Brave Story

by Miyuki Miyabe

  “I’m sure that Mr. Daimatsu and his son had something far more serious on their minds than kids coming to play ghost hunter. Whatever it was, they were so wrapped up in thinking about it they didn’t even have time to worry about a few neighborhood brats. They were nice to us, because they didn’t care.”

  Katchan scratched his head—his hair was cut so close it was almost a crew cut—and rolled his eyes in exasperation as if to say “there he goes again.” This had happened before. Wataru would be deeply concerned about something, and Katchan wouldn’t get it at all. It made Wataru frustrated, and several times he had snapped at his friend. It never occurred to him that, when he did so, his face looked exactly like his mother’s whenever she talked about those “Komuras and their filthy bar.”

  “You think it has something to do with that girl, Kaori?” Katchan muttered. He said it quietly, as though he didn’t want Wataru to hear, but loud enough just in case he happened to be right.

  Of course it does!

  “Of course it does!” Katchan said, beating him to it. “How could it be anything else?”

  That was my line, Wataru thought, growing more irritated. He was the one who figured it out, he was the one who saw behind their kindly façade.

  “You think she’s sick?” Katchan said, even quieter than before. “It was weird, I mean, she looked fine, except she was all limp. I wonder why she doesn’t talk?”

  Wataru thought. They had said they were taking her for a walk, but that was odd too. If she didn’t like other people around, why couldn’t they go to a park, or the ocean, or somewhere else? Why did they have to take her out in the middle of the night?

  The unsettling thought occurred to him that her condition might have something to do with the haunted building. That would explain why Mr. Daimatsu snuck her out so late at night when they wouldn’t be noticed, and brought Kaori to such a strange place.

  “Hey,” Katchan said, growing restless at his friend’s silence. “I asked my old man about Ishioka’s dad.”

  Because of their profession, Katchan’s mother and father worked late every night. But they always made sure to get up early the next morning and eat breakfast together. “The family that eats together, stays together,” they would say. They loved those kinds of sayings: “One kindness every day,” and “Friendship is priceless”—things like that.

  “He said he didn’t know. Ishioka’s dad hasn’t come to the bar for a long time.”

  “Hmph,” Wataru snorted in response.

  “So, we’re done with that haunted building, right?” Katchan said with a grin. “I wouldn’t be caught dead following in that jerk Ishioka’s footsteps.”

  Wataru was silent. Katchan scratched his head again, said something about that being the end of that, and nodded goodbye before heading back to his own desk just as the beginning-of-period bell began to ring.

  From his desk, Wataru could see the back of Katchan’s head. Katchan’s father cut his son’s hair himself with an electric shaver, and there was always a little bald spot. Every time he had it cut, the bald spot would move slightly to one side or the other, or change its shape. Katchan never complained. His father would laugh while he cut it, talking to Katchan and his mother, threatening to cut off Katchan’s ear if he moved.

  Someone cut Kaori’s hair too. Wataru remembered how it smelled. That fresh, clean scent of shampoo. Someone washed her hair, shampooed it, tied it up in a ponytail. Maybe they talked to her—her face a silent mask. Probably it was her mother. She must be very sad. How horrible it must be to know that Kaori would never answer her. It was like she was dead, even while she still lived.

  What had happened to her?

  Wataru realized that he utterly lacked the means to imagine what life must be like in the Daimatsu household. He couldn’t even make a good guess.

  The day passed by in a blur. When Wataru got home, Kuniko was in the living room, having draped laundry for ironing over every available surface. Her hands moved mechanically as she smoothed out dress shirts and pants, her eyes glued to the television the entire time. She didn’t have to look, she never made a crease. Akira always said she was the only person he knew who could make ironing a performance art.

  Wataru’s usual homecoming routine was to call out a perfunctory “Hi, Mom, I’m home,” and go straight to his room. But this time he stopped, and spoke to his mom. “Have you heard anything lately about that haunted building next to the Mihashi Shrine?”

  “Sorry?” she said, not turning around. It was unlikely she had even heard what he said.

  “That half-built building, the one being put up by Daimatsu Properties, or someone. Have you heard that Mr. Daimatsu has a daughter in junior high?”

  Kuniko slapped the creases out of a dress-shirt collar while shaking her head. “No, I hadn’t heard that.” For the briefest of moments she wrenched her gaze away from the television and looked down at her hands. Her fingertips ran along the collar, found a stray thread, picked it up, and threw it to the floor. She looked back to the television.

  “Maybe your friend, the one whose husband is the real estate agent, would know something?”

  Kuniko didn’t answer. She was watching an afternoon soap opera. On the screen, the heroine opened an unlocked apartment door and stepped inside a darkened room. A body was lying on the floor. She screamed and a commercial came on. At last, Kuniko looked up at Wataru. “What? Did you say something?”

  Wataru almost went to ask again, but then felt suddenly like he didn’t want to. “It’s nothing,” he muttered.

  “Strange child. There’s some cheesecake in the refrigerator. You have cram school today, right? You’re not going by bicycle. They’re doing repairs on Clover Bridge. Did you wash your hands? We’re out of mouthwash, but there’s a new bottle under the sink.”

  It was times like this when Wataru fancied that, as long as he said his hellos and goodbyes, he could eat breakfast, go to school, and come back home a slobbering, hairy werewolf, and his mother wouldn’t notice a thing. He stood up to snatch his cheesecake and go to his room, when the phone rang.

  “Could you get that?” Kuniko said. She couldn’t get up quickly from where she was sitting in front of the ironing board. He had heard her telling someone on the phone the other day that she had gained five pounds already this year, and it was hard for her to move around like she used to.

  Wataru walked toward the phone hanging on the living room wall and picked up the receiver. “Hello, Mitani residence.”

  Silence.

  “Hello?”

  Still nothing but silence. He said hello again, and not hearing a response, he hung up the receiver.

  “Wrong number?” Kuniko asked.

  “Guess so.”

  “We get those a lot lately. I answer the phone, and there’s nothing on the other end. So I hang up.”

  Because he was by the phone anyway, Wataru thought about giving Katchan a call. He wanted to apologize for being such a grump today, and for running home without asking if he wanted to walk back together.

  The phone rang again, and Wataru quickly picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  Again, nothing but silence on the other end. Wataru’s mood was blacker than it had been in a long time, and a sudden anger took control of him. Holding the receiver in front of his mouth he shouted into it, “If you’re not going to talk, than don’t call, idiot!”

  He slammed the receiver back down on the hook, and saw Kuniko staring at him, eyes wide. She looked more bemused than worried.

  Wataru couldn’t pay attention in cram school that day, either. Though he was normally an ideal student, he was scolded by the teacher no fewer than three times in a two-hour period. The third time, the teacher asked him whether he was feeling all right.

  Wataru couldn’t say for sure. He found his mind wandering to the events of the night before. There was Mr. Daimatsu, gently patting the arm of the wheelchair, and Kaori’s slender neck lolling her head to the side. Her cheek was pale as
wax, reflecting the color of the hastily draped tarps on the haunted building. Everything was permeated with the clean smell of shampoo. The same scene played over and over in his mind. Was she sick? Did she need help, or would she just get better? If she were a DVD player, she would definitely be in need of repair, but did humans work the same way? Wataru couldn’t say.

  He walked home in a daze, and then it occurred to him to go past the haunted building. Since cram school was in the opposite direction from regular school, it was more than a long-cut. He would actually have to walk past his house to get there. Still, he wanted to see it again. He had made it back to the apartment building entranceway and would’ve kept on going if someone hadn’t called out to him.

  “Welcome home, Wataru. Back from cram school?”

  He looked up to see his father standing a mere ten feet away. He carried his bag in his right hand, in his left, a folded umbrella. Wataru remembered that the weather report said there would be rain showers downtown.

  “Hi, Dad,” Wataru replied, walking toward his father. Akira turned and made for the entranceway without waiting for him.

  “You’re home early today, huh?” Wataru looked down at the digital watch on his left wrist, which read 8:43. Beside the big numbers, smaller digits raced on the right side of the watch face, counting out hundredths of a second. The watch was a gift picked up on Akira’s business trip to Los Angeles the year before. It bore the logo of a popular U.S. basketball team. Wataru hated basketball, and as a result, he hardly ever wore the thing.

  “School going well?”

  “Yeah,” Wataru said, as usual. This particular exchange had formed the bulk of their conversation over the past year. Even if Wataru said something else, his father would probably just listen in silence. And even if Akira asked something more, Wataru would probably just say “Yeah” to that too. Probably. He didn’t know, because it had never happened. Akira Mitani was not a talkative man by nature. In contrast, Kuniko talked up a storm. According to Wataru’s observations, the ratio was about ten to one in his mother’s favor. If success in daily life and authority within the family were proportional to the amount one spoke, then the one who talked the most would win. In other words, Kuniko wore the pants in the family.

  But when the conversation passed from the topics of daily life to more serious matters, things were different. Then, the usually taciturn Akira would become “argumentative,” as his grandmother in Chiba called it. The decision to buy their current apartment had been one of those times when he spoke up. So had he done when Kuniko thought to send Wataru to a private school. And again, when they had to decide if Wataru would go to a cram school. And he always had the last say when it came time to buying a new car. At these times, Akira would thoroughly research the problem at hand, think it through, and pick the most logical solution. There were no vague, touchy-feely factors involved, no “I think maybe we should,” or “Everyone else is,” or “That’s what’s expected of us.” If the subject in question were a new car, fuel economy and safety standards would be carefully scrutinized. If it were an apartment, the contractors, the living environment, all data would be analyzed, and there would be no questioning of Akira Mitani’s final decision.

  Akira’s peculiar way of doing things had received quite a bit of attention ten years ago when his father passed away. The topic remained to this day a matter of discussion among their relatives. Even though Wataru was only a baby at the time, he had heard the story so many times at family reunions that he remembered the incident as though he had seen it himself.

  Akira had shocked many of his relatives by refusing to conform to the “way things are done.” At his father’s funeral, he questioned the order of names on the invitation list. He questioned the gifts some people brought. He questioned everything. Apparently, it was quite a spectacle.

  Eventually it was poor Grandma, in mourning because of her husband’s passing, who finally spoke to him. “Akira, there will be no more of this,” she said tearfully. “At least give your father the quiet funeral he deserves.” If she hadn’t intervened, their relatives said, the casket wouldn’t have left the house for a week.

  With that one incident, Akira’s reputation was set among their relatives as an “intelligent man, quiet, and gentle enough…but when he gets going, watch out!”

  “Of course, I knew that all along,” Kuniko would say, laughing.

  Akira Mitani was not a scary father. Wataru could not remember ever having been yelled at or struck. So far, he had not even had to face his father’s ultimate weapon: the logical argument that others feared so much. Of course, this was partly because his father was too busy to spend time on family discipline.

  There were things about his father that Wataru didn’t completely understand. But this had never bothered him. The door to his father was simply not open, nor would it probably ever be open, but as long as Wataru cared for whatever was beyond it, and his father cared for him back, that was enough.

  Wataru even liked his father. In this world, where so many people liked nothing more than to talk about themselves—his friends, people on television, at school—he thought his father was cool to work so quietly all day. Like most children his age, Wataru had an image of his father that was nothing more than the image his mother, Kuniko, had of her husband, Akira.

  Even if all Akira did was nod his head and listen, Kuniko seemed to love relating things she had found interesting to him, or things that had angered her. She would even run things by him that had already been decided. Wataru had been like that, too, as a child, always eager to talk. Lately though, he had hardened, like spaghetti prepared al dente, and become less a pure child and more something approaching a young adult. This new Wataru could simply say “Yeah,” when asked a question, and nothing more. Maybe that was the difference between men and women. Or maybe it was something that Kuniko didn’t have, that Wataru had gotten from his father’s genes.

  Still, tonight, their usual exchange had left him feeling strangely unsatisfied. His thoughts stirred as they walked along the hallway to their front door. He suddenly found that he wanted to say many things to his father. Were there really such things as ghosts? If everyone truly believes something, and thinks something is interesting, even if it’s ridiculous, should I play along? If I don’t play along, will they hate me? You don’t think I should, do you, Dad? But they never called you names, did they? Even if something’s wrong and I know it, how do I do something about it without it turning into a fight? Will I be like you someday?

  And what about Kaori Daimatsu—wordless, cut off from the outside world. Dad, she was just like…like a princess trapped in a castle tower in a video game. I didn’t believe such girls really existed. What’s wrong with her? Why can’t I stop thinking about her? Have you ever felt this way about something?

  The words swirled in his head, but in the end they never found a way out, and now they were opening the door and going inside. Kuniko was busily explaining things to Akira, asking his advice, asking about work. It had been a long time since the three of them ate dinner together. His mother seemed very happy, and her happiness was infectious. Wataru hadn’t eaten a dinner that tasted so good in years.

  Wataru stood to bring his plate and cup to the kitchen when the phone rang. He quickly went to pick up the receiver.

  Silence.

  “Not again,” Kuniko said, her chopsticks frozen in midair.

  “Yup,” Wataru confirmed, hanging up the phone.

  “We’ve been getting those a lot lately, those silent calls.” Kuniko furrowed her brow. “I don’t like it.”

  Akira glanced at the phone. “They usually come around this time?”

  “Usually they come during the day, in the afternoon—isn’t that right, Wataru?”

  “Yeah. We had two in a row the other day.”

  “Do you answer the phone usually, Wataru?”

  “No, yesterday was the first time.”

  Akira put his cup down and stared at the phone. “Maybe y
ou should put it on the answering machine?”

  Kuniko laughed. “It’s okay, it’s not like it’s a crank call, or some pervert. And if it was your mother calling and we let her talk to the answering machine, there’d be hell to pay.”

  Akira smiled, knowing she was right. Wataru got an ice cream from the freezer, and a spoon from the drying rack, and was about to sit down when the phone rang again.

  “I’ll get it!” he shouted, flying to answer it. He was going to give the caller a piece of his mind, like he had yesterday. But when he picked up the receiver with a loud “Hello?!” there was an answer.

  It was a friendly, hefty voice. “Eh? Wataru? That’s quite a way to answer the phone!”

  There was no mistaking the voice of Uncle Satoru. Wataru’s shoulders relaxed. “Oh, it’s you, Uncle Lou.”

  “You sound disappointed! How you been, kid?”

  “Fine.”

  “You’re still going to school, right? You’re not playing hooky like those bad kids?”

  “No, Not me.”

  “You’re not getting bullied? They taking any money from you?”

  “Not even a little,” Wataru said, laughing. “You’ve been watching those dumb news programs again.”

  “Well, from what I hear, schools these days are worse than medieval dungeons!”

  “I don’t know what that means, but I guarantee you it’s not all that bad,”

  Wataru said, smiling despite himself.

  “Well, if you say so. I suppose I shouldn’t believe everything I see on television. So, got a girlfriend yet?”

  Wataru jerked upright. “Who, me?”

  “It’s about time. You’re in fifth grade, right? You’re ripe for finding your first true love! Isn’t there any girl around that makes you go all a-tingle up your spine?”