Awaken from a Dream Read online

  Yuma put her head in her hands and said, “No more, no more…”

  But then, forcing her arms to move again, she began crawling to the elevator.

  With only the use of his left arm and right leg, the man emerged into the hallway and came after her. Reaching the elevator, Yuma stretched out her arm to press the call button. But the man was already upon her. His hand closed around her calf.

  “I’ve caught you, Yuma,” he said. He clamped his fingers down hard, and the pressure rekindled the pain from the wounds on her feet. “Even if you kill me, I’m never letting go.”

  His grimy fingernails dug into her skin.

  Yuma gave up on the elevator. She turned her body toward the emergency stairway. With the man’s fingers digging into her, it would take an extreme measure to free herself of his grasp.

  Then an extreme measure is what I’ll take.

  She threw herself rolling down the stairs. The sudden force caused the man to lose his grip. His nails tore off little strips of flesh from her calf, but at least she was free.

  Yuma tumbled down to the landing where the staircase doubled back, halfway between stories. Her head slammed against the concrete, but she ignored the pain as she turned herself to roll down to the next floor. Once she made it there, she’d call for help as loud as she could. Maybe then she could be set free from this hell.

  But cold, merciless reality came to shatter such hopes. When she looked down the stairs, she saw the fire door was shut, sealing any hope of escaping that way behind it. Faced with this dead end, she looked up the stairs from where she’d come. The man was looking back down at her.

  “Yuma,” he shouted. “I’m coming!”

  “You’re what?” she shouted reflexively in confusion.

  The next moment, he was sailing through the air like a pro wrestler diving from the top rope. If he landed on her with his full weight, he might crush her to death.

  Pushing with her head, she arched her neck and lifted her shoulders from the ground. She rolled to the side.

  His soft landing taken from him, the man slammed into the concrete with a loud crunching sound and crumpled into a heap.

  But he was still breathing, moaning in pain. He started to rise, shaking. He was still alive.

  Yuma looked at her hands. There, forgotten but still held in her right hand, was the box cutter.

  She looked to the man’s face. Blood streamed down his forehead. Pain had twisted his countenance into a grimace. His eyes were teary, pleading her for help.

  As she watched this man who had taken so much from her, and caused her so much pain, she was overcome with a feeling that she could not define.

  “Goodbye,” she said. “We’ll never meet again.”

  She pushed the box cutter deep into his right eye.

  She tumbled in through the open door of her apartment and immediately felt ill. Stomach juices began pushing their way up, bringing their acidic taste to the back of her mouth. The cuts on the bottoms of her feet hurt even more than they had before. She brought her hand to her head, and everywhere she touched, her fingers were met by cutting pain. Scratches and scrapes covered her arms and legs. Her blouse was open, and her bra was exposed.

  Looking back on it, she’d been through an incredible fight.

  Dragging her legs behind her, she crawled into her living room. She began to weep.

  I’m safe, she thought. As she crawled she let herself cry. After some time, she looked up bleary-eyed and thought, My manager—I need to call him.

  Rather than dial 110—the emergency number for the police—her first thought was of calling her manager.

  With great effort, she sat up and stretched out her arm toward the telephone in front of her. The fight had left her weak, and she struggled to reach it. Finally, just as her fingertips landed on the receiver, she felt a strange pressure on her leg.

  Something sticky pressed down on her skin. She turned her head to look over her shoulder. What she saw was totally red.

  What is that? She tilted her head in confusion. Her mind couldn’t unpack what her eyes were seeing. It looked like some red thing reaching out a tentacle to grab her leg.

  No, not a tentacle. It was an arm. A red-painted human arm.

  It had to be…

  Yuma thought for a moment. Then the answer came to her. When it did, she laughed. But as she laughed, her face gradually froze.

  “No! No more!” she cried in a deep, shoulder-heaving scream.

  Answering her scream, the red thing whispered, “Yuma…”

  There was no denying it anymore. It was the man. It was the man she’d thought dead.

  She didn’t want to believe it. She didn’t want to, but it was him. As proof, the box cutter she’d stabbed into his eye was still there, standing straight out from the socket.

  The now one-eyed man muttered under his breath as he pulled her ankle toward him. Flailing with her entire body, she managed to shake free from his grasp. She crawled away from him, her arms bent like a cricket’s.

  She couldn’t make her legs push. She could hardly move her body at all. But she kept pushing herself ever forward, propelled by terror. The man crawled after her, much in the same way, using his arm alone.

  “Yuma, it’s me,” came the hoarse voice from behind. “It’s me…”

  Hearing him speak, she felt her body begin to give up what little strength it had left.

  “Please Yuma, don’t go. Wait for me. I want to die with you. We’ll go to heaven together.”

  Yuma summoned every last shred of willpower she had and used it to keep fleeing from the voice.

  But even that willpower was beginning to weaken.

  What good will running do? Where can I go?

  Ahead of her was a sliding glass door. On the other side, a balcony. Beyond that, only death. Flinging herself over that railing would bring her certain death.

  Acting only on unconscious instinct, Yuma slid open the glass door and exited onto the balcony. There, she put her hands on the railing and turned herself around to face her enemy.

  The man was only a few meters away.

  Crawling on his stomach, he raised his head like a snake to look at her. He kept on staring, with the box cutter protruding from his eye and his face painted red with blood. His mouth dropped open, and he gave her a broad, happy smile.

  “Yuma, we’re going to die together. Not alone. That makes me so happy, Yuma.” He stuck out a purple-tinged tongue and licked the blood from around his lips. “Tell me, how would you like to die? You probably want it painless, I bet.”

  He slithered one step forward and asked, “How does strangling sound?” Another slithering step. “We could both jump off the balcony.” Another step.

  She shook her head, No, no. She didn’t want to die. More than that, she didn’t want to be killed by this man. Trying to put what distance she could between herself and him, she kept her back against the railing and sidled to the right.

  The man’s head turned, locked on to her, as he pulled himself forward with his arm. Backed into the corner of the balcony, Yuma now truly had nowhere left to go.

  The man stared at her, savoring the moment. “You really are pretty, Yuma. You’re so cute when you’re scared. You see now—you have nowhere left to run.”

  He was now two meters away.

  “You know, now that I think about it,” he said, “I think I’d rather kill you with the box cutter, after all. It will hurt some, but you’ll just have to endure it.” He put his hand to the box cutter embedded in his eye. “Besides, I’ve endured so much pain for you already.”

  He pulled out the knife. With a messy, wet sound, a jelly-like object came out with the blade. Countless thin tendrils hung down from it.

  It was his eyeball.

  Fresh blood gushed out from the empty cavern of his eye socket.

  “It hurts, Yuma. Oh, my eye really hurts.” He shook his head again and again. Then he adjusted his grip on the box cutter. “But this pain doesn’t ev
en compare to how much it hurt when I learned you were seeing another man.”

  As if with the last of his strength, the man sat up, and then stood. Severed Achilles tendon or not, he stood.

  “Yuma, it won’t be much longer now. First, I’m going to stab this into your eye. And then your throat. And finally, your heart.”

  The man aimed the tip of the box cutter at Yuma and rushed toward her.

  With her back to the railing, Yuma had nowhere left to run. One word filled her thoughts. Death.

  Her arms and legs trembled. She wet herself. As if her body had crumbled beneath her waist, she slumped to the floor. Her rear landed first, followed by her hands.

  What? Her hand had landed on something hard. She grabbed it instinctively, recognizing the feel of the object immediately. My…microphone. She had used this microphone to practice her final move for “Lariat of Love.”

  Her thoughts flooded with memories of the long hours spent practicing in her apartment.

  It was so tough. I worked so hard to learn that. That’s why… that’s why…

  She looked up. The man’s deep red face was before her eyes. The box cutter was almost upon her. Only the shortest of distances stood between her and death. She had no more time.

  “I’ll give you your wish!” she shouted.

  For a moment, the man hesitated.

  “I’ll sing for you,” Yuma said. “I’ll sing only for you.” Her hand tightened around the mic. The lyrics replayed in her head:

  I’ll snare you with my burning love.

  Oh, my lariat of love.

  She threw the microphone.

  At nearly the same time, the man swung the box cutter.

  Cable in tow, the microphone brushed past the knife and went winding around and around the man’s neck.

  Yuma twisted her body to the side, avoiding the descending blade and then yanked on the cable, putting all her weight behind it.

  The cable went taut, and the sound of snapping neck bones rang out flatly. The man let out one last grunt before collapsing on the spot. For a second, his body rattled violently. And then he was still. His face puffed out like that of a drowned corpse, and a purple hue began to show through his dark skin.

  I did it!

  Yuma had won. She had defeated the monster. As her consciousness finally began to succumb to exhaustion, she knew she had won.

  On the verge of passing out, she began reeling the microphone in by its cable. The mic slowly unwrapped from the man’s neck and returned to her. By the time she had it tightly in her grasp, she was on the verge of losing consciousness.

  She held the microphone like a pistol and pointed it at the fallen man. In the last moment before passing out, a voice shouted inside her, victorious.

  Bang!

  STORY 3

  Even When I Embrace You

  The rain fell without end—not just any rain, but a gloomy downpour, tinged with acidity. Moist air seeped in through the thin wooden walls of the man’s room. As it settled over his skin, he felt as if the wetness would rot him to his core.

  I can’t take this any longer, the man thought sourly, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a kitchen rag. He set the rag down on the table in front of him, and then leaned down and pulled out a cardboard box sitting on the floor underneath.

  The box was stuffed with large wads of grimy cloth—former bedsheets, possibly. The man pushed aside the bunched-up fabric and dug out an object that just about filled his arms. He looked at the object for a moment, lifted it up to his face, then slipped it over his head.

  The pungent odor of mildew struck his nostrils. The inside of the thing was so oppressively stifling that he nearly choked. The musty, stale air mingled with his exhaled carbon dioxide and, with nowhere else to go, lingered in a cloud around his face. The only ventilation came through a small rectangular opening, barely the size of his closed lips, located partway between his eyes and his nose. The opening also served as his only window to see out from within. In truth, the slit so severely restricted his field of view that he may as well have been blind. As long as the object was over his head, moving and acting freely would only be possible with great difficulty.

  He kept the thing on for a while as he stood in place, muttering, “I need to get used to wearing this, as if it were a part of my own body. But there isn’t time. There just isn’t time. I have to do something. I have to…”

  With hesitant steps, he staggered his way over to the wall and stood in front of his calendar.

  “Damn it!” The man removed the object from his head. Without thinking, he threw it with both hands against the floor. It bounced a few times and rolled to a wobbling stop.

  The man’s face was drenched with sweat, and he took in deep, shoulder-heaving breaths. His dead eyes stared at the calendar with such intensity that he could have bored a hole into it.

  A large X had been marked over the square for the twenty-sixth of September.

  “Only one week left,” he said. “I’m nearly out of time.” His voice rose as he repeated, “I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough time!”

  Enough time for what?

  His expression twisted into something sinister. His lips were taut and curled, trembling. His eyes, unfocused, stared off into nowhere.

  The man balled his fists. He squeezed them tight and then tighter still, his joints creaking. Blood began to seep between his fingers as his nails dug into flesh. He didn’t know what it was that hastened him with such urgency. All he knew was that he felt a deep-set irritation, clawing at him from within.

  He opened his bloody fists and rubbed them across his face, painting it in deep red. For a moment, he seemed to be smiling. Then a sorrowful wail escaped his throat. His voice was shrill, like some strange bird’s call. It sliced through the stagnant air, pierced the thin walls, and melded into the expanse of black, low-hanging storm clouds.

  I’m happy, right? Yukiko thought. I’m supposed to be happy.

  She picked up the weekly men’s magazine in front of her. The periodical led with pin-up pages featuring Yukiko herself, wearing a natural, no-makeup look with just a subtle hint of lipstick. Behind her was a quiet, wintry outdoor landscape, snow falling all around.

  The scene was appropriate, and not just because of her given name, which had the word “snow” in it. The caption leading her featured section read, “In this winter for idols”—which referred to the slump in popularity pop idols were experiencing—“a single flower blooms from the snow.”

  Indeed, Tsukioka Yukiko was a traditional kind of pop idol rarely seen in recent times.

  How could I not be happy to receive so much attention so quickly after my debut?

  Yukiko had never aspired to become an idol singer. She’d always had an interest in becoming an entertainer, but being an idol was never her one and only dream. When she graduated from high school, she had found herself without direction. She was friends with a model, and on a whim, she joined the same modeling agency that represented her friend. Yukiko viewed it as little more than just a part-time job to get her by until something else came along.

  That wasn’t to say she did it with no reason whatsoever. Modeling offered substantially better pay than waitressing at some family restaurant or café, and she’d always liked the idea of being famous, even if the desire had never defined her. It was with that level of thought—and a few small pushes from her friend—that Yukiko entered the modeling world.

  Yukiko was not particularly glamorous, but her face had a traditional beauty, and gigs came in at a fairly brisk pace. After a little while, the agency’s owner asked her if she wanted to give Tokyo a try. Apparently one of his business acquaintances at a talent agency there had expressed interest in her. He wanted to represent her, cultivate her career.

  Yukiko took up the offer without hesitation.

  For the first six months in Tokyo, she lived under her new boss’s roof and spent all day, every day, in intense lessons. She threw herself into her vocal t
raining and jazz dance lessons, even if the exact nature and direction of her debut remained unclear.

  She still hadn’t figured out what she wanted to be, but from the content of her studies, she began to suspect her new boss intended for her to become a singer. When he started bringing songwriter-types to observe her vocal lessons, Yukiko was sure of it.

  Even now, she could still remember being mystified by her boss’s choice, as she knew she lacked vocal talent. Nevertheless, she ended up debuting as a pop idol of the traditional, innocent style that didn’t demand that much singing ability. That too felt like a mismatch to her, as she didn’t consider herself innocent, either.

  Meanwhile, the media was saying that pop idols were in their winter. Privately, Yukiko questioned the sense in having her debut as an idol just as they were going out of fashion—but she kept such complaints to herself. She wanted to be in entertainment, and she was. If her manager decided she would be an innocent idol, then that was the path she would follow.

  And yet her doubts continued. She was too old to be an idol. Her personality was demure and old-fashioned, whereas the younger girls were more lively and dynamic. She had been certain no one would buy her music.

  But, contrary to her expectations, she found an audience.

  Her debut single, “Flower in the Snow,” was a smash hit, selling tens of thousands of CDs. After an appearance in a soft drink commercial, her name was on everybody’s lips. (Her only line, spoken softly: “Refreshingly pure.”) Within six months of her debut, she had established herself as one of the top idol singers.

  Her outmoded style meant she had no direct rivals worth mentioning, and perhaps being out of step with the trends served to make people take notice of her rather than ignore another face in the crowd. Whatever the causes may have been, in a remarkably short time, Tsukioka Yukiko succeeded in leaving her own mark on the music industry.

  Debuting as an idol was itself an accomplishment, and in the entertainment world, where many careers were over before they even began—buds sprouting, never to blossom—Yukiko had secured real popularity and fame. It should have been enough to make her more than happy.