Evil and the Mask by Fuminori Nakamura

I think I went as far as saying that even though she looked so prim and proper, I bet she loved masturbating and fucking. I couldn’t stay at school, so I started staying in bed again, just trying to get through one day at a time. From the moment I woke until I went to sleep at night, I just tried to survive without sinking into a deep depression, simply enduring one day after another. Everything seemed worthless and irritating. I played video games for hours, and when I got bored I threw them across the room and broke them. I read hundreds of comic books, then flung them aside. I listened to music, took sleeping pills, then repeated the cycle. The air was thick and heavy, pressing down on me. When one day finished, I knew that tomorrow I would have to face another one. My future was a daunting, unbroken succession of days as far as I could see. From time to time I’d get a letter from Kaori describing her life, but it was usually a week or so before I could open it, and when I finally did I could only manage a brief reply.
    One day when I was seventeen or eighteen I went to see her. I showered for the first time in ages, changed my clothes and left the house. The unfamiliar sunshine was too bright, so I pulled my cap down tightly over my eyes. I thought that everyone I met was looking at me, did my best to control the fierce beating of my heart. I went to a hairdresser and asked for a trim, I didn’t care what style. The hairdresser chattered away, but I couldn’t get myself together enough to answerproperly. The guy was kind, though, and eventually I stuttered out a few suitable remarks.
    I left the salon, walking deliberately. For some reason I’d got into the habit of treading carefully. A woman in red was walking along the street perpendicular to mine on the other side of a high fence, moving smoothly past the black palings. I watched absently as the black overlaid the red, as the red was hidden by a series of black stripes, until finally we met at the corner. She was quite a bit older than me, but I thought she was beautiful, so I stopped. She passed by quickly, giving me a funny look. She didn’t seem suspicious, but I guess I must have looked pretty strange. I took a deep breath and made my way cautiously forward once more.
    Kaori’s school was in Nakamura in Nagoya. I waited for her in a small park a short distance from the gate. She’d been set up in an apartment on her own, and she’d have to pass this way to get home. I remember vividly how beautiful she was then. She was walking with three boys and two girls, laughing at something one of them had said. She screwed up her eyes and pushed the girl beside her playfully on the arm. Her expression held no shadow of the troubles of a few years earlier. She was free of us. I stood dazed, looking at her loveliness and glow. She was beyond my reach. Once we had been able to be together and happy, but it was like she had entered my life as some kind of mistake, as a brief fantasy. The loss of this blissful hallucination, combined with the confusion of being a teenager, rooted me to the spot.
    “Fumihiro!”
    I had intended to spy on her in secret, but I’d forgotten tomake my escape and she’d spotted me. I have no recollection of what happened to her friends. I simply looked at Kaori as she approached. She was gorgeous. Far too good for someone like me.
    “I haven’t seen you for ages,” she said with a smile, seeming untroubled by my sinister ambush.
    “Yeah. I was in the area.”
    “I’m glad.”
    She started walking. I realized that I was walking with her.
    “How’s school?” I think she asked.
    If I swallow my pride and admit honestly the ugliness that passed through my mind, I was thinking about attacking her. About touching the most beautiful, most precious girl in the world once more. After that, I thought, I would kill myself. That would be the end of my miserable life. If I could hold Kaori in my arms one more time, I didn’t give a damn what