by Sean Wallace
Ariyoshi’s handsome face blanched and he turned away. “Let’s go.”
Nakata kicked as much of Kaoru’s stuff under the footbridge as he could, then followed. As they sauntered away, Nakata stopped and, obviously so Kaoru could see, broke the monster figure in half. Or tried to—the hard plastic resisted. With a curse, Nakata chucked it away. The little monster hit the concrete with a crack, and ricocheted off at an angle.
Kaoru bit back his moan. At least this time he wasn’t going home with half the skin scraped off his face. Coming up with explanations to fool Mum was worse than the pain.
He squatted in the ditch and collected everything, not bothering to brush off the dirt as he stuffed things back in his bag. The pencil case’s hinge was broken. It didn’t matter—he’d given up carrying things that mattered.
The two men quarreling on the other side of the footbridge had calmed down a bit. One of them, a sharp-faced gangster type in a faded floral shirt, patted the other over-familiarly on the chest as he made a point. The other nodded sulkily. No wonder Ariyoshi had headed off so quickly; the sharp-faced man was his dad. Ariyoshi said he worked as muscle down at the pachinko parlour. The other kids thought he just lazed around.
The little monster wasn’t there. He crawled over the stained concrete for what seemed like hours. His knees ached from crouching. He would be late for juku. Why was he bothering? He should just tell Masaki he left the toy at school. Or say it had been stolen. It was only a cheap plastic model, after all.
But in the end he found it, half inside a hollow concrete block, gray-camouflaged where once the shaggy molded fur had been ice-white. The raised claws and snarling teeth once glowed yellow, the bulging eyes had been blood red. Three . . . four years ago, he’d wasted some of his New Year money on a “bargain bag” at the local toy store. Even though he’d bought a “twelve years and over” bag, it was full of junk like the plastic monster: a leaking water pistol, and character cards he’d thrown away in grade one. He gave the monster to Masaki, who loved it.
As Kaoru picked it up, the leg fell off again. He flushed with anger at the bullies. Dickheads. Fuckwits. Now he’d have to go through all the hassle of smuggling the monster into craft class and secretly gluing it again. He didn’t have any proper glue at home.
The autumn sun was already off the narrow lane and all the buildings on this side of the street. The gray canyon was damp and chilly. Most of the shop signs were old, the colors faded. Nobody shopped along this road any more, except the old people who didn’t have obliging grandchildren to drive them out to the superstores.
As he climbed out of the ditch and trudged home beside the rumbling traffic, his phone vibrated in his pocket. That’s right, it was because of the stupid phone he’d been discovered. He was sure he’d had it turned off all day. This call would be his mother, demanding to know where he was. Or somebody selling things.
Strange. The activate light was off but it still buzzed. He pressed “Receive” automatically.
The screen said simply,
He sighed and pressed the delete pad, then slipped the phone back into his pocket. Whatever hot new product “Revenge” was, he didn’t want any. He’d made the mistake once of answering an online sale, and they pestered him until he had to dump the phone and tell Mum he’d lost it.
At home on the ninth floor of the apartment block, Masaki played a game on the big TV screen. On the old TV, half the size, a rerun of Ultraseven spooled on slowly. Both the pico-pico trrrilll of the game and the tinny music from the TV were running at full volume.
“Where’s Mum?” shouted Kaoru. She wasn’t here, or Masaki wouldn’t have the sound so loud.
Masaki pointed at the kitchen with the controller, his eyes not leaving the screen. His round, six-year-old features were set in concentration.
There was a note on the kitchen table beside a tray with covered bowls. The note read: “Kaoru, I’ve gone to the P&C meeting. Make sure you lock the door behind you when you go out. Masaki isn’t to keep watching TV.”
“Mum says turn the TV off,” Kaoru yelled.
Masaki kept his eyes on the screen. “Okay.” But he made no attempt to do it.
Kaoru sighed and peeked under the lids of the bowls. Hamburgers, with steamed cauliflower, potatoes, and carrots. And rice. The soup bowls each held a turd-like brown curl of instant miso, ready for hot water.
He wished Mum would hurry up and finish this “home-cooked” fad. He preferred the defrosted microwave gratins and fried rice of old.
In the bedroom he shared with Masaki he took the plastic monster out of his bag and managed to prop it between two boxes of ninja cards in his desk drawer. He needed some proper tools—a clamp, for a start—but why bother? When would he build models—in his ten minutes of free time after dinner? He used some glue he’d found in the kitchen drawer and held it while the glue set. It wasn’t as good a job as he’d done at school—he’d have to scrape the overflow of glue away after it set properly—but Masaki wouldn’t notice. He shut the drawer carefully.
Shit. He was late for juku. He grabbed his second bag and ran full-tilt out the door, forgetting to check the lock so he had to sprint back and then missed the lift down. By the time he reached the cram school, which was in a building near the station five blocks away, sweat was stinging in the corners of his eyes and his heart pounded shamefully in the certainty of humiliation to come.
He tried to sneak into the classroom, but the teacher, a hearty bully concerned with his own popularity points, made a big thing out of his lateness.
“Perhaps our clock-reading skills need revising?” he boomed. All the students turned to stare and the two girls sitting directly in front of Kaoru’s back-row seat giggled.
Kaoru sat, his face burning. Smart quip, come on, you can think of a comeback if you try . . .
“The elementary classes are in the next building, you know.” More girls giggled.
Just as the teacher lost interest, Kaoru’s phone rang. He froze in disbelief, then plunged his hand in his pocket, letting go his textbooks to do so, but the textbooks cascaded on to the floor and he had the wrong pocket and everybody was giggling . . .
The teacher loomed over him. “You know the rules about phones, Hoshino?”
“Y . . . yes. But I turned it off, I did . . . ” he stammered, which was a waste of time and only prolonged the agony of more sarcasm.
The teacher finally turned back to the whiteboard. Kaoru stacked his textbooks, trembling. Leave me alone, leave me alone leave me . . .
“Don’t let him get you down.” The girl next to him, Emiko Tada, leaned over slightly and muttered out of the corner of her mouth, “He’s a prick. And a small one, at that.”
Shocked, Kaoru flicked a glance at her. Tada was known as a slob. She came to juku in old sweaters and stained jeans. She didn’t style her hair like other girls, or use lip gel, or carry a fluffy phone case, or even use a phone at all. And now she’d been nice to him and he didn’t know what to say, and it was too late because Tada was looking back at her books thinking he was a snob for not even acknowledging her kindness. He was hopeless.
And why had the stupid phone rung? He had definitely turned it off, but the screen still said,
Yes! a voice inside him screamed.
The screen went blank. Oh great, he’d probably accepted a virus that would screw his address file. With all of its two or three names.
The teacher’s drone faded. The hunched beetle-backs of his fellow students faded. White light surrounded him.
Good, maybe he was dead.
If so, he had come to a frozen part of hell. He was striding across a plain of ice that reached to the horizon on all sides except one—when he looked behind, a jagged white mountain range pierced gray sky. A wind solid with sleet played around his ears, but it didn’t feel cold. Must be a dream. His feet crunched on frozen snow . . . his feet? He stopped striding and looked down.
Long dark claws poked out of toes covered with a carpet of thick, yellow-white hair. The rest of the feet, the legs, the . . . he was completely covered with pelt. No wonder he wasn’t cold. His arms ended in stubby fingers tipped with the same claws as his toes. It all seemed familiar.
He laughed out loud, and a roar was whipped away by the wind. The ice monster. He’d stared at that little model for so long he was dreaming about it. He started striding again. It felt good. The snow subsided like crusted sand under bare feet; when he swung those long arms his whole body rocked from side to side, and he roared again, just to hear how loud it was and then to hear how even that loudness disappeared into the frozen wasteland. Best of all, he was completely and utterly alone.
Something glinted on the ice nearby. He stopped and bent over to see better, growling in annoyance at the effort this took. Kaiju bodies weren’t very flexible.
A lighter? He laughed at the incongruity. Nothing to light here.
A silver lighter. Like the one Ariyoshi used. As he stared, anger surged up in his throat in a snarl that heated his entire body. He scooped up the metal sliver with his claw and crushed it in his palm.
It was so easy.
“Hoshino-kun. Hoshino-kun!” Tada’s whisper replaced the howling of the wind.
Kaoru blinked at the sight of the teacher sauntering down the line of desks, checking homework. He fumbled his notebook open and glanced at Tada.
“Thanks,” he whispered back.
Tada shrugged, but her eyes laughed.
What a weird dream! Not very symbolic (he had read all the books about dreams, it was the fad-before-last, and he knew symbolic dreams should be obscure and preferably involve food or sexually significant objects), but definitely therapeutic. He felt better than he had for ages. A pity he couldn’t smash Ariyoshi’s real lighter.
“Stay away from the gang of three,” warned one of the few boys in Kaoru’s class who bothered to talk to him. “Ariyoshi’s pissed off big time.”
Kaoru nodded thanks. It was the day after his daydream at the cram school and he wanted to stay away from everyone, not just the gang. He had dutifully studied until 3:00 AM for today’s math test, but still hadn’t answered all the questions. He didn’t even want to be a doctor, he was going to make a terrible doctor . . . Mum gave him lunch money, but not enough for the gang. And the plastic monster’s leg fell off again when he took it out of the drawer. A rod would be the best way of making sure the leg stayed on, but every method he thought of required more time and tools than he had.
“What’s going on?” said one of the others. “Ari’s dad been beating him up again?” There was a general guffaw, hastily muffled.
“Someone smashed his lighter,” said the first boy. “Ran a car over it, they reckon.”
Kaoru didn’t hear the rest of the conversation. A chill spread from his stomach over his whole body. It must be a coincidence. His dream couldn’t possibly have picked up on an event in the real world.
I’m glad Ariyoshi’s hurting, gloated a small voice deep inside him. It sounded like the ice monster’s voice.
No, you’re not, Kaoru shot back. He’s going to make life hell for the rest of us. More like hell, he revised.
This time, the dream seemed to take much longer. Kaoru raged across the frozen land, each roar a protest at his roar-less existence in the real world. The monster’s body felt comfortable to him now, and he loved the sensation of power.
The juku sign hung in the air. He didn’t question why it was there. He just ran his fist through it. Didn’t even sting. Crunch. That stupid teacher. Smash. Couldn’t get employed at a real school, so he taught at juku. Crack. Always using the weakest kids to make himself look smarter. Splinter. Keeping us late so we have even less of a life than we would anyway . . .
The sign shattered completely.
There, that feels better, doesn’t it? chuckled the ice monster.
“Tanaka-sensei phoned. You’re to finish the workbook exercises,” his mother called into his room later that afternoon.
Kaoru jumped and shoved the drawer shut on the plastic monster. He couldn’t work out a way to drill a hole small enough for a wire rod.
“What are you talking about?” he yelled back.
“You know, the juku teacher.” Mum stood in the doorway of his room, spatula in hand. “There’s no juku tonight. Vandals trashed the place, apparently.”
“What, the whole place?” Kaoru heard himself ask, and immediately wondered if she’d notice the strangeness of the question. The sign in his dream, he’d only smashed the sign.
It couldn’t be another coincidence.
What have I done?
I didn’t mean to.
“Kaoru, are you all right? You look peaky.” Mum placed her hand on his forehead. “I’ll get you some multivitamins. You know how important your grades are this year. We don’t expect you to pass the uni exams first time, but you know you’ll have to get into the top twenty to get into the supplementary school . . . ” He tuned out, and finally she left.
He didn’t mean to smash everything. What was going on? Maybe someone was playing a stupid joke on him, messing with his mind. The phone! He’d turned it off, though, hadn’t he? He might have typed “Yes,” drowsy and stupid, then slumped back to sleep with his head on the desk. Only for a minute or so, at the end of home-room time this afternoon. Nobody took any notice—kids stole a few minutes of sleep at school all the time, it meant they were fresh for juku in the evening.
Maybe the phone message caused the dreams. That must be it. Some company was trialling a method of implanting subliminal suggestions in people’s minds. So they couldn’t hold him responsible for trashing the juku.
Anyway, a sneaky thought prompted, they’d never know it was him. Nobody would suspect or be able to find out. He could get away with murder. Not literally, of course. He’d never hurt anyone . . .
He stared across the open workbook to the faded movie poster on the wall above his desk. The boy hero confronted an insect monster bigger than a house, the proboscis longer than the boy’s body. Wavy lines in sunset colors surrounded the two figures, indicating the event was happening in an alternate dimension. He’d had that poster since he was in grade one. Until now, he’d always identified with the boy.
So what if his dream of the ice monster was connected with reality? It wouldn’t help him keep away from Ariyoshi and his sycophants, not unless he could metamorphose into the creature when he wanted to. It wouldn’t help him finish this stupid math that he couldn’t understand and never would.
“I’m going out for a walk,” he yelled on his way past the kitchen. The sizzle of frying onions competed with the burr of the exhaust fan.
“Take a jacket,” called his mother.
Masaki waved at him from in front of the TV, eyes reflecting Gundam.
He regretted coming out as soon as he left the building. What if Ariyoshi and the gang were hanging around?
The sky was blue with coming night and the shadows between streetlights were dark. He looked up and down the street, but could see only a few people hurrying home from the station. In the park, elderly walkers chatted as they followed the path around the fenced baseball ground. Around and around they went, unworried and unflurried. Past the age of having to get family dinners, evening was a good time for them. Kaoru thought of his father, off to work before the family woke, home after they were asleep. I suppose I’ll have to wait until I’m old before I can relax.
“Hey, Hoshino,” a voice called from the swings.
He tensed, ready to run, but it was a girl’s voice. In the gloom he could just make out Tada, rocking the preschool-low swing with her knees almost dragging on the ground. The swing creaked rustily each time she pushed it back.
“No juku, so I thought I’d get some fresh air,” she said cheerfully. “You going somewhere?”
“No,” said Kaoru and, greatly daring, sat on the other swing. It squeaked.
They creaked
and squeaked for a while without saying anything. If this were a manga, he’d tell her his problem and she’d offer him sympathy and say something smart to solve it. But of course manga were never like real life. Who’d read them if they were?
“What do you want to do with your life, Hoshino?” said Tada suddenly.
“Wha-at?” Kaoru stared at her in disbelief, but it was too dark to see her expression. The question was so alien to his thoughts that he would have been more comfortable if she had asked him how yellow smells.
“You know,” she went on in that abrupt, confronting manner of hers. “What did you always want to do when you were a kid?”
Kaoru laughed uneasily. “Same as most boys, I suppose. Be a baseball star, a pilot, game designer, I dunno.” Monster-slayer, he added silently.
Tada’s swing creaked a bit more. “What about now?”
He should get off the swing and go home. Tada was strange in the head. You didn’t ask questions like this of someone you hardly knew. He never asked them of himself.
But he answered. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?” He would spend the next five or six years struggling to get into a mediocre medical school because, sometime during his childhood, somehow it had been decided that he would become a doctor. He didn’t even think he could pass the supplementary school exams, let alone medical school . . .
“Of course it matters.” Tada stopped her swing with the scrunch of sandals dragging through dirt. “No wonder you look so wet if you think like that.”
“What about you, then?” retorted Kaoru, stung by her scorn and emboldened by the darkness.
“I’m going to breed dogs,” she said contentedly. “I’ll get a day job, then when I’ve got a bit of capital I’ll buy a place to build runs. It’ll have to be in the country, of course, you can’t do things like that in Osaka. I’ve got a budget and everything.”
Kaoru felt his mouth opening in awe.
“It’s because I like dogs,” she said. “What do you like?”
Being left alone, he wanted to say, but didn’t.
“What’s the most fun thing you’ve done recently?” she pressed.