Seeing the bullet, the village descended into a panic. A bandit was up in the hills, plotting something. What can we do but wait in fear? Young Lemuel was lucky that the bandit had fired only a warning shot. But how can we be sure it was a warning shot at all? The bandit could have just missed. For all we know, he could be aiming specifically for the children! He’s most likely planning a greater attack next, this time on the town itself! Something must be done to stop him!
The townspeople were one exclamation point away from forming a militia of their own when the local police caught wind of what had happened. Everyone was told to remain calm, and that the matter would be investigated.
A single officer was sent up.
A single officer came back down, minus a two-inch chunk of his left arm.
Twelve officers were sent up.
The General was waiting.
Had glaucoma not already ravaged his eyes, he almost certainly would have killed a number of the soldiers. Of course, the twelve men weren’t aware of his blindness, and treated him as they would any other threat. The standoff that followed ended up lasting for days. News of The General’s incredible stamina reached the town. The police worked in shifts, eventually calling in backup. The General’s assault was unrelenting. Many wondered whether there was indeed only one man in the cave, or if there were actually several. Others imagined that he was on some sort of military drug that gave him his overwhelming strength. Some quietly feared that The General was, in fact, a demon after all.
His cries were otherworldly, sounding more like those of a monster than a man. Throughout the standoff, The General would scream out the same phrase as he fought, but no one could understand what was being said, what he was calling for.
Vall harbour, Ball harbour, Bell hopper…
The General was screaming for “Valhalla,” the resting place of lore reserved for warriors. He wanted death by combat.
The police only realized The General was out of ammunition when he started throwing stones. Even still, his determination showed no signs of slowing. The squadron mustered up one last bout of energy and charged him, alone in his cave. When they pulled him out, he remained silent. Not once did he call out for the Valhalla he had been reaching for the entire time.
It would take weeks to get a proper story out of him. Eventually, they pieced together that he was an old Japanese soldier, unaware that the war had already ended. His meagre possessions—a rifle, an imperial flag, and an ornamental dagger—confirmed these claims as well. After much political manoeuvring, he was eventually pardoned and sent back to Kyushu, thanks to the special circumstances of his condition. Japan was just about to host the 1964 Olympic Games and wanted to handle the situation discreetly. Besides, he hadn’t actually killed anyone, although the gentleman left with a hole in his arm was reportedly less than satisfied with the decision.
There was, however, controversy surrounding The General’s return. Many who dug further into his story found inconsistencies in his age and reported rank, as well as gaps in his military knowledge. While he attempted to deter any doubts by displaying an impressive understanding of Buddhist and Shinto beliefs, some even questioned whether he was truly Japanese. On one occasion, when a member of the media suggested The General take a DNA test to end this suspicion, he flew into a rage, declaring that he didn’t need to prove to anyone how loyal to Japan he was.
Valhalla.
I wondered how, exactly, an uneducated soldier would learn of that word.
* * *
* * *
“General, what do you think about kami?” I asked.
He perked up, surprised by my sudden interest in religion. “What do you mean?”
“Do they really exist?”
The General took a sip of his tea, savouring the taste. As he did so, the front of his yukata loosened a little, revealing a spiderweb of scars across his chest. Burn marks. I never asked how he had received those.
“I would say so,” he tapped, fingers gently pressing into my palm. “To say that no realm exists beyond ours is arrogance. Everything is interlinked. Healthy water leads to healthy crops leads to healthy bodies. Those are just kami dancing with one another.”
“But what about the unnatural, then?” I asked. “Can man-made objects have kami?”
I felt The General begin to tap a response, then stop. Either he didn’t know what to say, or he’d decided against telling me the truth.
“I hope so.”
“You don’t know?”
“There’s no way to know for sure. What do you think?”
A dead end. So not even the great General knew. I thought of Soki and our dying city. How he was worried that the gods had abandoned us. I should have told him that maybe it didn’t matter, that so long as he believed in kami he wasn’t alone, he would survive. Instead, I had mumbled something noncommittal, and failed to give him the concrete answer he was searching for.
The General pushed a small tray of hard candies across the table, motioning for me to take one. I grabbed a handful and stuffed them into my bag, planning on throwing them out later. They would all be stale, about as tasty as wartime rations. No use telling the old man, though.
“So has nothing changed?” he asked. “No new friends?”
I paused, debating how much to reveal.
“I met someone interesting recently. A boy, actually,” I said, unsure whether I was talking about Soki or the LEO.
“I’ve always thought you’ve been too lonesome for your own good,” he tapped, smiling. “If you aren’t careful, you’ll end up like me. Has he taken you out?”
“No, not yet.”
“You shouldn’t be coming to me for romantic advice, either way. The only love I ever had was as a teenager. After I enlisted, everything changed.”
“The problem is that this boy lives really far away from me,” I continued.
“Then why don’t you visit him? Make use of your time while you still can. This world is only a traveller’s inn.”
Another proverb. I explained that the boy had since moved to another country. I chose Madagascar for good measure. Since I didn’t have the money or means to acquire a plane ticket, we would never be able to meet. I imagined that would be easier than having to explain that the boy in question was, in fact, a telecommunications satellite.
The General chuckled. “You should start walking, or build a plane!”
Sitting there in The General’s stuffy apartment, listening to his half-deaf neighbour blast the TV from the next room, I felt something. The familiar pressure of the LEO, almost overwhelming now, pinning me to Earth. He must have been flying overhead at that very moment, giving me hope.
Build a plane. That wasn’t a bad idea. It was far-fetched, even illogical, but if I allowed myself to be carried away for just a moment…
What if I could prove that kami were real? That what I felt from that satellite wasn’t an illusion, but a personal god? I was comfortable believing in my own myths, but Soki needed more. He needed proof of existence, a sign that neither of us was truly alone. It would be more than a blessing for myself, it would be a gift for the toothless boy.
I realized then that to reach that satellite, I needed more than just a telescope. I would need something bigger, something louder. The engine of an airplane. The roar of a rocket. Something so amazing, so beautiful, it would shock everyone to their core.
SATELLITE
HE WAS MISSING A tooth. That was certainly something odd about him. When I first saw Soki, arguing with his teacher in that classroom, I hadn’t realized that this was a unique trait. The average human head has 100,000–150,000 hair follicles, so what difference does a single tooth make? It was only later that I realized I’d never seen someone his age missing one before, let alone in such a prominent place. I felt bad for the boy, despite that unfamiliar pain I felt whenever I looke
d upon him. The scar running up his lip was curious, as well, and I wondered which human ailment could have been the cause.
It had warmed a little, down in Sakita, and the freak snow from earlier in the season had started to melt, leaving a layer of murky slush covering the ground. The humans were wearing less cold-resistant armour than usual. They walked through the city’s few parks with their jackets tied around their waists, scarves bundled up in hand. Soki, however, seemed too preoccupied to enjoy the weather.
All he had done for the half hour I’d been watching him was alternate awkwardly between standing in front of and sitting on a bench. The boy seemed terribly anxious to me, carefully scanning the crowd of passersby, and I wondered who he could be waiting for. I had learned from watching human films that only two things could make a young man this nervous: a young woman, or the yakuza. Judging by the fact that Soki was waiting in an outdoor garden and not, say, a dingy back alley, I assumed that he was waiting for a date.
The park this young boy was lingering in was Marushima Park, essentially the only well-maintained public space in all of Sakita. As a whole it wasn’t that large, but the assortment of slopes and plateaus sectioning it off must have made it a headache to navigate. I suddenly felt pity for the people below, lacking an innate GPS to guide them through their days. A stray Shiba lay in front of Soki, contributing an occasional yelp to the soundscape before sinking back into contented silence.
Another fifteen minutes passed, and I began to wonder what sort of person this Soki was waiting for. Despite the jealousy I felt towards him, I still worried he was being made a fool of. Soki wasn’t the usual romantic-hero type I saw in theatres, in either appearance or behaviour. He sat with a militaristic rigidness, his back at an inhumane ninety degrees. Rather than mask his nervousness, however, his stiff posture only revealed it. For all I knew, the missing lady had gotten cold feet, or had set him up from the beginning. Is there anything in their world more ruthless than a teenager?
Nevertheless, I had faith in him. Maybe Soki had found a girl with one tooth too many—that would definitely be a nice arrangement. They could live out the rest of their lives together, and whenever Soki felt bad about his missing tooth, he could look at his partner and feel worse for her and her crowded mouth. The opposite would apply as well. Not a bad deal, all in all.
It had been thirty-seven minutes and twenty-three seconds since he’d first sat on his bench. With every minute that passed, it was becoming increasingly likely that Soki’s date wouldn’t be coming, that he had been patiently waiting for nothing. For a while there was no sign of anyone else in the park, until far in the distance a girl appeared, jogging full force towards Soki, apologizing with every step.
By the time she reached him, she was breathless. As was he.
“Sorry I’m late. I probably should have asked you to be more specific when you said you’d meet me at the bench, but that’s on me, really, because I figured I’d at least be able to find you if I came by early, but there were way more benches than I expected. I was counting on there being like five, max, but do you know how many benches there are in this park? I counted at least twenty-seven, and a couple had people on them I could have sworn were you. Obviously, they weren’t, though, or I would have found you much sooner. Were you waiting long?”
“Not at all.”
How sweet.
I didn’t recognize her, although she appeared to have a normal amount of teeth for a human—I counted thirty-two. She was conventionally attractive, certainly more fitting of a romantic-lead role than Soki was. Long, straight black hair, unblemished skin, an open, inquisitive look in the eyes: these were all traits I recognized time and time again in these people’s celebrities and idols. Utterly Japanese down to her name: Fumie.
“Yup. Lots of benches. Good places to sit.”
“Right? It’s one of those things you never notice until you start to look for them. I heard it’s the same with being pregnant. I’ve never been pregnant, obviously, but my mom told me that you never realize how many pregnant women there are in the world until you become pregnant yourself, then you can’t escape them! I guess that’s true, because I didn’t realize there were so many benches until I tried to find you.”
“Uh-huh.”
A small part of me was relieved that Soki wasn’t meeting Anna in that park, that he wasn’t taking her away. Was jealousy an act of love? What was transpiring below was sure to upset my creator, yet I felt relieved. Surely pure devotion would mean putting her interests before my own. Did this make me selfish? The thought filled me with a vague guilt, a nausea I couldn’t pin down.
No, Fumie was good for Soki, I decided, perhaps out of self-justification. At first glance they seemed polar opposites, but perhaps this was a strength, rather than a weakness. Human relationships are a kind of alchemy, a science I had mostly given up understanding. Anna might even be worse off with the toothless boy.
Of course, the world doesn’t allow for days as pleasant as these to pass without payment. The ease with which Soki and Fumie walked through that park incurred a debt for someone else to pay. It was a cruel trick of fate. There was no warning, no signs attempting to turn them back, just a calm, stained sky floating above. Soki and Fumie walked through Marushima Park as a couple, their path lazily curling and looping over the melting snow, blissfully unaware what their being together would set in motion.
“Am I talking too much? People say I talk too much. A lot of people at school laugh at me when I get started, but I can’t help myself. It’s really frustrating, because I know when I’m starting to ramble, and that people think I’m being weird, but I can’t help it, even if they tell me to be quiet. Do you think I talk too much?”
“Nope.”
“Really? You aren’t lying? If you aren’t, then you’re probably the first person to think that, including me! So where do you want to go? Are you hungry? I am, there’s a really good tonkatsu place one station down if you don’t mind taking the train. They serve curry, it’s really tasty, you should try it.”
The sheer force of their decidedly one-sided conversation propelled the two to the nearest train station. It had been unanimously agreed upon by 50% of the party that tonkatsu would be the best option.
As they waited, a train from Kumamoto was coming into the station, one that I should have been observing. There was a tangible drop in the atmosphere, and far off, I could hear cicadas crying.
ANNA
I WAS ON THE train home to Sakita now; there was no turning back. Whether I wanted to accept the guilt or not, the principle remained the same: I had stolen from The General, the one person I truly admired. I never imagined I would betray his trust, yet I’d had no choice. What I had stolen would benefit me much more than it would him: a small book of yellowing, water-stained papers, smelling of pulp and creased beyond repair. Inside was every hope for the future, every possibility for Anna Obata.
Practical Applications of Experimental Aerospace Engineering.
The pressure from above was increasing. I could feel it. It had started growing when I first met Soki and hadn’t stopped since. That reassuring gaze had turned into something more powerful, something claustrophobic. A pressure to act, an expectation from the heavens. The knowledge that I was being watched, that I was being witnessed, pushed in on me from all sides, like I was going to implode.
Why did The General even have books to begin with? There was nothing a blind man could do with a book anyway. It was ridiculous. Where did he even get them from? Whether they truly were “classified” or not didn’t matter, I had to be careful regardless. These pages contained my only way out.
I had been so caught up in monitoring the satellite’s communication with me that not once had I considered sending messages myself. It simply hadn’t mattered before whether the LEO was truly there or not, I was able to believe in it all the same. But now believing just wasn’t enough. If I were able to
prove that the kami were real, I could be the one to tell Soki that we weren’t alone, that there was someone looking out for us. Someone we could ask for help, ask to let us leave this unworthy world. Ask to inflict divine punishment on those who’ve wronged us.
My hands were shaking. I could feel tears beginning to well up and only then realized that I had been holding my breath. I was getting ahead of myself. One step at a time. There was a beautiful simplicity to The General’s plan. No more waiting around. It was time to take action.
The train was getting closer to home, lurching along its tracks, drowning out any sounds of nature. Through the window, I saw husks of abandoned machinery jutting out amidst stretches of rice paddies, the landscape slowly becoming more industrial.
There had been plans to build an overpass along the rails we were riding, but construction had been halted partway through. All they had managed to build were the massive columns flanking the tracks, scattered throughout the landscape like a connect-the-dots puzzle. Dull solid concrete, several stories high, casting shadows across the otherwise lush fields, the waist-high grass paling in perspective. The train silently weaved through these pillars of creation. A modern-day Ozymandias.
I checked to ensure that I was the only one in my car, then carefully pulled out The General’s book. The cover simply had the title written across it, businesslike, with no date or author ascribed, only a publisher. I attempted to peek inside, but some of the pages were stuck together, making it curiously difficult to open. This small amount of resistance was enough to scare me, and I closed it again. I would take another look in a more secure location.
The train suddenly jumped, and the book fell from my hands and under the row of seats in front of me. It felt as though a dirty secret had been revealed, and I quickly tried to retrieve it, hitting my head on the seat in the process. The paperback slid even farther away, and I ended up having to get down on all fours. The whole experience was humiliating, despite there being no witnesses.
Satellite Love Page 7