Sitting on the recliner next to my stereo system was my father, or at least a man who appeared to be my father. Not quite grasping the full effect of what I was now seeing, I managed to take a couple steps inside to close the door. As I put down my briefcase on the kitchen table just off to my right, I noticed the man relaxing back into my recliner as if he no longer had a fear that the person entering was someone for whom he did not know. Finally, though, I decided to say something to break this nightmarish silence.
"Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my damn apartment?"
It seemed like a reasonable way to address the man's presence, but it came out sounding more like a horror movie victim's last words than it did the declaration of control over the moment I had hoped it would be.
After a short pause the man sat back up in the chair and replied,"Your father,Kaikou, remember?"
At this point I diddn't know what to say, because as best I could recall my father had died when I was ten years old from a heart-attack. And at that, I had remembered being the one who found him dead in the living room when I came home from school. Later, my mother told me that I had been the one who called the paramedics, but I really never remembered much else of that day aside from the events leading up to the discovery of his body.
"Of course you remember me, but you just don't believe it IS me, that's all. Well, I don't blame you for being surprised. After all, it's not every day that a man comes home and finds his dead father sitting in his chair. Trust me, the shock will wear off after I tell you what I have to say."
"Wait," I had to say something.
"Before you go on, I want some proof that you're really my father?"
"I thought you might want to put me through this." His voice was low in tone and otherwise nondescript.
"I'll give you the answers you need, but you're the one who has to remember them in order to decide thier validity."
I wasn't exactly sure what to make of this comment, so I just waited until he continued.
"My name is Namida Kaikou, and before I died we lived in Ichihara, Chiba prefecture. I worked as a fisherman for my whole life, and when you showed no interest in carrying on the family business I was the one who told you to chase whatever dreams you had in that head of yours. I always figured you'd come around and follow in my wake, but I guess we can't all get what we wish out of life now can we? Anyway, back to the concrete proof. When you were only a few days old you fell ill, and you lost most of the hearing in your right ear. To this day you have yet to tell anyone about it, and you try to compensate for your loss at work by making it a point to never let people of importance sit to the right of you. Satisfied?"
Though these words the man claiming to be my father spoke were all true, I still couldn't help but feel that I needed further proof. "Maybe I had told someone a long time ago about my hearing disorder and simply forgotten it," I told myself. If I had done so, then this man could have found out this information and done some research on my life and realized that he could have some fun with it or something. I diddn't know, but what I did know was that I wanted a better look at the man. He had been sitting next to my oversized stereo, which seemed to cast a dark shadow on him that the one table lamp light to the other side of the stereo just couldn't quite get to. Aside from the shadow, I had had the glare of that light between him and I from the time I opened the door, so I really couldn't make out any distinguishing features at all.
Nevertheless, I decided to turn on the overhead light. This was the first motion my eyes had taken away from the man since the time I first walked through the door and set down my briefcase, and in doing so they merely went to the light switch and back to where the man had been sitting. Only, he was no longer there when my eyes got back to the recliner. Now all I had before me was emptiness-as sight, as sound, as smell, as reality.