Dark Lanterns

by Zoe Drake

  Shimizu glanced wildly around him. There were lights in the walls. The shapes of dim, floating things, growing brighter and brighter as they approached, glowing softly like paper lanterns at a festival. The clock began to chime midnight, and Shimizu felt a foul, unnamable taste coat his mouth and throat.

  "Your customers are waiting, Akira Shimizu."

  "Oni wa soto, fuku ga uchi!"

  It was the time of Setsubun - February the 3rd - and this was the chant of Setsubun: "Oni wa fuku, soto ga uschi". Demons go out, good luck come in. Atsuko and her mother were advancing methodically through each room of their cramped two-storey house, scattering beans as they went - hard, uncooked soy beans. Atsuko knew that the beans meant something much more than a lucky charm, something to do with the spirits. What it really meant was she would have the job of cleaning up the beans again later.

  Another custom of Setsubun was that for stronger, better luck, you should eat the same number of beans as your age.

  "If Atsuko did that last night," one of the girls at junior high had said yesterday, "She must be over two hundred years old!" The other girls in the locker rooms had screeched with laughter, but Atsuko had turned her back on the ritual cruelty, putting her head down quietly as she changed into her P.E. gear.

  At the age of twelve, Atsuko was rapidly approaching what the family doctor had reluctantly called obesity. The cute puppy-fat of her childhood had grown large enough to choke the girl's budding adolescence. Her face rested comfortably on the roll of flesh surrounding her jaws. Her breasts, which had formed absurdly early, appeared to melt into the barrel that formed her abdomen, pushing her school blouse and sweater out in front of her. Her skirt, cut in the regulation style above the knee, failed completely to hide her swollen legs, or to flatter her when she walked.

  More and more, her parents muttered darkly of diabetes and the inconvenience of walking with a stick, yet for all the complaints, counseling and late-night closeted talk, the only results had been Papa getting drunk more often and Mama's constant tongue-clicking. A few more lines engraved on her parent's faces, pulling their smiles down like tiny leaden weights.

  At school, Atsuko found solace in the comfort of other misfits, girls who were drawn together through the simple fact of being generally despised. Atsuko's small group of "nails that stuck out" huddled together almost every break time and built dream castles from manga characters, an imaginary fortress peopled with princesses and impossibly cute talking animals, until the tidal forces of the next class came to wash it away.

  Atsuko was sheltered from the pain of school life by an elaborate set of defenses. Like a praline truffle enclosed by a crunchy chocolate-covered shell, Atsuko was closed off from the outside world. She had her shojo manga, her girl's comics, and the girls she avidly discussed them with were purely incidental. She also had her chocolate.

  Meltykiss and Krunky at breaktimes, Strawberry Pocky at lunch, mushroom-shaped Kinoko no Yama on the way home. Haagen Daaz Caramel Apple Pie ice cream and Milk Tea Pocky when closeted in her room. Trips into the city were punctuated by Angel Cream Donuts, chocolat pan, and the crepe suzettes from the schoolgirl's paradise that was the Takeshita Street in Harajuku.

  All of Atsuko's favorite indulgences were sweet. Chocolate, ice cream, sweet pastry, all stuff that melted at room temperature, melted inside her mouth. As the new sugar refueled the reservoirs in her bloodstream, Makoto felt as if she herself were melting, her burden of flesh loosening itself from her bones, blending with the air that surrounded her.

  The winter of that year had been a particularly harsh one, and many schools wre forced to close for one or two days. Unfortunately for Atsuko, hers was not one of those schools. She lived in a suburb of Tokyo that bordered Chiba prefecture, a ward resting uncomfortably on reclaimed land close to Tokyo Bay. From Atsuko's bedroom window, if she craned her padded neck, she could see one of the bridges that straddled the Edogawa river. The ugly, skeletal arm vibrated night and day with the ceaseless hum of traffic.

  On the 2nd of February, snow still clung stubbornly to some of the neighborhood streets, coating broken walls like moss. Atsuko shuffled to the school gates every morning at 8:30, her head down, praying not to be noticed.

  Monday was the worst day because of PE. For two hours every week, reality intruded into Atsuko's carefully constructed world. In the changing rooms, she unwillingly stripped herself, layer upon layer peeled away, until she was left almost naked, her confidence screwed up and lying in a crumpled heap along with her clothes. She was left with her flesh, flesh that could not be concealed by the ridiculous white top and blue shorts.

  An hour in the gym followed, an hour of ritual humiliation by wooden horse, springboard, and sitting out as scorekeeper during netball. Although Atsuko liked her PE teacher - she was cheerful, energetic, and had the lithe body of a manga character - Atsuko lived in fear of the short blast of the whistle followed by the calling of her name. Again and again, Atsuko willed herself to step back against the gymnasium wall and become part of it, unnoticed.

  Blend into it. Melt into it.

  On that certain Monday, after PE, she hastily pulled on her school uniform again to cover her body. She always left her navy blue cardigan buttoned and pulled it over her head; it felt as if she was wrapping up her whole body in it. In the math lesson that followed, she sat uncomfortably, paying even less attention to the teacher than usual. Something bothered her. Something was making her feel uncomfortable. Had she injured herself somehow in PE?

  There was a lull in the drone of the teacher's voice, and Atsuko looked up sharply. No danger signs; no stares or cold insults; the teacher had simply paused to write something on the black board.

  Atsuko looked around her. The late morning sun illuminated everything in the classroom with a piercing clarity. She could smell sweat on her upper lip, and it suddenly disgusted her. A cold thread of nausea abruptly began to snake its way out of her stomach, sliding through her gut, down towards the parts of her body which never troubled her waking, day-dreaming mind.

  Was she going to be sick?

  She sat nervously, flicking through the pages of her favorite comics in her head, until the strangeness in her body faded, and the lesson crawled laboriously to its end. She left the classroom rapidly, her face and palms shiny, groping in her bag for the Snickers bars that she kept in their own private pouch.

  At last three-thirty arrived, and most of the girls and boys scurried away to their club activities in the gym and out on the school grounds, the younger kohai working as slaves to the older senpei masters.

  Atsuko changed into her outdoor shoes at the entrance hall lockers, carefully checking them for any pins or trash that the older girls might have put inside. Today she was lucky. They had left her alone; busy with picking on someone else, or flirting with the boys. She impatiently walked the distance back to her house, carefully watching out for any senior girls who might have been walking nearby, only stopping to refill her supplies at the convenience store. At home, in the sanctuary of her bedroom, she ate her box of Yan-Yan creamy chocolate snacks with an air of desperation, unwrapping one slender wrapper with one hand while the other pushed chocolate between her slick, hungry lips.

  A sharp pain, like a scratching, stung deep within her bowels. For the first time this year, she wondered if she had eaten too much chocolate. She sat up, frowning, thinking about her body, the mysterious package of organs and other workings deep inside her.

  To end the day, the family took their ritual bath, each person vacating the tub and calling out through the screen door for the next. Atsuko squatted in the bathroom like a wrestler, listlessly waving the shower up and down her body. Settling into the deep, square tub, she put her box of Meiji Almond on the sill, feeling the water's heat prick and pull at her skin.

  A day-dreaming age later, she tilted her head, lowering her hand from the chocolate box to the faucet to refill the tub.

  And saw the blood.

  "Mama!" she screamed from
the bathroom door. "Mama!"

  Her mother came rushing through the corridor from the kitchen. She saw her daughter, standing with a towel clasped to her breasts and her fingers clawing into it. Atsuko's face was red as a baby's, her mouth open and tears squeezing from her eyes. The cause of her distress was obvious; the thick dark blood that trickled sluggishly down the inside of Atsuko's thighs.

  Mama took the towel and wrapped it around the crying girl, shushing her, looking around for tissues.

  There was a sound in the house.

  A sharp, high buzzing like insect wings, followed by the smash of breaking glass.

  "What's happened?" called Papa from the living room.

  "Nothing to worry about," Mama yelled back.

  "But I'm bleeding," Atsuko managed to say. "I'm sick..."

  "Sssssssh." Mama had found the tissues, and was briskly dabbing up the blood. There wasn't a great deal of it.

  "What's wrong?" the girl sobbed. "Did I cut myself?"

  "No, you didn't. It's perfectly natural."

  Mama squeezed some of the tissues into something long and thin, and then with one deft movement reached down and plugged it between Atsuko's thighs.

  The girl stared at the opposite wall as if in shock.

  "Come upstairs," Mama cajoled her. "I'll make you some tea, and give you something to make you feel better. But dry your hair, for heaven's sake. And wash your face again!"

  Later, in the stillness of her bedroom, Atsuko restlessly turned the pages of the biology textbook her mother had given her.

  Her portable TV in the corner was turned down low, because the shrill voices of the idols — usually so cute - now seemed to cut right through her. The wreckage of two tubs of ice cream lay beside her on the tatami, licked clean.

  Of course, she sometimes overheard some girls at school talking about their first periods. There had been some kind of speech in morning assembly, too, but Atsuko had fallen asleep halfway through. Something to do with being an adult ... something to do with changes in the body. But it was nothing to do with her.

  Now Atsuko looked at the diagrams in the biology book with confusion and wonderment. The shock and sorrow of her discovery in the bath was giving way to a new, melancholy feeling that she could not understand.

  Her body was changing. Atsuko sat back against the bedroom wall, the ice cream tubs nudging each other as the weight on the floor shifted. They yielded up the soft aroma of strawberry and cookies'n'cream.

  She thought about walking to school the next day, not as a girl, but as a woman. Perhaps she would give off a new womanly scent, a mixture of early Spring flowers mixed with the sweetness of vanilla. She thought about putting on lipstick and she shivered, rubbing her hands over her legs and lower thighs.

  She reached for her school bag and the Snickers bars inside, her mind and body crying out for more sugar.

  Despite her new-found biological revelation, Atsuko spent the morning recess in her usual schedule. She sat at her desk at the back of the classroom, her fellow misfit Sayaka beside her, flipping the pages of Ribbon magazine with one hand while stuffing Kabaya Strawberry Choco into her mouth with the other.

  "What are you going to do for Valentine's Day?" Sayaka suddenly asked.

  "Eh?" Atsuko looked up, her pale mouth flabby and dark with chocolate.

  "I mean, you know, aren't you going to do anything for anyone?"

  "I dunno. Give some chocolate to Papa, I guess. Same as least year." Atsuko turned back to her comic, feeling vaguely annoyed.

  "I'm thinking of giving something to Shoichi," Sayaka suddenly blurted.

  Atsuko frowned. Shoichi? Which one was Shoichi? Oh yes. The short, stocky one, who'd recently had some hip hop stripes cut into his hair and got suspended for a week for it.

  Sayaka was giving chocolates to him?

  "I thought he was going out with Kayo?"

  "Nah. Gossip says they split up last week."

  Atsuko felt a surge of jealous hatred toward Kayo. She was one of the trendiest girls in their grade, who wore her skirt as short as possible and her socks so loose and baggy they almost hid her shoes. At recess, if she wasn't gossiping with her classmates, she was always texting on her cell phone, her long sparkly thumbnail tapping katakana and emoticons into the keypad in a rapid blur of movement.

  An idea hit Atsuko with sudden immensity. That's what girls do, she realized, after they start to bleed.

  Walking home after school, she felt the rod-like thing inside her shift and settle. This was the most upsetting thing about being a woman; that she needed the help of something artificial. It was like putting on a pair of spectacles for the first time. The device somehow rearranged the body, making everything unfamiliar.

  As she climbed up the station steps, the chill wind toyed with the hem of her school uniform. Emerging onto the school platform, the late afternoon sun caught her full in the face and she blinked, momentarily blinded.

  She stopped, feeling her heart pound away inside her. Things were getting too much.

  Finally stepping out onto the platform, Atsuko noticed a trio of young punks near the entrance, flouting the No Smoking rule. In baggy jeans and wooly hats, they rubbed the air with their cackling voices and their rapid-fire slang, laughing too loud, too long.

  Atsuko walked past them quickly and then leant against a concrete pillar, feeling her legs grow weak. The voices of the boys cut right through her.

  She was sure they'd mentioned her name.

  Safely cloistered in her room, swallowing scoops of ice cream, Atsuko almost cried as she watched TV. One of her favorite TV commercials came on; the idol band AKB48, dressed up as office ladies, dancing a really cute dance and singing in chorus, in an impossibly wide office with photocopiers ranked along the sides.

  The next ad featured Shin Akanishi, and that made Atsuko sit up even more. He was the one who a lot of the girls were dating in their dreams. She studied his face, the heavy-lidded eyes, the carefully messed-up hair teased into tinted spikes.

  Atsuko squinted at the screen. There was something different about his face. Something new.

  The fifteen-second commercial blinked out of existence, to be replaced by another; two six-year-olds bouncing up and down on a car seat and singing as their papa drove them past Mount Fuji. Atsuko reached for one of her tarento magazines, and flicked through it to find a picture of the idol.

  She found it. Akanishi's face floated in front of her, adrift on a sea of possibilities. Her gaze drifted in and out of focus, her fingers twisting themselves in her lank hair as she concentrated.

  That was it. Something suddenly clicked into position. He reminded her of Ryuji!

  Ryuji, her classmate. Why hadn't she noticed the resemblance before? He was so similar. The face, the build — and the atmosphere. There was something very cute about Ryuji. Perhaps she hadn't thought it before because he was kind of shy. He always hung around at the back of the class in sports lessons, looking lanky and quiet in his black and white track suit. He had the same puffy eyes as the tarento — eyes that made him look as if he watched too much TV. His face had a pale ivory color, like he was always hungry. Atsuko suddenly realized that she could remember the details of his cheekbones, their clarity beneath the skin.

  The thought made her feel ... weird.

  The next day Atsuko watched him warily as she endured the sports lesson.

  "What are you staring at?" the girl next to her asked rudely.

  "Nothing," Atsuko said quickly.

  "You're looking at Ryuji, aren't you? Don't bother. He's too skinny, too tall. He'll never be cute."

  Atsuko swallowed her own reply, suddenly understanding the girl's animosity toward Ryuji. He was being bullied too. Just like her, he was outside the circle of mainstream school life because he didn't fit in. There was something of the rebel about him, and she knew that a sudden connection had just been formed, as if a thread had been attached from her heart to his.

  Across the gymnasium, Ryuji turned his hea
d. Atsuko glanced away, embarrassed. The mirror of his eyes might shine back her feelings.

  Late at night, Atsuko flopped and twisted in her bed, unable to stop thinking about Ryuji.

  He had always been in the background, nothing in particular, not one of the loudest, cleverest or funniest boys. Now he'd moved, putting himself directly in front of her. She thought about his face, that odd, unhealthy sheen to his face, the narrowness of his shoulders ...

  What would it be like to ... actually kiss him?

  Thunk.

  She froze. She lay absolutely still, shocked at the sound that had come from the living room.

  It wasn't her parents. She could hear her father snoring through the thin wooden wall, and she knew her mother was in the futon next to his. The sound had come from the living room, a loud thud, as if something had fallen.

  Or been dropped.

  The sound was not repeated. After a while, Atsuko drifted into sleep, still thinking of Ryuji, AKB48 melodies soothing away her fright ...

  "Atsuko?"

  The girl had just finished dressing when her mother slid open the door to the bedroom. "Atsuko, did you play with the dolls last night?"

  It was her mother's habit to raise a problem in as direct and abrupt manner as possible. Papa had already left the house; he took a bath at ten, went to bed at eleven, and awoke at six to begin the day's commute. It was a weekly schedule he never deviated from.

  Atsuko and her mother walked into the living room where they had performed the Setsubun ritual. A few days ago, Papa had taken out the dolls for the Doll's Festival in early March, and put them up for display in the corner of the room. Twelve Japanese figures in traditional kimonos with traditionally painted faces; they represented the Imperial Family from the ancient Heian Period, with their samurai retainers and court musicians.