Chapter 2
SQUIRM
I
Kirigoe Mima turned off the shower and listened. Her phone was ringing.
She shrugged, as if to say, What can you do? Then she took a towel off the rack and wrapped it around her body. She opened the glass door to the shower; the phone’s ringing became louder.
Who’s calling at this hour?
Mima glanced at the clock. It was after two in the morning. The caller was likely her manager, perhaps to tell her about a change in the next day’s schedule. I wish he wouldn’t call me so late, Mima thought, irritation etching a tiny crease between her eyebrows.
She stepped into the combined bedroom/living room of her studio apartment and put her hand on the phone beside her bed. She lifted the receiver and spoke in a tone that hid none of her annoyance. “Yes, who is it?”
She expected to hear her manager’s familiar rough voice—but instead, all she heard was soft breathing. Huff. Huff.
Mima let out an exasperated sigh. Not this again.
“Hello?” She spoke firmly. “Who is this?”
Huff. Huff. Huff. The breathing grew heavier.
For over the past week or so, she’d been getting harassed incessantly by calls like these. Mima wondered how this person had found her personal number. As far as she knew, it hadn’t been published anywhere. She clicked her tongue in exasperation.
Then, a faint voice came over the line. “Mi-Mima-san… Mima-san…”
The man’s muffled voice reverberated in her ears. Something in it sounded desperate.
“Mima-san…” Huff. Huff. Now the man seemed to be crying, too.
Fear urged Mima to hang up the phone, but the next thing she knew, she was pressing the receiver tightly to her ear. “Mima-san,” the man began. Agitation strengthened his voice; it took on a strange, raspy edge. “Do you understand how I feel? Do you? I want to save you, Mima-san. Mima-san, Mima-san!”
Fear put a tremor in her, but she felt compelled to speak—as if something still more frightful would happen to her if she didn’t. “Just who are you?” she asked her unknown caller. “What do you mean, you’ll save me?”
The man, caught off guard by her reaction, choked out a weak “Urp!” but then continued. “I’m… I’m your fan. I’m a huge fan of yours, Kirigoe Mima.” Huff. Huff.
From the sound of his voice, even talking to her was a great ordeal. Mima threw force behind her words. “If you’re my fan, then why do you keep harassing me with these calls?”
Perhaps intimidated into silence, the man said nothing. The receiver went quiet, save for the faint sound of his breathing.
Her voice rose to an angry shout. “If you don’t have anything else to say, I’m hanging up!”
“I-I… I want to save you,” the man mumbled. “I want to save you before you go down the wrong path. I’m not trying to bother you. Honestly, I’m not.”
She’d had enough of this. His cowering tone rubbed her the wrong way, and besides, with only a bath towel wrapped around her, she was starting to get cold. “Listen, whoever you are.” Mima spoke with finality. “I don’t need you to save me. I’ll decide my ‘path’ on my own. So please, just stop calling me.”
She was about to hang up the phone when the man shouted, “Wait! Don’t hang up!”
Then, words spilling out quickly, he went on. His voice was shrilly pitched now, and he rambled like a sick man, a man taken by malarial fever dreams. “I’m coming to meet you. I promise I’ll come to you soon. I’ll come to you, and I’ll save you. I promise I will.”
Mima hung up the phone frantically. Her body trembled down to the core.
II
“This is just awful,” Mima said, batting her wide, round eyes. She raised a hand to her slender nose and took in a deep, stuffed-up snuffle. “Of all the times to catch a cold, why now?”
Mima’s assistant, Yasuda Rumi, had been keeping an eye on the singer. Now Rumi hurried to her in the corner of the studio. “Mima-san,” Rumi said, “would you like me to bring you some hot coffee?”
Mima gave her a pleasant smile. “That would be great, Rumi-chan. With plenty of milk, please.”
“Will do!” Rumi replied. She jogged over to the vending machine in the back of the room and soon returned with the drink.
As Mima drank her coffee, her manager, Tadokoro Bon, entered the studio, bleary-eyed.
Mima put her hand in the shape of a glass and mimed drinking. “Out late again, Bon-chan?”
Tadokoro tossed her an embarrassed grin and ran a hand through his hair, already thinning at the ripe old age of thirty-six. “I can’t help it,” he said. “It’s part of the job.”
With a teasing smile, Mima said, “Working day and night for me, is that it?”
Tadokoro winked a long-lashed eye at her. “Rumi-chan, get me a coffee too, please.” The manager brought a metal folding chair beside Mima and plopped himself down. The cheap metal seat protested with a shrill and dubious creak. More serious now, Tadokoro said, “I hear you’re feeling under the weather.”
“I think it’s a cold,” Mima said with another loud sniff. “But that’s not all that’s bothering me—I got a strange call last night.”
Tadokoro frowned. “A strange call?”
“You remember how I told you about those troubling phone calls I’ve been getting?”
The manager nodded. “You mean the guy who doesn’t say anything?”
“Yeah, him. But this time, he spoke.”
“Well, now. That’s bold.” Tadokoro leaned forward, his eyes glimmering with interest. “What did he say?”
“He told me he wanted to save me,” Mima said.
“To save you?” Tadokoro echoed, bewildered.
“Apparently, he’s worried I’m headed in the ‘wrong direction.’ He said he’s going to prevent it.”
Tadokoro scowled. “Sounds like a nutcase to me.”
“Yeah, I guess so. I remember thinking something in his voice wasn’t right.” Just remembering sent a shiver through her.
“An overexcited fan,” Tadokoro said dismissively. One corner of his mouth turned up in a wry, long-suffering smile.
“He said he’s coming to meet me.”
Tadokoro’s eyes widened, and he exclaimed, “He said what?”
“He wants to meet me,” Mima said. “To talk to me.”
“Now that we can’t ignore. When did he say he was coming?”
“He didn’t. But he promised it would be soon.”
The manager put a hand to his chin, closed his eyes, and hummed in thought, but Mima couldn’t be sure just what he was thinking.
III
It happened when Yasuda Rumi was on her way back to Mima’s green room to retrieve something she’d left behind.
In the hallway just outside, the metal door to the emergency exit stood half open, allowing a bar of sunlight to pierce into the darkened hallway. Rumi had never seen that door open, and the anomaly caught the assistant’s attention.
Then she saw the figure lurking in the door’s shadow.
“Who’s there?” Rumi said in a low shout.
Within the pool of shadow, the figure made an even darker shape, save for two glimmering points—the eyes. Someone’s eyes, staring right at Rumi.
The figure watched but didn’t speak a word.