“Okay, okay,” Yoji said at last. “Hold on. I’m actually in Chofu now. I’ll come right over.”
Really?
“Really? Where are you?”
“I just said, I’m in Chofu.”
“But where in Chofu?”
“Right near your house.”
“Really? Why? Are you back at the playground?”
“No! Why would I be there? Anyway, hold on, I’ll be right over.”
“But I don’t understand. Where are you?”
“Like I said, I’m right nearby. I’ll be over in a minute.”
What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck? What was he doing in Chofu? Hadn’t he ever gone home? Why was he hanging around here?
“Yoji, are you out banging with the Armageddon boys?”
“Don’t be an idiot! I had something I had to do.”
What a relief. I didn’t want my Yoji mixed up with those Armageddon assholes.
“I’ll see you in a second,” he said.
“Yoji?”
“What?”
“Be careful.”
“Don’t worry, I will.”
“No, I mean it. It’s dangerous out there.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be right there.”
Okay! He was coming here. For me.
For this very selfish girl.
“Okay, I’ll be waiting.”
“Okay.”
“Hurry up.”
“Okay, okay.”
“And be careful.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Okay, I’ll be waiting.”
Then the line went dead.
Maybe he was a little pissed at me?
But why was he still hanging around here? Where had he been and what had he been doing for the last few hours?
I checked V of H again. There were more than five thousand posts to “Armageddon in Chofu.” As far as I could tell, thirty or so middle and high school kids were going at it—maybe a little halfheartedly by now—down by the Tama River. Some of them apparently had lights. Fight Club after dark. When the cops came, they doused the flashlights, moved to a new spot, and started fighting all over. I wondered whether they would start jumping in the river like they did during the last Armageddon. Or throwing each other in. They lost two kids that way last time. The bodies still hadn’t turned up.
As I sat there following all this in real time on the blog—or I suppose I should say, as I was sitting there with my head as empty as a bubble—it occurred to me that I should post something.
<Announcement from God. Aiko Katsura, who lives in Chofugaoka, in the city of Chofu, is the devil incarnate and a real toilet bowl. She’s outside somewhere near her house, so get out and find her! Rape her! Kill her!>
I watched as my post appeared there in the stream, somewhere after the Fight Club in the dark business. Watched as “Aiko Katsura”—that’s me!—was trailed by “devil incarnate” and “toilet bowl” and “Find her! Rape her! Kill her!” Why had I written that? I wasn’t even sure I was the one who had. I knew my fingers had tapped out the words, but I had the feeling it wasn’t really the “core” me moving them, not the me-within-me. But at the same time it did seem like the core me had done it, and the surface me simply hadn’t realized what the deeper me was doing.
Whatever. The other users seemed to ignore my announce-ment. New posts kept coming up one after the other, and mine moved down the list, into the past. Maybe there was a mutual understanding, some natural code of ethics for this unethical bulletin board, that dictated that people ignore posts like mine, ones probably motivated by some sort of personal grudge rather than the desire to get the Round-and-Round. These guys may have been complete idiots, but they had some sense of decency, and the thing they hated most was anyone trying to manipulate them online.
But what kind of trouble had I been trying to stir up?
If Yoji was headed this way, why would I want to make sure the shit hit the fan just as he got here? Was I that desperate to see him? To turn him into a Yoji who had braved a town full of hoodlums to get to me? Was I upping the ante because I needed him to be an even bigger hero in my eyes?
Then I guess that made me the enemy of the heroes, a kind of antihero. I guess that made me the villain. And Yoji’s enemy.
I guess that made me some kind of devil. I’m not sure, but I guess that post I wrote was the truth.
I really was a demon, and something of a toilet bowl.
Really, now that you mention it, I am a toilet bowl. A toilet bowl who had meaningless sex with Sano.
Shit!
No, no. I’m not a toilet bowl. Or a devil. No, I was pretty sure I had only done it with Sano because I loved Yoji, and that I was still punishing myself as a result. That’s why I had called myself a devil and a toilet bowl on V of H. And pretending to be the voice of God was just another way of punishing myself.
But what if somebody saw that post and really did come after me? Maybe I had waded into deep shit. Was somebody really going to come after me, rape me, kill me?
And if they did, would that be a way of paying for what I’d done, making me clean again?
But how would that work? How would being beaten, raped, and killed make me pure again? Wasn’t it just the opposite? Wouldn’t that make me even dirtier? Make me even shittier? What the fuck was I thinking? What kind of dumbshit am I?
But just as I was going through all this again, my phone rang. Yoji? No. It was Kan. Fuck! Kan. Why was she calling me? I screwed up my courage and took the call.
“Hello?” “Aiko? It’s me, Kan.” “What do you want?” “Can you talk?” “Can I talk?” “Where are you?” “I’m home. Why do you ask?” I was suddenly on my guard. She probably wanted to get me outside and have another crack at the Crucifixion, but there was no way that was going to happen. Maybe she thought she could take advantage of the Armageddon confusion. Scary! No
