The lecture dragged on and on. Samantha scanned the rows in front of her, but she could not find anyone interesting to focus her attention on. Her eyes began to droop. Just as she was about to fall asleep she saw a woman with shoulder length red hair sitting on the professor’s chair. Interest perked, she woke up, and found the chair empty.
Maybe I was just hallucinating, she told herself. Then she dozed off again and once more she saw the woman. This time Sam didn’t try to wake up. The woman looked about the room and finally her eyes fell on Sam. She smiled, and Sam woke with a jolt that startled everyone else sitting close to her.
Professor Abe turned his frowning eyes to her side of the lecture hall then swept his gaze across the hall as he said, “In the next lecture we will be looking through the details of Determinism. I would like everyone to write a short opinion piece on the subject. I intend to pick students at random to present their opinions,” he looked pointedly at Sam, “and I expect everyone I pick to contribute intelligently to the discussion.”
Sam blushed, realizing that she was barely passing the grade in his class. Just last month, she had begged him to give her at least a B for her last assignment because she needed to meet her scholarship requirement that year. She had promised to work harder and do better. He gave her a C-, but wrote a comment to the school board saying that she was having problems adjusting to life in Tokyo. That afternoon, Sam could sense his disappointment in her because she had not lived up to her promise.
Keeping her head bowed, Sam quickly stuffed her untouched notebook into her bag and walked out of the hall. She was glad he finished class early that day because then she would have time for a proper dinner before starting her night job at a nightclub in Shinjuku. Although the doors usually close at 2 a.m. and she also had problems sleeping after she got home because of all the whisky or brandy-look-alike teas that she had to drink with her clients, the tips she received was good. Lecture days were particularly hard for her. She liked the extra money but she also wanted to stay in school.
As she pondered over how to settle the problem, she looked up at a corner mirror hung up at the edge of the corridor wall and paused. There was that woman again. She turned but didn’t see her among the crowd passing by. She looked up again, the woman was no longer there. Samantha shrugged then made her way to the subway station. She hurried down a flight of steps, scanned her student’s subway pass then ran down another flight of stairs to the fast filling platform, just in time to see a Takadanobaba-bound train slow to a stop. The woman’s image reflected for a brief moment on the stainless steel door right before it opened. Sam turned with a jolt, nothing. The waiting crowd began to stream into the train and she followed them automatically. Just one hop from Waseda station, she bought a ticket and changed to the JR Line heading to Shinjuku.
At the Shinjuku station, she made her way to Lumine Square and went into a small French café for a quick meal before going out to her club which was only two blocks away. The night was rowdier than usual because one of the clients had brought their European customers along with them. The doors finally closed at 3 a.m. One of the company managers, an admirer of hers offered to send her home, but she declined.
Sam turned down the well-lit and still busy streets and walked for about twenty minutes then took a cab back to her apartment. She heaved a sigh of relief on reaching the steps of the 1960’s double storey building squeezed between two modern high rise blocks. With her tired head bowed, she climbed up to the 2nd floor, but on reaching the landing she realized with a start that she had somehow managed to enter the wrong building. Instead of the open balcony corridor she had expected, she was now in a long passageway with doors on either side. Could she have entered one of the other buildings, she wondered. Turning back down the way she came, she walked and walked but she could not find either a staircase or an end to the long dim passage.
Sam balled her fist and bit down on it with frustration. It had been a long day, and she still had the commentary to write out over the weekend. The door to her left opened, and on seeing the familiar face of the red-haired woman, she sprang back and fell against the opposite wall.
The woman also studied her with surprise for a moment then she said, “Hello, I’m Jane. You are that girl at Professor Abe’s lecture right?” She chuckled.
“Yes, I am,” Sam said carefully.
“Do you live here too?”
“No, I think I went up the wrong staircase.”
“Stuff like that does happen to the best of us.” She opened the door wider. “Would you like to come in?”
Sam hesitated then decided that Jane was a human just like her. On top of that she was exhausted and she needed a place to sit down for a little.
“How did you get here?” Jane asked once Sam was through the door and had taken a seat on a cushion before a low table in the middle of the tatami floor.
“I think I must have made a wrong turn somewhere.”
Jane held up a bottle of wine that she had picked up from a side cabinet and raised an eyebrow. Sam nodded with a smile. She poured the contents into two whisky glasses and placed one in front of Sam before taking her seat across from her.
“You can stay here tonight,” Jane said. “I have an extra futon for guests.”
“Thank you. I just need a couple of hours to rest then I’ll be on my way.”
“Okay.” Jane smiled and finished her wine. Sam did likewise then followed her into a narrow empty room. She sat with her feet folded under her and waited while Jane went into an adjoining room and returned with an armload of futon a moment later. After another ‘thank you’ and a ‘goodnight’ Jane slid the door close and left Sam alone, which was just as well because the moment Sam’s head touched the pillow, she fell asleep.
Almost immediately, she felt herself being shaken awake. “Ojou-san! Ojou-san! Okinasai.”
Sam sat up, still dazed and confused by the veil of sleep over her consciousness. She stared with surprise at the face of an elderly Japanese man then looked to the sliding door and saw a young woman peeking from behind it.
She looked down and found herself lying on a scorched mildewed futon. Her head snapped up and she stared aghast at the mildewed walls that still carried tell-tale signs of burns. The tatami floor about the futon was charcoal black.
“What is this?!” she screamed in Japanese.
The old man asked, “How did you get in here? The door is always locked.”
“Jane let me in. She lives here. Where is Jane?”
The old man looked to the young woman, as though asking her to explain. She said, “Jane used to live here, yes. When I heard the sound of someone moving about up here, I called Mr Minami and asked him to check. Nobody has lived here since Jane’s suicide.”
“Jane killed herself?” Sam asked incredulously.
“Yes,” Minami said, “She poured gasoline over herself and set it alight.”
“Why?” Sam asked, “What happened?”
The woman shrugged. Minami bowed his head as though apologizing to the dead girl for telling a stranger her secret. Then he looked up and said, “She was a good student, and won a scholarship to study in Waseda University. But life in Tokyo has many temptations and opportunities for a pretty girl. When I came to her to collect the rent, she told me she could not pay me yet because she had just lost her scholarship, and she was doing all she could to pay for the fees to stay in the university. I gave her a one month dateline.” A long, sad pause later he said, “The fire alarm went off that night, but we were too late to save her. One of the professors had to come to identify the body. He was devastated and blamed himself for her death.”
Samantha rose and brushed the debris off her. As she passed the living room, she saw the two dusty glasses and a newly opened bottle of wine. She stood before the table, clasped her hands in front of her face and bowed three times. Then she turned and walked out of the apartment. Minami locked the door and tried the knob before turning down the passage.
Inside the apartment, in a corner covered with shadows, a young woman sat. She was jotting down her thoughts on the philosophical doctrine of Determinism. Maybe this time, she hoped, Professor Abe would call her to give a presentation. Maybe then, she would get a good grade and win back her scholarship.
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