He coughed. Pain shot through his chest.
This was starting to get troubling. Toshihiko held his hand against his chest and thought, I think I might be sick.
A little over a dozen Betamax L-500 video cassette tapes stood in a row on Toshihiko’s table.
These cassettes were his most prized treasure—his only treasure. By shaving away at his food budget and skipping a rent payment here and there, he had slowly but steadily built his collection.
He had purchased a tape deck for 9,000 yen from a used electronics store in the Nihonbashi district. With its recording head, he etched his only fantasies onto the magnetic tapes.
What he dreamed of were pop idol singers.
When real life refused to fulfill what he lacked, he directed his longings toward the illusory images painted by the scan lines of the cathode ray tube.
He checked idol singer magazines for upcoming TV appearances of his favorite performers and taped nearly every show.
Unlike real people in the flesh, once recorded, the idols would never betray him. Recordings could be watched whenever he wanted to, for as long he wanted to. The idols never looked at him with the contempt normal women did, as if they had seen something dirty and repulsive.
No, the idols always looked at him with a smile.
To Toshihiko, starved of both emotional and physical love, the idols’ smiles seemed like those of angels.
He inserted a cassette into the tape deck and turned on the TV. He pressed the play button, and warm hues filled the screen.
Surrounded by colorful lights and a dazzlingly vibrant set, a slender young woman in a yellow dress kicked up legs so pale they might have been transparent. She sang passionately, a charming little song.
I love, love, love, that bashful you.
No matter how deep and strong my feelings
You pretend not to notice.
At the final chorus, the camera cut to a close up on the young singer’s face. She brushed her left hand through her hair, silky and a little short, and curled her cherry blossom lips in a coquettish smile.
Her name was Asaka Ai. She had debuted with the song “Lemon Season” two years ago, and while she wasn’t among the biggest names, she still maintained a respectable amount of popularity.
Though Toshihiko didn’t quite understand why, she was his favorite idol. Perhaps her inability to make it to the top resonated with his own life.
But more than anything, Toshihiko admired how earnest she was. Ai was always kind and courteous to the TV show hosts and the other talent with whom she shared appearances, as well as to the behind-the-scenes staff—though the last part was just Toshihiko’s guess.
He had watched his videotapes of her countless times. When a tape ended, he would rewind it and immediately watch it again from the beginning. For nearly every day in the past week, he’d done nothing but hole up in his small apartment watching his tapes of her again and again.
His feelings toward Ai surpassed the boundaries of a simple fan. He wanted to talk to her, if only just once. He wanted to go on a date with her, if only just once. Here he was, nearly a thirty-year-old man, believing these fantasies with total sincerity. It wasn’t normal.
It was clearly abnormal.
He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to have his arms around her. And yes, he wanted to have sex with her.
In the confines of his dingy apartment, his desires had escalated unchecked.
He thought about what he could do about it all.
He considered researching her schedule to find a time and a place where he could meet her in person. He wanted to talk to her, face-to-face, and pour out all his feelings. He wanted her to understand the passion he carried for her.
He wanted Ai to see him as a real person.
But there was a problem.
He didn’t want Asaka Ai to see his ugly face—there was no way he could allow that. His atypical, even zombie-like features were not fit to be seen by her.
He wanted to meet her. He wanted it so badly he felt like he might die.
But he couldn’t. With his face and the life he led, he could never meet her.
Nevertheless, his heart ached in yearning.
He hugged his arms around the TV, where Asaka Ai remained on the screen, and his inner voice cried out from deep within.
Ai... Ai-chan...
He squeezed his arms tight. The TV’s plastic shell creaked under the pressure. Tears trickled down from Toshihiko’s eyes.
He had rejected the world and its realities, and for that, his love for Ai had grown all the deeper, all the more severe. Over time, his thoughts had reached a terrible conclusion.
I will kill Ai, and myself.
It was no joke or simple passing thought. He was seriously considering acting on the idea.
His gaze went to the kitchen and to the sliding-door cabinet beneath the sink, where he kept his kitchen knife. It was brand new, purchased recently.
He looked again at Asaka Ai on his TV screen and then back to the cabinet.
His lips twisted into a smile.
For the past few days, Toshihiko hadn’t set foot outside his apartment. He had eaten hardly anything. He was hungry but felt no desire to eat. Drinking only his bitter coffee, he sat in his gloomy room, watching his videos of Ai. He’d watched them from morning until night.
Both mentally and physically, Toshihiko was strained to his limits. He couldn’t stop crying. He cried in loud, heaving sobs. Atop his flimsy futon—which he never bothered to fold and store away—and amid the hanging, raw stench of old sweat and dried semen, the nearly thirty-year-old man cried and wailed the name of a girl around half his age whom he’d never even met. He cried, and he cried, and he cried.
Thud.
The strange sound had come from his cracked, frosted window.
Toshihiko went over to it and threw open the curtains. In the span of a moment, a shape passed across the glass, and then it was gone. He thought it looked like a stooped-over person, but it might have just been a trick of his imagination.
Toshihiko became aware of a dull, lasting pain in the left side of his chest, just above his heart. He moved his hand up and pressed down where it hurt.
His flesh squished under his hand.
The shock registered not in his mind but as a physical, electric force that shot through his body. For a moment, his thoughts went blank. Then, hesitantly, he felt at his chest again.
His hand felt a small, plump softness.
His face went pale with stunned confusion.
He probed the protrusion with his fingers. As he squeezed at the softness, he wondered, Am I sick?
His grimy, flabby chest felt as if it had taken on the gentle firmness of a woman’s breast.
He opened the top of his pajama shirt to look inside, and there it was. A breast. Two of them, even. He’d never seen a woman’s breasts in real life before.
Two tiny, pink points stood in areolas wrinkled by emotional distress. His stale, sweaty odor had been replaced with a fresh, feminine scent not unlike a baby’s milky smell. His skin wasn’t the familiar oily yet dried out and cracked mess he was used to seeing, but was instead smooth, like moistened porcelain.
Toshihiko couldn’t believe it was real. He thought he might still be caught in that earlier nightmare. The deep, throbbing pain persisted in his head.
That’s what this is, he thought, taking great efforts to convince himself. This is a nightmare.
His mental state had been pushed too far to accept it as real. He was far too fragile for such a leap.
But reality was not to be denied as some dream. He had no choice but to accept the truth because it wasn’t just his chest.
Appearing from the sleeves of his pajamas were a set of arms, and hands and fingers and palms, that were not as they had once been. His smooth skin was so pale it might have been transparent.
He put his hands in his hair to see if it too had changed. What he found wasn’t his familiar mane, held stiff not by styling gel, but by accumulated oils. No—the hair he found was healthy, smooth, and flowing.
He touched his face. Gone was his angular, bony structure. In its place were petite features, from his eyes, to his nose, his mouth, and his lips, which were as soft and supple as freshly picked cherries.
Toshihiko ran to the kitchen. Somewhere on the windowsill above the sink, he had left a mirror. Impatiently, he picked it up. Its reflective mercury backing had begun to chip away.
He looked at his face and his heart nearly leaped out of his mouth. He gulped reflexively.