Free The Graveyard Apartment by Mariko Koike Page B

screen as if hypnotized.
    â€œCookie, come here right now,” Misao ordered. Her tone sounded harsher than she intended, and Cookie responded by slinking into the kitchen with her tail wagging weakly and a penitent expression on her face.
    Misao knelt down and took Cookie in her arms. “It’s all right, girl,” she whispered into the velvety ears. “Everything’s okay. Everything has to be okay.”

 
    5
    March 30, 1987
    An afternoon in early spring. A busy thoroughfare in the Ginza district of Tokyo. The sudden, frantic honking of a car horn, followed by the screeching of brakes.
    Jolted abruptly back to awareness, Misao looked around and was startled to realize that she had very nearly stepped into the path of a moving car. If she stretched out her hand, she could have touched the hood of the dark blue minivan that had barely managed to skid to a stop in front of her. The driver of the car was glaring angrily at her through the windshield, his features distorted by fury and indignation.
    Glancing up, Misao saw that the pedestrian-crossing light was red. She could hear people behind her murmuring things like “What was she thinking?” and “Whoa, that was close.” Her heart was pounding a mile a minute, and her armpits were drenched in sweat. The driver stuck his head out of the side window and shouted, “You stupid idiot!” Misao stared at the ground in embarrassment, unconsciously running her tongue over her parched lips.
    It wasn’t that she had been lost in thought or fretting about something in particular. No, her mind had simply gone blank. In that nearly fatal instant she wasn’t thinking about anything, and although her eyes were open, she wasn’t seeing anything, either. She felt as though she’d been sleepwalking, or hypnotized, or in a trance of some sort.
    What just happened? Misao took a deep breath. True, she hadn’t been to the Ginza in ages, but had she really turned into a country bumpkin in the interim, lacking even the most rudimentary urban-survival skills?
    When the light turned green, Misao waited until everyone else had surged ahead, then started across the broad boulevard. Two young men who looked like university students glanced back at her from amid the pack of pedestrians and began to snicker. Misao gave them a dirty look. The odd thing, she thought, was that they didn’t seem to be reacting to her absentminded behavior; rather, she got the distinct feeling that they were laughing openly at her appearance.
    Was there something funny about the way she looked? Once that thought took root in her mind, Misao became consumed by an obsessive desire to figure out what the young men had found so amusing. Maybe she had torn a hole in the back of her jacket along the way.
    There was a large department store on the other side of the street, just a few feet from the end of the crosswalk. Misao went through the revolving door and rode the escalator to the ladies’ room on the second floor. Inside, a quartet of middle-aged women was monopolizing the mirrors. When Misao walked in, every gaze slid to the door and gave her the once-over. The look in those eyes was undisguisedly appraising and judgmental. Ignoring the women, Misao sauntered over to the only open patch of mirror and looked at her reflection.
    She was wearing a black-and-white glen plaid jacket over a pair of fitted black slacks that hugged the curves of her derrière. The back of the jacket was intact, with nary a rip in sight. Her glossy black shoulder-length hair fell in soft waves around her face, and while she could see two or three white hairs, as usual, they were barely noticeable. A partially visible pair of gold earrings gleamed behind the curtain of hair. The anti-aging cream she had been using faithfully every night must have been doing its job, because there were no crow’s feet around her eyes. As far as Misao could see, there was nothing unusual or