The Complete Ring Trilogy: Ring, Spiral, Loop. Koji Suzuki

and his tie seemed rather tight, but he made no move to loosen it. As a result, the skin of his neck above his collar was slightly swollen—just looking at it was uncomfortable. Then there were his angular features. Even his smile would have struck your average person as being somehow nasty.

      Ryuji took an ice cube from his glass and popped it into his mouth.

      “Weren’t you listening to what I just said?” hissed Asakawa. “I told you, it’s dangerous.”

      “Then what did you bring this to me for? You want my help, don’t you?” Still smiling, he crunched the ice cube loudly between his teeth.

      “There’re still ways for you to help without watching it.”

      Ryuji hung his head sulkily, but a faint grin still played over his features.

      Asakawa was suddenly seized with anger and raised his voice hysterically. “You don’t believe me, do you? You don’t believe a thing I’ve been telling you!” There was no other way for him to interpret Ryuji’s expression.

      For Asakawa himself, watching the video had been like unsuspectingly opening a letter-bomb. It was the first time in his life he’d experienced such terror. And it wasn’t over. Six more days. Fear tightened softly around his neck like a silken noose. Death awaited him. And this joker actually wanted to watch the video.

      “You don’t have to make a scene. So I’m not scared—do you have a problem with that? Listen, Asakawa, I’ve told you before: I’m the kind of guy who’d get front-row seats for the end of the world if he could. I want to know how the world is put together, its beginning and its end, all its riddles, great and small. If someone offered to explain them all to me, I’d gladly trade my life for the knowledge. You even immortalized me in print. I’m sure you recall.”

      Of course Asakawa remembered it. That’s exactly why he’d opened up to Ryuji and told him everything.

      It had been Asakawa who first dreamed up the feature. Two years ago, when he was thirty, he had begun to wonder what other young Japanese people his age were really thinking—what dreams they had in life. The idea was to pick out several thirty-year-olds, people active in all walks of life—from a MITI bureaucrat and a Tokyo city councilman to a guy working for a top trading firm to regular, average Joes—and summarize each one, from the sort of general data every reader would want to know to their more unique aspects. By doing this regularly, in a carefully limited area of newsprint, he would try to analyze what it meant to be thirty in contemporary Japan. And just by chance, among the ten to twenty names that had surfaced as candidates for this kind of treatment, Asakawa encountered an old high school classmate, Ryuji Takayama. His official position was listed as Adjunct Lecturer in Philosophy at Fukuzawa University, one of the nation’s top private schools. Asakawa found this puzzling, as he recalled Ryuji going on to medical school. Asakawa himself had done the groundwork, and had listed “scholar” as one of the vocations to be included in his survey, but Ryuji was far too much of an individual to be a fair representative of thirty-year-old budding scholars as a whole. His personality had been hard to get a handle on in high school, and with the added polishing of the intervening years it seemed it had only become more slippery. Upon finishing medical school, he had enrolled in a graduate philosophy program, completing his Ph.D the year of the survey. He undoubtedly would have been snapped up for the first available assistant professorship if it weren’t for the unfortunate fact that there were older students in the pipeline ahead of him, and positions were awarded strictly on the basis of seniority. So he took the part-time lecturer’s job and ended up teaching two classes a week on logic at his alma mater.

      These days, philosophy as a field of inquiry had drawn ever closer to science. No longer did it mean amusing oneself with silly questions such as how man should live. Specializing in philosophy meant, basically, doing math without the numbers. In ancient Greece, too, philosophers doubled as mathematicians. Ryuji was like that: the philosophy department signed his paychecks, but his brain was wired like a scientist’s. On the other hand, in addition to his specialized professional knowledge, he also knew an extraordinary amount about paranormal psychology. Asakawa saw this as a contradiction. He considered paranormal psychology, the study of the supernatural and the occult, to be in direct opposition to science. Ryuji’s answer: Au contraire. Paranormal psychology is one of the keys to unlocking the structure of the universe. It had been a hot day in the middle of summer, but just like today he’d been wearing a striped long-sleeved dress shirt with the top button buttoned tightly. I want to be there when humanity is wiped out, Ryuji had said, sweat gleaming on his overheated face. All those idiots who prattle on about world peace and the survival of humanity make me puke.

      Asakawa’s survey had included questions like this:

       Tell me about your dreams for the future.

      Calmly, Ryuji had replied: “While viewing the extinction of the human race from the top of a hill, I would dig a hole in the earth and ejaculate into it over and over.”

      Asakawa had pressed him: “Hey, are you sure it’s okay for me to write that down?”

      Ryuji had smiled faintly, just like he was doing now, and nodded.

      “Like I said, I’m not afraid of anything.” After saying this, Ryuji leaned over and brought his face close to Asakawa’s.

      “I did another one last night.”

       Again?

      This made the third victim Asakawa knew about. He’d learned of the first one in their junior year in high school. Both of them had lived in Tama Ward in Kawasaki, an industrial city wedged between Tokyo and Yokohama, and commuted to a prefectural high school. Asakawa used to get to school an hour before classes started every morning and preview the day’s lessons in the crisp dawn. Aside from the janitors, he was always the first one there. By contrast, Ryuji hardly ever made it to first period. He was what was known as habitually tardy. But one morning right after the end of summer vacation, Asakawa went to school early as usual and found Ryuji there, sitting on top of his desk as if in a daze. Asakawa spoke to him. “Hey, what’s up? Didn’t think I’d see you here this early.” “Yeah, well,” was the curt reply: Ryuji was staring out the window at the schoolyard, as if his mind were somewhere else. His eyes were bloodshot. His cheeks were red, too, and there was alcohol on his breath. They weren’t that close, though, so that was as far as the conversation went. Asakawa opened his school-book and began to study. “Hey, listen, I want to ask you a favor …” said Ryuji, slapping him on the shoulder. Ryuji was highly individualistic, got good grades, and was a track star as well. Everybody at school kept one eye on him. Asakawa, meanwhile, was thoroughly unremarkable. Having someone like Ryuji ask him a favor didn’t feel bad at all.

      “Actually, I want you to call my house for me,” said Ryuji, laying his arm on Asakawa’s shoulders in an overly familiar manner.

      “Sure. But why?”

      “All you have to do is call. Call and ask for me.”

      Asakawa frowned. “For you? But you’re right here.”

      “Never mind that, just do it, okay?”

      So he did as he was told and dialed the number, and when Ryuji’s mother answered he said, “Is Ryuji there?” while looking at Ryuji, who stood right in front of him.

      “I’m sorry, Ryuji has already left for school,” his mother said calmly.

      “Oh, I see,” Asakawa said, and hung up the phone. “There, is that good enough?” he said to Ryuji. Asakawa still didn’t quite get the meaning of all this.

      “Did it sound like there was anything wrong?” asked Ryuji. “Did Mom sound nervous or anything?”

      “No, not particularly.” Asakawa had never heard Ryuji’s mother’s voice before, but he didn’t think she sounded especially nervous.

      “No excited voices in the background or anything?”

      “No. Nothing special. Nothing like that. Just, like, breakfast table sounds.”