Around her, Ryu found that time went gooey at the edges, like unagi on a hot summer’s day. Unfortunately, so did his tongue, hanging limp and useless in his mouth in her proximity, unless he was responding to a direct order. He’d been planning to spill what was in his heart via a romantic duet already queued in the karaoke machine.
But that was before a flailing phallic tentacle ripped through the wall of the Big Echo, sending glass and brick and people flying.
The tentacle was monstrous, a thick and glossy tendril of black hair the diameter of a compact Japanese car. It was equipped with eviscerating spikes, and the bulbous tip split open to reveal a mouth full of spiny black teeth.
The force of the initial attack flipped over the table Unathi was standing on. She hit the ground with a crack like a rupturing tectonic plate. A moment later the table smashed down onto her chest, driving the air out of her lungs. The bubbles of a mild concussion popped across her vision. In the background, Britney rapped the Spice Girls classic over a raunchy beat.
While Unathi struggled to get up, the tentacle made sushi of Saiko Squadron. It snapped Chief Engineer Sato’s spine so violently that his vertebrae erupted through his stomach. He twitched and flopped obscenely, only inches away from Unathi writhing on the carpet. A spike gutted Ensign Tanaka and another tore Corporal Suzuki in half. And then it bit off Ryu’s head in one neat snap of those spiny teeth.
The karaoke jukebox clicked over to the duet. Looking in your eyes, there’s reflected paradise. And that might have been true if Ryu still had eyes, or, for that matter, a head. His body stood swaying for a moment, like an indecisive drunk. And then a bright, hot jet of blood fountained from the stump of his neck, spraying Unathi in the face like some vampire bukkake video. She managed to suck in enough air to scream. She’d had an inkling of his crush. It was in the way he showed all his teeth and scratched the back of his head whenever she gave him a direct order. The cheesy eighties duet cemented it. And now he was dead. Excepting herself, the whole of Saiko Squadron was dead. And, worse, there was blood and spilt sake on her white patent-whale-penis-leather boots.
“Someone is going to fucking pay!” Unathi growled.
She finally shoved the table off her chest and yanked herself to her feet, drawing her saber. But the tentacle was already withdrawing, slithering back through the carnage. She vaulted the upturned table (and the still-flopping Chief Engineer Sato) and leapt through the smashed remains of what had once been a wall. She landed in a crouch in her heeled boots and looked up to see the creature looming above the couture capital of Shibuya 109, a mall that made Johannesburg’s glossy consumer temple, Sandton City, look like a fong kong flea market.
The creature resembled a toothsome Godzilla-sized hairball studded with gnashing sharky mouths beneath the tangle of matted hair, thick spiky tentacles with lamprey teeth of their own thrashing about and laying waste to historic pagodas and skyscrapers alike.
Unathi got to her feet and started running, not towards the creature, but towards her mecha, stashed eight blocks away on Takeshita Street—the only place she could find parking.
The giant robot—a Ghost VF-3—was painted in zebra stripes as a little homage to her home. It was sitting dormant, exactly as she’d left it, except for the parking ticket pasted onto the ergonomic claw of the mecha’s left foot. Unathi yanked it off, folded it into an origami unicorn and left it on the pavement as a little “fuck you” for the meter maid—no doubt, like all of Tokyo’s public servants, an android who could only dream of being human.
She scrambled up the front of the robot using the multiple revolving turrets of the massive chest cannon as footholds, only to spend the next five minutes sitting on the mecha’s armored shoulder, searching through her oversized Louis Vuitton bag for her keys.
They were right at the bottom, sandwiched between her Hello Kitty vibrator and a bento box containing yesterday’s uneaten lunch. She bleep-bleeped the immobilizer, and with a hydraulic hiss and an actuator hum, the robot’s blank-faced head folded back on its shoulders, revealing the cockpit. Unathi bounced into the pilot’s seat and started flipping switches.
Beneath her, the Ghost VF-3 started to thrum as the engines powered up. The decorative samurai armor spines on its back flipped down and fanned out to become interlocking fighter-jet wings. The whole street was vibrating now with the throbbing force of the engine. Windows in the neighboring skyscrapers were rattling. Unathi hummed the Top Gun theme to herself while she calculated the sudoku puzzle on the virtual display unit that would unlock the VF-3’s weapons systems.
“Weapons activated,” a serene female voice said as Unathi plugged in the last digit. A four. Like the four men of Saiko Squadron lying in pools of their own blood and spinal fluid back in the Big Echo. With a grimace, she hit the thrusters and the Ghost VF-3 burst into the sky, leaving a crater behind it in the tarmac. On the pavement, the origami unicorn caught fire.
The battle was a blur. Literally. Possibly because she was still drunk.
There were sweeping colors and motion lines as the Ghost VF-3 launched towards the evil hairball. There was a shuddering frame-by-frame slow-mo as one of the tentacles smashed into the mecha. Another as the VF-3 catapulted backwards—tearing through Shibuya 109 with a rumble of glass and concrete. In the streets below, ducking the falling rubble and the flaming, tattered ruins of high couture, fashionable teenagers screamed in an agony of loss.
Inside the cockpit, Unathi jabbed at the controls and broke out her nastiest tsotsi-taal. “Come on! Come on! Msunu ka nyoko!” until the Ghost VF-3 wrenched itself free from Shibuya 109, leaving a mecha-shaped imprint in the rubble. One of her wings had snapped right off. “For the love of kawaii!” Unathi cursed, pulling up the systems diagnostics check. They sure didn’t make them like they used to. She had told her superiors at High Command they should buy Korean.
Apart from the broken wing, which would throw her flight patterns for a loop, the damage wasn’t too serious. Some minor bruising to the VF-3’s sidian heat diffusers, an annoying fritz on the rear-facing starboard camera visual systems, but at least the Reaver cannon hadn’t taken a hit. Unathi yanked the joystick forward and the VF-3 bounded down the street towards the hairball, leaving a trail of cracked concrete under every armor-plated footfall (and at least one squished teen fashionista).
Unathi awoke feeling as if the oni of hangovers had squatted in her mouth. She sat up, her vision still bleary, and started hacking up blood. She wiped her hand across her mouth and looked around. The world oozed in and out of focus. A shadowy figure loomed and resolved itself into a mild-looking middle-aged man, his hand extended to offer her a handkerchief. “Here,” he said, and she dabbed at the bloodstains round her mouth. From the carpet, a black cat with one white ear looked up at her curiously. There was jazz playing quietly in the background. Miles Davis, she guessed, but then her knowledge of jazz was pretty much limited to Miles Davis.
“Where am I? What happened?” she said, handing back the bloodied handkerchief. The man folded it up and tucked it into a pocket.
“Perhaps you should tell me?” the man said, tilting his head at the smoking VF-3 wreck lying sprawled in the ruins of what was once a tidy little kitchen. Actually, it was only part of the mecha; the head, one shoulder and the ripped chassis of half the chest cavity had partially melted to fuse with the shredded remnants of the Reaver cannon. Unathi felt a hitch in her throat at the sight. First her boots, now her VF-3. Was there no end to the horror?
She closed her eyes. The memory of what happened came in Polaroid flashes of the action.
The Ghost VF-3 crashing down into Shibuya Station.
The hairball swallowing up half a train, which disappeared into one of those gnashing mouths like it was a tunnel.
The VF-3 seizing the nearest thing to hand—which just happened to be a panty-vending machine—and hurling it at the beast.
Scorched panties drifting down through the sky.
Launching into the sky, locked toge
ther like fighting hawks, her damaged wing sending them spiraling in crazy loops.
And then, weirdest of all, in the moment just before two tentacles seized the legs and chest of the Ghost VF-3 and twisted, shearing through the metal with a screech, she had plunged the mecha’s hands into the heart of the thing and yanked the hair apart like a curtain, revealing . . . a lurid smiley-faced flower.
“Would you like some spaghetti?” the man asked. He ducked under the sparking wiring of the VF-3’s amputated arm to the stove, miraculously still intact, where a pot was bubbling.
“Hai, baba. I have to get back. I have to destroy that thing!” Unathi snapped, lurching to her feet.
“You shouldn’t go into battle on an empty stomach,” he said mildly, dishing out a bowl of spaghetti for himself. He added fresh basil.
Unathi narrowed her eyes. “You know, for someone who just had the flaming wreckage of a mecha crash into his kitchen, you’re being suspiciously calm about all this. Who the hell are you?”
“Oh, I’m a writer. I used to work for an advertising agency, but I left. Not for any particular reason. I just didn’t like it.”
“What do you like?” Unathi said, still suspicious.
“I like music. I like to cook. I like to think about jogging. And you?”
“Who am I or what do I like?”
“Let’s start with the first.”
The question made Unathi philosophical. “Mechacaptaining and monster-battling aside, I guess I’m still just a girl from Soweto.”
“That must be nice,” the writer said.
The phone rang. It seemed to have an impatient tone. “Excuse me one moment.” He ducked back under the mecha’s arm and went down the hall to pick up the phone. It was a grey phone, slim and somehow nostalgic. “Hello?” he said into the receiver and then: “You again? I thought I told you I don’t have time for these phone games.” He listened for a moment, then held out the phone. “It’s for you.”
Unathi limped over, holding her side. She’d definitely broken a rib. Maybe several. She took the phone receiver and held it to her ear.
“Hello,” a woman’s voice said. It was a serene voice, like her mecha’s vocal system.
“Hi,” said Unathi, taken aback.
“Did you have some of Haruki’s spaghetti?”
“No,” Unathi said.
“You should have some. He’s an excellent cook. You’ll like it.”
“Excuse me, do I know you?” Unathi was getting annoyed.
“Yes, we’ve met many times. Have I mentioned I’m naked? I just got out of the shower.”
Oh great. Phone sex. Like that was what she needed right now. “Have I mentioned I have a giant hairball to track down and destroy before it consumes the whole city?”
“No. No, you hadn’t. Perhaps you should go do that,” the woman said.
“Is there some kind of point to this phone call?” Unathi thought about hanging up, but there was something about the woman’s voice. The situation was eerily familiar. Not déjà vu exactly, but like she’d seen it in a movie or maybe read it in a book.
“Not really. I just wanted to say hello.”
“Hello and goodbye.”
“Oh and you should go to the suicide forest. It’s beautiful this time of year.”
“What?”
“Aokigahara. It’s under Mount Fuji.”
“I know where it is.”
“I think it might be helpful for you. Well, that’s all,” the woman said pleasantly, and then, “Goodbye.”
Unathi listened to the dial tone for a moment and then replaced the receiver. “What was that about?” she asked Haruki.
“I don’t know. She phones sometimes. I don’t mind so much.”
“She said I should visit Aokigahara.”
“Why would she say that?”
“I don’t know, you tell me. She’s your mystery lady phone caller.”
“Well, maybe we should go check it out.”
“Maybe we should. Maybe it’ll lead us to the hairball.”
“It could be a wild sheep chase,” Haruki mused.
“You mean goose chase.” Unathi hated it when people got their idioms muddled.
“You’re right, I don’t know why I got that confused,” Haruki apologized. “But I know a short cut. It’s this way, through the alley.”
He led her out the back door into a small garden behind the house. There was a white and green deck chair with a book beside it. He helped her climb over the breeze-block wall and into an alley that ran parallel to the backs of the houses. The black and white cat jumped up onto the wall and watched them.
“I call it an alley, but it’s not really an alley,” Haruki said. “It’s also not a way, because, technically, a way should have an entrance or an exit, but this doesn’t. It’s also not a cul-de-sac, because a cul-de-sac should have an entrance. This is more like a dead end.”
“You’re going to be a dead end if you don’t stop talking. Get me to Aokigahara.”
“All right, all right,” the writer said. “Sorry.” He was quiet for a while, leading her behind the houses. Both ends were fenced off with barbed wire. He was right: it wasn’t a way or a cul-de-sac. Above them, in the trees, a bird sang like a wind-up toy or a spring unravelling. The cat jumped down and padded after them.
They came to a well. It had a cover made of wood, faintly damp with moss that had grown over the edges, with a metal handle set into it. She helped him push the cover off. Inside the well, it was very dark. A metal ladder descended into the black. It looked well maintained. There was a rich, cloying smell, like sarin gas or dead bodies. Maybe both.
“Ladies first,” Haruki said. The cat jumped onto his shoulder. It looked like it was coming along for the ride.
Unathi sighed, looking down at her boots. At this rate, she was going to have to go on another whale hunt.
Unathi counted 439 rungs before she stepped down onto loamy earth.
“It’s man-made,” Haruki said, climbing off the ladder and brushing the dirt off his hands, “Possibly an old storm drain. Or maybe it connects to the subway. An abandoned line that used to lead to Aokigahara.”
“Or straight to hell,” Unathi said.
“That seems unlikely,” Haruki said. The cat leapt off his shoulder and set off ahead. It looked back at them with an inquisitive meow, as if to say “Well, are you coming?”
They followed the cat and, after thirty minutes or so, the tunnel opened into a cement bunker with a rusted metal door that was wedged shut. There were signs that someone had been there recently. There were paintings stacked up against the walls. The top one featured a colorful theme park monstrosity, a sickly grinning mushroom with rolling eyes and melting edges. In the corner, there was a life-size sculpture of an anime boy with spiky hair and a death-grip on his erect penis jizzing spunk around his head.
“I recognize this,” Unathi said. It was hard to forget a sculpture of a naked anime boy with a sperm lasso. “This is the work of that art factory. The one run by that famous guy who formed a collective of hungry young talent to mass-produce a range of work. What’s his name again?” Before the aliens attacked and Unathi had been enlisted, she’d gone through a rigorous cultural immersion program, from the correct brewing of tea to pop-art politics.
“Ah, my namesake,” the writer said, “Takashi.”
“You said you were called Haruki.”
“Yes, but we have the same last name. No relation.”
“Yeah, okay. Whatever.” Irritated, Unathi flicked through the paintings stacked up against the wall, until she hit one that was horribly familiar. She hauled it out to get a better look. It featured a lunatic grinning flower with rainbow petals. It was almost identical to the glowing face at the heart of the hairball.
“And I definitely recognize this,” she said. “But why is this here?”
“Never mind that,” the writer said, yanking at the rusted door. “This door is stuck.”
“Not for long.�
�� Unathi grinned and broke it off its hinges with one well-placed karate kick (another advantage of the cultural immersion program).
They emerged into a forest. Sunlight streaked through the leaves in pale golden bars. Mount Fuji loomed through the foliage, tufts of cloud ringed around the peak like a hula hoop. The cat stopped to lick itself. The wind in the leaves sounded like ghosts laughing.
“It’s lovely,” Unathi said, surprised. That was before she saw the bodies hanging from the trees like gruesome Christmas decorations. Their faces were black, their eyes popping out. Asphyxiation does that.
They were hanging from belts or cables or the kind of mesh straps you might use to secure a mattress to the roof of your car, which Unathi had done only a few weeks ago when helping Corporal Suzuki move into his new apartment pod.
“The suicide forest,” the cat mused. “Second only to the Golden Gate Bridge in the self-murder popularity stakes. Partly inspired by the tragic double suicide ending of the novel Kuroi Jukai, or Black Sea of Trees.”
“I didn’t know you could talk,” Unathi said.
“I can’t,” said the cat. It gave her a huffy look from beneath its eyebrow whiskers.
“Why are they all bald?” mused the writer.
Unathi started. He was right. Whatever state of decay, whether their faces were still intact or the birds and squirrels had eaten their eyes and lips, whether their clothes marked them as disgraced salaryman or despondent housewife or lovesick teens playing out Kuroi Jukai, every corpse had one thing in common: their heads were entirely shaved.
“Something weird is going on,” Unathi said, automatically reaching for her joystick and the diplomatic power of the Reaver auto-cannon’s 20mm uranium-depleted tank-killer bullets the size of milk bottles.
“No shit, Sherlock,” the cat said and then pretended it hadn’t, earnestly rubbing a paw over one ear and then the other.
“Shhh. What’s that sound?” Haruki said. Unathi listened. There was a buzzing whine, like a sick lawnmower or her Hello Kitty vibrator running on maximum speed.
“This way,” she said, and ran off between the trees, quiet as a ninja in a library.
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