Status Updates From Out

As she crawled along through the morning rush-hour traffic, she let her thoughts range over the past few months and on into the future. Was she the hunter or the hunted? Would she kill or be killed?

‘They want revenge,’ said Masako, and as soon as the word had left her mouth the puzzle seemed to solve itself. Of course, that was it. He wanted revenge, an elaborate, expensive revenge. She’d been wrong in thinking it was about the insurance money. If it was money he wanted, would he have spent millions of yen to get Kuniko’s body here to scare them? But that made the whole thing even more terrifying.

The warm, still air that preceded a typhoon was oppressive. The storm, a fairly large one, was bearing down on them now, signalling an end to summer. Masako looked up at the sky, listening to the wind wailing in the upper atmosphere. As she reached her red Corolla, she saw a familiar bicycle coming toward her across the supermarket parking lot.