···
Frog told Katagiri his plan. They would go underground on the night of February 17 (one day before the earthquake was scheduled to happen). Their way in would be through the basement boiler room of the Shinjuku branch of the Tokyo Security Trust Bank. They would meet there late at night (Katagiri would stay in the building on the pretext of working overtime). Behind a section of wall was a vertical shaft, and they would find Worm at the bottom by climbing down a 150-foot rope ladder.
"Do you have a battle plan in mind?" Katagiri asked.
"Of course I do. We would have no hope of defeating an enemy like Worm without a battle plan. He is a slimy creature: You can't tell his mouth from his anus. And he is as big as a commuter train."
"What is your battle plan?"
After a thoughtful pause Frog answered, "Hmm, what is it they say—'Silence is golden?"
"You mean I shouldn't ask?"
"That's one way of putting it."
"What if I get scared at the last minute and run away? What would you do then, Mr. Frog?"
"'Frog.' "
"Frog. What would you do then?"
Frog thought about this awhile and answered, "I would fight on alone. My chances of beating him by myself are perhaps just slightly better than Anna Karenina's chances of beating that speeding locomotive. Have you read Anna Karenina, Mr. Katagiri?"
When he heard that Katagiri had not read the novel, Frog gave him a look as if to say "What a shame." Apparently, Frog was very fond of Anna Karenina.
"Still, Mr. Katagiri, I do not believe that you will leave me to fight alone. I can tell. It's a question of balls—which, unfortunately, I do not happen to possess. Ha ha ha ha." Frog laughed with his mouth wide open. Balls were not all that Frog lacked. He had no teeth either.
···
Unexpected things do happen, however.
Katagiri was shot on the evening of February 17. He had finished his rounds for the day and was walking down the street in Shinjuku on his way back to the Trust Bank when a young man in a leather jacket leaped in front of him. The man's face was a blank, and be gripped a small black gun in one hand. The gun was so small and so black that it hardly looked real. Katagiri stared at the object in the man's hand, not registering the fact that it was aimed at him and that the man was pulling the trigger. It all happened too quickly: It didn't make sense to him. But the gun, in fact, went off.
Katagiri saw the barrel jerk in the air and, at the same moment, felt an impact as though someone had struck his right shoulder with a sledgehammer. He felt no pain, but the blow sent him sprawling on the sidewalk. The leather briefcase in his right hand went flying in the other direction. The man aimed the gun at him again. A second shot rang out. A small eatery's sidewalk signboard exploded before his eyes. He heard people screaming. His glasses had flown off, and everything was a blur. He was vaguely aware that the man was approaching with the pistol pointed at him. I'm going to die, he thought. Frog had said that true terror is the kind men feel toward their imagination.
Katagiri cut the switch of his imagination and sank into a weightless silence.
···
When he woke up, he was in bed. He opened one eye, took a moment to survey his surroundings and then opened the other eye. The first thing that entered his field of vision was a metal stand by the head of the bed and an intravenous feeding tube that stretched from the stand to where he lay. Next he saw a nurse dressed in white. He realized he was lying on his back on a hard bed and wearing some strange piece of clothing under which he seemed to be naked.
Oh yeah, he thought, I was walking along the sidewalk when some guy shot me. Probably in the shoulder. The right one. He relived the scene in his mind. When he remembered the small black gun in the young man's hand, his heart made a disturbing thump. The sons of bitches were trying to kill me! he thought. But it looks as if I made it through OK. My memory is fine. I don't have any pain. And not just pain: I don't have any feeling at all. I can't lift my arm...
The hospital room had no windows. He could not tell whether it was day or night. He had been shot just before five in the evening. How much time had passed since then? Had the hour of his nighttime rendezvous with Frog gone by? Katagiri searched the room for a clock, but without his glasses he could see nothing at a distance.
"Excuse me," he called to the nurse.
"Oh, good. You're finally awake," the nurse said.
"What time is it?"
She glanced at her watch.
"Nine-fifteen."
"P.M.?"
"Don't be silly; it's morning!"
"Nine-fifteen A.M.?" Katagiri groaned, barely managing to lift his head from the pillow. The ragged noise that emerged from his throat sounded like someone else's voice. "Nine-fifteen A.M. on February 18?"
"Right," the nurse said, lifting her arm once more to check the date on her digital watch. "Today is February 18, 1995."
"Wasn't there a big earthquake in Tokyo this morning?"
"In Tokyo?"
"In Tokyo."
The nurse shook he