Hikikomori and the Rental Sister Read online

  “Why did you leave Japan? What happened?”

  They pass closed shops and dark windows. The sky shows no sign of turning brighter. But she knows the sun will eventually rise and she will have to leave Thomas and go back to work selling wagashi. She wishes the sun would stay sunken.

  “I had this idea that . . . that if I could make enough money, I could take my brother out of his room and move away to America or Australia. Some place where being half Korean didn’t matter. I thought I could save him. I thought we could start fresh. It was my last year of high school and my parents wanted me to go to college, but how could I go when I knew my brother was in his room like that? So I started meeting clients. Men.”

  The money she earned from selling her panties wasn’t enough to take her brother away from Japan. So she bought some plain white silky fabric, cut out little rectangles, folded the rectangles in half, and sewed them into her panties. Labels. On the back of the labels she wrote her cell phone number discreetly. The Agency would never know.

  Most guys never called. She’d write her phone number, drop her panties into the pretty box at the Agency, take her envelope with the ¥10,000 and never hear from the pervert who purchased them. She had expected every guy to see her number and call right away. If they wanted her panties, they must—once given the option—also want her, right? She was diving into the thick sludge of men’s perversions, and she was getting stuck.

  Then one day during biology class her cell phone vibrated inside her backpack. After class she pulled it out and found someone had texted I HAVE YOUR PANTIES.

  She texted back: WANNA MEET? The reply was immediate.

  She texted him to go to a certain Shibuya love hotel, on the hill, at exactly four o’clock (couldn’t stay out too late on a school night, had to be home for dinner), no earlier, no later. She added that the cost was ¥60,000, an inconceivable amount of money, a ridiculous amount of money, an amount she never thought she’d get away with.

  At 3:50 p.m., from across the street and around a corner, she staked out the love hotel. Nobody went in or out until exactly four o’clock, when a man walked in, nervously glancing over his shoulder to see if he had been spotted. It was a self-service hotel, so she figured five minutes would be all it would take for him to get settled in a room.

  From across the street he hadn’t looked like a pervert. He looked like any other guy: tired, slouched, slightly sad. He wore a dark suit and tie, he didn’t look crazy, and he wasn’t as old as she had expected. Old, but not that old. Just a random guy she might one day find herself waiting behind in line at a store. Or at the table next to hers in a restaurant. Or the father of one of her friends from school.

  After five minutes, she texted him: which room? She went inside and knocked on the door to room 15, and the man who had purchased her panties let her in.

  It surprised her so few men contacted her through her labels. She had figured she’d have to sleep with hundreds of men, each once. Instead, few men called but those who did wanted to see her regularly, so over the next year and a half, while her brother was living in his room, she had a constant stable of clients. One or two would fade away just as one or two new ones contacted her. It worked out.

  The money piled up. Payment for services rendered.

  The sex was mostly boring, but there’s nothing wrong with being bored, and sometimes the sex was good—men and their fantasies—once in a while even great, and some men seemed to save their best sex for her, as though they had something to prove. What that something to prove might be she had no idea, but she was certain these men didn’t fuck their wives the way they fucked her.

  Mostly though, the biggest obstacle to overcome was the sadness. All those men carried with them profound sadness, often buried deep deep deep, but visible to her. After sex, spent and looking up at the ceiling, the men let down their guard and the sadness came oozing out. This, the hardest part: to ignore the sadness, to not reach out, to not become involved, to not care, to do only what their arrangement required, to let them leave with their sadness, to not let her own sadness out, to stay on guard. The hotel rooms began to smell of sadness. The curtains, the sheets, the pillows, the carpeting. Drenched in sadness.

  During sex the men were usually disconnected, distant, faraway minds. But what of it? Her mind, too, was far away, thinking of a new life with her brother.

  But one particular afternoon she opened her eyes and looked up at a face and stiffened with fright, with self-consciousness, and she pushed him off of her and rolled to the side and buried her face in her hands. She didn’t know what else to do: he had been looking at her, he had been doing all those intimate, sweaty things not to his own private fantasy but to her, to the person called Megumi. Her mind had been far away but his mind had been right there, between them, with them.

  “Did I hurt you?” he said. “Are you okay?”

  Was she okay? She wasn’t sure. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Let’s keep going.”

  He wasn’t like her other clients. He was unmarried, a college student, from a rich family, good looking. Smart and charming and kind. And perverted.

  The next week, same thing. His mind was right there. Hers too. He paid her.

  And instead of waiting for his calls, she began calling him, arranging two or three meetings a week. Sometimes four. Right there. He still paid her. Afterward they would go to a café together or a restaurant for dinner. He wasn’t afraid of being seen in public with her.

  But what was she to talk about at cafés and restaurants? Her other clients? How she wanted to keep her two lives separate? At first it was easy enough to just listen. Men love to talk about themselves. But after a while she was expected to contribute; she wanted to contribute. She told about her family, about how she’s half Korean, about her hikikomori brother.

  They’d meet in the hotel, and more and more often they’d use up the entire appointment simply talking, time flying, forgetting all about having sex. Even then he paid her.

  At dinner one night he asked if she would ever go on a real date with him. “Are you running out of money?” she asked, laughing.

  “I have plenty of money. But I just . . . I just love doing so many amazing things in the city, and I always do them alone and I like doing them alone but I’d much rather share them with someone else and the only person I can think of, the only person I’d really want to do any of those things with, is you.”

  “Don’t you have any friends?” she asked.

  “Of course I have friends,” he said. “But nobody special.”

  Client, no longer. Over the next months, they saw each other often. They met after school and went to cafés and parks and gardens and restaurants. He took her shopping. They explored different neighborhoods and went to museums and baseball games and secret, hidden jazz clubs. A new, sophisticated world. Once, they went to the harbor and watched the ships being loaded and unloaded with giant, slow-moving cranes. Often, but not always, they went to hotels. One night at dinner, as he was sipping his soup, he asked her to stop seeing clients.

  “If not for my clients I’d have never met you,” she said.

  “But now that you’ve met me, why do you need to see clients?”

  “For the money.”

  “So if I paid you that much, you wouldn’t see them anymore?”

  “Of course.”

  Later that night her brother was rushed to the hospital. Three days later, in his bedroom, he slit his arms and stomach and throat.

  She would’ve held him. Dead, alive, blood or no blood, she would’ve held him. He deserved to be held. He did not deserve to have his mother call the authorities and order a cleanup as though a storm had sent a tree flying through their roof. He didn’t deserve to be erased for the sake of those still living. He deserved to be held.

  “When my brother died,” she tells Thomas, “I lost it. Is that the right way to say it? That’s how it happens sometimes. You just lose it. You say, That’s enough. First my brother did, then I did. I
had to escape, get out of there. How could I spend even one more night in that house without losing my mind? I didn’t even pack a bag. I walked out and called my friend here in New York to tell her I was on my way. The next flight wasn’t until the morning so I slept in the airport. And now here I am. I thought maybe if I had told him about all the money I had been saving up, maybe then he would’ve changed his mind. I don’t know.”

  “You haven’t been back?”

  “Not even once in three years.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Eighteen

  She helps me carry the groceries home. For a moment I imagine that we are walking home together—to our own home.

  I ask if she’ll have enough time to get some sleep before work. “Not really. Maybe a few hours. I’ll have to guzzle down coffee all day.”

  “Where did you learn that word?”

  “Guzzle? I don’t know. I like it because I can pronounce the two zs correctly. Most of my friends can’t.”

  My street is just as lonely and quiet as before. This whole time, all these sleeping people have been dreaming. It’s like the air is filled with their dreams. She asks if she can help carry the groceries upstairs. “I can manage,” I say. I take the bags from her and set them on the top step, in front of the door. I put down my bags as well.

  “Everything okay?” she asks.

  “It happened right there,” I say, pointing behind her. She spins around but there is only empty pavement.

  “That spot on the road. Even now the stain doesn’t wash away.” My knee cracks as I sit down on the top step, facing her, facing the street. I fold my hands together. “I’m not doing this because you’re here,” I say. “I always do this. When I come back from my shopping in the middle of the night I set down the bags and sit here and look at that spot and think. In a way I’m sorry you have to witness it.”

  “You never have to feel that way about me,” she says, the kind of thing people say as they fall in love, before things change.

  “This is the first time we’ve been outside together,” I say.

  “Our first date.”

  “Is grocery shopping at three in the morning a date?”

  “Sure. We were holding hands.”

  I lean back against the step. Morris’s light is off. The concrete is rough, stones stuck together with cold gray paste. These same stones shattered my coffee cup. The coffee stain is gone. The bloodstain is still there, a black splotch. People step on it. People drive over it.

  At this time of night the buses barely come and there are no cabs. She calls a car service. While we wait she takes a pen from her purse and fishes out and unwads a wrapper or receipt of some sort, then flattens it out on her thigh and starts writing. “Just in case,” she says.

  “Just in case what?”

  “You can call me anytime, or you can come over.” She hands me the paper.

  “I don’t even have my own phone.”

  “Memorize it. The address, too. If all else fails, find the wagashi shop on Minetta. Hamamoto.” I put the paper in my pocket. A few moments pass. I follow her gaze’s vector straight to the stain on the pavement. “I don’t know exactly what I mean by all this,” she says, “but when my brother . . . I just don’t want you to lose it or do anything—just come, okay? If something like that starts to happen.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Promise?”

  When the car comes she kisses me on the lips. “Thanks for coming out tonight,” she says. “I feel so much better now. Because of you.” She rolls down the window and waves as the car drives off.

  I carry my groceries up the stairs. Five plastic bags hanging from my wrist, I open the door. It takes some time for my eyes to adjust to the bright light. How could I have been so stupid, so careless, where was my mind? Another ambush!

  Silke says nothing at first, she just sits there on the sofa, staring up at me. I’ve seen her in the dark as I pass by her room, but when was the last time my wife saw my face? I search and search but come up blank. I feel as though I am onstage, naked.

  “I didn’t know you were out,” she says. Her legs are folded beneath her, as they were when I’d come home late from the studio, when she’d look up from her book and smile.

  She comes toward me. “Here, let me help you with that.” She takes the shopping bags from my hands and goes with them to the kitchen. The most jarring thing is that she’s wearing the white sundress. I’d forgotten all about that dress, but now the entire memory hits me all at once.

  She puts away my groceries, clearing room in the cupboard for my dried soups and macaroni and cheese. She puts the milk and butter in the refrigerator, as though I have come home, as though she called me with a list and I have delivered.

  Her face has no particular expression. She crumples the first plastic bag into a ball, throws it away, and begins to unpack the next.

  My food next to hers in the cupboard looks like nonsense. “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Putting away the groceries.” I tell her not to bother, that I’m going to take them back to my room anyway, but she continues to unpack. “Are you hungry,” she asks, “do you want me to make you something?”

  “It’s three in the morning.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “What are you doing awake?”

  She tells me she was having dreams and woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. Bad dreams? I ask, nightmares? No, she says, intense dreams. Not good or bad; just intense. “I haven’t forgotten that you hate when I tell you my dreams,” she says. “Don’t worry, I won’t bother you with the details.”

  Every word would be the wrong word, so I stay silent.

  “Are you sure I can’t make you something?”

  “You don’t have to cook for me.”

  “Then how about just a snack?”

  We sit at the kitchen table under the hanging pendant lamp. Chips and salsa. The crunch echoes in my head, the tang lingers on my tongue. “They’re from a new store, a tortilla factory in Brooklyn. Pretty good, don’t you think?”

  I nod. Here she is, within reach, all I’d have to do is extend my arm and open my hand and cup her cheek, fingers stretching into her hair.

  Maybe that’s Megumi’s purpose, to simply get me used to having other human beings in my proximity. Why doesn’t she mention Megumi’s little shoes? I wait for it. I prepare a response.

  Her fingers grab a chip and plow the salsa. Crunch crunch crunch between her teeth. A soft pulp. She swallows. A shared snack, each of us with the same taste in our mouth. Is this how it begins?

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “Can’t I have something to eat with you? Is that against the rules?”

  “But what will it change?” I say, and I’m startled to realize that I don’t mean it as some bitter rhetorical deflection at all but as an actual genuine question to which I really want to hear her answer. I want to know whether my sitting here could really be the beginning.

  “Eat your chips,” she says.

  For a while we do not talk. The salsa level sinks lower. The remaining chips are smaller, revealing the crumbs underneath, and the abandoned salt. She is beautiful, my wife. Whatever these years have done to her soul, her face is still beautiful. But stained with desperation.

  “Maybe . . .” she starts, but then turns her head toward the window, toward the black, and in the glass I can just barely see her reflection and my arm extends and before I can change my mind my open hand settles on her cheek, soft skin, and my fingertips, yes, stretch into her hair. She does not hesitate, she places her warm hand over mine and presses hard. She does not turn toward me; she stares out the window. Perhaps she can see me in reflection.

  I slide my hand out and stand up. “I should go.”

  “Maybe you could stay,” she says without turning around. But I leave her there and go into my room and deadbolt the door.

  I sit motionless on my bed and listen, but there is nothing to hear, and it is not the
silence of emptiness, like the vacuum of space, the silence of nothing to say, no common point, of searching for words; it is the silence of drowning, of overflowing fullness. It is the silence of too much to say and nowhere to begin.

  I pull aside the window shade but Megumi is not down there. She has not come back. She is somewhere else. It would be so easy, a fresh start, a woman I have not yet wronged.

  Finally there is a sound, and it is a familiar one: Silke’s sobs. Quiet at first, she spends tremendous effort holding them back. She struggles. They grow louder. I wait for her to stop, a long time, but she does not stop. The stain is my fault. I can’t bear it, I go back out.

  “What do you mean, Maybe I could stay?” I say. She is as she was, sitting at the table, facing the window. She wipes her tears. She tries to compose herself.

  “Just for a night,” she says. She turns to me. How must I look to her? I am a stranger. Or maybe she looks at my body and face and sees only memories. “I don’t know if every day you’re dying to come out and be with me but every day something holds you back, or if you’re happy as a clam in there and have no intention of coming out, or if you’re about to run off with her. I don’t know anything. And my imagination . . . I get nothing from you, so I make things up. I’m going crazy out here.”

  She takes my hand. So different from Megumi’s hands. Larger, stiffer.

  “See,” she says, “it’s still you, still your hands and mine, still us. We’re right here.” And warmer. Warmer than Megumi’s. “Maybe you could show me something, progress, that you’re trying.”

  So we sit on the sofa. I’m not sure how to hold my body on the contraption, it’s been so long. She keeps her distance, at the opposite end, arm against the rest, angled away. We face forward.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I ask.

  “Don’t be like that,” she says. I’m not sure if her meaning is limited to my comment or extended to encompass my entire life. Don’t be like that. Yes, darling, I wish I weren’t like that, I wish I could be like something else, someone else, everyone else.