Birthday by Koji Suzuki

Author:Koji Suzuki
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Published: 2011-03-22T22:00:00+00:00

9

November 1990

Every cell in his body was reliving the touch of Sadako's skin. This wasn't like a mental recollection: it felt as if the memory were engraved in his very DNA.

He told Yoshino about that episode from his youth, but he didn't go into every single little detail. He just gave him the general outlines, the salient points of the day of the final dress rehearsal. But as he spoke he was remembering Sadako's voice, the softness of her skin, the feel of her hair, as if it were yesterday.

Toyama, I love you.

Her voice still lingered in his ear—whether he'd really heard it or only hallucinated it, he could recreate its resonance, its mysterious ambience, exactly. It was the voice of the only woman he'd ever met with whom he could have been truly happy.

He wanted to see her again, if at all possible. Where was she now? What was she doing? The fact that Yoshino couldn't find her was at least proof that she hadn't made a name for herself as an actress. That in itself he found unbelievable, for a woman with such a unique allure as hers. He began to feel uneasy.

He found it took courage just to ask. But somehow he managed to voice his query. "By the way, Mr.

Yoshino. What do you think Sadako's doing now? Please, don't keep anything back from me—whatever you might know."

Yoshino rested his chin on his hand; he licked the cover of his fountain pen with the tip of his tongue.

"Of all the ridiculous... I'm trying to find out what happened to her. How could I have any idea what she's doing now?"

"I think you people know something. Don't you think it's a bit unfair for you to ask me all these questions and then not answer mine?"

"But..."

Toyama leaned forward earnestly and looked Yoshino square in his bearded face.

"Is Sadako alive?"

He had to come straight out and ask it: otherwise they'd keep going in circles.

Yoshino looked taken aback by Toyama's serious-ness. He made a strange face, then shook his head twice, gently.

"I hate to say it, but she's probably..." Warning him that nothing was definite yet, Yoshino told Toyama that the information his colleague Asakawa had come across gave them reason to speculate that Sadako Yamamura was no longer alive. There was a possibility that she'd been involved in some kind of incident, and that it had happened right after her disappearance from the troupe twenty-four years ago. Again, it was still only specula-tion. But...

But it was enough. It was the development Toyama had feared, and it didn't surprise him. He'd had a feeling, for he didn't know how long now, that Sadako was no longer of this world.

Still, hearing Yoshino state it as a near-certainty caused a physical reaction in Toyama that was far more honest than he'd expected. To his surprise, tears began not just rolling down his cheeks, but actually falling to splash on the floor. In his forty-seven years he'd never dreamed his body was capable of such a thing.

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