I thought back over the radio news I’d just heard. The announcer knew that I was in a taxi heading for central Tokyo. That meant someone must be following me. They must be watching my every move. I turned and looked through the rear window. The road was full of cars – it was impossible to know which of them was following us. Come to think of it, they all looked pretty suspicious now.
“I think someone’s following us,” I said to the cabbie. “Can you shake them off?”
“That’s a lot to ask, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so,” he said with a grimace. “Unless you know which car it is. Anyway, you’d have a job shaking anyone off in this traffic.”
“I think it’s that black Nissan. Look! It’s got a newspaper company flag on it!”
“Well, all right sir, if you insist. Though, personally, I just think you’re being paranoid, sir.”
“I’m perfectly sane,” I countered hastily. “Don’t go taking me to the madhouse, will you!”
The taxi meandered and roamed aimlessly for a while, as if driven by a sleepwalker, before finally arriving in Ginza 2nd Street.
“Well, I lost the black Nissan at least,” the cabbie said with a broad smile. “That must be worth something!”
I reluctantly added five hundred yen to the fare on the meter.
On entering the office of our client in Ginza 2nd Street, I was greeted with uncommon courtesy by a female receptionist whose face I recognized. She led me to a special reception lounge for particularly valued guests. Normally, I’d be called to the duty clerk’s desk, and would stand there talking while he remained seated.
I sat myself on a sofa in the spacious lounge and was fidgeting in some discomfort when, to my surprise, the Department Director walked in with his assistant. They both started greeting me with particular formality.
“Suzuki is always most glad of your kind assistance,” said the Department Director, bowing deeply. Suzuki was the duty clerk who usually saw me.
As I sat there bewildered, the Department Director and his assistant, far from discussing the business at hand, started to heap sycophantic praise on me. They admired my tie, flattered my dress sense, and even started extolling my good looks. In my embarrassment, I hurriedly handed over the documents I’d been given by the Chief Clerk, passed on his message and quickly took my leave.
As I left the building, I noticed the same taxi still waiting there by the pavement.
The young cabbie thrust his head through the side window. “Sir,” he called.
“Still here, are you?” I said. “Well, that’s perfect. Take me back to Shinjuku, will you.”
I was just settling into the rear seat when the cabbie thrust a five-hundred-yen note towards me. “You can have this back, sir,” he said. “You’ve got to be joking!”
“Is something the matter?”
“I switched the radio back on, didn’t I. And they were talking about you, weren’t they. They said you’d been carried off by a rogue taxi driver, who’d deliberately taken you out of your way and squeezed five hundred yen out of you for it! They even mentioned my name!”
Now I understood why I’d been treated so courteously at the client’s office.
“I told you, didn’t I? We were being followed!”
“Whatever. You can have your five hundred yen back.”
“Go on. You keep it.”
“No way! Have it back!”
“Well… All right. If that’s the way you feel. Anyway, will you take me to Shinjuku now?”
“How could I say no? Next thing they’d say I refused a fare!”
And with that he started off towards Shinjuku.
I was gradually realizing that the plot to drive me out of my mind was unimaginably massive in scale. Apart from anything else, my enemy appeared to have bought off the mass media. Who on earth could it be? And what was his motive? Why would anyone want to do something like this?
All I could do was to follow the flow for now. It would be virtually impossible to uncover the mastermind at the bottom of it. Even if I caught one of my pursuers, he would just be small fry. He wouldn’t know who the mastermind was. That was the big cheese – big enough to buy off the media, at least!
“I’m not trying to make excuses, sir,” the cabbie said suddenly. “But I did lose that black Nissan. I did, really.”
“I’m sure you did,” I replied. “But I reckon it’s not that simple anyway. They’re not just following me in a car. They’ve probably even bugged this taxi.”
I suddenly noticed a helicopter circling above us. It was flying at dangerously low altitude, almost skimming the tops of the buildings.
“I’m sure I saw that chopper on the way out, sir,” said the driver, squinting up at the sky. “Maybe they’re the ones that are following you.”
There was a thunderous crash, and a blood-coloured flash of light streaked across the sky. I looked up to see fireballs flying in all directions. The helicopter had crashed into the top floor of a multi-storey building. The pilot must have been paying too much attention to events on the ground and lost control.
“Serves him right! Heheheheheheheh!”
The cabbie laughed insanely as he sped away from the scene. He already had the look of a deranged man.
I knew I’d be in danger if I stayed in the taxi any longer. “Ah, I’ve just remembered something,” I said. “Could you let me off here.” Actually, I’d remembered there was a small psychiatric clinic nearby.
“Where are you going?” the cabbie asked.
“That’s my business,” I answered.
“Well, I’m going straight home to sleep,” he continued. He looked pale-faced as he took the fare from me. That decided it – he wasn’t one of them.
“Good idea,” I said as I stepped out into the unbearable heat.
I entered the clinic and sat in the waiting room for about twenty minutes. An apparently hysterical middle- aged woman was followed by an apparently epileptic young man. I was next. I went into the treatment room, where the doctor was looking at a television on a desk by the window. News of the helicopter crash was just coming through.
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Even the sky’s getting congested now,” the doctor muttered as he turned to face me. “And of course, there’ll be more patients as a result. But they won’t come for treatment until it’s too late, oh no. Another bad characteristic of people today.”
“Yes, you’re right,” I said with a nod of agreement. I didn’t want to seem pushy, but jumped straight in and started to explain my situation anyway. I was supposed to be at work, after all, and didn’t have much time. “They suddenly started talking about me on TV last night. And there were articles about me in this morning’s papers. They made an announcement about me at the station. I was even mentioned on the radio. At work, they’re all talking about me in whispers. I’m sure they’ve bugged my house and the taxis I travel in. In fact, I’m being followed. It’s a major operation. That helicopter on the news crashed while it was following me!”
The doctor stared at me with a pitiful expression as I continued my story. Finally, however, he made a gesture to signal that he could take no more. “Why didn’t you come to me sooner?” he moaned. “But no. You only come when your condition is already too serious! You give me no option but to admit you to hospital immediately – by force if necessary! For there’s no doubt about it at all. You are suffering from a persecution complex, a victim complex – in other words, total paranoid delusion. A classic case of schizophrenia. Luckily, there’s no loss of personality as yet. I’ll admit you to the university hospital right away. Leave it to me.”
“Wait a minute!” I said. “I was in a hurry, I didn’t explain myself well! I had a feeling you wouldn’t believe me. I’m not a good talker, I can’t express things logically. But everything I’ve just said, it’s nothing to do with any complex – it’s plain fact! Yet I’m just an ordinary office worker – certainly not famous enough to be followed by the media! No, however you look at it, these media people who are tailing me, reporting about me – yes, even someone as ordinary as me – they’re the ones who are insane! I just came here to ask your advice, you know, what you think I should do to cope with all this. You’ve written books about the pathological tendencies of society and the perversion of the media. You’ve talked about it on TV. That’s why I came here. I hoped you could tell me how to adapt to this abnormal environment without losing my sanity!”
