At times, it was difficult to imagine him ever holding a gun, let alone firing one.
I placed a hand on his shoulder to alert him to my presence. He turned to me and smiled; not a large smile, but one which seemed to hold within it the knowledge of the entire world. The General felt around the floor for a cushion, eventually placing one by his side. He gestured for me to sit down and then took my hand. I couldn’t help but notice how small and fragile my fingers seemed in his.
The General looked at me with white marble eyes, completely clouded. The non-stop gunfire of his final battle had taken a severe toll on his hearing as well, which was now entirely gone. He lived in his own world, painfully distant from anyone else, one where myths of Nordic warrior heavens existed alongside Buddhist teachings without contradiction.
He began to tap on my hand in a rhythm. We spoke in Morse code, the only reliable way for the two of us to communicate. I had spent months learning this for the sole purpose of speaking to The General, who I had first seen in some newspaper article years ago, only to find out that he wasn’t much of a conversationalist. On top of that, he had a tendency to break off into archaic Buddhist proverbs, mantras from a past life perhaps, in a Japanese so old I would have to translate it later on my own. Nonetheless, he was the only person I could trust with my secrets, and the first person I had told about the hollow in my chest.
Four short taps. A pause. Two short taps. Hi. I responded the same, eager to learn more from this man who seemed to understand everything I couldn’t.
“What did you do today?” I asked.
“Same as any other day. Woke up, ate the breakfast a nurse brought me, continued my work.” The General motioned towards a low table, on top of which sat a few new ink paintings.
Cluttering the room were stacks of old rice paper, on which The General had inked out massive calligraphy characters. To the untrained eye, however, they appeared as nothing more than scribbles. Owing to The General’s distinct lack of vision, these characters were mostly illegible, violently painted and spilling off the pages, the paper torn through where his brush was too rough.
Looking at these paintings, I felt a profound sense of loss. No one, not even their creator, could properly read what was written. No doubt there was a wealth of knowledge hidden in their brushstrokes, an entire lifetime of wisdom just barely out of reach.
“I’ve been reading the books you recommended,” I tapped, picking up a painting with my free hand. It was crumpled and had buckled under the sheer amount of ink thrown on it, spraying out in all directions. I couldn’t tell where the brush first struck the page, or where it left.
The General’s eyes flickered as I placed the painting among a towering stack of books, none of which were in Braille. Other than the occasional novel or two, most of what he owned were specialized military and strategy texts, which I was prohibited from reading on account of them being “classified” or “dangerous to the general public.” What a blind man would be doing with these documents, I did not understand.
“What did I assign you again?” he asked.
“Inoue’s Bullfight. I didn’t like it. The protagonist wasn’t self-aware at all, didn’t realize he was destroying himself.”
Bullfight was the story of a newspaper editor, Tsugami, who becomes obsessed with hosting a bullfighting tournament. It was a short but frustrating read, Tsugami leading himself blindly down the path to his own destruction.
“If he’d realized that his obsession was ridiculous,” I continued, “everything bad that happened to him could have been avoided.”
The General let out a laugh which eventually evolved into a wet cough, before stopping for a moment to collect himself.
“I suppose you’re still too young to be reading works like that. When you get older you’ll understand more about people; maybe then you’ll even sympathize with Tsugami.”
I felt mildly insulted by The General’s comments but took them in stride, understanding that this was what it meant to be someone’s disciple. Despite how anxious I was to pose Soki’s question, I restrained myself from asking right away. It was important for The General to understand that I wasn’t only coming to him for simple answers, I was also here for his guidance.
“And how are you getting along at school?” he continued. “Have you made any friends?”
“I have.”
“Are you telling the truth?”
I didn’t respond.
“If you start with the assumption that other people are beneath you,” he went on, “then no one will want to—”
I took my hand out of his grasp. The General didn’t react, and instead sat there patiently, waiting for me to calm myself. A short while later, he took my hand once more.
“Are there any more exercises I could be doing?” I asked.
“No, none more,” he tapped, lips drawn into a tight frown. “Enjoy being a child for once.”
“Please.”
He paused, perhaps a little disappointed. “I don’t envision a single thing that, when untamed, leads to such great harm as the mind. Do you know where that is from?” he asked.
“I do not.”
“Next time we meet, I want you to know that entire sutta by heart.”
“Understood,” I replied, grateful for a concrete challenge.
I noticed that The General’s cup was empty and dutifully went to prepare tea for the two of us, careful not to rearrange anything in my path. The collapsed tower of books, the misaligned coffee table—every detail would be mapped out in The General’s mind with a militaristic precision, allowing him to safely navigate his home.
Waiting for the water to boil, empty cups in hand, I ran my finger along a chipped edge. An untamed mind: one which never guards itself, and is made vulnerable as a result.
I set the cups down on the table, The General bowing his head in appreciation. Just behind him, mounted on the wall, was his iconic rifle. He had let me hold it once, and I hadn’t anticipated how light it would be. The grain of the unpolished wooden stock had been comforting, the dented barrel cool in my palm. This relic had once been an extension of The General’s self, as much a part of him as his right arm. It felt unfair for it to be relegated to the mantel, gutted and unable to fire.
The tea warmed our hands, neither of us resuming our communication just yet. I wasn’t sure how to broach my reason for visiting, how to ask the question posed to me up on the roof: Do man-made things have kami, too?
What was Soki doing at this moment? Perhaps he was also thinking of me. His coming into my life just now couldn’t be a coincidence; we must be tied by fate. It was almost like a test. There was a karmic connection between us. That Shinto boy needed something that only I could provide.
I heard a police siren pass by outside the window, briefly interrupting the quiet between The General and me. I wondered what that patrol car was responding to. Maybe a robbery, maybe a jumper, maybe a fire.
“Do you ever wonder if you were wrong?” I asked The General, aloud this time. “That maybe in the end, Japan wasn’t worth fighting for?”
The General took another sip of his tea, unmoved by words he couldn’t hear.
SOKI
MOM GOT NERVOUS WHEN I went out on my own. I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, so I never had a reason to leave the house. But in Sakita, I told her I had no choice. It was important for me to become stronger, braver. I’m sixteen now, which means I’m a man. And a real man shouldn’t stay inside all day, being home-schooled. I needed to get used to meeting people.
To keep me safe, she made me carry shrine charms for protection wherever I went. I figured Mom was just collecting them at that point. She’d put so many on my backpack it was embarrassing. When I told her I didn’t need them, she said you can never be too careful, especially when you’re new to a place. When you don’t know who to make friends with, who to steer clea
r of.
Dad once told me why she’s like this. Said Mom had a “hell of a time” in school. They played this game back then, called “diseased child.” Basically, all the students in a class decide that someone has a curse, and then they avoid touching or talking to her. The only time they speak is if they find new things to tease her for. Happened to my mom, so she transferred schools. Started fresh. But then it happened again at the new school. Guess she was easy to bully. She couldn’t transfer anymore, though. Her parents refused to pull her out a second time. They wanted her to toughen up. Looks like it backfired.
I told her people weren’t as scary as I thought they would be. I’ve met a lot of them since we moved to Sakita. Guess I’ve conquered some fear of the outdoors. This city is bizarre. It’s like it can’t decide whether to give up, or if it already has. The people are weird too. Still, that didn’t stop me from introducing myself. Think that’s the key to staying grounded here. If I make some friends, Dad might say no the next time he’s offered a “relocation.” And Mom won’t have to worry about me anymore.
I’ve been in Sakita long enough to start picking up some local gossip. Heard the guy who owns the arcade used to be yakuza. He’s really nice now, so you wouldn’t suspect a thing. Tells everyone he lost his pinky finger in a farming accident. But I think the yakuza must have cut it off when he messed up some massive deal. This is my secret, I won’t tell anyone.
And then there was Anna-terasu. The neighbours talked about her like she was a charming eccentric or the neighbourhood pet. Felt kind of condescending.
Mom told me to stay away from her, though. She’d heard there was an incident a few years back, when Anna became obsessed with this teacher, Mr. Hamada. He taught Japanese literature, so Anna kept sticking around after class, asking for help with her assignments, for extra reading. Eventually, she started going to him during lunch. I guess Mr. Hamada didn’t think too much of it, just imagined she was lonely or something. Ended up giving her extra lessons, too.
Then, these cryptic letters started showing up at Mr. Hamada’s house. One went on about how perfect he was, how he was “the embodiment of perfection” and had a “lover’s soul.” Another letter invited him over for dinner, so that he could properly meet her mother. At some point, he started getting weird phone calls. It didn’t take long before Mr. Hamada’s fiancée picked up the phone, asked who was calling. Told Hamada to take care of it before they got married. He ended up taking a job in another city. His house is still abandoned. Sometimes I’d throw rocks at it when no one was around.
My mom was pretty upset when she found out I’d talked to Anna-terasu. I told her it was only for a few minutes, but I still got scolded. She said that I should be wary of those types. What would happen if Anna did something to me next?
Then I started school and saw that Anna was in my class. I knew I couldn’t tell my mom, though, not even if my life depended on it. I didn’t get why Anna was supposed to be so dangerous. She seemed okay, a little awkward maybe. She never made eye contact, just stared at the ground or at her hands. Dad told me not to do this, since it’s rude. Solid eye contact is a must. Didn’t think Anna meant it that way. She was just a spacey person.
Still, I felt like she was treated unfairly. Anna just thought a little differently. Like once, she told me that my shrine charms were probably useless, but that it shouldn’t matter. Believing in them was reason enough to hang on to them. Coming from someone else, that might have sounded rude, but not from her. She wasn’t trying to disrespect the charms. She was just being sincere.
My mom was just being paranoid about Anna. Wasn’t sure why. I felt like, if my mom was sixteen, they might have even gotten along. Anna could be a little intense, but she wasn’t cruel. She wasn’t the kind of person who bullied her classmates. It’s just that, if someone lashed out at her, she wasn’t afraid to hit back. Usually much harder, too. I guess that made her a little intimidating.
There was another girl in my class who had my attention, though. Her name was Fumie, and she hadn’t stalked any teachers, as far as I knew. Seemed nice. Kind of cute in that Kyushu way. Figured I might as well invite her out. Boys my age are so immature. They make a big deal out of stuff like that. I think it’s best to cut your losses and ask right away. I followed Dad’s advice and sounded confident, even though I wasn’t. Eye contact is a must.
My mom was happy when I told her about Fumie. Guess she assumed I’d forgotten about Anna. I hadn’t forgotten about her, but we were never really friends to begin with. It was just that Anna said things that ate away at me and stuck in the back of my mind. Wasn’t sure if I liked that. For example, I once asked her if man-made objects could have kami. Thought she’d have an interesting opinion, considering what she’d said about the value of belief. Instead, she just told me that she didn’t know.
If I’m being honest, I was disappointed. Was hoping she’d say something that would prove me right. But that night, I wasn’t able to sleep. I wondered if I was missing the point again. Maybe whether man-made objects have kami or not doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s wanting to believe they do that’s more important.
I heard another rumour about Anna. Apparently, she hung out with this old war vet. Some crazy blind dude, who claims to have been a soldier. Would be fine if they were related, but nope. This girl in my class said Anna wanted there to be another war. Or that she had some sort of military obsession. Seemed unfair to me. If Anna was a boy no one would care. It would just be another hobby. But because she was a girl, people said she acted “creepy.”
I felt bad for her. I think my mom knew this, which is why she was worried. Thought that pity would bring me closer to Anna or something. I just felt it was wrong that everyone should be so mean to her. It made being home-schooled seem all right in comparison. I might have been alone growing up, but at least I wasn’t bullied.
Some people said the notebooks she carried around weren’t actually her school notes, but a manifesto. Other people said that Anna made up imaginary friends to play with, because no one wanted to be with her in real life. That one’s just sad. They never said anything to her face, and in a way, I think that’s worse. I wonder if Anna realized she was the laughingstock of our entire class.
ANNA
FORTY YEARS AGO, THEY found The General barricaded in the mountains of Lubang Island—a small landmass in the northwest Philippines. He was fighting a war that had ended a decade and a half earlier, defending dead Japanese imperial values. Trading fire with what he believed to be a hostile opposing army, but was actually the local police squadron.
By the time they pulled him out—by force—he was no more than a hollow shell. Barely strong enough to hold up his now-iconic rifle, with which he had made his last stand. Forty years, a length of time more than twice my age. While The General was fighting the battle that would define his life, I hadn’t even been born.
I’d read deeply into The General’s life, wanting to fill in the gaps he was reluctant to explain. He was the most infamous example of a “Japanese holdout,” a recurring theme following the end of the Second World War. Throughout the war, Japan had sent guerrilla units deep into enemy territories, with orders to never retreat, to never surrender. While the ultimate goals of these missions varied, the end result was the same: a group of blindly militant young men hiding deep in foreign territory, cut off from the outside world.
Trapped in a wartime limbo, without any end in sight, these soldiers grew increasingly dogmatic in their devotion to the empire. When Japan surrendered in 1945, a few of these groups refused to accept the end of the war, choosing instead to continue fighting long after the rest of the world had moved on.
These militants accounted for half of these holdouts. The other half—due to a gap in the chain of communication—were simply never told that the war had been lost. Sometimes a commanding officer would die and his unit would be left in the jungle elsewhere, condemned to always be waiting
, anticipating orders that would never come.
Most Japanese holdouts fell into one of these two camps. This is where The General’s case became tricky.
No one was sure why he was in that cave to begin with. There was no record of a squadron being ordered that deep into the jungle, guarding a location that provided no real tactical advantage. The General also changed his story in the months following his rescue, if you can really call it that. At first, he claimed that he had refused to accept Japan’s surrender; later, he would claim he simply hadn’t heard the news at all. It was only after he ran out of ammunition that The General’s hideout was stormed and he was taken away. He never surrendered, something he always made a point of mentioning.
The first person to discover his fortress was a young schoolboy born years after the war had come to a close. He had been let out of school early and had decided, despite his mother’s warnings, that he would venture farther into Lubang’s mountains than he ever had before. The nature of these warnings had to do specifically with a certain “Blind Demon” who had been spotted in the area, spoken of in the same cautionary tone reserved for aswangs and the Berberoka. Unlike those, however, the Blind Demon was most certainly real.
They heard the boy before they saw him. He ran all the way down from the mountain, crying and yelling, and might have overshot the town entirely had his father not caught him first. After nearly an hour of there-there’s and what-happened ’s, the boy said that he had seen the Demon of the Mountain, and that the demon had chased him off with a dark curse. This was met with a sympathetic rap on the head from the mother, and a tender “What’s wrong with you?” from the father. No one took the boy’s story seriously until he produced the bullet that had been fired at him.
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