“They’re notes from Koji,” I replied, taking them. “He slipped them under the door when we were talking.”
Mr. Suzuki turned back to Mrs. Tanabashi. “I’m so sorry,” he said to her. “She won’t be coming back here.”
“What’s going on?” I said, losing my patience. “Tell me what I did.”
“Enough of your lies, Shinju. I know you wrote these notes yourself.”
“I would never do that!” I said. “Why would I ever do such a thing?”
“Because someone must have told you there’s no one in that room.” He looked down at the floor, then back at Mrs. Tanabashi, then back at me. “I’m going to have to terminate your employment, you realize.”
“These notes were slipped under the door!” I said, shouting now. “There’s someone on the other side!”
“There’s no one in there and you know it. We use this as a facility that Mrs. Tanabashi kindly offered to Fresh Start so that new rental sisters can get practice before their real work with the hikikomori. This is your training, Shinju.”
“But there’s someone in there!” I insisted, louder this time, and then Mrs. Tanabashi let out a kind of scream of frustration that silenced me.
“Follow me, then, ‘pretty’ girl,” she said, and Mr. Suzuki and I went after her up the stairs. When we got to the door she rudely stepped on my tatami, reaching into her pocket for a ring of keys. She struggled with the lock for a moment before the knob turned, and when she swung open the door a stack of papers on the other side spread across the floor like the opening of a fan.
The room was empty. There was no furniture, no closet, nothing but the heavy curtains rawn across the far wall. It was much smaller than I had pictured it but still I stepped inside, just to make sure, Mr. Suzuki entering after me. Nothing.
Mrs. Tanabashi left the keys in the lock and headed down the hall, slamming her bedroom door behind her.
“I don’t understand,” I said, staring down at the papers on the floor, the writings of thirty-seven rental sisters in training, all unread, a rainbow of different colored and sized stationeries glowing in the light from the open door. “I was so sure. Maybe if she would just look at the handwriting again—”
But Mr. Suzuki interrupted me. “Listen, Shinju, I understand that this was something you wanted to happen so badly that you created your own fantasy. But you’ve managed to deeply offend Mrs. Tanabashi, and that is not excusable.”
“What have I done that was so wrong?” I asked him.
“The reason she offers our company this space is because her own son was a hikikomori. He landed up hanging himself. This used to be his room.” I understood her in that moment, the weight of her soul, and longed to console her; I never saw her again.
And then, and this is exactly how it happened, I felt this strange coldness pass over me, almost like static electricity, you know? It felt like something was brushing against my hair, back and forth and back again, as if from above. I looked up at the ceiling.
“Time to go,” Mr. Suzuki said.
I left alone, heading down the stairs and into the genkan, where I put on my shoes and went out into the cold evening air; autumn had arrived without my noticing. I stopped to stare up at Koji’s windows, the heavy curtains black and unmoving, before I made my way home.
I try not to think about that stage in my life very often, days of vast emptiness waiting to be filled by something, anything that might show me my way, my purpose in being. But I think about that night all the time. In fact, I still have those notes he slipped under the door. I carry them with me in my wallet wherever I go.
Would you like to see them?
The White Bone Fan
Richard Parks
Jin Lee Hannigan had only been a goddess for a few days. It was hard enough just being herself, what with her sorry excuse for a love life and her mother bringing up the subject of grandchildren every other breath. Being a goddess just added another degree of difficulty.
Ok, Jin knew that—technically—she wasn’t a goddess at all. She was a bodhisattva, a transcendent being known as Kuan Yin who had refused to transcend, now reborn in the all too mortal form of Jin Lee Hannigan, aged twenty-one, of Medias, Mississippi. Now the acting Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, the first two things Jin learned after her apotheosis were 1) that mercy wasn’t about kindness and 2) that being a goddess was hard work. It was Kuan Yin’s special charge to free souls trapped in the various hells. There were an awful lot of hells.
Now Jin was summoned. She knew she’d been summoned, because she found herself in a corridor very much like the one that had led her from Medias to the Gateway to All Hells when she first found out that little matter of her apotheosis. The same flaring torches, the same carved monsters in the stone. The same dust and debris of ages settling on the stone floor.
I don’t suppose anyone ever sweeps up.
It was a silly thought, but no more silly than a corridor with torches that apparently never burned out and never needed to be replaced. Jin knew that she wasn’t really in a corridor. There was nothing solid beneath her. It was an illusion. It occurred to Jin that, perhaps, illusions were not always bad things. She’d suddenly become very fond of the one that made the passageways to Hell seem like simple stone corridors that allowed her to travel infinite space in the time it took to cross Pepper Street. Jin hurried down the corridor toward the far door.
Which wasn’t there. Jin simply stepped through an open arch and into a cavern not unlike that containing the Doorway to All the Hells. The main differences that Jin could see at first glance was that this one seemed more elongated than round; she couldn’t even see where it ended and she was fairly certain this wasn’t simply because of the dim light. The other thing she noticed was that the floor of the cavern was strewn with small rocks and looked like the bed of a dried-out river.
She frowned. “This is a hell, too?”
“I suppose. It depends on your definition.”
Later Jin would think that, perhaps, she should be used to people just appearing and disappearing. As it was, she jumped back two feet and landed in a fighter’s crouch in full demon form. A few feet away from her there stood a strange-looking little man. He carried a staff with several rings set into the top of it. He was bald, and his earlobes were elongated exactly as those on many of the Buddhist images Jin had seen in her studies. He was maybe five feet tall in his sandals, and wore the robes of a monk. He looked about as dangerous as a fireplug.
“Damn it all, don’t do that!”
The little man raised his eyebrows. “Immanence, your language has certainly gotten more... colorful, since our last meeting.”
Jin stood up straight and abandoned her Pulan Gong form, feeling a little foolish. She racked her brains while she waited for her heart to stop pounding. “You’re… O-Jizou, yes?”
He nodded. “You remember me, after all this time. I am honored, Kannon-sama.”
She was in the presence of the bodhisattva Jizou, known in Japan as the God of Children. Which made sense, since “Kannon” was the Japanese form of Kuan Yin. It was a good thing that some deep down part of her knew what she was supposed to be, because Jin as Jin Lee Hannigan didn’t claim to be an expert on Japanese cosmology or, indeed, any other. Still, something in the way he said “honored” led Jin to think that he wasn’t honored at all. In fact, if it had been anyone other than the Enlightened Being O-Jizou was supposed to be, she’d have thought he sounded downright annoyed.
“I’m in a mortal incarnation and my memory is faulty. Have I done something to offend you?”
“Lord Yama, King of the First Hell, informed me of your condition. As for offense… those in my care have suffered because of you. Suffering may be the lot of all creatures, but usually it serves a purpose, however obscure. Does what you have done serve a purpose? Yama believes so, but I don’t know for certain and neither, apparently, do you.”
Jin said nothing. There didn’t seem to be anything to say. Then the moment p
assed and the little monk turned on his heel and set out at a walk so brisk that Jin had to run to catch up. “Follow me, please,” he said over his shoulder.
“I’m trying,” Jin said, amazed that the man’s short legs could move so quickly.
They hadn’t quite reached the riverbed when a fierce-looking old woman appeared out of nowhere, blocking their path. Her hair was white and her eyes jet black, and those eyes glittered like cold wet stones. “Give me your clothes,” she said to Jin.
Jin put her hands on her hips. “Excuse me?”
“Begone, Datsueba,” O-Jizou said. “Do you not recognize Kannon the Merciful?”
The hag looked at her even closer. “I know guilt when I see it. Her clothes belong to me. That is the Law.”
“I don’t think so,” said Jin. In another moment she was in full demon form again. The hag didn’t appear worried at all, or even surprised. She did look a little puzzled.
O-Jizou sighed. “Stop that,” he said to Jin, as if she were a misbehaving child, then he turned back to the hag. “Whatever else this woman may be, she is mortal and alive. You’re wasting our time, Datsueba.”
“Mortal stink,” said the hag finally, and made a sniffing noise. “I should have noticed. Didn’t want to touch her anyway.”
In another instant the hag was gone and Jin had returned to her normal appearance. O-Jizou started walking again and Jin hurried to catch up. “What was that all about?”
The little monk shrugged. “After their initial judgment, the dead, guilty and guiltless alike, come to this place to cross the river to the next realm. Those judged guiltless cross on a bridge. Those who are guilty must either wade or swim the river. It is the Datsueba’s task to strip the clothing from the guilty.”
“Just what am I supposed to be guilty of? Are all the guilty here supposed to stay naked?!”
“As to the first, I cannot say. For the second, no, they clothe themselves again in time,” he said, as if the matter was of no importance.
Jin just hurried along for a little while, so intent on keeping pace with O-Jizou that the inherent absurdity of what he had said took a little while to catch up to her. When it did, she almost stopped.
“Ummm, O-Jizou, correct me if I’m wrong, but where we’re walking is dry. There’s no water here.”
“Not a drop,” O-Jizou agreed.
“So why does anyone need to wade?”
“Because they don’t understand that the water is an illusion. If they did, they wouldn’t belong here.” Apparently seeing that Jin was about to ask something else he went on, “Even in your mortal form you should know this. Or has your Third Eye never opened?”
“Oh, right.” Jin said. She did not, however, feel an overwhelming urge to open that eye just then and verify absolute reality.
As they walked along the riverbed Jin saw something very strange. All along the bank on one side were children, piling heavy stones one on top of the other. Some of them were in fact naked. Others wore tattered clothes of an overwhelming variety: kimonos, robes, jeans, dresses, jumpers. Their ages seemed to vary from those barely able to walk to pre-adolescents. All seemed to be working at the stones. Some were piling in groups, others worked alone.
“What are they doing?”
“They’re too small to wade the river, or the older ones can’t swim. They’re piling up the stones to try and make a footpath to the other side.”
“I don’t understand. What can children so young be guilty of?”
O-Jizou just shrugged again. “Ask the one who judges them.”
Even as they spoke Jin saw a ragged boy turn away to pick up another heavy stone and in that moment a small demon almost identical to the one on Joyce’s shoulder dashed out of nowhere and shoved the pile of stones, scattering them and reducing the pile to nothing. The demon vanished before the child could return with the stone to find all his work gone to nothing.
“The poor thing—”
Jin had started to turn back but without even looking at her O-Jizou had reached back and taken hold of her wrist. “Neither you nor your pity can help him, Kannon. Please concentrate on those who need you.”
As scoldings went this one was very gentle, but it was a scolding none the less. Jin wanted to be angry, but couldn’t. “This is what you deal with all the time, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Can… can you do anything for them?”
“When the time comes—and not before—I help them cross the river.”
“How do you know when the time comes?”
“How do you free someone from hell?” he returned, mildly. “It is, as the King of the First Hell has taken to saying lately, ‘my job,’ just as freeing the punished is yours.”
“So I’ve been reminded. A lot,” Jin said dryly.
“If it were not so, then His Majesty would not be doing his job.”
That sounded like a scolding too. Jin sighed. “If it turns out that this incarnation is a mere whim of mine—and your guess on this is as good as my own—I’ll be sure to apologize for wasting everyone’s time. In the meantime can we just drop the subject of my incarnation?”
He just shrugged. “Your incarnation does not matter.”
“Then why do you keep bringing it up?”
Somewhat to Jin’s surprise, O-Jizou actually seemed to be thinking about her question as they walked. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Maybe I’m just angry.”
“Human emotion is an illusion,” Jin said, even though she wasn’t really convinced of that herself.
“‘Show me someone who’s never been bewitched by a pair of beautiful eyes and I’ll show you a stone buddha,’” replied O-Jizou, smiling.
“Is that a real saying, or did you just make it up?”
“Yes,” he said.
O-Jizou smiled again and Jin started to wonder if she was beginning to like the guy. She really could do without the scolding, though. Neither said anything for a time. Jin followed the little monk up a narrow path on the opposite side of the dry river bed from the children. The land on the other side of the river didn’t look very different from the river bed itself: it was flat, stony, and dry.
“What happens when a child finally crosses the river? Or is that something I should already know?”
“Of course it is but, since you don’t, I’ll tell you—then the child goes where it’s supposed to go, just like anyone else who crossed over. Or rather, the child goes where it needs to go. I can’t explain it any better than that. I can, however, show you. We’re approaching Mariko’s—”
He didn’t even get to finish. The air in front of them shimmered like one of the doors to the hell corridors and everything changed from one step to the next. One moment they walked in a dry, desolate place and in the next they were strolling down a narrow forest path in autumn. To either side of the path were maples in the full russet display marking the end of summer. There was a cool but not unpleasant edge to the breeze that made the pines whisper and the maple leaves rustle. They came to a place where a mossy stone bridge crossed a quiet dark stream, and there they stopped.
Jin knew that the way the place looked was not real, any more than the river keeping the children from crossing into their next destination was real. And yet, like that river, the appearance of the path was important. This seemingly tranquil place looked the way it looked for a reason, and that reason belonged to neither herself nor O-Jizou who, without preamble, had just sat down cross-legged under the larger of the two maples flanking the path about fifty feet from the bridge. He placed his staff across his knees and just sat there, not looking at her. He was looking over the bridge. After a moment Jin did the same and saw the figure approaching from the opposite side.
“Mariko?” Jin asked, and he grunted assent.
She wore a kimono of pure white, and it contrasted with hair blacker even than Jin’s, and far longer. It trailed in two long braids down the front of her kimono almost to her waist; the rest spread from her head to
fall down around her shoulders and black almost like a cape. Her face was in shadow but, by what Jin could see, it was almost as white as the kimono. She knew that Japanese women at certain times in history had painted their faces white, so thought little of it at first.
If Mariko noticed either of them she didn’t show it. She started across the bridge with the tiny, shuffling steps that a formal kimono demanded. Jin had worn one once in a school play and couldn’t understand how anybody could walk more than a few steps in the silly things, but Mariko managed just fine. She stopped at the highest point of the wooden bridge and looked down, gazing at the dark water, her long, graceful fingers resting on top of the railing.
Jin had been waiting, in a sense, for the other shoe to drop, but when it did she still felt a little sick. Mariko’s fingers on the railing. Fingers too long, too thin. Jin remembered what little she had seen of Mariko’s face and finally put it all together.
The skeleton is wearing a kimono. Jin almost giggled, though she didn’t really think it was funny. She wasn’t frightened—she had seen far worse in her crash course in being Kuan Yin—but the sight was at once shocking and pitiful and for several long moments Jin could do nothing at all put stare at the poor girl, who still seemed oblivious to all except the water. When she finally did look up from the stream Jin thought for a moment that she’d finally noticed them, but soon realized that Mariko was looking down the path the way they had come. Jin glanced back that way but she saw nothing and it was clear that Mariko saw the same. The poor creature’s shoulders raised briefly and lowered; Jin would have sworn the girl had sighed, even though she had neither lungs nor breath to do so.
O-Jizou made a slight noise, little more than a clearing of his throat, but Jin knew what it really meant—her cue. Jin headed for the bridge, even though as yet she didn’t have the slightest idea what she was going to do, and understanding that it was her nature to sort just such things out didn’t make her feel the least bit more confident.
The understanding that Mariko was little more than a skeleton in a white kimono bothered Jin just a little, and not for the obvious reason. If all hells were personal—and Jin knew that to be true—then the particular torment, experience, and appearance of the punished one were all personal as well. Yet here was little more than an assemblage of bones and scraps of cloth pretending to be, as Jin perceived her, a young girl of about seventeen. Why? Jin could understand if Mariko was at a place where she would be subjected to horror and revulsion at her appearance; that was a torment that made sense, and Jin could look for understanding there. Yet Mariko was alone. Here there was no one to see her bones, her sorry pretense at being a living girl, so what was the point of it? It’s not as if the girl carried a mirror to look at herself; so far as Jin could see she only carried a delicate fan tucked into her sash, and considering the height of the bridge it was unlikely the water below could cast a reflection plain enough for Mariko to see.
Japanese Dreams Page 5