The Monster on the Road Is Me

by JP Romney

  In one of those memories, Moya was screaming at Seimei to run. In the other, she looked like she was protecting him from a blind tengu by torching an entire park. But then Seimei died a month later when Ōmura Shrine was locked and detonated like a firebomb. Did Moya do that?

  On the night of the town festival she did get drunk and threaten to burn me alive if I told anyone about the kaki tree. Gods above, Yori was right. My magical girlfriend who lives in the woods might actually be dangerous!

  I slid my bike into the Lawson’s parking lot. I left my helmet on the handlebars and ran into the convenience store.

  “Haru,” I said.

  He looked up from the counter.

  “You know that weird girl, Moya? I think she’s an arsonist. Or the ghost of an arsonist. I’m not sure which one yet.”

  “Koda, quiet,” Haru whispered.

  “What?”

  He smiled at the back of the store and jogged around the cashier’s counter. He grabbed me by the shoulders. “You have to play it cool, kid. There’s a new employee here.”

  I looked down the aisle at a woman in her twenties stamping price tags on noodle sandwiches.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  “That’s Emi,” he said.

  I looked again. “Her name tag says Natsuki.”

  “Okay, fine, you caught me. I don’t remember her name. But it should be Emi. That’s a really pretty name, don’t you think?”

  “Hey,” Natsuki called from the back. “My hands are cold because of the refrigerator, so I’m going to take a smoke break.”

  “I’ll just be here watching the store,” Haru called. “Take all the time you need.”

  She stopped to look at me and Haru, rolled her eyes, and then pushed her way outside the store.

  “She does not care for this job,” I said.

  “She hates it!” Haru said with glee. “We’re perfect for each other.”

  “Right. Anyway, I have to talk to you about Moya.”

  “Who?” Haru said, rounding the front counter.

  “The girl from a couple of weeks ago. The one who snuffed your cigarette.”

  “Oh, yeah, the kitten-graveyard girl. Whatever happened to her?”

  I was about to tell him that Moya might, might be murdering boys my age, when Natsuki stormed back into the store.

  “Kore hidoi,” she said. “This sucks!”

  “What is it, Emi?” Haru immediately asked.

  “My name is Natsuki!”

  I shook my head.

  “You stare at me too much,” she continued, pointing at Haru. “And the store is too cold, and I can’t even smoke outside because of all the birds.”

  Birds?

  Natsuki marched into the backroom to grab a coat. I ran over to the front window. Crows lined the curbs of the parking lot. They must have flown over the roof, because they kept dropping onto the asphalt in front of me. They kicked to their feet and hopped onto the sidewalk and the garbage cans and the recycling bins. They clicked their beaks and stared straight at me.

  “Are you seeing this?” I said to Haru.

  “Never mind that,” he said. “I need you to take off.”

  “What?”

  “Emi is in a delicate place right now, and she needs me to be there for her.”

  “Listen to me, my friend, I really think you’re misreading the situation.”

  “Take an ice cream bar on the house and come back later, Koda.”

  “You might want to— A free ice cream bar, you say? Like, any ice cream bar?”

  Natsuki walked back into the room and started fidgeting with the cash register.

  “Hayaku,” Haru mouthed to me.

  I stepped up to the freezer unit near the door and quickly slipped a vanilla ice cream bar into my pocket. Haru laughed and then stopped when Natsuki turned to look at me.

  “What the hell?” she said.

  Kso! She saw me! I turned to Haru, but neither he nor Natsuki were actually looking at me.

  “Run, Koda!” Haru screamed.

  Because of the ice cream bar? You said it was on the house! Do something, Haru! But he wasn’t yelling about the ice cream. He was looking past me, through the huge window. I turned around.

  Have you ever noticed how time plays out differently in your memories? A van spun off Route 33, barreled through the parking lot, and skipped the curb. It flew through the window and smashed the ice cream freezer in front of me. The force of that blow knocked me down and jarred my senses so badly that everything was fuzzy until I woke up later in a Kōchi hospital.

  But that’s not how you remember traumatic events. I looked back, and in my memory the world ground to a halt. I remembered the van in the air, wheels slowly turning, bearing down on me. Behind that van, across the parking lot, sat a ghostly white fox. Black, shining eyes staring through the flying gravel and the broken crows.

  A fireball blossomed under the van, and the front fender burst gently through the window. Witnesses standing nearby thought the petrol tank had exploded. I remember seeing glass and wood and plaster flying through the air like slow-motion confetti. I remember the look on the driver’s face. Clearly. It must have only been a fraction of a fraction of a second, but I remember it like a photograph.

  Terror. That’s what you thought I’d say. How else would someone look as they bounced their vehicle through the front of a convenience store? But that wasn’t it. The driver didn’t look terrified. Or even concerned in the slightest. He looked bored. As if losing control of his vehicle was an inconvenient thing to happen on his way home from work. Even when his arms buckled at the elbows and shattered from the force of the steering wheel, his face looked blank and totally separated from what was happening.

  The force of the blast knocked me to the ground. The van flipped onto its side, demolishing half of the Lawson’s back wall. I remember hearing screams. The world rocked in and out. Stripes of black raced across my vision. I heard Natsuki screaming behind the counter.

  “Shinde iru wa! Shinde iru!” She was crying.

  I rolled over. Why is she screaming like that? I’m not dead. The store jerked back and forth. Then I saw Haru’s feet beneath the counter. I tried to focus. He wasn’t moving.

  20

  As I was lying in a hospital bed, waiting for my parents to take the train to Kōchi City, I expected Haru to walk into my room at any minute.

  You’re a mess, kid, he’d say. Guess that’s what you get for stealing ice cream bars. How’s that for karma? Do something bad and somebody runs you over with a car. Immediately. Through a window.

  “I wasn’t stealing,” I’d say.

  I told you to take it without paying. Which is pretty much the definition of stealing. That’s how karma works, kid.

  “I think there’s a little more to it than that,” I’d say.

  Haru would shrug and pull out a cigarette.

  * * *

  “Koda?” my mother said, shuffling through the door. “Oh, my poor baby boy.”

  “The van missed me. I’m okay,” I said, trying to sit up. The nurse in my room reached out and pushed me back down.

  “Relax, dear,” my mother said.

  “I can’t,” I said, kicking my legs. “She’s hurting me.”

  “I’m barely touching him,” the nurse said.

  “Our boy is not strong in the conventional sense,” my father repeated.

  “He has a wonderful spirit,” my mother shot back.

  “I didn’t steal the ice cream bar,” I blurted out. “Where’s Haru? He’ll tell you. This has nothing to do with karma.”

  My mother drew close to my ear. “Haru’s fine, Koda. They told us he’s just fine.”

  I stopped kicking my legs. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “But I saw his feet.”

  “Haru is going to be fine. He has a broken leg and some bruises, but they’re fixing him up now.”

  “Is he here? Is he in the hospital?” I asked.
/>   “Yes. He’ll be here for a few days. You can see him when he’s ready.”

  “When will that be?”

  “We’re not sure, dear.”

  “Okā-san?”

  “Yes, my boy?”

  “Am I naked?”

  “You have a hospital gown on. Well, you did before you started kicking around like that.”

  “Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is the nurse looking at me?”

  “Umm.”

  “I think I can go now,” the nurse said. “If you need anything, press the button near his head.” She straightened her skirt, bowed, and left the room.

  Mother covered me up with a hospital blanket.

  “All of this was for an ice cream bar?” my father asked.

  “Haru said I could have one. I got distracted because I was trying to choose between vanilla and strawberry. I like the strawberry, but you could win another vanilla bar by finding a Hello Kitty under the wrapper.”

  “Hello Kitty?” My father buried his face in his hands and whispered, “Gods above.”

  “Hello Kitty Dancing Ice Cream Party happens to be a delicious vanilla dessert bar!” I shouted. “I won’t apologize for that.”

  “Quiet, both of you,” my mother snapped. “Ice cream has nothing to do with this.”

  * * *

  She was right. The Kusaka Town Newsletter wrote about the accident and published it the next week. The driver, a forty-three-year-old businessman, survived the crash. He said he didn’t know what happened. He was driving down the road and then came to, upside-down in the van. Several witnesses reported seeing a massive fireball erupt beneath the vehicle, but the petrol tank was untouched and whole.

  “There was no reason for it,” one policeman said. “The traffic on Route 33 was light at the time. He probably got drowsy and drifted off the road.”

  “But how would that explain the driver’s injuries?” a reporter asked. “Both his arms were shattered. The steering wheel was bent around the driving column. That doesn’t sound like a man who was drowsy. That sounds like a man who was bracing for impact.”

  “I don’t know how to explain that,” the policeman said.

  Well, I do.

  During the crash I saw a white fox staring at us from the parking lot. With no rational explanation, old librarians might describe the crash as an act of the gods. You know, the kind that sends vans flipping through windows in fiery explosions for no reason. Or, and I’m just throwing this out there, it might be the act of a supernatural girlfriend. One who, coincidentally, has also blown up a shrine.

  * * *

  The night after the hospital released me, I snuck out of my house. The words “snuck” and “night” are a little misleading. I walked out of the front door at 5:30 p.m., thirty minutes after my parents had fallen asleep.

  I didn’t mean for Haru to get messed up in all of this. He had been in and out of surgery, and “visiting” meant peering through a small window in his hospital room door and watching him sleep. By the time I got home, I knew I had to figure out what I was really dealing with here. I strapped my helmet on and rode my bike to Yori’s house.

  “Tell me everything you know about kitsune,” I shouted up to Yori’s window.

  The Desert Punk slid back the glass. “I thought you got hit by a car?” he said.

  “I did. Well, a van, actually.”

  “You don’t look like you were hit by a van,” he said. “Did Shibaten trick everyone into thinking that? That sounds like something Shibaten would do.”

  “Nope. It wasn’t a kappa. And the van missed me, so I’m fine. Can I come up?”

  Yori waved me inside.

  “Tell me about foxes,” I said, marching into his room. “And not just any fox. A fox spirit. A real-life kitsune.”

  Yori turned his cosplay camera off. “Your girlfriend is a kitsune?”

  “Did I say she was my girlfriend? Oh, right, I did.”

  “Well,” Yori said, “how many tails does your girlfriend have?”

  “So, first of all, I’m not sure she’s my girlfriend anymore. We might break up. Because she tried to kill me. And, second, as far as I know she doesn’t have a tail.”

  Yori looked at me like I was an idiot. “I’m talking about her animal form, Koda. How many tails does the kitsune have?”

  “Of course. I’m going to say just one tail.”

  “So it’s a young kitsune, then.”

  “I guess. She’s like fifteen.”

  Yori laughed. “That doesn’t mean anything. You can’t tell how old a kitsune is by looking at its human form. She could be nine hundred years old. But probably not if she only has one tail. She’s definitely less than nine hundred years old.”

  “Well, great, I was worried there’d be an age gap.”

  “Do you know what type of kitsune she is?”

  “Like big or small? She’s definitely a white fox. Kind of medium size.”

  “No. Is she zenko or yako?”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Zenko are benevolent fox spirits associated with the goddess Inari. Yako are the opposite. They’re evil field foxes. Mischievous. Cruel.”

  “Definitely the last one. Maybe.”

  “Kitsune are shape-shifters. They usually take the form of girls. So yeah, it’s reasonable that she could be your fifteen-year-old girlfriend.”

  “Oh good. I was afraid this wasn’t a totally reasonable conversation.”

  “Now, if she’s one of Inari’s foxes, having her around is a good omen, Koda.”

  “And if she’s the dangerous kind?” I asked.

  “Then she will shoot fire at you.”

  “Okay, let’s talk about that one for a minute.”

  Yori sat down on a ramen box. “It’s called kitsune-bi. Fox fire. It comes out of their eyes. Or their mouths. Or their tails. They can shoot fire, that’s really the point.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m pretty sure she’s not yako,” Yori said. “If she’d wanted to burn you alive, she would have done it by now. Unlike their mischievous cousins, benevolent kitsune are fiercely loyal. That’s probably what you’re dealing with. If she has chosen you, it will be difficult to separate yourself from her.”

  “And why would a kitsune choose someone?” I asked.

  “Who knows? Maybe you saved her life. Maybe it’s a blood oath from the goddess Inari. Maybe you have something she wants.”

  “Yep,” I said under my breath.

  Yori jumped up and snapped his welding goggles over his eyes. “So are you going to ask me?”

  “Ask you what?”

  “No matter the feat, no matter the run…” he sang.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “C’mon. No matter the feat, no matter the run…” He gestured for me to finish.

  “Oh, right. No matter the feat, no matter the run, uh, Desert Punk gets the job done! Did you get the evidence, Yori?”

  “I didn’t get it.”

  “What? Then why did you—”

  “The Desert Punk did!” Yori pulled a thick manila envelope out of his tattered tote bag and set it in my hand.

  “You got it!”

  “Please,” Yori scoffed. “Did the Desert Punk thrash Rain Spider all over the wastelands of Tōkyō?”

  “I’m going to say yes because I don’t really understand what you just said.”

  “Of course I got it! It was amazing!”

  “Did you have to, like, sneak into a high-security room and trick the cameras and knock out a few guards?”

  “Yes! Well, no. I mean, they were in a cardboard box in the basement. No guards and no cameras, but there was tape on the box. A lot of tape. It took me like ten minutes to get it off. And someone could have seen me, Koda! What would I have said if some guy was like, ‘Hey, Yori, what are you doing down here?’”

  “You could have said, ‘I’m looking for tax records.’”

  “Then he would have said, ‘Why?
’”

  “And you could have said, ‘Because I’m an accountant.’”

  “Okay. Yes, I see where you’re going with that. But the point is—I didn’t have to!”

  “No one saw you go into the basement?”

  “Like four or five people saw me go into the basement, but they didn’t see me take the evidence! I was in and out like a ghost. No—a shadow. A desert shadow!”

  “And no one said a word to you?”

  “Kazuo from accounting said, ‘Hey, Yori, what were you doing in the basement?’”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing! I ran right past him! He’s so stupid!”

  “So that’s it? That’s the evidence?”

  “Yep, and that’s not all. I grabbed these, too.”

  Yori opened the envelope and pointed at a stack of folded files.

  “What are those?” I asked, peering in.

  “These are the case files on all of the Shibaten murders.” He looked around. “They were on a shelf that was mislabeled—CROWS / TRAVELER / ROAD. Just like the haiku.”

  I stepped closer to Yori. “You stole police files on the suicides? Are you insane? The police are going to know they’re missing.”

  Yori’s face fell for a moment. “But Aiko, Ichiro, Taiki, the headmaster. They’re all here, probably.”

  “These are open cases, Yori. Someone’s going to notice!”

  “Read through them, and then I can take them back.”

  “You can take them back right now,” I said, pulling them out of the envelope. “I never told you to steal active police files—” I stopped. From the cover of a girl’s diary, a three-legged crow stared up at me.

  “What is this?” I said. I set the manila envelope on the ground, ignoring whatever Yori said in return.

  藤原愛子

  Fujiwara, Aiko

  The drawing of the crow on the front stayed still as lead, but I could almost feel something stirring beneath the cover.

  “I said I’ll take them back first thing in the morning,” Yori repeated. He reached out to take the diary, but I yanked it away.

  “No, you’re right, Yori. It’s … it’s all connected.” I picked up the envelope and dropped Aiko’s diary inside. “I’ll bring these back in a few days. I promise.”