by JP Romney
Shibaten glanced over at Moya.
“Don’t look at her, look at me,” I said. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? Tricks and pranks? I want to buy a prank.”
Shibaten growled.
“What kind of prank?” Moya asked.
“A complicated one. There’s an eighteen-year-old boy. His name is Haru. He lives down the street from my house and used to work at the Lawson’s convenience store. I want you to trick him into believing he is me.”
“Why?” Moya asked.
“Then you must trick my parents,” I said. “Make them believe that Haru is their son and they want to take him away from here. Far away. To some place like Tōkyō. Until Kōtenbō is dead. They must drive away in their truck and not return until the tengu has been killed. If the tengu doesn’t die, they must never return. Ever. Do you understand? Play this trick for me and I will bring you Ikeda.”
“This is a very bad idea,” Moya said.
Shibaten stood. His chest vibrated and he stomped the ground.
He is afraid of the crows, my brain said. He is afraid they will tell the tengu where he is hiding. Tell him they will not.
“The crows won’t bother you,” I said. “Not while you do this thing for me.”
“How could you know that?” Moya asked.
Look into the kappa’s eye and assure him that he will be safe.
I looked straight at Shibaten. “Because I know.”
The kappa turned to Moya. She shrugged. He looked back at me and blew air out of his nostrils.
“Good,” I said. “Then it’s a deal.”
* * *
NOTEBOOK/FUJIWARA, AIKO
DATE: 2006年9月13日
i sit with the black birds. only they listen. only they stay. i ask them if the three-legged one will bring my mother home. it makes them sad. they say no one can find her. they want to stop hurting me, but the monster wont let them. they want the three-legged crow to save them, but they cant find him either. i tell them my family worshipped Yatagarasu at a temple near our home so he will help us. they don’t know where the three-legged crow is or why he is taking so long. i dont want the black birds to leave. even with the crying i dont want to be alone again.
Not not not not
again
we leave together.
Fly
black birds
fly
* * *
I walked into my house sometime after midnight. “Tadaima,” I said, kicking off my shoes in the genkan, even though I knew no one would call “Okaeri” back.
“Come into the kitchen, Koda,” my mother would have said. “I made your favorite soup for dinner—shiitake.”
“No time, kā-san,” I’d reply if I were a normal kid and we were a normal family. “I have homework to do. And then I want to watch TV.”
If my life were normal.
I walked upstairs to my parents’ room and slid the door back just a bit. They were both asleep on their futon. My father was snoring.
I slid the door open wider. Maybe Haru would be a better son than me. Maybe he’d tell my mother how much he liked her soup. Maybe—
“Aah!” my father screamed. “Who is that? Who’s there? Mother, Koda’s come to murder us!”
“It’s just me, tō-san, I didn’t mean to—”
But then my father was snoring again. Was he sleep-talking? And also, does my father think I’m going to murder him in the middle of the night? How often does he wake up like that? My poor mother.
I really was the most dangerous thing that could have happened to them. Maybe in the space between awake and asleep, my father sensed that and resented me for it. I closed the door and walked down to my bedroom. I folded my futon and dragged it back along the hall to my parents’ room. I unfolded the mattress, and that’s where I slept my last night with them, listening to my mother’s breathing and my father’s terrified snoring through the door.
30
* * *
NOTEBOOK/FUJIWARA, AIKO
DATE: 2006年9月10日
There’s something strange about the black birds. They follow me. Not just one now. Brothers and sisters and cousins. they all follow me. they know I’m looking for the three-legged one. they know my father and I have been searching for Yatagarasu since my mother left. the three-legged one will know what to do. the three-legged one will bring her home. maybe Yatagarasu can help these black birds, too. I hear their crying. inside they’re crying, but outside they’re watching.
i talk to them now. ask them questions. i tell them i am waiting. they tell me they are crying. someone is making them act this way. someone is ttttttttrapping them here. The black birds don’t want to hurt me, but they have no choice.
he is making them.
* * *
I woke up to the sound of banging in the kitchen and stumbled down the stairs.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” my mother cried when she saw me. She stood at the counter chopping her way through a stack of cucumbers.
“What are you doing?” I asked, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.
“Your father put his meat hands in the front of the auto-carriage and now it’s operational again!” she said with a smile that looked like someone was holding up the corners of her mouth.
“Are you talking about the truck?”
“Yes, that’s it,” she said, returning to her vigorous chopping. “The auto-truck! For transporting humans!”
My father slid back the front door and marched into the kitchen wearing the largest, most awkward smile I’d ever seen.
“Eat your breakfast, boy. We have a long day of rolling forward in a metal box before we reach the capital city of Kyōtō, where the other monkey people live!”
First of all, Kyōtō was the capital of Japan, like, two hundred years ago. And second, that smile is way too big for a human face. Though now I see where I get my terrible bullfrog grin.
My mother dropped a plate of poorly diced cucumbers onto the table in front of me. “Put these in your talking hole, Koda. They are delicious and very desirable.”
“That’s just a hill of cucumbers.”
“They are delightful to the tongue,” my mother said, trying to match my father’s grin.
“So … no shiitake?” I asked.
“Of course not!” my mother said. “Mushrooms are filthy molds that grow on trees and should not be eaten by humans or any other creatures.”
I looked around for Shibaten. My father dropped to his knees in front of the low table and shoveled cucumber pieces into his mouth.
“See?” my mother said. “This older person loves to eat the cucumbers, and so can you!”
“They are happy to eat,” my father said, dribbling juice down his chin.
Cucumbers are a favorite snack of kappa. They may like cucumbers even more than sucking the life-energy out of river victims. Any doubts about Shibaten keeping his end of the bargain had vanished. The kappa’s trick had started.
“Join us, Koda,” my mother said, tearing into a particularly ripe cucumber.
So they’ll be all right on this diet for just a few days, I hoped. Cucumbers have, like, nutrients and stuff, right?
“Actually, I think I’m going to go check on Haru … before we leave,” I said.
I slipped into my coat and shoes and walked out the front door.
“Hurry,” my parents called from the genkan. “And remember, you are our youngling and we feel a fondness for you!”
I dropped my helmet into the bicycle basket and looked back. My father had his arm around my mother’s waist. They were smiling and waving. Sure, they had cucumber juice running down the front of their clothes, but I’d never seen them so happy.
I ran back up to our entrance and kissed them each on the cheek. “I will hurry,” I whispered to them.
For just a moment my mother’s eyes changed. She touched my face. And then the vacant, happy look returned. I turned around and ran to my bike.
* * *
“Osu!”
I called out to Haru as I turned the corner to Lawson’s. Or what was left of it. “I thought I’d find you here.”
“Don’t have anywhere else to go,” Haru said, kicking a chunk of loose cement with his cast.
I stopped my bike and walked over to the curb where Haru was sitting. His crutches were propped up against the sheets of plywood that covered the gaping holes in the side of the store. I really doubted Lawson’s would reopen. No one had even bothered to sweep the glass and cement chunks out of the parking lot. Haru lit a cigarette.
“Huh,” I said. “Didn’t your time in the hospital teach you about the dangers of smoking?”
“Nope.” Haru blew out a lungful of cancerous smoke. “If anything, I learned I should smoke more.” He tapped the cigarette on the curb. “Nobody guesses they’ll be offed by a van driving through a front window, you know?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Maybe an airplane will drop out of the sky on my way home. Maybe a motorcycle will fall down a flight of stairs. Maybe my uncle will finally cross the line and they’ll find my body in the backyard thirty years from now.” He coughed into his hand, then spit on the ground. “You never know, man, you never know. So smoke on.”
Haru ground his cigarette into the parking lot. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“Fine,” I said, looking around for Shibaten.
The cars in front of us roared down Route 33. “Thanks a lot for not coming by yesterday.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Something came up.”
“Yeah,” Haru said. “Something always comes up in this town. And not in a good way.”
“Okay. So why haven’t you left?”
Haru leaned back against the curb. “It’s hard to explain to you, Koda, since you’re just a kid and all, but … I loved my job.”
“The job you used to have? At Lawson’s?”
“Yep. Loved it. Couldn’t get enough of it.”
“You might want to seek alternative employment,” I said, tossing a shard of glass into the lot. “Since this place doesn’t look like it’s bouncing back anytime soon.”
Haru motioned over his shoulder. “Remember the girl who used to work here?”
“Sure. It was a week ago.”
“Her name was Emi.”
“Nope. It was Natsuki.”
“Emi and I are in love.”
“Also incorrect. I was there.”
“And soon we’re going to get married. We’ll get a nice little apartment in that stained concrete building at the north of town. We’ll have a boy and a girl. She’ll stay home and take care of them while I hop on the train to my salaryman job. I’ll have a love affair with my secretary, but Emi will be too polite to say anything—”
“It’s Natsuki.”
“I’ll yell at the kids and drink sake at night, and when I finally drag myself into our futon we’ll lie next to each other, hating each other in the dark, refusing to say anything because that would bring shame upon our families. You know, the perfect Japanese life.”
“I don’t think that’s right.”
“That’s just my point, Koda. There’s a difference between fantasy and real life. Sure, who wouldn’t want to fly around the world in a Zero-sen fighter plane? Hell, I would. But that’s not real life, is it? Real life is working at a convenience store in the middle of nowhere. Real life is walking to work each day because you can’t afford a car. Real life is going home each night because you have nowhere else to go. That’s real life, Koda.”
I looked around again. This would be a good time for Shibaten’s little happy trick.
Haru lit another cigarette. “Most people are stuck in the life they fell into,” he said, “and they never find the strength to crawl out of it.”
“We should talk like this more often, Haru. Why don’t we do that?”
“Then they lose all hope.”
“That’s why.”
“Do you know what happens to those kinds of people, Koda? The kind who lose hope?”
“Surprise birthday party? Really keeping my fingers crossed for surprise birthday party.”
“Nothing happens to them. Absolutely nothing ever happens. They live a meaningless life and eighty years later they die a meaningless death.”
“There was no birthday party anywhere in that story.”
I heard rustling in the grass across the lot.
“Ugh, my breath tastes weird,” Haru said. “These are your smoke sticks, aren’t they? Gross! I don’t want your smoke sticks.”
“What?”
Haru tossed the cigarette onto the asphalt. Like I would do if I suddenly realized I was smoking cigarettes.
“Gods, did I put that into my talking hole?” Haru squealed. “Disgusting! I wish I had a cucumber instead.”
He picked up a chunk of cement. “I’m going to rub this rock on my tongue now to make the smoke taste disappear.”
“Okay, don’t do that,” I said, snatching the rock away from him. “Very funny, Shibaten. Can we just get on with this?”
The rustling in the grass didn’t answer.
“Well,” Haru said, leaping to his one good foot, “I am a weak human boy and I have to go to Kyōtō now.”
“I’m not that weak.”
“I’m so weak that I must protect my skull with this enormous head covering and ride on top of these pink metal tubes until I reach my home with the older humans.”
“They’re red metal tubes!” Stupid kappa.
Haru limped over to my bike and undid my helmet, but it didn’t fit him at all. “Kso, kso, kso,” Haru swore, pounding on the top of my helmet. Finally he just gave up and let the straps hang down over his face.
Haru swung his cast over the side of my bicycle frame and dropped it onto the pedal. He turned and gave me the most frightening smile I’d ever seen. Haru didn’t wear his happiness so convincingly.
“Sayōnara, Haru,” Haru said.
“See you around,” I said.
Haru fought to keep his balance on my bike, tripping over the gears and slamming his cast onto the asphalt until he disappeared down the nearby back roads. Under any other circumstance this would have been a pretty funny prank, but I knew that by the time I walked home, the people I cared about most in Kusaka would be gone.
I pushed up from the curb and brushed the dust from Lawson’s off my pants.
“Koda, may I speak with you?”
“Whoa!” I flipped around. Shimizu-sensei was standing just a meter away.
“Where did you come from?” I said.
My homeroom teacher looked nervous. His weird eye shot from one corner of the parking lot to the next.
“Koda, I need your help,” he said.
Shimizu-sensei took a step forward. “You can see them, can’t you?”
I took a step back.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“The ghosts, Koda. They’re all around us. That old one. The little girl over there. The hag standing behind her. I think she’s a great-aunt or something. I can’t remember. You are a hag!” Shimizu-sensei shouted at a parked car and then turned back to me. “Don’t listen to her. She’s a hag.”
“Okay.” Was this part of Shibaten’s trick?
“The tengu is holding us,” Shimizu-sensei said. “Kōgubu is keeping us prisoner.”
“You mean, Kōtenbō?”
This was not a trick.
“Yes, we know about Kōgubu.” He turned around. “Kōtenbō? Right, Kōtenbō,” he said, turning back. “You see that rōnin standing in the road? The so-called master swordsman?”
“I see a parked car.” And a crow. Perched on the hood.
“Well, he’s the one who lost Kōtenbō. It was his job to hunt down the tengu and end this all. But he failed. He’s the reason none of us can ever leave this place.”
Shimizu-sensei turned to the parked car.
“Damare!” he screamed. “You just shut your mouth! You don’t get to talk! Not after what you did
.”
The crow flapped into the air and landed back on the hood.
“Maybe I should leave you and your friends to sort this one out,” I said, backing away.
Shimizu-sensei spun around to face me, his one light eye moving slower than the rest of his face. “They aren’t my friends, Koda. They’re ancestors. Dead ancestors.”
“Right.”
“We need your help. I need your help. To get rid of them. Of course, to get rid of you,” he shouted over his shoulder. “I don’t care where you go. Just get away from me.”
“I really don’t know how I can help,” I said.
Shimizu-sensei ran his fingers through his hair, hands shaking.
“We’ll never be free, Koda. Do you understand? He is keeping us here in this cursed town. We can never leave until the tengu gives us permission. But you can find him. You can find Kōgubu.”
“Kōtenbō.”
“Yes. And when you do, we want to fight by your side.”
“You want to fight Kōtenbō?”
“Yes. With you. And the fox girl.”
“You know about Moya?”
“Yes. Moya. Of course. We see many things,” Shimizu-sensei said. “When you find the tengu, let us know. We can help you defeat him.”
A white fox emerged from the grass and snuck up behind my homeroom teacher.
I slowly shook my head at Moya. Don’t worry. I’ve got this. “I want to help you, Shimizu-sensei,” I said. “This isn’t your fault. We’ll work together and return this town to the way it used to be.”
A smile crept across my teacher’s face. “That is wonderful, Koda. Why don’t we go to the school to discuss our schemes and make our plans. Together. Like you said.”
“That’s a little strange, since no one’s there right now and it’s dark and isolated. But sure, let’s go. You lead the way.”
“No. You go first. I insist.”
The shadow of the fox grew to the size of a fifteen-year-old girl.
“Wait!”
“What?” Shimizu-sensei said.
“We have to shake on it. Hurry.”
“Shake on it?”
I had about five seconds to trap him before Moya intervened. “Like we’re making a business deal,” I said, extending my hand. “You know—schemes and plans and all that stuff.”