COTE : Parasite in Love.

Chapter 2: Computer Worm

It’s difficult to explain the eeriness of an intercom echoing in the dead of night to someone who’s never experienced it.

You’re relaxing, defenseless, in a completely silent room. Suddenly, the silence is broken by an inorganic sound notifying you of a visitor. For a moment, your thoughts halt.

You check the clock, and indeed, it’s clearly no time for a person to be visiting. Your head fills with questions and doubts. Who? Why now? For what purpose? Did I lock the door? What about the chain lock?

You hold in your breath, listening for the person beyond the door to enter. How much time has passed? It could be seconds, it could be minutes. You timidly go to the front door and look through the peephole, and a mysterious stranger appears and leaves without leaving any hints. It ends with everything still up the air, and the echo of that ill-omened electronic noise continues for the rest of the night…

It was a visit without any forewarning.

At the time the intercom rang out, Ayanokouji was cleaning his computer keyboard. The PFU-made keyboard had no markings on the tops of the keys, and not from being rubbed away by repeated cleaning, but because it was designed that way. He’d taken out and washed all the keys just last week, but he just had to do a thorough cleaning after every use.

A table clock showed it as past 11 PM. Before he could even think about who it might be at this hour, Ayanokouji’s smartphone, which had been charging on the desk, vibrated. He intuitively realized that the corresponding timing of the intercom and the email was not a coincidence.

He picked up the smartphone and checked the new email.

Open the door. I have no intention of hurting you.
I want to talk about viruses.

He looked up and glanced in the direction of the front door. His apartment wasn’t equipped with orthodox systems, and it was easy for intruders to enter the building without being tenants. The person who sent the text was likely already standing outside the room - at nearly the same time he realized this, there was a knock on the door.

It wasn’t a rough knock, but a kind of knock that was for letting your presence be known.

Ayanokouji stared at the phone in his hand, wondering if he should call the police. But the message displayed there gave him pause.

“I want to talk about viruses.”

He definitely had some idea about what that message could mean.

Kousaka first acquired an interest in malware three months ago, in the close of summer 2011. One day, he received a text from an unfamiliar address on his phone.

“The world will be ending very soon.”

An ominous message. But at the time, as he was feeling uncomfortable with what was now his fourth job and disheartened, the message was somewhat refreshing.

Ayanokouji  closed his eyes, and briefly enjoyed a vision of the world ending. The sky turned red, sirens wailed through town, unhappy news played on the radio. He imagined the scene at length.

It may sound absurd, but Ayanokouji was saved by that imprudent message. A baseless consolation, effectively a lie, was just what he needed at the time.

When he looked it up later, he found the message was forcibly sent from a device infected with malware called “Smspacem.” Malware is a programming term referring to malicious software or programs that cause computers to behave irregularly. Most people refer to all such things as “computer viruses,” but technically, a virus is no more than a sub-category of malware.