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

his cigarette and went to go back inside. Just at that moment, the door separating the dining room from the hall opened, and Shizu appeared in her pajamas. Flustered, Asakawa grabbed the remote and paused the video.

      “I thought you were asleep.” There was a note of reproach in Asakawa’s voice.

      “I heard noises.” As she said this Shizu looked back and forth between the TV screen, with its distorted images and staticky sound, and Ryuji and Asakawa. Her face clouded over with suspicion.

      “Go back to bed!” said Asakawa in a tone of voice that allowed for no questions.

      “I think we ought to let the missus join us, if she’d like to. It’s quite interesting.” Ryuji, still seated cross-legged on the floor, looked up. Asakawa wanted to yell at him. But instead of speaking, he balled all his thoughts up into his fist and slammed it down onto the table. Startled by the sound, Shizu quickly put her hand on the doorknob, then narrowed her eyes and bowed ever-so-slightly and said to Ryuji, “Please make yourself at home.” With that she turned on her heel and disappeared back behind the door. Two guys alone at night, turning videos on and off … Asakawa knew just what his wife was imagining. He didn’t miss the look of disdain in her narrowed eyes—disdain not so much for Ryuji as for male instincts in general. Asakawa felt bad that he couldn’t explain.

      Just as Asakawa had expected, Ryuji was still utterly calm after he’d finished watching. He hummed as he rewound the tape, then set about checking it point by point, alternately fast-forwarding and pausing it.

      “Well, it looks like yours truly is mixed up in it now. You’ve got six days left, I’ve got seven,” said Ryuji happily, as if he’d been allowed to join in a game.

      “So what do you think?” asked Asakawa.

      “It’s child’s play.”

      “Huh?”

      “Didn’t you use to do this sort of thing when you were a kid? Scare your friends by showing them a spooky picture or something and saying that whoever looked at it would come to harm? Chain letters, that sort of thing.”

      Of course Asakawa had experienced that kind of thing, too. The same sort of thing had come up in the ghost stories they’d told each other on summer nights.

      “So what are you getting at?”

      “Nothing, I guess. Just, that’s how it felt to me.”

      “Was there anything else you noticed? Tell me.”

      “Hmm. Well, the images themselves aren’t especially frightening. It seems like a combination of realistic images and abstract ones. If it wasn’t for the fact that four people had died exactly as dictated in the video, we could just snort and pass it off as an oddity. Right?”

      Asakawa nodded. Knowing that the words on the video were no lie was what made the whole thing so troublesome.

      “The first question is, why did those poor fools die? What’s the reason? I can think of two possibilities. The last scene on the video is the statement, ‘he who watches this is fated to die,’ and then immediately thereafter, there was … well, for lack of a better word, let’s call it a charm. A way to escape that fate. So the four erased the part that explained the charm, and because of that they were killed. Or, perhaps they simply failed to make use of the charm, and that’s why they were killed. I suppose even before that, though, we have to determine if it was really those four who erased the charm. It’s possible that the charm had already been erased when they watched the video.”

      “How are we going to determine that? We can’t just ask them, you know.”

      Asakawa got a beer from the refrigerator, poured a glassful, and set it in front of Ryuji.

      “Just you watch.” Ryuji replayed the end of the video, watching closely for the exact moment when the charm-erasing mosquito coil commercial ended. He paused the tape and began to advance it slowly, frame by frame. He’d go past it, rewind it, pause it, advance it again frame by frame … Then, finally, just for a split second, the screen showed a scene of three people sitting around a table. For just the briefest moment, the program which had been interrupted by the commercial was resuming. It was a late-night talk show broadcast nightly at eleven on one of the national networks. The gray-haired gent was a best-selling author, and he was joined by a lovely young woman and a young man whom they recognized as a traditional storyteller from the Osaka region. Asakawa brought his face close to the screen.

      “I’m sure you recognize this show,” said Ryuji.

      “It’s The Night Show on NBS.”

      “Right. The writer is the host, the girl is his foil, and the storyteller is today’s guest. Therefore, if we know what day the storyteller was a guest on the show, we know whether or not our four kids erased the charm.”

      “I get it.”

      The Night Show was on every weeknight at eleven. If this particular episode turned out to have been broadcast on August 29th, then it had to be those four who erased it, that night at Villa Log Cabin.

      “NBS is affiliated with your publisher, isn’t it? This ought to be an easy one.”

      “Gotcha. I’ll look into it.”

      “Yes, please do. Our lives may depend on it. Let’s make sure of everything, no matter what. Right, my brother-in-arms?”

      Ryuji slapped Asakawa on the shoulder. They were both facing their deaths now. Brothers in arms.

      “Aren’t you scared?”

      “Scared? Au contraire, my friend. It’s kind of exciting to have a deadline, isn’t it? The penalty is death. Fantastic. It’s no fun playing if you’re not willing to bet your life on the outcome.”

      For a while now Ryuji had been acting pleased about the whole thing, but Asakawa had worried it was just bravado, a cover for his fear. Now that he peered into his friend’s eyes, though, he couldn’t find the smallest fragment of fear there.

      “Next: we figure out who made this video, when, and to what end. You say Villa Log Cabin is only six months old, so we contact everybody who’s stayed in B-4 and ferret out whoever brought in a videotape. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to limit the search to late August. Chances are it was somebody who stayed there right before our four victims.”

      “That’s mine, too?”

      Ryuji downed his beer in one swig and thought for a moment. “Of course. We’ve got a deadline. Don’t you have a buddy you can rely on? If so, get him to help.”

      “Well, there is one reporter who’s got an interest in this case. But this is a matter of life and death. I can’t just …” Asakawa was thinking about Yoshino.

      “Not to worry, not to worry. Get him involved. Show him the video—that’ll light a fire under his ass. He’ll be happy to help out, trust me.”

      “Not everybody’s like you, you know.”

      “So tell him it’s black-market porn. Force him to watch it. Whatever.”

      It was no use reasoning with Ryuji. He couldn’t show it to anybody without figuring out the charm first. Asakawa felt he was in a logical culde-sac. To crack the secrets of this video would require a well-organized search, but because of the nature of the video it would be next to impossible to enlist anybody. People like Ryuji, willing to play dice with death at the drop of a hat, were few and far between. How would Yoshino react? He had a wife and kids himself—Asakawa doubted he’d be willing to risk his life just to satisfy his curiosity. But he might be able to help even without watching the video. Maybe Asakawa should tell him everything that had happened, just in case.

      “Yeah. I’ll give it a try.”

      Ryuji sat at the dining room table holding the remote.

      “Right, then. Now, this falls into two broad categories: abstract scenes and real scenes.” Saying this,