“Please forgive me, Akiba.” His voice was shaking. “I really don’t know. I was simply told by the sixth-grade head instructor that your family was involved in something terrible, and that I’m to go with you as your teacher to hand you over to your aunt at the hospital. I really…”
Kanako stared at his face as he made excuses, not letting a single detail escape. She’d been described as “insightful” on her report card, and at that moment, her senses were honed and especially sharp. She felt as though she could see all the way into people’s souls and became afraid of herself for seemingly having come by such a power.
“May I close my eyes, Mr. Ihara?”
She tried to distance herself from reality.
“Oh, of course, try to get some sleep,” Mr. Ihara said, relieved.
She wasn’t sleepy. If she kept her eyes open, she would see too much. Thus she retreated into the darkness. The taxi was on a regular street by now. She could hear the clicking of the car blinkers. Someone honked at them from behind, perhaps because Mr. Ikeda had made a brash lane change.
“Where are we now?” Mr. Ihara asked, leaning forward.
“We’re at a place called Kohinata.”
“Why did you make a right turn? If we had gone straight, we would have made it out to Shinobazu Street. Fine, take that road there—”
“I can’t. It’s one way.”
“Ouch…Why are we even on this street?” Mr. Ihara reached for the road map on the passenger seat in disbelief. “Well, then, if you take the next street…”
The blinkers ticked, and Kanako’s body tilted to the left. Her surroundings grew quiet, and the darkness thickened. She cracked her eyes open and looked outside the window.
They were on a public road around a dozen feet wide and in a residential area—Kohinata Second District according to a sign on a telephone pole. “Ah, no good, that’s one way too,” Mr. Ihara tutted. It was a cramped residential area. The taxi was maneuvering through a maze.
“Let’s go back to Mejiro Street first,” Mr. Ihara suggested.
“It said we’d get to Kasuga Street on a right,” Mr. Ikeda objected.
“It’s safer to go back.”
“We’ll be fine.”
The driver turned on the blinkers again. Kanako could tell that her teacher had sucked in a breath. Mr. Ihara had been just the same way in homeroom right before he had let out a shrill yell upon discovering that the boys in her class had commandeered some of the lower grade kids’ brand-new paper maché.
“Why can’t you listen to your passenger’s requests?” He was barely holding back explosive rage. “You’re from Shinshu. I’m telling you about streets you don’t know. Why can’t you just listen?”
“When we were stuck in traffic, I studied the map in my own way and got a hang of them.”
“But the fact is, we’re lost now.”
“See, we’re right in front of Myogadani station now.”
“I’ve got a responsibility to get this girl to our destination as soon as possible.”
“I’ve got a responsibility as well…”
“When you get ahead of yourself, you just cause more trouble for us.”
“Mr. Ihara,” Kanako called out, opening her eyes. It was painful hearing the adults argue. “It’s okay, we don’t need to be in such a hurry.”
This caught Mr. Ihara unprepared. Mr. Ikeda also raised his gaze to look at Kanako through the mirror.
“It’s already too late, right?”
Her four family members, shrouded white, flashed in her mind. A suffocating room with concrete walls on all sides, and one big cloth. One medium cloth. Then two small cloths.
A leaden silence filled the cab.
“If that’s the case, there’s no need to hurry.”
Mr. Ihara dropped his gaze. He probably felt ashamed for acting so poorly. He didn’t know what words to give Kanako, who had already reached that conclusion.
The taxi continued to roll onwards through the darkness. They passed an avenue and entered a narrow street, but Mr. Ikeda’s back was hunched with determination, confident that he was taking the shortest route.
Kanako closed her eyes again. She clamped down on the sharpness in her and attempted to reclaim a moment of peace.
“Miss,” Mr. Ikeda called.
Kanako opened her eyes. In front of her was a light that blurred green.
“It’s been a long trip, thanks for hanging in there. We’ve arrived.”
Mr. Ikeda had finally completed his mission.
The sign with the green light read “The Medical Examiner’s Office.” As she had imagined from the name, it looked foreboding, the outer walls dusted with city soot without a care for appearing hygienic, unlike a hospital.
Police cars and station wagons were parked outside and she could sense plenty of people around, but the illumination within the building was faint.
Mr. Ihara handed over five ten-thousand-yen bills and said restlessly, “I don’t need change, just a receipt please.” After accepting a hand-written one, he ushered Kanako out of the cab and retrieved her bag from the trunk.
Someone opened the front door for them. It was a police officer in uniform. There were many people crowded in the dimly lit hall. Emotionless gazes turned toward them and Kanako immediately found it difficult to breathe.
She recognized one of the faces. Her eyes a brilliant red from crying, her aunt walked up to Kanako without a word and gently rubbed her arms.
The honed senses that she had willed away returned, and a premonition that something truly horrible awaited her on the other side of the door rose like an incoming tide.
“Kako…”
That was what her family and relatives called Kanako. Her friends at school simply used her first name in full. Whether or not she was referred to by the abbreviated form colored the world around her. Outside, she play-pretended being an adult. At home, perhaps she was still the clingy child.
“Something terribly scary happened, and your father and mother, even Tomo and Nao, they all…they all died.”
There were tear trails down her aunt’s face. She had cried that much.
“Are they over there?”
“Resting, all four of them. They need to be autopsied now at this hospital.”
Kanako finally realized that that was what the place specialized in.
“I already confirmed that it was them, so they can get going, but I wanted them to wait until you arrived. Kako, I thought you should have the chance to say your proper goodbyes first.”
Kanako started walking. The people on both sides of the hall didn’t attempt to make eye contact with her and just stood there rigidly. When she turned around, Mr. Ihara was watching her off with his mouth tightly shut. Having completed his part, his shoulders sagged with exhaustion.
Once again, someone opened the door for her. The scene wasn’t all that different from the one that had flashed in her mind. Neither the cramped room, nor how the four of them were laid out, nor the way the dim light made the white cloths stand out.
What she hadn’t imagined were the candles by each of their heads.
Kanako tried to move closer, but her aunt grabbed her right shoulder and stopped her.
“You can’t look…no matter what, Kako.” Apparently her aunt had seen what was under the cloths. “You can tell who’s who, right?”
A large one, medium, and two small. What was under the cloths? How much had her family lying there changed in appearance? She couldn’t tell from looking at just the mounds.
Her eyes hurt. She’d been staring, unblinking, at the four forms. She grasped that there was something strange and undeniably different about her family’s shrouded shapes.
There was something off about the balance between their heads and bodies. Below their necks, the size of their bodies was familiar, but the bumps for their heads were too small.
They were all sunken in.
The moment she tried to understand what that meant, her heart cons
tricted. Maybe it had put a lid on that sharpness from before, unable to handle it.
Resignation—there was no point in figuring it out now—and comprehension—her family had departed on a voyage, hand in hand, leaving her behind—dulled her senses.
Suddenly, Kanako remembered her face as she had seen it in the women’s bathroom at the parking area. Fearing that something sad awaited her, and conscious that it was the Kanako Akiba prior to a transformation, she’d told herself to remember and burned into her memory the image of her face in that mirror, roughly two hours ago.
Kanako realized that she had passed some sort of boundary in coming here.
Not feeling anything. She would protect herself by not feeling anything. Until she could be confident that her heart was strong enough, she would postpone crying it out.
The four remains, herself, and her aunt. Beyond the door, many people were no doubt trying to guess what was happening inside.
Apparently, she had to say her goodbyes if she were ever to leave this room.
Was she supposed to say “Goodbye” to each of them? Did her aunt want her to start bawling? Stumped, Kanako hesitantly reached out her right hand. She noticed her aunt jolt as though to stop her, but perhaps sensing what Kanako was about to touch, her aunt just watched over her instead.
The way their feet were all lined up in a row brought up a memory. The Golden Week vacation had only been a week ago. They couldn’t travel because of her father’s work, so they’d gone to Yoyogi Park with badminton gear and frisbees. At two in the afternoon, tired from playing, they all laid down in a row on the grass in the shade of a tree, and her father started snoring. Kanako was the only one who couldn’t take a nap, her mind too awake. Seeing all of their bare feet lined up, she felt mischievous and took the gel pens that Naoki had brought. Stifling her giggles, she drew each of her family member’s likenesses onto their toes. On her father’s big toe she left a father face. On her mother’s pointer toe, a mother face. On her brothers’ pinky toes, too, she inscribed tiny eyes and noses and mouths.
No one noticed that their toes had been doodled on until they returned home and were taking baths.
“Sis must have done it!” Tomoki’s voice ricocheted through the bathroom.
Now, a cloth covered her father’s feet. She touched his big toe through it. She doubted the doodle still remained.
Next, she touched her mother’s pointer toe. Then, she touched her brothers’ pinky toes.
They were all equally hard and cold. The thought that she was warm and no longer one of them brought on a sudden loneliness, so she forced shut her doors of perception and tried not to think.
She could hear her aunt sobbing.
I’m sorry, Auntie, but I can’t cry with you, Kanako apologized in her mind.
Behind her the door opened, and a subdued but businesslike voice asked, “Are you done here?”
2
Last fall, upon her maternal grandmother’s passing, a black suit had been tailored for Kanako.
In the six months since, her legs must have grown longer; her aunt lengthened the hem of her skirt by an inch and carefully ironed it out for her.
As soon as the bodies of her family members were returned from autopsy, the undertaker took over. The overnight vigil and funeral services would be conducted at an Amidist Buddhist temple in Suginami Ward.
Kanako was taken to her aunt’s house in Hachioji while her uncle fetched her black suit and a change of clothes from her home.
Whenever she went over to play at her aunt’s, Kanako always slept over in the same room as her cousins. It was crowded but more fun that way. This time, however, she stayed in the guest room with her aunt. Having arrived so early in the morning, they had no choice.
Why had Kanako’s parents and little brothers all lost their lives? It was still a mystery to her. Unless she asked them point-blank, her aunt and the others weren’t going to say anything.
Having closed off her senses, Kanako felt no urge to pursue the mystery for the time being.
Getting to the heart of the matter couldn’t bring even one of them back, and accepting a seemingly immutable reality was already too much for her. Right before her eyes was “death,” far too much of it. As for the “cause of death,” it lay beyond the remains that she hadn’t been allowed to see and probably comprised so much information that hearing it once wouldn’t be nearly enough for her to take it all in.
There would come a time when she’d find out. That time wasn’t far off. Kanako convinced herself to leave it at that.
Evening, when they would leave for the temple to attend the vigil, seemed so far away when she woke up that morning.
By then, Shingo and Maki had already left for school. Kanako awoke from her light slumber at around ten. For the four hours between the call during her school trip and their arrival at the hospital in Tokyo, she hadn’t slept a wink. When they had gotten back to her aunt’s at six in the morning, futons had already been laid out in the guest room for the two of them.
Uncle was out since morning arranging the funeral services. He was taking around a week off from work according to his wife’s responses to a call from his office.
The afternoon passed in a fog. As Kanako sat on the porch and tossed about snack crumbs, pigeons gathered. People moved in and out of the room behind her.
They appeared to be the undertakers. They were confirming the headcount for catered meals with her aunt.
Shingo and Maki finally returned from school. They seemed unsure how to act when their eyes met Kanako’s. “Come, get changed,” her aunt urged to dispel the tension.
In the evening, before they left for the vigil, Kanako told Maki, who looked bored having finished getting ready, “They’re showing a re-run of an anime.”
“Oh, but they told us not to turn on the TV,” Maki replied.
The TV was off limits. Kanako put a lid on pondering what that meant, too.
Her father and her aunt had no other siblings. Her mother was an only child on top of that, so they didn’t have that many relatives. In the temple’s main hall, the corner marked out for them with a standing sign contained just a few men and women. There had to be more, Kanako thought. At her grandmother’s funeral, around three times as many people had filled the seating reserved for relatives.
She suspected that perhaps her family’s passing was some secretive affair for them.
There were many other things that differed from her grandmother’s funeral.
When she got out of the taxi after it pulled up in the temple parking lot, she noticed glaring lights in a distant roped-off corner. Camera flashes. Constrained to a designated area, people wearing armbands were filming her and the others as they got out of the car.
This certainly hadn’t happened at her grandmother’s funeral.
In the main hall, they would be sitting on chairs for the priest’s sutra. Kanako was honestly grateful because her legs would fall asleep if she knelt on a tatami mat.
There were four photos surrounded by fresh flowers. Her uncle had brought over the family albums from Kanako’s house in the morning and consulted with the undertakers on which made for good funeral portraits.
The photos chosen had been taken at a Prince Hotel skating rink this past New Year’s when they had gone on a three-day vacation to Hakone.
The final decision had been left to Kanako. The undertakers had advised not to pick ones where they were wearing ski hats and ear-muffs, but seconding her uncle, she opted for the photo where they all wore matching smiles.
Kanako recalled what they had all been laughing at.
As she had said, “Here goes,” holding her camera at the ready, a couple behind her had slipped and flailed their arms in perfect unison and fallen on their rear ends. Kanako had managed to capture the precise moment her family had all burst into laughter.
How creepily fateful that a photo she, herself, had snapped was being used as the funeral portraits for each of them. The notion that perhaps she had
sent them off began to harden within her numbed senses.
They might as well have used the photo of the four of them side by side as is, but the undertakers had bothered to separate out and frame each portrait before hanging black-and-white ribbons and positioning them among the fresh flowers.
The plates on the flower arrangements gave the names of her father’s work relations, the principal of Kanako’s school, and the principal of the kindergarten her brothers had attended. Unlike at her grandmother’s funeral, there were mountains of flowers by the altar, and a thick fragrance wafted around them.
Four coffins draped with extravagant silver-embroidered covers were lined up together. While each had a small window, people probably weren’t going to be allowed to open them. That was another decisive difference between this funeral and her grandmother’s. The windows already appeared to be nailed shut; Kanako had seen one of the undertakers checking to make sure they were secure.
The sutra began. People gingerly filed in to light incense sticks, and following instructions from the funeral service staff, formed into three lines. The scent of incense soon saturated the main hall.
The first people to catch Kanako’s attention were older police personnel with multiple stars on their uniforms. Her uncle later told her that they were Metropolitan Police Department brass.
Everyone who came up to offer incense stole glances at Kanako. It was as if they couldn’t help but look even if they weren’t supposed to.
The principal and the headmaster, along with teachers from the other grades, were also in the same line. Apparently the teachers and students on the trip would be rushing back in time for the service tomorrow. Kanako couldn’t help but feel sorry for making them attend a funeral after a fun school trip.
The vigil had commenced at six in the evening, and when the line of incense burners petered out three hours later, the priest wrapped up his chanting, bowed deeply to Kanako and the relatives, and disappeared into the back, his golden-hued shoulder drape trailing across the tatami mats. The ceremony had come to a close.
Apparently, visitors who had come to burn incense were gathered in a spacious room next to the main hall where they were drinking sake and eating sushi.
Deep Red Page 3