When did I fall asleep? Toshihiko wondered.

  Irritated, he reached out to switch off the source of his nightmare (or at least, what he thought had been the likely source).

  When he flicked the TV switch, the room went suddenly dark. He looked to his alarm clock. A little past six in the morning.

  Pressing the thumb and forefinger of each hand against his throbbing temples, Toshihiko slowly got to his feet. He went over to his window and threw open the faded curtains.

  Early morning sunlight filtered through the cracked, frosted window and filled his cramped four-and-a-half tatami mat room. But to the man newly awakened from a nightmare, even that gentle light felt sharp enough to slice into his flesh.

  It stung his eyes.

  As if chased away by the sun, Toshihiko retreated into the darker, malodorous kitchen. A pile of old dishes had amassed in the sink. Among them were rice bowls with dried-on grains, plastic spoons stained yellowish brown from instant curry, and glass cups half filled with cola long since gone flat.

  Toshihiko pushed the dirty dishes to one side of the sink and turned on the tap. When the water gushed out, it smelled of chlorine. He cupped his hands and delivered a drink to his mouth.

  Clouded with impurities, the water’s unpleasant taste struck the back of his throat. With an equally unpleasant sound, Toshihiko spat the water back out.

  He felt nauseous. Fighting the sensation, he took in another mouthful of water, then spat it out again, repeating the process two more times.

  Beside the sink sat a small bar of soap, cracked and dried out, with spots of mold growing on its surface. Toshihiko picked up the soap and rubbed it back and forth between his hands. Hardly any bubbles formed, but he used it to wash his face anyway.

  He let out a deep sigh.

  He felt the slightest bit better now.

  Next to the sink was a single gas burner—lonesome, rusted, cheap. Toshihiko filled a pockmarked aluminum kettle with tap water and placed it on the cooktop.

  He pressed the gas burner’s ignition switch. No flame appeared. Grease and dust had gummed up the auto-ignition mechanism, leaving Toshihiko no choice but to use a 100-yen lighter instead. He nearly burned his fingertips in the process, but at least he got the burner lit.

  He reached into an adjacent cabinet with a fallen-off door and retrieved a jar of faintly moist instant coffee and a cup with a chipped rim and a panda on it. A crack ran right down the panda’s face. He absentmindedly tapped his fingers on the cup’s handle while he waited for the water to boil.

  As Toshihiko stared at the kettle’s spout, which contained a few extra bends beyond the ones it came with, he found himself suddenly overcome with sadness. Tears began to well in his eyes.

  Next year, I’ll be thirty, he thought. I can’t believe it.

  He felt keenly aware of the loneliness that came with solitary living. It crawled stickily up his back like a slime-coated slug.

  Eight years had already passed since he dropped out of college.

  Time has gone so fast.

  If he had graduated like he was supposed to, found a career like he was supposed to, he would probably have been promoted to section chief or some other managerial role by now. At the very least, society would have recognized him as a respectable, working adult.

  He could have owned his own home, albeit a modest one, in which he could have lived happily with a wife and child.

  When he pictured it all, a masochistic smile came to his face.

  Toshihiko was lazy by birth. He was under no illusions—attempting to delude himself otherwise would have been far too much work. When he was still in college, he never went to his classes. Nor did he go out with any girls. He was the kind of person who avoided interacting with other people.

  It wasn’t that he lacked that common, human desire to go out and have drinks with friends, go on dates with women, and share in other such social experiences. If anything, he desired them even more than the typical person. But Toshihiko was excessively timid and shy to a fault. He found himself unable to approach members of the same sex, let alone women.

  He was a pitiful man.

  Not only was he timid and shy, he was unkempt, unclean, and indolent.

  He wasn’t simply lazy; he took laziness to the extreme.

  Needless to say, he truly loathed having to work.

  The entire history of his work experience could be summed up by day-wage part-time jobs taken up only by necessity whenever his funds ran dry—jobs he dropped as soon as possible. Consequently, his life was one of constant and extreme poverty.

  Most of his meals came ready-made in packets. His biggest luxury was the one beef-and-rice bowl he allowed himself per month.

  After all other expenses were accounted for, he had hardly any money left over to spend on clothing, and the clothes he wore showed it.

  Had he some fashion sense, he might have been able to make it work, but he didn’t, not even a shred. When he chose to loiter around the neighborhood outside his shabby apartment, it was in a sweat-stained T-shirt and outmoded bell-bottom jeans.

  Take a moment to consider how cold the world would be to a man in his thirties, with no style, no money, no guts, no ambition, no friends, no hygiene, and a greater-than-average longing for the opposite sex.

  To make matters worse, Toshihiko was short. His face was, as a matter of course, ugly. His hair, matted with grease and sprinkled with dandruff, was dreadful. His angular, bony features resembled the leftover parts of an amberjack fish, already gutted and filleted, and his eyebrows were off-putting and scraggly like dried kombu flakes. Below his bulbous nose rested slug-like lips that carried a vaguely oily sheen. Meanwhile, his eyes—somehow only his eyes—were round and pleasant, even innocent, in a way.

  Each of these parts had been assembled into a countenance that was as clumsily put together as a face could be. If he were to work up the courage to approach anyone and offer them his diffident smile, that person—no matter how kind or compassionate—would likely turn tail and run.

  Of that, Toshihiko was all too aware, painfully so.

  The awareness shackled him, gradually drawing him ever deeper into the shell of his social phobia. He avoided social engagement, afraid he might offend anyone unfortunate enough to interact with him.

  Toshihiko put a scoop of the insta
nt coffee powder into his panda bear cup. Then he poured in the boiling water and swirled the contents. Wisps of steam ascended to his nose, but the stale coffee offered no aroma.

  As he sipped the coffee, devoid of any flavor but bitterness, Toshihiko returned to his four-and-a-half tatami mat living space.

  With the grunt of a man twice his age, he sat cross-legged on his futon mattress.

  He let out a short sigh.

  His mouth felt scratchy, but he didn’t think the bad coffee was to blame. A stabbing pain throbbed in his head, and he felt nauseous. He hadn’t felt right since he woke up. If anything, the nausea in his chest was gradually worsening, like some insect had eaten the upper half of his torso away.

  Toshihiko shook his head vigorously a few times, then downed the rest of his coffee in a single gulp.

  He coughed. Pain shot through his chest.

  This was starting to get troubling. Toshihiko held his hand against his chest and thought, I think I might be sick.

  A little over a dozen Betamax L-500 video cassette tapes stood in a row on Toshihiko’s table.

  These cassettes were his most prized treasure—his only treasure. By shaving away at his food budget and skipping a rent payment here and there, he had slowly but steadily built his collection.

  He had purchased a tape deck for 9,000 yen from a used electronics store in the Nihonbashi district. With its recording head, he etched his only fantasies onto the magnetic tapes.

  What he dreamed of were pop idol singers.

  When real life refused to fulfill what he lacked, he directed his longings toward the illusory images painted by the scan lines of the cathode ray tube.

  He checked idol singer magazines for upcoming TV appearances of his favorite performers and taped nearly every show.

  Unlike real people in the flesh, once recorded, the idols would never betray him. Recordings could be watched whenever he wanted to, for as long he wanted to. The idols never looked at him with the contempt normal women did, as if they had seen something dirty and repulsive.

  No, the idols always looked at him with a smile.

  To Toshihiko, starved of both emotional and physical love, the idols’ smiles seemed like those of angels.

  He inserted a cassette into the tape deck and turned on the TV. He pressed the play button, and warm hues filled the screen.

  Surrounded by colorful lights and a dazzlingly vibrant set, a slender young woman in a yellow dress kicked up legs so pale they might have been transparent. She sang passionately, a charming little song.

  I love, love, love, that bashful you.

  No matter how deep and strong my feelings

  You pretend not to notice.

  At the final chorus, the camera cut to a close up on the young singer’s face. She brushed her left hand through her hair, silky and a little short, and curled her cherry blossom lips in a coquettish smile.

  Her name was Asaka Ai. She had debuted with the song “Lemon Season” two years ago, and while she wasn’t among the biggest names, she still maintained a respectable amount of popularity.

  Though Toshihiko didn’t quite understand why, she was his favorite idol. Perhaps her inability to make it to the top resonated with his own life.

  But more than anything, Toshihiko admired how earnest she was. Ai was always kind and courteous to the TV show hosts and the other talent with whom she shared appearances, as well as to the behind-the-scenes staff—though the last part was just Toshihiko’s guess.

  He had watched his videotapes of her countless times. When a tape ended, he would rewind it and immediately watch it again from the beginning. For nearly every day in the past week, he’d done nothing but hole up in his small apartment watching his tapes of her again and again.

  His feelings toward Ai surpassed the boundaries of a simple fan. He wanted to talk to her, if only just once. He wanted to go on a date with her, if only just once. Here he was, nearly a thirty-year-old man, believing these fantasies with total sincerity. It wasn’t normal.

  It was clearly abnormal.

  He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to have his arms around her. And yes, he wanted to have sex with her.

  In the confines of his dingy apartment, his desires had escalated unchecked.

  He thought about what he could do about it all.

  He considered researching her schedule to find a time and a place where he could meet her in person. He wanted to talk to her, face-to-face, and pour out all his feelings. He wanted her to understand the passion he carried for her.

  He wanted Ai to see him as a real person.

  But there was a problem.

  He didn’t want Asaka Ai to see his ugly face—there was no way he could allow that. His atypical, even zombie-like features were not fit to be seen by her.

  He wanted to meet her. He wanted it so badly he felt like he might die.

  But he couldn’t. With his face and the life he led, he could never meet her.

  Nevertheless, his heart ached in yearning.

  He hugged his arms around the TV, where Asaka Ai remained on the screen, and his inner voice cried out from deep within.

  Ai... Ai-chan...

  He squeezed his arms tight. The TV’s plastic shell creaked under the pressure. Tears trickled down from Toshihiko’s eyes.

  He had rejected the world and its realities, and for that, his love for Ai had grown all the deeper, all the more severe. Over time, his thoughts had reached a terrible conclusion.

  I will kill Ai, and myself.

  It was no joke or simple passing thought. He was seriously considering acting on the idea.

  His gaze went to the kitchen and to the sliding-door cabinet beneath the sink, where he kept his kitchen knife. It was brand new, purchased recently.

  He looked again at Asaka Ai on his TV screen and then back to the cabinet.

  His lips twisted into a smile.

  For the past few days, Toshihiko hadn’t set foot outside his apartment. He had eaten hardly anything. He was hungry but felt no desire to eat. Drinking only his bitter coffee, he sat in his gloomy room, watching his videos of Ai. He’d watched them from morning until night.

  Both mentally and physically, Toshihiko was strained to his limits. He couldn’t stop crying. He cried in loud, heaving sobs. Atop his flimsy futon—which he never bothered to fold and store away—and amid the hanging, raw stench of old sweat and dried semen, the nearly thirty-year-old man cried and wailed the name of a girl around half his age whom he’d never even met. He cried, and he cried, and he cried.

  Thud.

  The strange sound had come from his cracked, frosted window.

  Toshihiko went over to it and threw open the curtains. In the span of a moment, a shape passed across the glass, and then it was gone. He thought it looked like a stooped-over person, but it might have just been a trick of his imagination.

  Toshihiko became aware of a dull, lasting pain in the left side of his chest, just above his heart. He moved his hand up and pressed down where it hurt.

  His flesh squished under his hand.

  The shock registered not in his mind but as a physical, electric force that shot through his body. For a moment, his thoughts went blank. Then, hesitantly, he felt at his chest again.

  His hand felt a small, plump softness.

  His face went pale with stunned confusion.

  He probed the protrusion with his fingers. As he squeezed at the softness, he wondered, Am I sick?

  His grimy, flabby chest felt as if it had taken on the gentle firmness of a woman’s breast.

  He opened the top of his pajama shirt to look inside, and there it was. A breast. Two of them, even. He’d never seen a woman’s breasts in real life before.

  Two tiny, pink points stood in areolas wrinkled by emotional distress. His stale, sweaty odor had been replaced with a fresh, feminine scent not unlike a baby’s milky smell. His skin wasn’t the familiar oily yet dried out and cracked mess he was used to seeing, but was instead smooth, like moistened porce
lain.

  Toshihiko couldn’t believe it was real. He thought he might still be caught in that earlier nightmare. The deep, throbbing pain persisted in his head.

  That’s what this is, he thought, taking great efforts to convince himself. This is a nightmare.

  His mental state had been pushed too far to accept it as real. He was far too fragile for such a leap.

  But reality was not to be denied as some dream. He had no choice but to accept the truth because it wasn’t just his chest.

  Appearing from the sleeves of his pajamas were a set of arms, and hands and fingers and palms, that were not as they had once been. His smooth skin was so pale it might have been transparent.

  He put his hands in his hair to see if it too had changed. What he found wasn’t his familiar mane, held stiff not by styling gel, but by accumulated oils. No—the hair he found was healthy, smooth, and flowing.

  He touched his face. Gone was his angular, bony structure. In its place were petite features, from his eyes, to his nose, his mouth, and his lips, which were as soft and supple as freshly picked cherries.

  Toshihiko ran to the kitchen. Somewhere on the windowsill above the sink, he had left a mirror. Impatiently, he picked it up. Its reflective mercury backing had begun to chip away.

  He looked at his face and his heart nearly leaped out of his mouth. He gulped reflexively.

  The face looking back at him had skin as pale as if it were dusted with flour. Its cheeks had a faint, healthy red tinge to them. Its eyes were bright and black. Its nose was dainty, and its lips were moistened. It was the face of an angel.

  It was the face of his beloved Asaka Ai.

  The resulting shock was tremendous. Toshihiko retained his thoughts and his personality, but his body had transformed—into the idol Asaka Ai.

  Unable to cope with the shock, he let out a crazed scream that resounded through the apartment, otherwise quiet in the early morning.

  The voice, too, was as pretty and clear as a ringing bell.

  An hour had passed.

  Toshihiko had finally calmed himself. He sat up on his futon and began turning an analytical eye toward the situation he now faced.