Shigeru was dressed in the only item of clothing he then owned, brand new Levi's. 501s, white ones. They were stiff, too new.

Skin that sensed it would only be alive for a short while longer smudged up into the air. His breathing had formed a grey halo around his head. When he became aware of this he wrote his name backwards through it, then erased with the most tender part of his left wrist.

'Just fine.'

The day before had been the last day of September. The day before his parents had left for Kagawa at dawn. The sense of freedom that he always felt when his parents were off somewhere flooded him. It was precious. The last time they had gone away, departing at five on a Wednesday in April, he had waved to them from that same window while unnecessary luggage was loaded into the cab. Then he had sat there for sixty-two hours until ten that Friday evening, staring beyond the clear screen of glass at the stillness and tiny focusing movements of people and machines as if it were all a film.

The sun was lazy behind layers of mist and gauzy cloud. The sky kept changing. It was soiled white, mainly.

Among red roofs, blue roofs, unlit neon and orange tv aerials there were seven hundred and fifty variations of grey. The view he had wasn't old, but felt it. Most of what he saw had gone up in two previous generations. It didn't look so bad in sunshine or sunset, but in total cloud cover it was dreadful.

To Shigeru the threat of earthquakes was very real. 1923, 1946, 1994; the Great Hanshin-Awaji of 1995. Mainlands, islands—threatened by nature. As a child, Shigeru had imagined his death would have been due to an earthquakeŠlast breath squashed out of him under piles of rubble. It was not to be so.

Sorting out memories in chronological order is an interesting business. People get left out, whole sequences forgotten. Bits and pieces are overlooked, then patched in—sometimes blurry, sometimes in sharp focus. Within minutes of those parents heading off for their week of heaven, the walls of Shigeru's room—lined with books—had been bared. Those once precious books had been roughly bound with nylon string and dumped in the bins; goodbye to all that.

Sawing his desk in two, then four, then eight, then sixteen neat parts, brought a smile to his face but no sweat to his brow. The desk had been one of those deluxe models, with a built-in alarm clock for self-imposed speed tests, built-in calculator, high and low intensity lights. A special offer buy his parents had considered a good investment, once upon a time. Dismal.

He wanted to leave things tidy, right. Getting everything right included binning all personal items from the flat so it would seem like he'd never been there. The back-and-forth trips to the garbage had been precision-planned for years. Umbilical cord, primary school paintings, the awful attempts at pottery, school certificates, Hi-8 cassettes, CD collection, clothes—all binned. Postcards off the kitchen wall, photos from the family album (naked at three, shirtless at ten), carefully-hidden pornography, floppy discs, cacti—disposed of. Binoculars, computer—dumped.

Getting everything right included machine-washing curtains from what had been his room. He knew the boil-washed bedsheets, folded ever so neatly, would eventually be slept on. Those parents of his hated waste.

Getting everything right involved laying down three double pages from Mainichi Shimbun to protect the tatami when painting those four thin bedroom walls. It had been three years since they'd last been done.

The Kite White emulsion spread with a lovely thickness. Glossing the doors, shelves and skirting boards was a tiring, tedious affair. Only a sense of humour helped him finish it/himself off. No traces of his existence were to be found in the flat, except the body.

Down below he could see the boy from #7B heading off for school, the same neighbourhood school he had once attended. Same inky-black, five button-fronted uniform every Japanese schoolboy wears with no choice in the matter. An outfit still retaining that military feel which got going in the thirties. Shigeru waited till the boy had turned the corner before flinging the jeans up, up and away.

The floor and walls of the bathroom, laid with glazed ochre-yellow hexagonal tiles, shone brilliantly. Every surface, shiny shiny. Perfect but for the drip drip of the showerhead.

Shigeru splashed his face with double handfuls of cold water. Drops splattered his chest. He needed the water, needed to splash, rinse and wipe. More and more water. He let it splash into his hair and ears. It didn't matter about the floor, not any more. The emptiness of the tiled room gave back to him all his sounds and movements, echoing like an indoor pool.

Getting everything right also meant standing still for ten minutes covered head to toe with lemon-scented Immac.

He showered carefully, rinsing off thoroughly as suggested, obediently following the step-by-step instructions. A mess of dead black was retrieved from the plughole and flushed.

The depilatory exercise was successful but for a few isolated areas that got a quick tidy-up shave with a Bic. This included eyebrows, an impulsive final touch. Shocking, he thought, applauding his reflection.

There was gloss paint deep under the nails of the index and middle finger of his right hand; neat semicircles of white. A careful clipping removed most of the imperfection, but not all. He was too exhausted to care at that point and let it be.

The enema seemed a matter of course. Shigeru hadn't eaten the day before to ensure that floating shit wasn't a feature of his suicide, something many Hollywood starlets had failed to consider in their heyday.

Removing the spray nozzle, he inserted the usual comfortable length of tube. It was well worth the bother. A number of small ping-pong clockwork turds bounced against the fibre-glass of the toilet.

'Why did he do it?' Shigeru said to himself in the mirror, running a hand over his bald head. 'Can't imagine,' was the reply, said in a voice two octaves below his usual, hands on hips.

He watched the tub fill, emptying an entire bottle of hair shampoo into the flow. The water creamed into bubbles as it mixed. Large bubbles, peppermint-scented. His eyelids grew motionless. They ceased to be focused on the rippling, furling surface. He knew what he was about to do would not be pretty.

'Bath time,' he sing-songed toward the mirror, but his reflection had become a steamed-up blur.

Waving a hand from side to side over the glass, Shigeru half-laughed at himself. To him it looked like he was waving a giant, desperate bye bye.

'Sayonara,' he said with a wink. Then he switched the light off, wanting to be discovered in the shuddering brightness of the fluorescent.

It was as he lit a candle by the mirror that Shigeru surprised himself with tears. The only comfort the preceding months had held for him was the intelligent planning of those last days. The grand finale had come and he was surprised to be feeling nothing but a modest trace of determination.

When he bent to elbow-check the temperature of the water, muscles in his back (particularly the shoulders) rippled beneath that smooth, clean, faintly-tanned skin. Momentary flexings like sparks. Musculature as natural and effortless as the structure of a flower—not studied and built with rapid-grow drinks and Nautilus pumping.

Only head, knees and shoulders emerged above the level of the water, like something severed—set there for viewing. The temperature was a bit too hot; perfect. No gin, no sake, no bottle of Suntory beer. Shigeru hadn't had a drink inside him for the last six months. Alcoholism would not be a cover up excuse his parents could use with the neighbours when questions started to be asked.

His first cut was tentative; vertical, up the vein. Afraid of making a mistake he slowly pushed the blade through the skin, as if it might break from too much pressure.

It was an incision the length of an average porn star's dick. There was no sound. He'd expected a muted hiss.

Dragging the knife firmly up from the palest part of his left wrist in a perfect (and deep) straight line for a second time, the one thought in his head was of the plug being pulled later. The flesh kind of peeled back, opening up quickly, blood type A jetting out to pink the water in a tropical way. He squinted against the pain.

The action was repeated one last time, just to be on the safe side. With regret he glanced over toward the squeezed out tube of Immac and the Bic; he'd forgotten about their planned, neat disposal, but not that of the knife. Rocking on to his left buttock he tidied it away up his arse, black plastic handle first. Buried it beyond the second ring.

Both of those large capable hands were then placed under his feet, eyes blindly fixing on the tiniest start of a damp patch beside the air vent directly above.

His eyes wandered over the perspex towel holders, the neatly folded pale blue cotton. A vegetable knife seemed such a mundane thing to end his life with. He'd have preferred a benediction-given sword, something decorative—inlaid with agate and jade—though such an item is difficult to dispose of in the depths of an average dirt-box.

He wondered what shade of opalescent yellow his skin would fade to, how dark the water, how long it might take the concierge to make use of the emergency key if a nasty smell were noticed.

Shigeru was sure of one thing: the person who would pull the plug, revealing inch by inch more of his remains, would do it not in the style of a half-running chicken with its head cut off, unsure of its direction, but with a cold, professional detachment—careful not to get fingers wet.

The dead can be so graceless, flopping—mouth open, falling as gravity dictates on the mechanical restriction of joints. Shigeru knew this and wished he could freeze into a position that did not look a mess. He didn't want an inelegant heap to be discovered.

Stretching his neck, resting his head backwards, gave him—weightwise—a balance. The ribcage also became nicely elongated, suds held him sweetly at the waist.

His body had always been so precious to him, so great and abundant. He could feel the nourishing blood pump away, gently reducing his strength with the flow. Not for the first time that day the youth wondered if his mother's vegetable knife would be returned to her and, being the woman she was, if she would continue to make use of it. Waste not, want not.

The nineteen-year-old's lifeblood curled out of him with the twirl of a barber's candy stick. The bubbles popped one by one orŠsometimes, a few together at once. He liked the irregularity of both tempo and volume. It was all quite musical with his eyes closed. Behind those eyelids was a whole galaxy of red stars. He felt wonderful. Just fine. Perhaps the way an imago feels cracking out of the chrysalis or how a snake feels when a skin is shed. It was the kind of experience he used to take drugs to have.

'A hint of old-fashioned pain,' a youth at the end of his teenage years thought aloud.

Tears, not sweat, rolled down his cheeks—he was that happy. He wiped them away with his good right hand, then balanced it on the side of the tub. The index and middle finger drummed flat, rhythmic, numb beats over which a blast of fuzz guitar was imagined.

'Oh, excellent,' his voice smeared to a twinkle of light in the mirror.

It occurred to Shigeru, only briefly, that he might resemble a miscarriage when found. A dirty, great big baby. Him, the boy who followed two brothers who had never made it past the cervix. Him, the only child of a regimented marriage.

His features slowly began to morph with a face he'd worn at the start of the year when he'd had bad flu. He could feel himself fading away from one world, not fading into another. It was black he was fading into. Comforting, welcoming black.

Moments before consciousness was lost he heard, then—with effort—spotted a rather short, bristly bluebottle by the light switch.

Perfect, he thought.

He managed to mouth one last word to the fly, but no sound was voiced. Shigeru's last word was Soon. Thought, mouthed, but unheard.

Drip drip of the shower-head.

It wasn't long before the bath water was as cold as a deserted egg in a bird's nest.

The compound eyes of the fly, a masterpiece of micro-circuitry, enjoyed the sweet excitement of monitoring the reduction in power of that dying, dimming human. Each and every tiny inhalation and exhalation was monitored up to one hundred times a second before all movement ceased.

There were so many silent fertile places to lay her eggs. The maggots, the fly thought, will be beautiful and numerous.

The clever little thing was well aware that nine ants, three spiders, two centipedes and a single, very hungry cockroach were also present.

The race was on.