Free Underground by Haruki Murakami Page A

had shut down … no, that’s a bit exaggerated.
    “Strange,” I’m thinking. That’s when the people hanging on to the handstraps started coughing. The car was pretty empty by then, maybe three or four people still standing in front of the seats. But I was so short of breath, I just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. All I could think was, “Can’t this train go any faster?” It’s two, maybe three minutes between Otemachi and Nijubashi-mae, and all that time I was desperate for air. When you fall down and you wham your chest, sometimes you can’t breathe. You inhale all right, but can’t push the air out again—it was kind of like that.
    That’s when I look, and by the door opposite me there’s something wrapped in newspaper. I was standing right in front of it and hadn’t even noticed. It was about the size of a lunch box and the newspaper it was wrapped in was dripping wet. Water or some kind of liquid seeping out all around. I took a closer look, and the thing was sloshing around to the rhythm of the train.
    I’m a downtown girl, so I know when you go to the fish shop, they wrap it in newspaper. That’s what I thought it was: someone had bought fish or something and left it behind. But who’d buy fish and be traveling on the train first thing in the morning? One middle-aged man also seemed to think it was odd and had gone over, just staring at it. He was forty-something, a salaryman. He didn’t touch it, though, just peered at it like, “What’s that?”
    Meanwhile the train reaches Nijubashi-mae, so I get off and everyone else who gets off with me is coughing. I’m hacking away, too. About ten people got off and every one of them was coughing, so I knew there had to be something, it wasn’t just me. I knew I had to rush if I was to be on time. My heart was pounding and I ran along the platform, went straight up the passageway, and suddenly was out of breath. I slowed down and felt much better, but now my nose was running like mad. My heartbeat was back to normal, though.
    By the time I got to the office and we were in the meeting, I Started to feel really sick, like I’m going to throw up. Then it came on the news that something had happened on the subway, and I think, “Aha, so that’s it!” When I heard I felt faint … I’m a real coward. I went straight to St. Luke’s Hospital.
    They put me on a drip for two hours and ran blood tests, then told me, “Okay, you can go home now.” The tests didn’t show up anything out of the ordinary. I showed no sign of contracted pupils, I just felt sick. I was still wearing the same clothes. I was really suffering then, but I’ve gotten better over time. Luckily I was dozing off. That’s what a detective told me. My eyes were shut, and my breathing was lighter and shallower
(laughs)
. Just lucky, I guess.
“Everyone loves a scandal”

Hideki Sono (36)
    Mr. Sono works in the Aoyama fashion district, at the Tokyo branch of a haute couture clothing manufacturer. He’s in sales. After the “Bubble” burst and Japan’s 1980s affluence dried up, most fashion-related businesses fell on hard times, or as Mr. Sono puts it
, “We came back to our senses.”
Tired of the excesses of the previous decade—old men cavorting around with young girls, spending a fortune on image, selling overpriced brand-name clothes—he seems somewhat relieved that the economy has bottomed out
. “Now we can finally get back to normal.”
    Although he says he’s
“cut out for sales,”
Mr. Sono has nothing of the usual hard-sell salesman about him. He seems rather cool and introverted. He doesn’t care much for drinking or group tours or golf, but golf is important in sales, so he can’t very well not play. He goes to the golf course, opens his long-neglected golf bag, and aska his playing partners
, “Er, which club do I need now?”—
he’s that level of golf er
.
    “With society the way it is, everyone just chasing after money, I can sort of