Satellite Love

by Genki Ferguson

  “Is that story true?” I asked.

  “Why should it matter?”

  After she managed to pile her rocks ankle-high, she stood up, took out a pair of straw sandals from her backpack, and left them at the base of the statue.

  Anna smiled sheepishly. “Sanzu River is rocky, so Jizo’s feet get worn out easily. We’re supposed to leave him new shoes, sometimes.”

  Without thinking, I checked the soles of my shoes for wear.

  * * *

  *    *    *

  The station was only a short walk away from the statue of Jizo. How many steps exactly, I wasn’t sure. I’d forgotten to count. By coming down to Earth, I’d had my omniscience taken from me. A small price to pay for the gift of being human.

  We boarded the train around noon. I tried not to think of the ethical implications of not buying a ticket (“You don’t even exist! Why would you have to pay?”) and admired the countryside through scratched windows.

  The train wound its way through an eerily familiar landscape, the world feeling fresh when glimpsed through this new angle. The sight, and scent, of other humans was overpowering. There were only a few people in the car with us: a smattering of young boys, an elderly couple with matching jackets, a thirty-something lady flipping through a detective novel. I was still attempting to acclimatize myself to their presence when I was hit by the woman’s strong perfume. The train lurched along its predetermined path, and her scent felt thick in my nostrils. Sweet with a note of earthiness. It reminded me of the forest I had just come from. Why would humans want to emphasize their smell?

  I wanted to move away, but Anna didn’t seem to notice. My hazy reflection, still undefined, warped with the shifting planes I saw before me—and it was then that I realized, with a sense of unease, where I was being taken.

  Tonuki Café.

  Even after I’d descended to Earth for her, Anna was still hung up on the toothless boy’s imagined betrayal. She was taking me to the spot where she had experienced her greatest humiliation exactly ten days earlier, a humiliation nobody but me had witnessed. The train I had once viewed from the detached safety of space now filled me with slow-burning dread. I looked Anna’s way and watched her read the ads pasted on the roof of the car, lips moving slightly. There was something unusual about her appearance as well.

  Lipstick. She was wearing lipstick. I had never seen her wear any sort of makeup before, and yet here she was, with the exact same shade Fumie had worn the last time their paths crossed. Was Anna attempting to re-enact that day, but from a different perspective?

  I felt a sharp pain in my chest. Sadness mixed with fear. The train suddenly felt much, much smaller.

  Anna turned to look at me. “If you’re going to be my boyfriend, you’re going to have to take me on a first date, okay?”

  I nodded. There wasn’t much else for me to do.

  ANNA

  ON THE TRAIN TO Tonuki Café, Leo continued to relay what he’d learned up in space, desperately trying to come up with something clever to say. Perhaps he was feeling insecure beside his creator. I didn’t offer anything in response, too preoccupied with what to do next. I had succeeded in my plan to bring him down to Earth. Now what?

  I kept an eye on Leo, monitoring his facial tics, his expressions, the way he glanced around him. The two of us weren’t identical, yet he was still undeniably a product of my mind. Where did I end, and he begin?

  “I think the Buddhists got it right, though,” he rambled. “About karma, I mean. I feel like I saw objective proof from space.”

  “Oh yeah?” I was barely paying attention, more concerned with getting off at the right station than with his waxing philosophical. It was here that Leo surprised me, however. Not through the quiet wisdom in his statement, but rather the sheer innocence of it all. I hadn’t realized the omniscient could be so naive.

  “Like for example, if someone cut in line at the supermarket, they’d get caught in traffic on the way home. Or, if someone gave money to the homeless, they’d get a call from an old friend later in the day. It’s on a small scale, but it makes sense to extrapolate. Everyone gets what they deserve.”

  Everyone gets what they deserve.

  I refuse to believe this, even now. Leo had only seen a small portion of day-to-day life, and didn’t realize how truly unfair it could be. In fact, you can neatly divide the world into two kinds of people: those who get what they want, and those who don’t. Half the world walks through life not realizing how lucky they are, always getting what they desire. Fortune, success, love—they cut in and out of everyone else’s paths, carving into the foundations.

  True beauty comes from the other half, those who have things stolen from them by the first group. Theirs is a beauty of modesty, of having to struggle for what they want. To never get what you wish for holds an aesthetic value in and of itself.

  Only those who have had things taken from them can truly know one another; someone who is beautiful could never understand this. I thought of Soki and his cleft lip, and decided that he and I belonged to this camp of outsiders. Fumie, that kitsune, was in the other.

  There is a flip side to always getting what you deserve, though. If people deserve happiness, they should get it. But happiness taken at the expense of another…

  A life spent taking deserves to be taken from. This was my new mantra, Leo’s be damned, and it was the only one I could hold as true.

  SATELLITE

  AT TONUKI CAFÉ, THE world moved on. Anna’s private tragedies had made no difference to the restaurant; it existed in a bubble of its own. The people who inhabited it were the same as before: teenage girls sporting gyaru tans and false lashes, boys with spiked hair and sutajan jackets, unsure whether to imitate American or Japanese gangsters. The one constant was that they were all underdressed for the weather, something I only understood after feeling the prickly cold of winter on my face. That these people prioritized aesthetics over proper insulation was bizarre to me.

  Clothes have always struck me as an odd human construct, equivalent in nature to the plumage of a colourful bird. I was amused to find that, despite being invisible to everyone else, Anna had still thought to clothe me from the depths of her imagination. A much-too-thick winter coat, a tattered wool scarf, a pair of winter boots to pack the slush under my feet. Why not cover me with thermal blanketing and be done with it?

  Anna was greeted by a hostess, who asked how many people were in her party. I couldn’t help but feel hurt when she replied, “Just me.”

  We were going to be seated at the counter, but at Anna’s request, were brought to a specific booth in the back. I attempted to ignore the chill I felt when I realized this was the same booth Soki had occupied the last time I had seen him. It was impossible to check on him now, to ensure everything was all right. My oversized boots suddenly felt much heavier, anchors to this material world. Meanwhile, Anna kept looking up at the mirrored ceiling, examining her lipstick.

  The red was too dark for her pale complexion, giving the impression that a gash had been cut across her face. It had looked much better on Fumie with her healthy tan. I nearly mentioned this, but held back. I don’t imagine there’s a single girl on the planet who would appreciate getting makeup advice from a boy. I hadn’t been here long, but there were some things so obvious even I could pick them up.

  One of the first things Anna had said to me that morning was that I didn’t exist. I had figured I was something otherworldly, but to be told that I was in fact imaginary was a startling experience, to say the least. If what she said was true, then I really did owe my entire existence to her mind, which hardly made for a fair fight.

  As if to prove my creator wrong, I tried catching the other diners’ attention, but found that no matter how close I got to someone’s face, how loudly I shouted in their ears, or how many jumping jacks I did in front of them, they stared right through me. While
this was going on, Anna sat in the booth watching me, barely hiding the amusement on her face. How cruel. I smiled at her, embarrassed, and returned to the table.

  “If you created me in your image,” I said, out of breath from my impromptu cardio session, “why didn’t you make me in better shape?”

  She gave a laugh, the first I had seen in a while. “I made you exactly how I wanted.”

  “Even still, twenty jumping jacks and I can barely breathe.”

  I stared at the glass of water in front of me, tempted to drink it, but decided to avoid that metaphysical can of worms for now. If the water passed through me like I was a ghost, I probably would have fainted, and not just from the exercise. For the time being, I opted to endure my thirst.

  Logically, if I was created by Anna, that should make me her Platonic ideal for what a boy should be. A quick survey of myself revealed me to be short, unfit, pale, and nearsighted. So nearsighted I was unable to make out what I looked like from the reflection above. I wanted to tell her to raise her standards a bit next time, to have another go at creating me. I didn’t even have radiation shielding, for example. How would this soft body protect me from solar flares? My tongue absentmindedly played with the gap between my teeth while Anna opened her menu, hiding her face from me.

  “Hey, so if I’m imaginary…”

  Anna cut me off without looking up. “Be quiet, you’re practically shouting.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond. “If other people can’t hear me I don’t see how that would be a problem.”

  She put her menu down and stared at me curiously. “I suppose you’re right.”

  Score one for the imaginary boy. I was about to push my luck even further when Anna interrupted, probably sensing what I was going to say next.

  “You should hurry up and order. I’ve already decided on the pork loin sandwich.”

  Order? Why would I need food? “I’ll get the same then, I guess.”

  She focused her gaze at me, as though peering through my body.

  “In all honesty, you seem more of a curry kind of person,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You don’t strike me as someone who would like a pork loin sandwich. I’ll order you some katsu curry instead.”

  What a weird thing to micromanage. It wasn’t like I was going to be able to eat whatever she ordered anyway. I tried thinking back to Soki’s date and seemed to recall Fumie ordering a messy sandwich as well. What had Soki eaten?

  I looked at Anna, trying to get a read on her face, what she was thinking. She noticed me staring and closed her menu.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “Nope, just thinking about how surreal it is to actually be seeing you like this. In person, I mean.”

  Anna drew closer, squinting, almost dissecting my soul. “You know what you remind me of?”

  “I’m going to hope this is a compliment.”

  “You’re kind of like those mythical kirin.”

  I was appalled, knowing this creature from the billboards and character mascots littering the city. “Those old dragons with the long whiskers?”

  “Yeah! With the deer bodies and oxen hooves.”

  “Couldn’t you have picked a better creature than that to compare me to?”

  “First of all, kirin are beautiful. That’s not what I meant anyway. You’re like a kirin because you’re gentle, kind of quiet…”

  “That’s better.”

  “But most of all, no one believes you exist!” She said this a little too loudly, proud of her comparison. The other diners were now watching her warily, as she appeared to be speaking to no one in particular. Anna seemed to sense this at the same time I did, but paid no mind. If anything, she increased her volume in defiance.

  The nausea I’d felt earlier was replaced with a feeling of warmth, reminding me of my newfound physicality, and I realized for the first time how strangely beautiful I found her, with her alien delicateness, mismatched lipstick and all. It was something akin to love. Her hands were small, peeking around the edges of the menu, and I was struck by a desire to hold her fingertips between mine. To confirm that she was still there. Who was to say that an object couldn’t love its creator?

  “Do you like me?” Anna blurted this out at the same moment our food arrived, eyes fixed on the empty space where I was sitting, making the waitress visibly uncomfortable. “Do you like me or not?”

  The question had caught me off guard. What was I supposed to say to this? Surely Anna had meant to ask whether I loved her, and not whether I merely found her likeable. And yet, her repeating “like” instead of “love” was no accident. Up to that point, I thought what she desired was romance, but now I wondered if all she needed was a friend.

  “Of course!” I said.

  She continued to stare, as though unsure how far to trust me, her own creation. “Good.”

  As simple as that. One word. Good. The mood had gotten noticeably chillier. I attempted to make her laugh throughout the meal with a few awkwardly timed one-liners stolen from the comedies I had watched from up in space, but I eventually gave up. My curry, untouched and growing cold, lay just beyond my immaterial reach.

  Anna ate the rest of her meal in silence, paid with a crumpled 2,000-yen note, and left.

  ANNA

  I WOULD BE LYING if I said I wasn’t disappointed by Leo. On the surface, our date went as well as could be hoped. I was able to experience the day that was stolen from me as best as I could. For some reason, however, I remained unsatisfied. Unsatisfied in the way someone can only be after finally getting what they desire.

  I left Tonuki Café with Leo, my loneliness amplified by his immediate proximity. On our way to the station, we stepped onto a wooden footbridge, weather-beaten planks creaking underfoot, the decades-old paint job flitting red snow into the creek below. The stream must have been polluted somewhere, the sweet smell of sewage wafting our way. Amaterasu had made a surprise appearance recently, briefly warming our small corner of the Earth. I paused mid-crossing, rubbing the handrails to loosen as much paint as I could, searching for a reflection in those murky waters. A story The General had once told me bubbled to the surface. The Death of Narcissus. I never had as much interest in Greek mythology as I did in Japanese legends, but for some reason this tale had stuck with me.

  Narcissus, he had explained, was a hunter who had drowned in a pool after falling in love with his own reflection. The modern use of the word narcissist was inspired by this story, and therein lies the problem. According to The General, narcissism was only given its modern meaning after Freud, whose theory obscured the real reason Narcissus fell into the water. He wasn’t obsessed with his own image, but shocked by it. Since mirrors and cameras didn’t exist, that moment by the pond was the first time Narcissus had seen himself. Rather than being drawn in, he was surprised, and fell into the water. Narcissus didn’t drown in self-love; he was overwhelmed by self-awareness.

  The General had explained this theory with a practiced air, even taking time to add dramatic pauses in his story. I tried not to think of the implications of a blind man telling me such a tale. Perhaps he wanted to know what would happen if he, too, were able to see the world again. I tried to picture how The General might react to his reflection, but could only imagine him drowning. Soon my thoughts began to drift from The General, who I could never see again, to Soki.

  My love shines brighter

  than the Herd Boy’s star,

  and though the barrier between us

  is not as great as the Milky Way,

  please tear it away now.

  A poem from The Tales of Ise. Of all the episodes in that collection of verse, this one had always been my favourite. Only now was I beginning to understand why.

  How would Soki feel if he saw me now, a superior version of the girl he had been with a week be
fore? Would he be drawn to my reflection of her, or repelled by it? I suppose the end result would be the same, and in either case, it was Leo, not Soki, who I had invited to suffocate in my image.

  Which brought me to the root of my dissatisfaction that evening: no matter how hard Leo and I tried to pretend he was an independent person, he was still a product of my imagination, and therefore inherently inferior to the real thing. It disturbed me to watch how he would walk with the same gait I did, nervously touch his eyebrows as I did, even lose focus in the middle of conversations like I did. If he loved me, was it by choice, or because that was what I had created him for? All I wanted from him was an act of rebellion, no matter how small, to prove that he had some iota of independence from me. That he was real.

  Standing on the edge of the bridge, I wondered if Narcissus had ever touched any of the water below. There’s only a finite amount available in the world. Maybe some of what Narcissus had choked on in his last moments had made its way into the clouds, circled the Earth, and come to rest here.

  “If I fell into the water, would you try to save me?” I asked. My words hung in the air, the sound of water taking their place. It was louder than usual, no doubt amplified by the crisp January air.

  Leo crossed over to where I stood and peered over the edge, perhaps wondering what I had seen. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “There’s kappa in the water. Half-frog, half-man river demons. They’ll drown you and eat me just for fun. Are you still jumping?”

  He thought about this. “If you were eaten, I would stop existing anyway, so really I have no choice.” He said this with a bemused smile, not realizing how serious I was. I refused to budge.

  “What if you were actually a person?”

  “Okay.”

  “And I died the second I hit the water.”

  “Okay.”

  “Would you still dive in?”

  “I suppose so.”