Birthday (2 page)

He didn't tell you anything there at the end? No last words? Nothing, say, about a videotape?

Those words urged her to it. She turned on the video deck.

She began to think, gradually with greater certainty, that she was there because she was supposed to be there.

It was no accident, but a necessary thing.

Now that she thought about it, the shape of the rooftop fissure where she was resembled a videocassette.

A long, narrow rectangle. No, that wasn't quite it. It was more accurate to say that it was shaped like the
case
of a videocassette.

She wasn't sure what the purpose of the hole was in terms of the building's design. An exhaust shaft, maybe a drainage shaft? Skyscraper construction was a field she knew nothing about. She could hear the whine of a motor beneath the concrete, which suggested the building had an elevator. She was somewhere near the machine room, then. She knew that much.

The sky suddenly brightened, going from a whitish to a truer blue. A line that divided light from shadow was crossing the shaft wall fast enough that she could actually see it advancing downward. Light was moving into the giant videocassette case.

Mai recalled the moment at Ryuji's parents' house when she'd taken the tape from the VCR. She'd plugged in the machine, turned it on, and pressed eject. A

kachunk,
and the tape popped out like a child sticking its tongue out at her.

She remembered the touch of it, hard, inorganic but strangely warm. She'd only just turned on the power, but it communicated to her fingers an almost living heat.

A title was written on the spine. 

Liza Minnelli, 
Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr. /1989.

The handwriting wasn't very good, and she didn't think the inscription described the contents of the tape.

She doubted it actually contained a concert. Most likely someone had recorded something else over it, but left the title.

What she regretted most now, more than watching the tape, was sneaking it out of Ryuji's parents' house and taking it home with her. Why couldn't she just leave it alone? She'd gone there to find those missing pages.

She should have ignored the odd tape. The moment she took it home with her, her fate was sealed: sooner or later, she'd watch it.

The line descended along the wall of the shaft in leaps. Suddenly, the light hit her straight in the eyes. The sun was directly overhead now.

Time was flying; it was not passing in an analog manner. She'd awakened only just now, in the early morning, but the sunlight had reached the bottom of the hole. It had to be noon or thereabouts.

She lifted her left arm, weakly. No wristwatch.

She'd have to tell time by the position of the sun.

She was probably still losing memory—a block at a time. That would explain the jerky, disjointed passage of time. She was alternating between awareness and blank-outs. She'd spent the hours since her first awakening in a state of idleness, drifting in a daze or lost in flashbacks.

But now she knew exactly what she had to do.

I need to figure out how to get out of here.

She'd die if she didn't escape—and death would come slowly, at its leisure, nibbling away at her soul.

Have I already gone crazy?

She knew, considering her predicament, that she should be terrified, perhaps even in a state of panic, yet she was calm. It was as if there was another her somewhere watching it all as a bystander. She wondered if she was capable of fully appreciating her situation given the gaps in her awareness, the tenuousness of her hold on consciousness.

For no apparent reason, Mai found herself thinking of a pretty girl rotting at the bottom of a well. The image had to have been triggered by something, but what? The smell? She was aware of a citrusy scent wafting on the air that seemed to stimulate her imagination. The image of the girl became more and more real; it leaned heavily on Mai's body, and then drew back.

Mai had imagined a girl as if she were really there.

She listened closely and tuned herself to her surroundings. It was terrifying, this being utterly alone, and she wanted someone—anyone—to come to her.

Her ears were all she could rely on, and she waited desperately for the sound of footsteps. She was vexed at her own powerlessness.

So I have to wait to be rescued?
She'd never liked to be so passive about anything.

The thread dangling down into the shaft was her lifeline, her only connection with the bustling world below. She wondered how many bathrobe sashes had been tied together to make it. Looking up at it, she could only see one knot. What was it doing there anyway? If the sash was a snake, the knot would be its head.

It looked too slender to hold her weight, but it was the only way out she could see. The end of the sash-rope swung lazily in the air a foot above the floor.

She decided to try to force herself into a sitting position to see how much she could move. As she made the attempt, she banged her injured left ankle into the wall and nearly screamed from the pain. Was it broken or just sprained? The intense pain proved to her, at any rate, that she was indeed conscious, and it ended up giving her a little courage.

She broke into a cold sweat as she tried to steel herself against the pain. But how could she expect to climb out on her own if she couldn't even sit up?

Call for help.

Mai racked her brain for a way to let the inhabitants of the outside world know she was there.

She cried out, just to see how it went. "Help! Help me!" The sky above swallowed her words. She seriously doubted anybody could have heard her. Unless somebody came up onto the roof, yelling wasn't going to do her any good.

She pondered. If nobody was going to come up to the roof on their own initiative, she'd have to do something to draw attention to herself, to bring somebody up.

Maybe passersby would look up if something came falling out of the sky.

Is there anything I can throw!

She stretched out her arms and felt around above her head until she found a few chunks of concrete. She picked one up and examined it. It was about the size of her thumb. It was just a little piece of old concrete from the crumbling wall; even if it happened to hit somebody in the head it probably wouldn't cause serious injury.

Mai had been on the track team in middle school and high school, as a sprinter, and she had confidence in her athletic ability. She'd been able to throw a softball farther than almost anybody in her class. But she'd never tried throwing from her current position before—flat on her back. The only feasible motion was to swing her right arm in an arc from her head toward her feet; it meant there was only one direction in which she could toss the concrete. If she couldn't get it over the railing at the edge of the rooftop, the whole thing would be a waste of effort.

The sun was descending into the west. She realized that if she was going to try this, she should do it in day-light when there would be a maximum number of people walking by. She flung the piece of concrete into the air.

It immediately disappeared from sight, swallowed up soundlessly by the sky.

She was astonished how little of the world she could see. Her entire world was that narrow strip of sky. The ease with which the concrete had disappeared made her wonder if the place she was in really connected to the world below.

She felt around again and this time found a four-inch length of iron pipe. Big enough and heavy enough, she thought, to carry farther than the fragment of concrete. On the other hand, if it hit someone in the head it could do considerable damage.

She wanted to minimize the pipe's potential to do injury. She also wanted to lend it some trace of herself, to make it seem like a message.

She fished in her pockets for a scrap of cloth. A handkerchief would do—anything, really. If she could tie something to the pipe, then whoever found it would be less likely to think it had simply fallen at random.

But she had no handkerchief in her pockets. She tried to tear off a piece of her sweatshirt, a bit of the hem of her jumper, to no avail. She closed her eyes to think of her options, and an idea came to her. The odder the item attached to the pipe, the more attention it would elicit.

She'd take off her panties and tie them to the pipe.

She'd have one chance. If she screwed it up, that would be it. But her only fear at the moment was that getting them off her legs might hurt too much.

She slowly hiked up her skirt and felt around in the area of her hipbone. Her skin was bare. She should have encountered the elastic band of her underwear, but all her fingernails found was her own skin. She felt all around but couldn't locate her panties.

What the.. ? I'm not wearing any underwear!

This was not normal for her. She'd never gone out in public wearing nothing under her clothes.

She raised her head and craned her neck to a painful angle in order to get a glimpse of her groin, but her dis-tended belly was in the way. She had to judge by feel. At the very moment she realized she really wasn't wearing any underwear, her arm felt something moving inside her abdomen.

It felt precisely like a baby stirring in her womb. But then she remembered that she was still a virgin, and her consciousness threatened to recede again. Her puzzle-ment as to why she wasn't wearing panties gave way instantly: what was this in her womb?

She could see part of her belly now, peeking out of her rolled-up skirt. It was swollen, but it was also moving, changing shape before her eyes, in response to pressure from within.

She remembered a scene from a movie she'd seen years ago. The sheer abnormality of her situation chilled Mai to her core now.

Her memories couldn't be wrong about it. Mai knew it was foolish even to examine them.

Once, and only once, she'd nearly yielded herself physically to a boyfriend. She'd been in the same position she was in now, flat on her back, arms and legs extended. On the single bed in his apartment... They'd had long, serious discussions about it, and she was ready.

His name was Sugiyama, and he was a student at her college; both of them were in the school of liberal arts.

Sugiyama was slender, pale, and handsome. A little taller than Mai, with something of the beautiful boy about him. In terms of looks, he and Mai were a fine couple.

Mai, though, wasn't attracted to his looks, but to his precociousness as a scholar. Sugiyama prided himself on knowing everything about everything, and he could answer seemingly any question with ease. It was fun just to ask him questions, so sharp was his mental razor, and conversation with him was a joy.

He was well versed in literature and was a real charmer the way he peppered conversation with bits of astrology or Greek mythology. Having devoted most of her attention to sports in high school, Mai had vowed to focus on academics in college. She fell head over heels for Sugiyama's mind—not that his androgynous good looks didn't help.

Friends who knew her as a dedicated member of the track team expressed doubts about her choice of boyfriend.
Hey, I thought you went for jocks!
That was the gist of their doubts. But Mai knew that if she had to choose between body and mind, she'd choose the latter as the locus of talent without hesitation. Of course, to have both would be ideal. But she wouldn't meet a man like that until Ryuji.

Several upperclassmen had asked her out back in high school. Although they were all pretty naive and none of them actually tried to move on her, just sitting across the table from that type came to be a burden for Mai, what with their masculine passions and ghastly thirst for sex.

Sugiyama's androgyny comforted her, in a way. She didn't have to worry about blocking his lust, or taming it and diverting it. That was a relief and it made him relaxing to be around.

That time in his apartment when they nearly hooked up, it began almost as a sort of ritual. They proceeded with great deliberation, and only after confirming each other's feelings and intentions. At that moment, Mai had no reservations about discarding her virginity.

Following his instructions, she lay down on his bed and shut her eyes tightly. Her nervousness had made her arms and legs tense. Just as now, her limbs were straight and rigid. Sugiyama didn't try to alleviate her tension.

Rather, he went about his business in stony silence, almost seeming to enjoy the stiffness of her body.

He slowly took off her clothes and exposed her skin.

Mai could see her own naked body in her mind. He simply undressed her, with no kisses or caresses, nothing to blur the roles of undresser and undressee. As pre-inter-course ceremonial, it was strangely monotonous, but Mai didn't have enough experience to think it odd.

It happened when she'd been reduced to bra and panties, and Sugiyama laid his hands on her chest. Her bra slipped upward and exposed her smallish breasts.

Never very big at the best of times, they looked perfectly flat when she was supine. She imagined her breasts the way Sugiyama would be looking at them. Her nipples, large in proportion to her breasts, must have been erect and pointing at the ceiling.

The image of that moment remained vivid in Mai's memory, no doubt because it had been the product of her imagination to begin with.

She was left in that state for a dozen or more seconds, her breasts visible beneath her displaced bra. It was an awkward limbo that emphasized the flatness of her chest. She thought she could feel Sugiyama's gaze. Then the current shifted subtly—she detected a change in the air that filled her with unease.

What are you doing I Hurry up!

But he didn't hurry. In fact, he started to replace her bra.

At the touch of his hands on her chest, Mai's eyes popped open. She stared in disbelief as he covered up her breasts. And not only her breasts. He put all her clothes back on her, retracing his earlier steps in reverse. He closed her away, just as innocent as she had been before, with not so much as a drop of his saliva upon her.

She looked the question into his eyes.