Chapter 8: Confrontation

Chapter 8
CONFRONTATION

 

I

 

Mima ran.

She ran through the nighttime streets. She ran until her legs ached, until her heart strained—but still she ran. She weaved through Tokyo’s south-central Azabu district, moving through back roads lined by quiet, upscale apartments and residences, turning right here, left there.

She wondered how long it had been since she ran like this. In her first year of high school, she’d placed fifth in her school’s marathon race. That was probably it.

She’d walked from her apartment to the old K-TV studio building once before. She had no reason to measure how long it took, but it had to have been more than ten minutes.

I don’t know how that freak kidnapped Rumi, but he’s using her to get to me. He’d threatened to kill her if she was even one second late.

Mima spurred her aching feet into a full-on sprint. As she ran, she felt her thoughts grow clear. A cold rage against her stalker began to swell throughout her body. If she said she wasn’t afraid, she would have been lying, but far more anger filled her heart than fear.

She had only known this man through his calls and his letters, but his voice and his handwriting had revealed enough of his character to thoroughly repulse her. Now they were going to meet face-to-face, and she fully intended to tell him exactly what she thought of him.

On and on Mima ran—to keep Rumi safe and to put that creep in his place.

 

Before Mima stood a Daruma Shipping distribution center. The facility’s broad, metal gates were closed up, their bars offering a view of several dozen large trucks stationed in a large parking lot. Circling the grounds was a long stonework wall dotted with an occasional red-tinted light. The former K-TV studio building was just on the other side.

Still running, Mima followed the wall. There were few streetlights in this part of Azabu; she couldn’t run at full speed, since she couldn’t make out the ground at her feet. Only the dim red lights ahead served to guide her way to the studio.

Suddenly, the wall ended, revealing the former TV building in the distance. Against the dark night sky, the building formed an even blacker silhouette, a long flat slab reminiscent of a giant crocodile. Mima ran straight for the crocodile’s great black mouth.

The studio hadn’t been used for three years. About a year ago, she’d heard that the building was going to be torn down and replaced with a shopping and recreation center.

Mima climbed the stairs to the front entrance. Crisscrossed chains barred shut the sliding glass doors; a sign read NO TRESSPASSING. Cobwebs and dust had accumulated along the doors’ upper track. No one had been in or out for months. Mima peered in through the glass and saw nothing but a deep darkness. She wondered if the building even had working electricity.

Mima circled around to the rear entrance. It, too, was chained up. Only the emergency exit off to its side was unlocked. That door stood half open.

That must have been where the man had gone in.

Mima readied herself and opened the door wide. The hinges released a metallic shriek that spurred her onwards.

A pungent, musty smell greeted her nostrils. At her feet lay messy piles of scrap lumber and cardboard. The hallway had become just another storage space.

It was dark; Mima could hardly see anything at all. She proceeded down the corridor slowly, taking care not to trip over anything. After a little while, a faint light spilled out from a side passage.

Her eyes had become so adjusted to the dark that even that faint light seemed eye-piercingly bright.

Drawn in by the light, Mima came into a room.

It was a green room. Mirrors with little counters lined the side walls, and a sink stood at the back. Hanging from the ceiling was the source of the light, a fluorescent tube in a yellowed, dangling ballast.

Did that mean the building’s power was on?

While Mima squinted up at the light, a voice came from behind her. “I brought a portable generator,” the man explained.

Mima gave a start and turned around. The man was standing there. Mima took a good look at him. This is him. This is that freak.

“Finally, we meet,” he said. His smile chilled her to the core; it put a burr in the pit of her stomach.

The man had long and greasy hair, cow-like eyes, and lips that were much too red. As she inspected his face, she felt the terror of minutes ago begin to creep its way back over her. Mima tried to guess what this man had in store for her, and the question made every hair on her body stand on end.

The man said, “Mima-san, look at this.”

He pointed to the T-shirt he was wearing. When she saw what was on it, her eyes went wide.

It was a character from an anime TV show called Be an Idol!, which had heavily featured Mima in its advertising. Once her involvement had finished, she’d had little enough reason to think about the show—but she remembered the T-shirt. It was a prize from a promotional giveaway held when the anime first aired.

The man puffed out his chest with pride. “I’ve kept really good care of it.”

Then he took a step toward Mima.

The idol took a step back. She asked, “What about Rumi? Where is she?”

The man furrowed his eyebrows and muttered, slightly disappointed, “Mima-san. You were two minutes late.”

Mima slumped to the floor. “You—you killed her? Did you really kill her?”

The man suddenly burst into a gleeful belly laugh. When the laughter subsided, he made a gesture with his hand.

From behind him, Rumi appeared. “M-Mima-san,” she said.

“Rumi-chan!” Mima ran to her as they called out each other’s names. “Rumi-chan, you’re all right!”

The two women hugged each other tight.

The man gave another chuckle. “I’m sorry to have given you such a scare. I was never going to kill her. All that matters is that you came. Beyond that, she means nothing to me.” He spread his arms wide. “Now, you’re probably wanting to know why I summoned you here. Isn’t that right?”

Still holding on to Rumi, Mima glared at her tormentor. “I am,” she said. “I very much want to know why you’ve done this to us.”

The man’s gaze turned distant as he said, “I wanted to protect you.”

He reached for a paper shopping bag that was sitting on the floor and pulled it over to him. From inside, he retrieved a poster. “This is a life-sized poster of you, Mima-san. It’s from when you made your debut.” He unrolled the sheet. “You were so adorable back then.”

He caressed Mima’s printed face gently. She felt it as if were her real flesh he was stroking. A chill ran through her body.

“I wanted to make you remain as you were then,” he explained. “I wanted to keep you as you were. That’s why I called you all those times. I even wrote you. But no matter what I did, you insisted on changing.”

Rumi pushed Mima’s arms away, then got to her feet. She walked up to the man and thrust a finger at him. “Just who the hell do you think you are, talking like that? It’s up to her if she wants to change or not change. What she does is none of your business!”

Mima took Rumi’s hand and pulled her back in, away from the man.

He gave Rumi a sharp look, quickly losing his temper. “Don’t—don’t upset me! I’m not saying any of this for my own good. This is for Mima.”

“And I’m saying it’s none of your business!” Rumi shouted. “I’ll make this as clear as I can. You’re no man; you’re a coward—from your creepy phone call harassment to your threatening letters… to the very way you brought us here!”

The man clutched his hands to his head. Weakly, almost whining at first, he said, “I… I… I wasn’t calling to harass her. I could never have gone to such great lengths simply to bother her. I’m only thinking of what’s best for Mima-san. I’d do anything to save her. Those phone calls came from a place of sincere devotion. I even took off Ochiai Eri’s skin for her!”

Rumi’s face turned white. “You…took off Ochiai Eri’s skin?”

But the man was still talking. He pressed his hands around Mima’s. “You remember this place, don’t you? This is where you gave your first performance of your debut song, ‘Innocence Forever!’ You wore a white cardigan and a yellow flared skirt. You were the picture of cute. And that ending! Cherry blossom petals filled the stage, and you finished in this stance.”

The man struck a pose, his arms and legs bent, backside sticking out a little. It was too surreal, repulsive, a sight from a nightmare—this dingy man striking a pop idol’s pose in this dingy room. Reflexively, Mima looked away.

The man said, “The flower petals danced about in the wind, just like Mima-san’s flared skirt; the fluttering edge suggested a glimpse of her panties but never truly revealed one. To this day, I can remember the excitement, my heart beating in my chest.”

He continued. “That’s the Mima-san I want to remain. That’s my only desire.”

He looked at Mima and then to Rumi. “But Mima-san changed. It was a shame, but she changed. And once someone changes, it’s hard to get them back the way they were. Even so, it’s not too late. I’ve resolved to bring Mima-san back to her proper course—clearly my old passive methods, like the letters and calls, won’t do anymore. I admit I maybe went a little overboard with how I brought you here, but it needed to be done.”

The man withdrew a knife from the shopping bag. The blade’s tip gleamed in the dull light.

Rumi gasped. Mima positioned herself between Rumi and the man.

He said, “I truly, truly am Mima-san’s fan. My adoration for her is pure. Untainted. I’ve never touched myself to her, not even once. I would even die for her.”

The man’s thick red tongue came out and passed across his lips. As he spoke, the obsession shone brighter in his eyes.

“Mima-san, do you understand the purity of my feelings for you? You really understand, don’t you? Don’t you think it’s wonderful for a person to be so pure of heart he’s willing to die for someone he loves? Mima-san, I know you understand the purity of my feelings, because that’s who you used to be. When you debuted as an idol, you were innocent—like me. My purity, my innocence, those are what you need, now more than ever.”

Mima and Rumi paid little attention to the speech. Instead, their thoughts were focused on finding an opening for escape. But just now, they sensed that if they moved even a hair’s breadth, that massive knife would claim their lives—and so they kept stone still.

“I’ve thought about this very seriously,” the man was saying. “If Mima and I became as one, then Mima would be able to forever remain the same Mima she used to be. My soul and her body—that would do perfectly, wouldn’t you agree? And so I thought long and hard. How could I bring us to that perfect union? I thought and I thought—and I found the answer.”

The man opened his beady eyes as far as he could manage, his face that of a man lost in dreams.

“It goes like this—I’ll take off my skin.” He paused, then said, “You heard me right. I’ll take off my skin—from my face all the way down to my waist. Then, Mima, I’ll take off your skin. You can figure out where it goes from there.” As he inspected his knife’s edge, he added, “Rumi-chan, you can figure it out, too, can’t you?”

Rumi’s lips trembled as she said, “You’re—you’re insane. You’re insane!” She clung to Mima from behind.

The man looked at Rumi as if she were the one talking nonsense. “I’m not insane. I’ve never been more clear headed. So. Right now, I’m going to remove my skin. Then I will do the same to Mima. After that, I’ll put her skin over my face and body. On the outside, we’ll be Mima. On the inside, we’ll be me. We two will be one. The Kirigoe Mima of today will go back to being the Kirigoe Mima of her debut.”

The man laughed. “This makes me so happy. I’ve never felt this happy before.” Carried away by his emotions, the man kept on laughing. As he did so, he turned his back on them.

Mima saw her chance.

She squeezed Rumi’s hand and whispered in her ear. “Listen to me. We’re going to run away. I’ll count to three, and then we run.”

Rumi’s face was pale, but she nodded.

“Okay. One… Two… Three!”

At the same time, Mima and Rumi took off running, fleeing out the door and into the darkened hallway.

“Damn!” the man said—and then he was after them with astounding speed.

In her panic, Mima lost control of her footing and collided into a wall. The next instant, the man’s hands were on her back. With incredible strength, he pulled her into him, wrapped his arms around her, and hauled her back into the green room.

“Let go of me!” she screamed. “Let go of me! You say you’re my fan, don’t you? Then let me go.”

Grumbling under his breath, the man tossed her over by the sink at the rear of the room. He was retrieving a spool of brown packing tape from his bag when Rumi came back in.

Mima shouted, “No, Rumi! Stay away. Save yourself!”

Rumi ignored her and charged at the man, who promptly clubbed her on the back of the skull with the butt of his knife. The woman grunted and collapsed in a heap.

The man pried up the edge of the tape with his fingernails and gave Mima a grin. “All right, hold out your hands. Ah, and no more running. If you don’t do as I say, I’ll stab Rumi until you listen. Now be a good girl and hold out those hands.”

Closing her eyes in acquiescence, the idol thrust her arms out in front of her.

Moving quickly, the man wrapped the tape around her wrists, then laid her down on the floor, where he bound her ankles together in the same style.

“Good,” he said. “Now you won’t be going anywhere. I need you to be patient for a little while, but it’ll be over before you know it. I got plenty of practice peeling up Ochiai Eri.”

The man tapped the flat edge of his knife against his cheek and showed Mima a chilling smile. “I go first. I want you to watch this, Mima. This is how deep my devotion is for you.”

The moment he finished talking, he pushed the knife’s tip into the bottom of his scalp. Then, in a single motion, he traced around the side of his face until he reached his chin. With a sickening wet sound, a thin incision formed in his skin.

“Arrggh!” the man cried. “Ouch… Oh, this hurts. But I can take it.”

Again the man put the knife’s tip at the middle of his hairline, then made an identical cut down the opposite side of his face.

He adjusted his grip and began another incision, from the base of his neck to the top of his shoulder. The man’s howls of pain echoed through the darkened hallways. With each scream came another splatter of bright red blood.

“Mima, are you watching this? It must look painful, I know. But it’s not that bad. As long as I avoid cutting any nerves, the pain isn’t too terrible. What really hurts is when I peel away the skin. What I learned from Ochiai Eri was that it’s best not to be overly cautious about it. Here, watch this. It’s better just to tear it off quickly—like this.”

The man put his hands to the sagging skin of his face and yanked. With a sound like shredding rubber, his outer layer began to separate. Blood sprayed from his face, from his neck, even from his shoulders.

Moaning, groaning, with his skin in his hands, he turned to Mima. His face had been completely peeled, and his shoulders were well on their way.

The man’s white T-shirt was painted red, his jeans sopping wet.

Mima tried to look away, but even as she tried, her eyes were inexorably drawn back to him. Attached here and there to the back side of the torn-off skin were clumps of flesh dotted with white fatty tissue.

As strange as the thought was, amid this horrific, stomach-turning ritual, the sight reminded Mima of a bug shedding its chrysalis to emerge a butterfly.

 

II

 

“This is odd,” Tadokoro said with a frown.

“Very odd,” Murano Yuji agreed.

The lights were on, the cooking underway, and Rumi and Mima were gone.

“The door was unlocked, too,” Tadokoro said. He’d been to Mima’s apartment dozens of times, but never had he known her to leave without locking up. “Something might have happened.”

The manager began searching the room. After a moment, Yuji called to him from the entryway. “I found something.”

Tadokoro ran over to the photographer, who held a scrap of paper.

“What is it?” Tadokoro asked. “Did she leave a note?”

Yuji spread open the paper. Scrawled on it in pencil were the words, “Old K-TV.”

The photographer scratched his head as he tried to work out what the note meant. “K-TV used to have a studio over in Azabu, didn’t they?”

Tadokoro thought about it a short while, then suddenly lifted his head. He looked to Yuji and said, “We need to go—now. To the old K-TV station. I’ve got the feeling something bad is going on.”

Tadokoro and Yuji ran into the darkness of the night.

 

III

 

In the scarlet mask, two eyes stared at Mima.

Mima stared right back at them.

The singer was struck by how repulsive the human face was without skin to hide it. The structure of the man’s flesh was laid open to the world. His eyeballs were exposed, almost wholly round. Two red holes remained where his nose had once been. With no lips, his teeth were bared down to his gums.

Mima thought, He’s not a human anymore. He’s a monster—a monster of red flesh.

He was on his hands and knees, creeping toward her. The man opened and closed his jaw as he spoke to Mima. His voice was oddly wispy, like that of a toothless old woman, and his words were hard to make out.

“Your skin comes off next,” he said.

The skin from his shoulders drooped down over his chest. Every time he slinked another step closer, the tissue flapped about.

With her wrists and ankles still bound by tape, she pushed with her arms and legs to get away from him. Curling her body up tightly, she slowly, slowly, backed herself toward the sink. All too soon, she had nowhere left to go. Her back was against the wall.

Mima was out of ideas.

The mass of blood and flesh that used to be a man was drawing nearer and nearer, and in his hand, he still held the knife.

“Your skin comes off next, Mima-san.” The man laughed weakly. “Your skin… I’ll take off your skin…”

He was getting even closer now. Not even two meters separated them. If she didn’t do anything, she knew she would die.

Desperately, she looked around her, seeking any avenue of escape. But her hands and feet were still bound by tape. Even if she somehow found an opening, she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

The man was right on her.

Mima despaired. This was how her life would end—being skinned alive by a monster.

She felt his sticky hand grasp her leg. “I’ve got you,” he said. His teeth chattered. Was that his laugh? Was he delighted by her supple skin? In one last attempt to resist him, she curled up her legs and shook off his hand.

Slowly, the man lifted himself up, before pouncing on top of her. He adjusted his grip on the knife and placed its tip against her face.

Reflexively, Mima closed her eyes.

She heard a dull thunk, and the man fell over.

Fearfully, Mima opened her eyes and saw him stooped over, head clutched in his hands. She looked up and saw Rumi standing behind him. In her hands was an industrial-sized bottle of facial lotion.

“Rumi-chan!” Mima said.

“I’m glad I made it in time,” Rumi said. She ran to Mima’s side and tore through the tape at her wrists and ankles.

The man was still holding his head while letting out low moans of pain.

“We have to hurry,” Rumi said. “Before he gets back up.”

Mima stretched out her freed arms and legs, then slapped Rumi on the back and said, “Let’s go!”

Just as they began running for the door, the man grunted and leaped past them. In a single, powerful frog-like bound, he crossed from the sink to the doorway. He was no longer a man, but a monster.

Mima and Rumi backed into a corner.

Anger contorted the flesh that used to be the man’s face as he glared at the two women. “You’re breaking my heart,” he said, tears spilling from his eyes. As he cried, his body convulsed, perhaps due to the salt in his tears touching exposed nerves.

“You’re breaking my heart,” he repeated. “Here I am, offering you my complete devotion. But you give me nothing. Why? Why?”

The man’s entire body writhed in agony. “Well,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what you want. I’m taking that pretty skin.”

The man slashed at the air with his knife before moving in toward Mima. He held his arms outstretched to block any path of escape.

What can we do? Mima’s mind went on overdrive. How can we escape this demon?

She pointed to the left and shouted, “Rumi, run that way!”

Without hesitation, Rumi ran, circling to the left of the man, toward the doorway. The man turned and moved to intercept her, giving Mima the opening to run to the right.

The movement caught his attention, and he turned his head to look—thus failing to catch either woman.

They both fled through the doorway and emerged into the darkened hall. Mima headed for the emergency exit, but Rumi stopped her.

“We can’t go that way,” Rumi said. “He chained up the door after you came in. He’ll catch us before we could ever hope to get it open.”

Mima turned back the other way and ran into the pitch black. Rumi kept right on her heels.

The man’s head popped out from the green room. Gnashing his teeth in rage, he hollered after them, “This’s how it’s going to be, is it? No matter what I do, you refuse to see things my way. Fine—I won’t count on your cooperation. I had hoped to take your skin while you were still alive, but I no longer have that luxury. You got that, you two?”

He kept shouting into the darkness. “Do you hear me? I’m done holding back! The first one of you I catch is going to be the first to die by this knife. You’d better run like your lives depend on it!”

 

Mima and Rumi could see hardly anything at all. They gripped each other tightly by the hand, walking one step at a time.

Sounding disheartened, Rumi said, “If this is as fast as we can go, won’t he catch us any moment now? He said he’s going to kill us. What are we going to do?”

“Don’t talk like that, Rumi-chan. He’s stuck going slow, just like us. You can’t give up. We’ll just keep looking for a way out of here.”

They continued slowly into the unknown darkness.

For the first time, Mima appreciated just how unsettling the dark could be. There was nothing pleasant about the thought of that skinless monster pursuing them through the hazardous piles of boards and glass and scattered debris that had slowed them to a crawl. Yet still, she found the courage to press on, ever forward.

Several times, they heard a bump or clatter behind them. Each noise nearly sent their hearts leaping from their chests, but none of them seemed to come from their hunter.

Rumi let out a small yelp of surprise. Her hand had been following the wall, but it suddenly opened into empty space. She moved her hand around and determined it was some kind of doorway. The door had been left open.

Rumi sidled next to the frame and reached her arm around to feel along the inside wall. It wasn’t long until her fingers found a light switch.

“I’m turning on the light,” she said and did just that. The room lit up.

It was a locker room with large lockers lining the walls.

“Rumi-chan!” Mima hissed. She took the woman by the arm and pulled her inside the room. “You shouldn’t have turned on the lights. Now he’ll know where we are.”

Hope drained from Rumi’s face. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m going to lead him right to us. I’m sorry, Mima-san. I’m so sorry. Oh, what have I done…”

Mima held up a palm to cut her off. She spoke calmly. “Blaming yourself won’t get us anywhere. We’re going to hide in these lockers. We’ll lock them from the inside.”

The idol picked a nearby locker at random and got inside.

Though flustered, Rumi chose a locker for herself and latched it from the within. The two women stilled themselves and quieted their breathing.

The inside of Mima’s locker was dark and smelled strongly of rust and mildew. A few ventilation slits let in slashes of light and offered a full view of the locker room.

Both women watched nervously through the openings.

As they had feared, the man came in not long after.

Again, Mima was horror-stricken by the man’s ghastly appearance, red flesh exposed on face and body. Hunched over, shoulders rocking, with his crimson visage thrust forward, he seemed more demon than man. As he advanced into the room, step by ponderous step, he casually tapped the flat of his blade against his cheek. He appeared to be enjoying the sensation of the metal against his open flesh.

As if to himself, the man said, “This is where they decided to hide?” His voice leaked out from his nose and took on an unnatural quality. “They must be in these lockers. How dumb can you get? Of all the places they could have gone, they picked a room with nowhere to hide. Well, I guess I’ll just check the lockers one by one.”

He put his hand to the locker closest to the door. He grasped the handle and rattled it, while Mima watched through the air holes in her locker.

The man muttered, “It won’t open,” and began kicking at the compartment.

Then he put his knife up to a ventilation slit and pushed the blade inside.

Mima winced in imagined pain. Was he going to stick that knife into every locker?

The openings were precisely at eye level. Mima pictured his knife coming into her locker, body shivering.

Now he thrust the knife into the second locker.

The man grumbled, “Not in this one, either.”

It seemed he intended to perform that grim test on every locker in the room.

Mima had hidden herself in the sixth one from the door. The math was as simple as it was inescapable: four more and the knife would come for her.

More than anything, she wanted to scream, but she desperately fought down the urge. Her legs began to shake. Rumi’s locker was at a diagonal opposite hers. Inside that locker, Rumi likely faced the same maddening terror.

“Not in this one, either,” the man said, his voice sounding irritated, now.

He stood in front of the fourth locker and tried the handle. The door swung open with no resistance. The man clicked his tongue. “And not in this one.”

His hand was on the handle of the fifth locker. He yanked the door open.

He groaned. “Not in here.”

He turned his goggling eyes toward Mima, and their gaze met through the gaps in the locker door.

With heavy, inhuman breaths, he approached.

Mima held both hands tightly around the inside workings of the handle to keep it from moving. As before, the man rattled the handle. Mima held on with all her might, and somehow, somehow she managed to keep the door closed.

The man said, “I know you’re in there. Stop resisting and open that door.” As he kept furiously pulling at the handle, his voice raised to a shout. “Open it! Open it now!”

Mima held the handle closed, her life in her grasp. The metal dug into her fingers until they bruised and swelled. But Mima held her grip.

The man gave up. He released the handle, and then drove the tip of the knife through the ventilation holes.

Reflexively, Mima pressed herself into the back corner. The sharp edge of the blade rushed past her eyes and then back out again.

“I know you’re in there,” the man said. “If you don’t open that door right now, I’ll cut your face with this knife. You have nowhere to go, and I’m not leaving until you come out.”

Mima knew he was right. If she didn’t do something to change the situation, that knife was cutting into her one way or the other. She had to do something—but what?

Before Mima could finish the thought, the knife came through the center slat, and then again, and again. The blade scraped against the metal door with a terrible screech.

Mima made herself as small as she could, but there was only so much she could do.

Again and again, the knife’s tip passed perilously close to her forehead. Once, the blade even brushed her bangs.

The stress and fear had pushed Mima’s mind to the limit. Her nerves were an overinflated balloon, ready to burst at a single pinprick. If that knife pushed through those slits one more time, it could very well be the pin to end it all—to end her.

I’m trapped in this tiny locker, she thought. I have nowhere to run. Even if I had a way out, I hardly have the will to take it.

A desperate thought crossed her mind. If her fate was to be anointed by that killer’s knife while trapped in that locker, she’d rather open the door and face him. She’d rather put up a fight than silently await an inevitable death.

Having found her resolve, she began to turn the handle.

Just then, a crashing sound broke the silence. The man jumped in surprise before turning to the source of the disturbance. Mima looked the same direction.

The door of one locker, diagonally across, was standing open. Rumi stood within it, her eyes so wide they showed white all around.

She couldn’t handle it any longer, Mima thought. She couldn’t stay waiting in the darkness.

For a moment, Rumi’s sudden appearance had startled the man into stunned stillness, but he quickly recovered and came swinging the knife at Rumi.

Rumi’s wide eyes popped open even wider. She shrieked and flapped her arms like a chicken and fled from the locker room.

The man laughed through his lipless mouth and ran right after her.