Free Real World by Natsuo Kirino Page B

if they say something about me that’s completely off the mark, though, I can’t just laugh it off. ’Cause it’s me they’re talking about.

Just like with Sakakibara and those other murderers, I’ll be in all the papers for days, and they’ll gather experts together to endlessly debate changing the juvenile statutes. There’ll be articles with my photo and the message I wrote in my grade school yearbook, some classmate will post my photo on the Internet, and all of it will be just more ammunition for the rumor mill. People who didn’t like me will say whatever they like: “He was kind of gloomy, but never stood out in class, so I don’t know much about him.” “He always said hello, but I heard rumors that he tortured cats in the neighborhood.”

When I think of being on the run all over Japan with everybody in the country trying to track me down, it feels like my fate is to keep on running forever. Not like there’s anyplace for me to run to. Like in Stephen King’s The Running Man, taxi drivers and convenience store clerks are going to phone the cops, telling them that that guy on TV was just here.

Speaking of Stephen King, I really like him. The Running Man and Carrie. I read The Long Walk twice. Battle Royale isn’t by King, but I read that twice, too. Most of the kids I know read only manga, but I prefer novels. Novels are closer to real life than manga, it’s like they show you the real world with one layer peeled away, a reality you can’t see otherwise. They’re deep, is what I’m saying. Which makes me sort of a weirdo in my class. The guys in my class see only the outer surface. Same with their parents. Guess they find that makes living easier, like that’s the smart way to approach life. What a bunch of assholes.

I have to keep doing something, I’m so sleepy. Half awake, I focus on the scenery passing by. Boring scenery along a main road. A pachinko place, a karaoke place, a used-car lot. A ramen shop, a family restaurant. All of them with their windows shut tight and the AC going full blast. A tin roof of a garage reflects the bright sun, hot as a frying pan.

But it’s like none of this is part of my world anymore. Ordinary scenery has transformed. Or I should say it’s me that’s changed. If I go into a pachinko place or a karaoke place, I know I won’t feel the way I used to about them. I’ll never feel the way I used to—ever again. Do you know what I mean? If somebody had told me all this before, I would have said, What the hell are you talking about? But there’s this gap now between my world and other people’s. And I’m totally alone.

People are part of the scenery, too. The truck driver talking on his CB as he passes me, the middle-aged guy stifling a yawn as he drives a white delivery van. The woman with a small child on the seat beside her, the elementary school pupil crossing the road. It’s like all these men and women—everybody—are in a different world from me. In their world, time just stretches on endlessly, today the same as yesterday, tomorrow the same as today, the future the same as tomorrow.

I feel like I’m racing alone through a desert on some distant planet, like Mars. Everything’s changed from two days ago. Everything’s divided now into before then and after then— then meaning the day I killed my mother. My actions created a turning point, a crossroads, in my own life. And now I finally understand the fear that Japanese soldier felt. People who experience this kind of a crossroads are afraid. And so sleepy they can’t stand it.

As these thoughts kept a lazy pace with my pedaling, I got so sleepy I really couldn’t stand it anymore. I wondered if I should stop my bike by the side of the road and take a nap. I looked around for a good place to sleep, but there wasn’t any, just cheap-looking houses and shops, not what I wanted—a bench or a small patch of grass. God, I’m so sleepy! So sleepy. I want to crawl into my own bed and sleep