by JP Romney
“Now see, you go talking all normal for a while—well, normal for you—and then you say totally freaky things like that.”
“That kind of darkness is a long time off, though. Maybe a thousand billion years from now. But when the nothing of the universe encounters a particularly bright light, it’s drawn to it. The darkness surrounds the light, tries to twist and fold and consume it. That is the Tengu Road.”
“The Tengu Road?”
“It is the nothingness that’s all around us,” Moya said. “The Road breaks down the universe piece by piece until everything you see will be black and empty and cold. Normally people don’t even notice the Road, but Kusaka is different. The Road is seeping in here faster than anywhere else. And whatever it touches, it eventually destroys.”
“So do you, like, ever get invited to sleepovers? No? Here’s a hint: it’s because you say things like that.”
“I don’t know what a sleepover is, Koda, but the Tengu Road probably hates that, too.”
“Right.”
“Listen to me, the Road infects things differently. The kaki trees were points of light and hope in this town. As the Road flooded in, though, it suffocated them one by one.”
“Gods, Moya, this is not the conversation I pictured us having.”
“And humans don’t fare any better. Those who become infected by the Road go mad. They wander down empty paths of hopelessness. Some survive this encounter, but most do not.”
“The Yamabuki Three were on the Road.”
“Despair overtook them. When the crows started watching, the cancer flooded their minds.”
“Watching them? Gods above, Moya, they’re watching me! I see the crows!”
“Calm down, calm down, Koda. You’re freaking out. Just listen to me.”
“Okay, fine, what?”
She waited until my breathing returned to normal.
“You are going to die.”
“I’m going to what? Are you serious? Have you ever given bad news to anyone before? You are absolutely terrible at it!”
“No, no, that’s a good thing.”
“How is that a good thing?” I shouted.
“Because the Road won’t take you like it took the others. You’re different. If you’re very lucky you’ll die in about eighty years like a normal human being.”
“I hate how you said ‘normal’ there.”
“You’re a dirty little memory thief, Koda. That’s not really normal.”
I dropped my head into my hands. “Moya.”
“Yes?”
“Why am I on the Tengu Road? I’m a nobody. I’m a sick, weak kid who is constantly hurting myself. I’m the kind of person you forget five minutes after meeting me. I’m a shiitake farmer with no future. I’m not important to anyone, anywhere.”
“You’re a kaki tree, Koda.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not true,” I said, looking up.
“Not literally a tree, no, but you have great strength inside you. You may be scrawny and goofy-looking and incapable of running forty meters without injuring yourself—”
“Bedside manner, Moya.”
“But you have potential in that gnarled trunk of yours.”
“What am I?” I asked her.
“You’re someone who sees things that other people don’t,” she said.
“I see misery that other people don’t.”
“Yes. But unlike the suri who enter the Tengu Road and lose themselves, you want to help people. You want to reverse the pain and suffering you see, not poke it and spread it around. That makes you more kaki tree and less—”
“Tengu?”
“Well, technically, yes.”
“But that’s where most suri end up?”
“Certain suri do … make a home of the Tengu Road.”
“I don’t want to make a home on any road. Especially not one that leads to freaking mountain demons.”
“That’s why I sent you to Yori’s house, Koda, to steal a memory about Shibaten. That river troll holds the key to breaking the Tengu Road in Kusaka.”
I leaned back against the trunk of the kaki tree. “I was at Yori’s house, Moya. He doesn’t know where Shibaten is hiding. There’s nothing in his house but cosplay videotapes and anime figurines.”
“He has to have the memory,” Moya said quietly.
“I’m sorry. He doesn’t.”
“But the bus driver said he saw Shibaten.”
“He felt his presence around the school. He didn’t actually see anything.”
Moya stood up and walked to the edge of the kaki tree. “No one else has seen Shibaten in two hundred years. Yori was our only link. If we can’t find someone who has a memory of the kappa, then Kusaka is lost.”
“I wish there was something…” I started, but trailed off. I suddenly jumped to my feet and ran to Moya. “I have to go.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m a suri. Those traumatic memories aren’t going to steal themselves!” I tried to give Moya a peck on the cheek, but I was really excited and smacked her in the chin instead.
“Ow, Koda, gods!”
Whatever, I had a town to save. No time to worry about awkward kisses. I ran out from under the kaki tree and darted through the bamboo forest.
“All right, then,” Moya called after me. “Ride like the wind on your little pink bike, my brave thief.”
“It’s red!” I shouted back.
18
“Yori!” I called. “Imasen ka? Are you there?”
“Koda?” came a voice from the second floor. Yori walked to the window dressed in his sugegasa straw hat, his cape, and goggles. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Yori, I need to talk to you. Can I come up?”
“Is it about the kappa Shibaten?”
“Yes, it absolutely is.”
Yori’s face lit up. “Do you need the Desert Punk?” he asked.
“That is, yep, exactly why I’m here.”
Yori pumped his fist in the air. “Come up, Koda. The door’s unlocked!”
“Sumimasen,” I said, after I walked up the stairs and into his room.
“Here, have a seat, Koda. First question: Did you ride all the way here?”
“Yes.”
“Next question: You’re out of breath.”
“That’s not a question. I was riding hard.”
“Drink this,” he said, handing me a canteen. “You’ve lost a lot of water. I can see it in your face. You need to rehydrate. Our bodies are ninety-eight percent water.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not true.”
“Drink it anyway.”
I took a swig. “Done. And really gross.”
“All right, your turn.”
“I think my girlfriend is a yōkai,” I blurted out.
Yori stopped dead in his tracks. He slowly turned around. “You have a girlfriend?”
“Yori, that wasn’t the important part—”
“What’s it like to have a girlfriend? Someday I’m going to have one. She can be Rain Spider in my cosplay videos. I definitely need a girlfriend.”
“So that really wasn’t the point. And I shouldn’t have said ‘girlfriend.’ We’ve never actually, you know, defined our relationship.”
“A girlfriend who doesn’t know she’s your girlfriend?” Yori said. “Oh, okay, I’ve had those before.”
“I mean, we kissed once. But the point is, I think she’s a yōkai.”
Yori walked to the window and removed his straw hat thoughtfully. “I don’t know, Koda. Having a supernatural creature for a girlfriend could complicate things … in the romance department, if you know what I mean.” He turned back to me. “Do you know what I mean? Because I do not know what I mean. Women are a complete mystery to me.”
“If my girlfriend is supernatural, is she dangerous?” I asked.
“It’s possible. It depends on what kind of yōkai she is. She could be good or malicious or something in between. She could be a yū
rei ghost. She could be a shape-shifting obake. Does she seem more like a snake or a badger or a spider? Oh! She could be tsukumogami—an inanimate object that comes to life every hundred years! I once dated a porcelain teapot for three months thinking it had a woman’s soul inside.”
“But it didn’t really?”
“We broke up,” Yori shot back.
“When you say ‘broke up,’ do you mean you ‘broke it’?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. It was a very delicate teapot!”
Yori untied the strap on his cape and laid it over a nearby ramen box. “The first thing you need to do, Koda, is find out what kind of yōkai she is. This is very important. If you’re compatible enough, you might be able to marry. If not, she could suck your soul dry and leave your body a withered husk. Just like a kappa,” Yori said, spinning on me. “You aren’t dating a kappa, are you? Koda, are you dating Shibaten?”
“What? No. Gods, Yori, no. But if I can find out what kind of yōkai she is, I’ll let you know.”
“All right. And if she is an inanimate object with a soul, I will not judge you. Heaven knows those relationships are hard enough.”
“I’m really here because I need a favor.” I lowered my voice. “One that isn’t strictly legal.”
“Illegal?” Yori asked. “Like criminally illegal?”
“That … Okay, what other kind of illegal is there? No, I just need you to borrow something for me.”
“What kind of something?” he said, removing his goggles.
“You work at the town office, right? You work with records and stuff?”
Yori took off his straw hat. “I work with tax records.”
“What about different kinds of records?”
“How different?”
“Police different.”
“What would you want with police records?” Yori asked.
“Not police records.” I handed him a piece of paper.
Yori opened and read it.
“You remember how Taiki’s father was murdered by Shibaten two years ago?” I said.
“Sure. They found him in the river.”
“Well, I need any evidence they still have at the town office. This is a top secret mission, Yori. Only the Desert Punk can do it.”
Yori looked up at me. “What are you talking about, Koda?”
“The case was ruled accidental, and any evidence was probably filed away somewhere. I need you to get it for me. I need whatever he was carrying at the time. A watch, maybe. A wallet. A key. There might be clues that will lead us to Shibaten.”
“This is incredibly dangerous, Koda. What do you think you’ll do if you find the kappa anyway?”
“Something larger than Shibaten is happening to this town,” I told him. “It’s bigger than me and you and the Yamabuki Three. Bring me any evidence the police have, and I will show you a conspiracy that makes Shibaten look like a sneezing kitten.”
“Why a sneezing kitten?”
“I tried to think of the opposite of scary. That’s what popped into my head.”
“Cats give me the hives.”
“I’ll remember that. Will you do it for me, Yori?”
He looked down at the paper. “I don’t know, Koda. I could get in trouble. I don’t even know if I can get into those archives.”
“I need help,” I said. “I need your help. And when people need help, who do they call?”
“The police?”
“No. They call a hero. They call the Desert Punk.”
“Sure.”
“Yori,” I started, “you are a simple town employee. You were fired from being a bus driver because you saw things and refused to back down. And what did you get for it? Thanks? No. A medal? Hell, no! You got stuck behind a dusty desk in the basement of the town hall. You sit around all day under the glare of fluorescent lights making sure that numbers in Column A match numbers in Column B.”
“It’s not that bad,” he said.
“No one sees you,” I continued. “No one pays you any mind. If you suddenly stopped existing, they would just replace you with some other mindless drone who is willing to waste his life away over a mountain of papers.”
“Hey.”
“That’s no way for a person to live,” I said. “That’s not a real life, is it? But I will tell you what it is, Yori. It is a perfect cover. The perfect secret identity. Who would ever suspect that Yori Yamamoto, failed bus driver and town hall accountant, is really the Desert Punk? Out there solving murders! Changing lives!
“You come home each night and dress up in front of your camera. You put on that cape and the hat and goggles, and you pretend you’re making a difference. But I’m offering you something here, Yori. I’m offering you a chance. A chance to be someone. For real.”
“Koda,” Yori said.
“Help me, Desert Punk.”
“It’s just, if someone saw—”
“Help me, Yori. I need the Desert Punk.”
“I don’t—”
“Please, Sunabōzu. Please.”
Yori folded up the paper and pushed it into his pants pocket. “All right, Koda. I’ll bring you the evidence. But promise me you won’t keep it for long. I have to return it. I could get fired for this. Or worse.”
“You have my word. On the honor of the Desert Punk, you have my word.”
Yori walked me to his front door. “Give me a couple of days, Koda. I need to reconnoiter the premises.”
“Sure thing. Whatever you just said.”
I walked out into the growing darkness of Kusaka Town. “By the way,” I said, turning back to Yori, “there’s this strange haiku that keeps popping up. I wonder if you know anything about it.”
“I like haiku.”
“Crows fly.
A traveler on the road
Is lost.”
“Nope. I can look into it, though, if you want.”
“Don’t do that. I’m just glad you’ve never heard it before. Have a good night, Yori.”
“Oyasumi,” Yori said.
I walked out to my bike and kicked up the stand. Looks like I am an awesome thief after all. Step one: Tell your victim he has access to something you want. Step two: Ask him to get that something and bring it to you. Step three: The victim says he’ll do it.
Being a master thief is way easier than I thought.
19
Moya wasn’t at school the next day, which was fine with me—I had a very important errand to run. After the final bell, I rode my bike along the backstreets to the town library. And when I say library, I mean a small reading room tucked in between town hall and the Sunny Mart grocery store. It may not be very big and it may not have a wide selection of, you know, books, but if something happened in Kusaka (and it usually doesn’t), this library would be the best place to learn about it.
“I’m, um, doing a report for school,” I told the old lady behind the desk. “And I was wondering if a family was ever murdered in a park with a samurai sword.”
The librarian squinted at me over her wire-frame glasses. “Well, that is morbid. And oddly specific. This is for a school report, you say?”
“Yes. So do you know where I can find some information on that, and also did it really happen?”
“That was a very long time ago, young man,” she said.
“But it did happen?”
“Oh yes. It was very strange and very tragic.” She set down the book she was reading.
Hey, they do have books here.
“Come with me,” she said.
The librarian led me through the run-down room toward a table in the back corner. One, two, three, four … nine. They have nine books here.
The librarian pulled down a fat three-ring binder with the date Shōwa 6 written on the spine.
“This is a collection of all the Kusaka Town Newsletters from the year 1931 to the present. Let’s see,” she said, thumbing through the pages. “Here it is. May.” She laid the binder out in front of me. “A young man lost both
his parents that night. He was about your age.”
“Seimei? Was his name Seimei?”
She looked over the edge of her glasses and ran her finger down the page. “That’s right. Seimei Nakagawa. What was the topic of your school report?” she asked, but I’d stopped listening to her. I was staring at the front page of the next month’s newsletter.
At first it was difficult to tell what I was seeing. The charred remains were apparently part of a shrine. It could have been any building, really, from what was left, but in the corner of the picture, you could see the trunk of the old botan tree. Anyone who attended the fall matsuri would instantly recognize it.
“Is that Ōmura Shrine?” I asked.
“It is. Two tragedies in two months,” the librarian said. “All centered on this boy Seimei.”
The doors in the picture were seared and shattered. Around the handles, though, you could make out a blackened chain. Someone had locked it. Fastened it tight.
“What ever happened to Seimei?” I asked.
“He died in the fire that burned Ōmura Shrine to the ground.”
“He died?”
“Seimei and his family were the last Nakagawas in this town. Their ancestors went all the way back to the founding of Kusaka Village in 1805. When Seimei died, his family line went extinct. I suppose that makes three tragedies in two months.”
“Gods,” I whispered.
“Do you need a photocopy for your report?” the librarian asked.
“Sure,” I said, blankly.
As we walked across the room to an ancient-looking machine, I asked the librarian if the man who set the fire had ever been caught.
“Oh no, no one set that fire,” she said. “It was an act of the gods.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because the shrine was struck by lightning. And not normal lightning, young man.”
“What kind of lightning?” I asked.
“The kind that explodes a shrine from the inside out.”
“Oh,” I said. “That kind.”
* * *
I folded up the grainy photocopy and shoved it in my pocket. After clicking my helmet on, I turned my bike toward Lawson’s.
Moya didn’t know it, but I’d already stolen two memories from her. One while we were at the funeral, and the other after my fall during Sports Day. Both memories were about Seimei Nakagawa.