Wolf Children: Ame & Yuki

by Mamoru Hosoda

  “The interior of every apartment is completely different, even the ones in the same housing complex. Some households have money, and others don’t. Some have big families, and some have just one person. Some have babies, and others have only old people.”

  He surveyed the city from the hilltop park. Brightly lit houses stretched all the way to the horizon and beyond as an outbound train packed with passengers cut across the center of the expanse. To which of the illuminated houses were each of them returning? He gazed out at the landscape and commented, “It must be nice to have a home. To tell someone, ‘I’m back,’ and take off your shoes, wash your face, and sink into a chair. Yeah—it would be so nice. I’d build a bookshelf, and when there was no more room on it, I’d build another. I could do anything I wanted, because it’d be my own house.”

  His voice full of longing, he told her he wanted to save up money little by little and buy a house one day, even if it wasn’t big.

  Hana felt something warm spread slowly through her until it had permeated her whole body.

  “I’ll be the one to welcome you home,” she said very softly, gazing out at the city lights.

  He looked at her as if her casual reply had caught him by surprise. Then, slowly, he turned his face away.

  On the way back to her apartment, he didn’t say a word. The only sound was the crunch of his sandals on fallen leaves. Suddenly, just as they stepped onto the little bridge over the stream near her apartment, he broke the silence.

  “Hana.”

  “Yes?”

  “You see…”

  “—”

  “There’s something I have to tell you…”

  “…You can tell me anything.”

  “—”

  “You see…,” he tried again, then fell silent.

  Hana knew he was trying to share something very important. She couldn’t imagine what it might be but prepared herself to accept whatever she was about to hear.

  The water grasses at the bottom of the shallow stream swayed gently. Aside from a few passing cars, no one else crossed the bridge. Finally, he spoke again.

  “I’ll tell you next time.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  She watched his back until he was gone.

  Many times after that, they met up and then walked back to her apartment together, but he never told her what the “something” that night had been, and she never asked.

  Then it was winter.

  Hana wrapped her scarf over her duffle coat and left the dry cleaner. Twinkling strings of lights were wrapped around the trees along the road in a brilliant display. She arrived at the usual old café exactly at the preappointed time.

  He was nowhere to be seen.

  That was unusual. Warming her hands with her breath, she searched for him among the surging crowd. The street was so full of people, it felt like a festival. She pulled out an unfinished book and started reading, checking the clock beyond the streetlights every now and then. It was quite a bit later than the time they’d agreed upon.

  Still, he did not come.

  She finished her book and had nothing left to do. Inevitably, her gaze turned to the endless stream of people flowing toward the station. Now and then, the construction worker directing traffic around a project glanced at her with concern.

  He didn’t come.

  As the crowds dwindled, the cold seemed to bite harder. She stomped her feet to warm them as the chill penetrated the soles of her shoes. Suddenly, the lights in the café dimmed, and she turned around in surprise. Had so much time passed already? An employee peered at her suspiciously as he began getting ready to close up, and she moved out of his way apologetically.

  He didn’t come.

  At midnight, the holiday lights strung up along the street went dark, and the plaza in front of the train station transformed into a lonely void. She sat down in front of the shutter that had been pulled down over the café facade and wrapped her arms around her knees, huddled against the cold. A drunk called out to her, but she didn’t answer. A siren wailed in the distance and faded into silence. She buried her face in her scarf and closed her eyes. She had no idea how long she’d been sitting like that when she heard a voice.

  “Hana.”

  “—”

  “I’m sorry, Hana.” He was standing over her. “…It was a lousy thing to do.”

  She slowly looked up at him. Her cheeks were frostbitten. All the same, she answered with a broad smile.

  They stood on the hilltop overlooking the city as innumerable stars sparkled in the night sky.

  “I’ve never told anyone before—I was too scared. I thought you might leave me when I told you. But…” The wind gently ruffled the fur around his collar. “I should have told you sooner…I mean, I should have shown you.”

  “Shown me?” Hana’s breath was white.

  “Close your eyes for a minute.”

  “—”

  She complied, but she couldn’t guess his intention. After a minute or so, she cracked them open very slightly and then heard his voice.

  “Longer.”

  She closed them tightly again, steeling herself for whatever might come.

  A long time passed. It was frightfully quiet.

  “Can I open them yet?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer. The wind lifted her hair lightly. Slowly, she opened her eyes.

  “—!”

  He was still there, staring down at his left hand. No question.

  But…

  Before her eyes, that hand was changing from a human hand to the paw of a wild animal. A maelstrom of wind swirled around them. As his hair was whipped into a disheveled mess, it morphed into a pointed pair of animal ears. Fur spread in a flash over these ears and down his face, while the corners of his mouth seemed to rip back into a wider opening.

  A long snout turned slowly in her direction, and his closed eyes snapped open.

  They were the eyes of a beast from the wilderness.

  As Hana stared into them, she couldn’t move or utter a single word.

  Suddenly, the wind fell still.

  He—the wild animal—looked down and sighed.

  “Hana. What do you see?” he asked quietly.

  The cloud of his breath melted into the darkness as the color of his eyes deepened, brimming with sorrow.

  It was a beautiful color.

  Without a doubt, it was him.

  A staggering number of stars twinkled across the winter sky. That night was a new moon.

  Hana realized then that the stories of werewolves changing shape under the full moon and pursuing human victims were mere myths. The world is full of things I don’t know, she mused.

  The electric heater in Hana’s apartment shone red against the blue of night.

  “Were you surprised?”

  She heard his voice, but she neither answered nor looked up. She simply nodded slightly.

  “You don’t want to see me anymore?”

  Again, she did not answer, but this time, she shook her head slightly.

  “But you’re shivering.”

  She said nothing. The canine paw reached slowly toward her and very softly touched her white shoulder. She could tell he was taking great care not to harm her delicate skin with his sharp claws.

  “…I’m not afraid,” she said quietly, raising her head to look up at him. “Because it’s you.”

  He slowly drew her to him and gently touched her lips.

  That was the first night she spent with him.

  He was a descendant of the Japanese wolf, which was believed to have gone extinct a century earlier, in the Meiji era.

  He was the last to carry mixed human and wolf blood. His parents had died when he was still young, but before they passed, they’d told him the story of their clan’s ruin and warned him never to share the truth with another soul. After that, he was sent to live with relatives who knew nothing of his true nature. He suffered
greatly as he grew into an adult.

  When he was old enough to get his driver’s license, he’d moved to the city to find work. He told her that, until now, he had lived almost in hiding, unknown and unnoticed by the world.

  Morning dawned.

  Hana sat up naked in bed, still half asleep, and looked to her side.

  He was asleep, in human form. Over his supple muscles, his skin looked to her like carved marble. He’d mentioned extinction the night before; it made her think of the fossilized, primeval shells buried in the marble columns of subway stations.

  She stared at his sleeping face.

  The previous night hadn’t been a dream. He really had changed into a wild animal. And she really had accepted him. As he slept, she imagined what might happen from that moment on and resolved to take everything as it came.

  Hana was the only person in the world who knew his secret.

  Which was to say, his secret became her secret.

  Her fellow students dated older men who wore imported jackets or students from other universities who took them to events and concerts.

  “So who are you dating, Hana?” they would ask her. How much older was he? How tall was he? Was he thin? Had he gone to a good school? What did his parents do? Did he give her a present on their anniversary?

  She didn’t know how to answer their never-ending questions, but she knew she couldn’t introduce him to them.

  She simply told them she was seeing someone with integrity.

  Their new meeting place was the twenty-four-hour supermarket. They would do the shopping together, then go back to her apartment nearby.

  Chicken was often on the menu. She would cut breast or thigh meat into bite-size chunks, sprinkle it with salt, and push it onto skewers with pieces of green pepper. (Leeks or onions were more conventional, but he didn’t like either of those.) While it was grilling, she would mix together a bit of soy sauce, a splash of cooking sake, and a dollop of grated onion (he was okay with a little bit of onion) in a six-inch-tall cup. Then, she would pile the finished skewers on a plate and dip them into the sauce before eating them. This was the traditional way of eating grilled chicken in Hana’s family.

  The first time, she showed him how to dunk the skewers in the cup and pull them out dripping with sauce to whet the appetite. He had never eaten grilled chicken that way before and didn’t quite know what to do. He copied her and dipped his skewer timidly into the cup, glancing at her questioningly.

  They each took a bite at the same time and chewed. It was delicious! He stared intently at his skewer, as if in deep appreciation. After that, he scarfed down the remaining chunks of meat.

  Before long, Hana’s grilled chicken was one of his favorites, and she made it for him often. When meat was on sale, she would buy a big package and freeze it for later.

  While Hana was cooking, he would arrange the dandelions or other flowers he had picked along the roadside on his way home in a little milk bottle and place it on the windowsill. Hana would watch, smiling, as he regarded his arrangements with satisfaction.

  After work, he would come to her apartment and spend the night, and in the morning, he would go straight back to work. Before they knew it, this was their new normal. After a few months, at her suggestion, he gave up the lease on his apartment and moved into hers—meaning he set two paper bags of books down in the corner of her room and called it a day.

  He pulled an old photograph from between the pages of one of the books and showed it to her—a steep, snowy mountain ridge. That was where he was from, he told her. She set it next to her father’s photograph on top of the bookcase.

  It was a brilliantly sunny morning in early summer.

  The dayflower and cranesbill in the milk bottle were shifting in the wind. As Hana leisurely folded one of his big, freshly ironed shirts, nausea suddenly overcame her. Unable to stay sitting, she leaned onto the bed, knocking the neatly folded pile of clothes onto the floor.

  Something unusual was going on, she realized.

  She had had a hunch; if she was honest with herself, she had felt sluggish for the past month, and her appetite had been low. But this was the day she finally recognized what was happening within her body.

  She walked to the obstetrics clinic in her neighborhood and looked inside to see a waiting room packed with pregnant women. She peered through the window for quite a while but couldn’t bring herself to go inside. She sensed that her situation was different from theirs. But where should she go? Standing in front of the clinic door, she felt she had nowhere to turn.

  She headed toward the university library. Inside, she sat in the nearly empty reading room with a pile of books about pregnancy and childbirth and took notes. She imagined how he would react to the news. Maybe he would be happy, or maybe he would be worried.

  After going back and forth over what to do, she called his company from a phone booth. All she said was that she had gone to the obstetrics clinic but hadn’t seen the doctor. He said he would come right away and hung up.

  Hana waited in front of their usual old café, holding several books on natural childbirth and home delivery. She had decided to tell him firmly what she intended to do.

  She spotted him as he approached. He was running, as if this were the most important thing in the world. Her heart thudded in her chest as she mentally rehearsed the first words she planned to say to him.

  But before she could, he had swept her up in his arms. The can of peaches he had been carrying fell onto the sidewalk and rolled away so noisily that the people passing by threw them questioning glances.

  He hugged her again and again, oblivious to the stares they were drawing. His face was radiant with joy.

  And so Hana, too, was content.

  All through summer and fall, Hana suffered from horrible morning sickness.

  She was nauseous from morning to night, which prevented her from attending her classes. After worrying over it for a while, she turned in the paperwork for a leave of absence. She also had to quit her job. The owner was taken by surprise and begged Hana not to leave, asking if something was bothering her and promising to do anything to fix it. But Hana couldn’t explain her motives. All she could do was ask to be let go. She felt terrible, since she had worked there ever since starting university.

  All her routines changed. Unable to get out of bed, she spent every day trying to bear the nausea. Soon, she could no longer swallow a bite of food, and the morning sickness robbed her of what little weight her slender form had. Even then, she couldn’t stop vomiting.

  Every day when he came home from work, he would silently rub her back throughout the evening and night. In the morning, not having slept a wink, he would leave again for work. He was Hana’s strongest support.

  One day, Hana heard him come in and sat up in bed to greet him, only to notice that his coat was covered in dark brown feathers. She gave him a worried look, but he just smiled teasingly and brought his hand out from behind his back to show her what he was holding.

  A beautiful bird with a deep green tail squawked in his hand—a wild pheasant.

  Hana was dumbfounded. She tried to envision him hunting in wolf form, but she couldn’t even conjure the image.

  He stood in the kitchen and skillfully butchered the bird, then submerged it in a big pot of boiling water. While the pheasant was releasing its flavor into the broth, he bent over the counter to chop vegetables. Hana asked if she could help and started to climb out of bed, but he told her to just sit and relax.

  Finally, he wrapped the handles of the clay pot in a kitchen towel and carried it from the stovetop to a trivet on the table. When he lifted the lid, steam tinged with the scent of soup rose from the pot. He’d made pheasant and udon noodles in a clear, glistening broth. Neatly cut quarter slices of daikon radish and carrots floated on the surface.

  Hana peered into the dish with mixed feelings. She was worried she wouldn’t be able to eat the meal he had so thoughtfully prepared for her. Normally, just looking at food or
smelling it was enough to make her retch.

  She picked up a noodle with her chopsticks and hesitantly nibbled on it. A mild, savory flavor spread through her mouth.

  “Wow!” she blurted out.

  First of all, she was happy to be able to swallow anything at all. Second, she was glad something finally tasted good to her after what seemed like ages. All of a sudden, she was ravenous, gulping it down as if making up for all the meals she’d missed.

  He rested his chin on his hands and watched her, relieved.

  As fall turned to winter, Hana’s morning sickness vanished as if it had never existed.

  He worked harder than ever. Some days, he left before the sun rose and returned late at night. Small though it might be, he wanted to save up a nest egg for the future.

  Hana prepared for the birth alone in their apartment, her belly heavy. She took breaks from sewing cloth diapers to make a little stuffed wolf. As she sewed, she prayed that all would be well and she would be able to meet the child she bore.

  Again, she mulled over the possibility that the baby might be a wolf child, since the father was a wolfman. She didn’t think she would mind; she simply wanted to make her child’s acquaintace as soon as she could. As she watched the sun setting outside the window, she felt tears rolling down her cheeks for no reason at all.

  Hana gave birth to their child in the little apartment.

  It was a snowy day. They called neither the doctor nor the midwife, instead delivering the baby by themselves. He gripped her hand all through her labor. Although Hana had imagined giving birth to a wolf child, the newborn looked human enough for now.

  The teakettle on top of the stove puffed out a jet of steam.

  The two of them gazed at the infant for what seemed like forever. It was a girl. When they pressed their fingers to her tiny hand, she squeezed back helplessly.

  “I’m so glad she was born without trouble,” Hana said.

  “I’m sure not everything will be so simple,” he replied.

  “I wonder if she’ll be a kind little girl,” she said.

  “Maybe she’ll be smart,” he said.

  “What will she be like when she grows up?” she wondered.