Popular Hits of the Showa Era by Ryu Murakami

colors oozing from her eyes and nose and mouth, and her skin wasn’t coated with pimples; but an aura of disease emanated from her in a sickly wave powerful enough to have defoliated giant mangrove trees on some South Pacific isle.
    “You’re not supposed to pee there.”
    It seemed as if even her voice were sprinkled with disease dust, like soybean flour on a ripe rice cake. Nobue and Ishihara looked at each other. They were both keenly aware that something strange was happening to them. Normally, whenever they were together and had the opportunity to speak to a female, be she an oddly sexy kindergartner or a refined old lady stopping for dumplings on her way home from the temple, they tended to view each other as rivals, each suspecting the other of trying to steal her away, and to disguise that antagonism they would both laugh like idiots. This, of course, merely frightened and alienated toddlers, elderly widows, and all those in between. But now, face-to-face with this junior college girl who seemed to be made of one hundred percent disease particles, they were united in a lack of competitiveness and an utter inability to laugh. This was a woman they would not be capable of facing unless they worked together, unless they (at least figuratively) held hands, clung to each other, and squealed, I’m afwaid!
    “May I ask your name?” said Nobue. It was the first time since his early years in grade school that he’d been able to address a female in a normal and courteous way. This surprised him, and it surprised Ishihara too.
    “I live in the dormitory over there.” The junior college girl’s voice was neither high nor low, neither clear nor muddy, neither thin nor thick. It wasn’t the sort of voice you would ever remember. But it wasn’t by any means an ordinary voice. “We have a problem with people always urinating here.”
    In spite of, or perhaps because of, the sheer terror they were experiencing, Nobue and Ishihara had never felt or acted so normal.
    “You must forgive us! But even dogs always relieve themselves in the same places, don’t they? Perhaps it’s instinctive.”
    Ishihara wondered why his heart beat so fast as he said the word “instinctive.” He thought he sounded like some sort of youthful prodigy when he used such words. It may be that the junior college girl thought he seemed gifted as well; at any rate, she smiled at him and said, “I’m sure you’ll be more careful next time.”
    Her smile was so horrifying that Nobue ejaculated a line he never would have thought himself capable of.
    “Can we interest you in a cup of tea or something?”
     
     
    At the neighborhood ice-cream parlor, the junior college girl drew stares from the other customers and even the waitress. When she walked inside, the temperature seemed to drop three or four degrees. Seated across the table from her in their booth, Nobue and Ishihara finally realized what it was about her face. The eyes were weird. Not the look in the eyes so much as the fact that they weren’t aligned horizontally. When she smiled, the eyes slipped even farther out of line. This feature alone seemed to thrust Nobue and Ishihara into a different and dreadful world, and they both grasped something that Sugioka had only understood a moment before his death. Which is not, of course, to say that they were any more discerning or perceptive than Sugioka had been, but merely to give some indication of the magnitude of this junior college girl’s face and smile and voice.
    “I don’t come to places like this very often,” she said, and both Nobue and Ishihara thought, Good! Best to leave a face like that at home!
    But Nobue’s delight in his sudden ability to speak like a normal person was even greater than his fear. He couldn’t have laughed mindlessly if his life had depended on it, but he managed to smile and ask, “Oh? And why is that?”
    “I wouldn’t have thought that to look at you,” Ishihara chimed in with a smile of his own,