Black Fairy Tale

by Otsuichi

  He was in love with Yukie. But he kept it an absolute secret from her. He bared his feelings for her to Miki quietly, and only when Yukie’s head was asleep.

  Shinichi moved his giant body. His torso was longer than an average person’s—more than five feet. On different ends were attached the heads of Shinichi and Yukie. Miki had operated on them to create a shared torso. Originally they had been two completely separate people.

  “You put us into this shape to test your bizarre powers. I don’t know if I should thank you or curse you for it.”

  Shinichi let out a cry of grief.

  To find the answer to the question, What would happen if I tried to connect two individual people? Miki had performed the surgery.

  First, he had amputated Shinichi’s right arm at the elbow. He did the same to Yukie’s left arm and connected the two where their arms had been. He set their bones with metal fittings and joined their blood vessels and muscles with thread. Miki had little knowledge of medical care, only what he had read in some of his father’s books. But in the end the seam closed and their arms were connected together. Even their blood vessels seemed to heal perfectly. Shinichi’s blood pumped from his heart toward his right elbow. At the seam, the blood flowed from his veins and into hers, their two bodies sharing the same blood. Miki had never considered if their matching blood types might have had something to do with the result. Had their blood types differed, the result might have been the same regardless.

  And although it happened slowly, their bodies—their muscles and their nerves—began to meld together at the seam. The boundary between their bodies was fading.

  They were both still conscious. They were aware of each other’s existence and knew what their bodies were doing. They had met for the first time in that cellar. One Miki had found near his house; the other had sent him a fan letter that hinted at suicide and had been invited here.

  Again and again Miki cut at their parts and stuck them together.

  The bodies of Shinichi and Yukie now looked like one bizarre lump of flesh. Miki had sliced their torsos into two or three pieces each and rejoined them. Their stomach was an inflated sack just big enough to hold their intertwined organs; their limbs were sutured on at abnormal locations.

  Next he transplanted the arms and the legs he had removed from Hitomi to their body. There hadn’t been a proper place to connect the bones and muscles, but he did connect the large blood vessels on the limbs with theirs for their blood to flow through.

  Those Miki mutilated were delivered from a fate of decomposition, but the leftover parts disconnected from the mind and the heart—which Miki believed contained the will to live—were different. In time these parts would begin to rot and, as is only natural for a normal human being, turn to dust.

  Hitomi’s limbs should have been the same. But when they were connected with the body of Shinichi and Yukie, when their body’s blood circulated into them, the limbs lived. At first the transplanted parts were immobile, but soon, whether by Shinichi’s or Yukie’s command, they gradually began to move.

  After a time, solid bonelike material formed inside their collective body and formed connective joints with the bones in Hitomi’s limbs. The joints had similarities with typical ones, but their shape was entirely new. Muscles and nerves also grew within their body like a plant grows its roots. In every way the limbs became one with the lump of meat.

  At first, the limbs’ movements were sluggish, but eventually the two could move them with complete control—all the way down to the tips of their fingers and toes.

  When Miki once asked them which of their brains moved Hitomi’s limbs, Yukie had answered with an expression as if she’d dozed off under the afternoon sun.

  “I don’t know. It could be me or it could be him. I feel so muddled I can’t tell anymore.”

  Neither had clearly delineated control over the lump of meat.

  And strangely, neither seemed to be bothered by it.

  “We’re always talking to each other,” said Shinichi. “About how desolate and lonely we were when we were separate.”

  He had been an orphan, with no one to depend on, and felt comforted by Yukie’s constant presence. Yukie had once given up on living and decided to kill herself, but now Shinichi, closer to her than anyone, gave her the will to live.

  “But you’re so cruel,” Shinichi accused Miki, appearing on the verge of tears. “If you’d only stitch our necks a little bit closer . . .”

  Their necks were attached on the opposite ends of their torso.

  The massive clump of flesh in front of Miki wriggled. Their shadow rocked across the walls of the cellar.

  Shinichi’s head, still in front of Miki, said, “Are you awake? I thought you were sleeping.”

  A voice came from the shadows on the opposite side of their body.

  “Hey, I still haven’t found it.” It was Yukie’s pained voice.

  “There just isn’t a right way to be in this shape.”

  They were constantly searching for a way to position themselves comfortably.

  When Shinichi’s face was upright, Yukie’s cheek was pressed against the floor. And when she oriented herself comfortably, Shinichi’s protruding elbow had to bear the painful weight of their combined bodies. They spent much of the time wriggling around, trying to find a position that was comfortable to both. But it seemed like one always had to make a sacrifice and bear their weight.

  Hitomi had probably been referring to that behavior when she likened them to the people in “The Human Knot.”

  Shinichi spoke again to Miki. “I wonder what your power is.

  Normally we’d be dead. You must be a son of the gods. When you injure a person, in that moment they escape from death. I can feel the torrent of life overflowing from the wounds. That terrible paradox. You’re keeping people alive. You free us from the cycle of life and death . . .”

  Miki turned his back to them.

  As he left the cellar, he looked over at the lumber and brick piled in the back of the room.

  I may have to cover the cellar door. I have what I need to do it. There are still some bricks there, probably leftover from when the house was built.

  If I don’t catch the visitor, I’ll have to.

  Several days later there was a knock at the door.

  2

  Even if I were certain that Shiozaki was the kidnapper, I didn’t have the proof to accuse him. I don’t know how many times I started to phone the police. Each time I’d lift the receiver, set it back down, and lift it up again. If I were to explain what I’d experienced and the conclusion I’d reached—well, I didn’t think they would believe me. I had no proof to convince anyone of it.

  For a week I gathered information about Shiozaki. But I couldn’t come out and ask people to tell me about him directly. I had to avoid drawing attention to what I was doing. If he realized I had any suspicions about him, it might put Hitomi in danger.

  One day in Melancholy Grove, Sumida said, “I heard Shiozaki used to be married.” As usual he was seated at the counter, watching Saori intently as she poured his coffee.

  Saori, her tone that of one speaking to a delinquent child, asked him, “Sumida, shouldn’t you be in class?”

  Chagrined, he replied, “Which do you think is more important—that I come here or that I attend college?”

  Whenever he gave a reply like that, Kimura would smack Sumida’s face with a round silver-colored tray. Of course, he wasn’t actually mad—Kimura did it with a joking smile on his face.

  “Shiozaki had a wife?” I asked. Sumida pointed to the painting on the wall.

  “Look closely. There’s a red dot nearly too small to see on the shore of the lake. Do you see it?”

  I moved my face close to Shiozaki’s painting. I hadn’t noticed it before, but just as Sumida said there was an out-of-place spot of red color.

  “Well, I thought that dot looked like the figure of a woman staring out across the lake. I said so to Shiozaki and he told
me a woman he’d married long ago was standing there in the picture.”

  Compared with the size of the painting the spot was incredibly small. If I hadn’t put my face right up close I wouldn’t have noticed it at all, but I too saw it as a woman standing. Dressed in red, she was drawn about the size of the tip of a fingernail.

  And in that instant, the forest and the lake inside the painting vanished. I was transfixed by the woman in the red dot. The rest of the landscape seemed to have been painted for her. The forest and the lake formed a vast garden dedicated to the woman confined inside the painting.

  Sumida shrugged. “I don’t know if he really was married or not. It’s just what he told me.”

  I didn’t have any reliable information about Shiozaki, his family, or his past. Who brought him to that house? Doesn’t anyone know why he moved to Kaede?

  During my investigation I stayed at Mr. Ishino’s house. I ate breakfast with him and Saori. We passed each other in the halls and kicked each other’s feet under the kotatsu.

  Sometimes I felt like I was imposing on them, but in other moments I felt a familiarity, like I had taken Kazuya’s place inside their home.

  I called my parents every day. I apologized to them and thought of how wrong it was of me to leave.

  “The old you would never have run away,” they’d tell me.

  My father never knew what to say on the other end of the line, and I still couldn’t talk to my mother, not even over the phone. Both she and I would just remain silent until she finally handed the phone to my dad.

  “Come home soon,” he said. “You need to go to your regular checkup at the hospital.”

  When my thoughts left the matter of Shiozaki—when my feelings allowed it—I passed the time helping Saori wash the dishes. At the café or at her home, we stood side by side in aprons, idly chatting as we rinsed plates and cups.

  Once when her hands were full of dishes Saori yelled, “My nose is running! It’s running!”

  But she couldn’t free her hands to blow her nose.

  “Here, is this all right?” I put a tissue to her nose and wiped it dry, and like a little child she thanked me in a pitiful, stuffedup voice.

  We spent a windy night playing cards together, the two of us, a gale wind howling outside. When the kotatsu and the stove were not enough to keep the cold at bay, we put on thick padded clothes and curled up face to face. I couldn’t hear anything but the wind; it felt like we might be the only things in the world.

  As she played the ace of spades she asked about Kazuya and me. She seemed to want to learn more about the Kazuya she didn’t know. Whenever she asked, I evaded her questions, and she would suddenly laugh. I’d think to myself, She just can’t see what’s coming, can she?

  As she dealt out the cards she said, “I just remembered the time when Kazuya started eating a card. He was still little. I was his older sister, so I thought I had to take care of him.”

  She cheerfully told the story of how Kazuya had started to chew on a playing card and she hadn’t known what to do about it.

  And as I laughed and nodded, I felt a love for Saori and Kazuya well up inside my chest—so much I thought I might cry.

  When it was my turn to cut the deck I asked, “Saori, do you remember your parents’ funeral? The way Kazuya told it, it was kind of odd. He was standing next to you on a hill a small distance from your house. From there you could see the many people dressed in black down below . . .”

  It was a vision I’d seen in my left eye.

  A young man wearing black funeral clothes came up to the brother and sister on the hill. He spoke to them and tears quickly came to Saori’s eyes. The young man’s eyes were sad too.

  I wanted to know what the youth had said. My left eye couldn’t pass on his voice to me.

  Saori, still small at the time, hugged the young man and cried.

  “Did it happen like that? I only remember it vaguely.” She rested her chin in her hands and closed her eyes. “That boy was the one who caused our parents’ accident—the one who didn’t tie the ropes properly . . .”

  Saori had felt so much pity for the young man. After all, he’d only just gotten out of high school. He apologized to Saori and Kazuya again and again, told them he had left his hometown to come work in Kaede, told them about his own parents.

  “I wonder why he told you all that stuff.”

  “He must have wanted me to hear it.”

  Two weeks after the funeral, the young man hanged himself. In the suicide note he wrote that he felt responsible for their parents’ deaths.

  That was what Saori quietly told me.

  *

  When I had time to spare from my investigation I put the binder full of my eye’s memories into my backpack and walked around town. The binder was heavy—when I held it in my arms as I walked, I felt like an ascetic monk.

  I needed to find proof of the kidnapping and captivity of that little girl, but to do so I needed to follow Kazuya’s footsteps.

  I walked through the town and stood in places he had seen. I went to his elementary school and fondly recalled his memories.

  Alongside the highway that cut through town was a supermarket, and behind it there was a small gap between the outer wall and a chicken-wire fence. Kazuya had walked through it as a young boy. Now I walked through it too. My line of vision was far higher from the ground than his had been, so I wasn’t seeing exactly the same view as was in my left eye’s vision. Yet still my heart raced—in a way I felt I had become the young Kazuya.

  I walked down a street lined with utility poles and I stopped to listen at an empty, lonely park.

  Kaede was a logging town. I came across a brace of trees being felled as the sound of chain saws rang through the air. A man in work clothes was sliding the whirling blade into the trunk of a tree, spraying wood chips about. I moved in for a closer look, but was shooed away because of the danger. Soon the tree’s trunk cracked and snapped and the tree fell.

  I took the binder from my backpack and read it as I walked through the town, like a tourist with a guidebook.

  One hand supported the book of memories, the other turned the pages—although the gloves I wore made that difficult. Worse yet, my arm grew sore from bearing the binder’s weight.

  Blown about by the cold wind, I walked. A small distance from the homes of the town I found an abandoned railway line. A gravel path ran along the top of a hill thick with dead grass and the two rails, turned crimson with rust, followed its length as far as I could see.

  I put the binder back into my backpack and jumped onto one of the rails, careful not to fall off as I walked. The past me with all her memories had apparently enjoyed exceptional coordination, but the present me couldn’t walk more than a few feet down the rail without losing her balance and slipping off it.

  From atop the hill with the abandoned line I could see the whole town nestled between the mountains. The town had changed since Kazuya had seen it. Roads had disappeared and new buildings had been built. I even found the exact same view as one I had seen in my left eye, and I saw houses I hadn’t recorded in the journal.

  My left eye remembered scenery that no longer was. That eye, taken from Kazuya and transplanted into me, was like a nugget of the past itself. Like a piece of hard candy, it slowly melted away, the past flowing into my optic nerve.

  The abandoned rail eventually terminated at the edge of the forest in the place I’d seen, some time before, from the train station platform. The season had changed, so the trees in the background were now bare, skeletal. But the abandoned train car was just as it had been. The cold wind was blowing and there were no voices of children playing. But within the quiet the hulking mass of rust had not moved—not even a little—from where it had been in my left eye’s memory.

  Exhaling white breath, I ran to the train car and stepped inside. The walls of the car kept out the wind, preserving at least a little warmth in the space. But the interior was emptier than I’d imagined. Everything had be
en removed—even the seats. I hadn’t known it from my vision, but the train car had been discarded as nothing but a shell. I felt a little lonely.

  That’s right, I recalled, Kazuya was shunned by the group of kids. They wouldn’t let him play with them.

  Kazuya was often alone in the memories of my left eye. Some visions showed him playing with friends, but more frequently I saw him walking alone. Maybe anyone’s memories would be as limned with loneliness.

  I went to the lumber mill next. I was hesitant to go inside, so from in front of the building I looked at where Kazuya’s father had worked and where his parents had lost their lives. The worksite was fenced off by chicken wire, but the scent of fresh-cut wood drifted through the air. I covered the bottom half of my face with a scarf I’d borrowed from Saori, and as I stamped my feet to keep the cold away I tried to picture the inside of the lumber mill. I wasn’t sure how accurate my imagination was—the real building probably wasn’t crammed full of wood shavings.

  But when I happened to glance at what seemed to be the entrance to the lumber mill’s office, I saw a woman whose face I knew. It was Saori. I waved my hands and called out to her, and she looked at me, startled.

  “I don’t come here much,” she said, “but there was something I wanted to find out about my parents.”

  She told me that some of her father’s old coworkers still worked there and she had been listening to them reminisce.

  We walked side by side back to Melancholy Grove. Saori was silent. She seemed to be thinking of her dead parents and of the young man who, feeling responsible for the accident, had killed himself.

  I opened the door to the café and went inside, noticing first Kimura and then a few customers I didn’t recognize. The café didn’t seem to be very popular, but I knew by now that other customers did come from time to time.

  As I went to sit down at the counter I found myself paralyzed, unable to move. It felt like the warmth of the space heater and the soft yellow light had utterly vanished.