Salmonella men on Planet Porno: stories - By Yasutaka Tsutsui Page 0,7

now eating a meal that he prepared by himself. Well, that’s all we have on Tsutomu Morishita for today. Now let’s go over to our correspondent at the Yakuyoke Hachiman Night Festival in Kobe. I imagine things are starting to hot up now, Mizuno-san?”

“Yes, that’s absolutely right.”

I sat there open-mouthed, staring at the screen blankly as the next item continued.

I eventually came to my senses. “What was that all about?” I muttered to myself.

I was hallucinating. That was it. I was seeing things. And hearing things. That was the only explanation. I mean, what would be the point in reporting that I’d asked Akiko Mikawa out for a drink and was so spectacularly rejected, as always? The news value was zero.

All the same, it still seemed so real – the pictures of me and Akiko, the captions under the photographs, the newsreader’s manner, everything.

“Don’t be daft!” I told myself, shaking my head vigorously.

The news ended.

I nodded to myself. “A hallucination. Yes. That’s what it was,” I said. “But hey, what a realistic hallucination!”

I laughed. My laughter reverberated around my tiny bedsit room.

What if the news had been real, I wondered. What if Akiko Mikawa had seen it, what if my workmates had seen it? What would they have thought? I had myself in stitches just imagining their faces.

Now I was laughing uncontrollably. “Wahahahahahaha, hoohoo-hoo, hahaha, hee, hee, wahahahahahahahaha!!!”

I climbed into bed, but still the laughter wouldn’t subside.

There was an article about me in the morning paper.

MORISHITA REJECTED AGAIN

At around 4.40 yesterday afternoon, Tsutomu Morishita (28, an employee of Kasumiyama Electric Industries, Sanko-cho, Shinjuku, Tokyo) invited Akiko Mikawa (23, a secretary at the same company) out for a drink after work. Mikawa refused, claiming she had to go home early. Morishita was wearing a red tie with green polka dots, which he’d bought in a Shinjuku supermarket the previous day. Morishita later returned to his apartment in Higashi-cho, Kichijoji, and made his own dinner. He is thought to have gone to bed immediately after eating, as usual. This is the fourth time Morishita has been refused by Miss Mikawa.

There was a picture of me next to the article, the same one as had been used on television the night before. But there was no picture of Akiko Mikawa. I was obviously the main subject of this story.

I read the article four or five times while drinking a glass of milk. Then I tore the newspaper up and threw it into the bin.

“It’s a conspiracy!” I muttered. “Someone’s playing a practical joke on me. My God! All this just to have a laugh!”

Whoever it was, they’d need a lot of money. Even a single copy of a newspaper would be expensive to print. Who could it be? Who would go to such bizarre lengths just to get at me?

I couldn’t remember offending anyone that much. Perhaps it was someone else who fancied Akiko Mikawa. But what was the point? She’d done nothing but reject me.

No, this must be someone really perverse, I thought. Trouble was, I couldn’t think of anyone who could possibly be that perverse.

Damn! I should have kept the newspaper, I thought on my way to the station. I regretted losing my temper. If I’d kept the newspaper, it might have helped me to ferret out the culprit. It would have been evidence once I’d found him.

I forced myself onto the packed commuter train and found a place to stand in the middle of the carriage. I thought about all the people I knew. Then I caught sight of a newspaper being read by the man standing next to me. It was a different newspaper to mine, but it also had an article about me. And this time, it occupied two whole columns.

I gasped audibly.

The man looked up from his newspaper, glanced back at the photograph next to the article, then looked up again and stared at me. I hurriedly turned my back.

Who had done this?! I was livid. The villain had actually replaced all the morning papers along this line with fake ones. He wanted to make sure the article was seen not just by me but also by everyone else who took the same train as me. In that way, he could make a complete fool of me and vilify my name. And of course, the ultimate intention was to make me lose my mind. I filled my lungs with the stuffy air inside the packed train. The bastard! I wasn’t going to play his game! No one