A Small Charred Face

by Kazuki Sakuraba

  Just then, snow started to fall. We both looked up at the sky at the same time. The first snow of the year, it was desperately beautiful as it danced down. The clouds slid by, and the full moon half disappeared.

  I set to work getting most of the dirt off her face. Marika stood still and narrowed her eyes happily. I was just glad I could make friends with another Bamboo like this. Because things were difficult at home. So maybe that was why—or maybe it was because I’d gotten a little weird, after all—I wasn’t really bothered by the fact that there was a dead body right next to me.

  “You’re not going to the meeting?” I untangled her hair while I was at it.

  “Huh?! You really know your stuff, huh, Nako?”

  “Oh. Yeah. Um…”

  “I don’t go! Too annoying! But at least I know where the meeting is held!” she declared, thrusting her chest out. And then she looked at me and muttered, “Hey, maybe I could take you?” like she wanted me to like her or something. I nodded, delighted.

  Marika had me climb on her back and then shot up into the night sky without any preamble whatsoever. The winter wind howled as it bit at my cheeks. I held my breath, and we cut through the night.

  We raced upward through the night sky to a point halfway between the town below and the town above. And then Marika cocked her head as if to say “Huh?” and came back down. Apparently, she’d passed it.

  Dropping down suddenly near a slanted factory on the road to school, she let me off behind a tree and stepped toward the building on tiptoes. The exterior walls were covered in galvanized sheet iron and pocked with holes here and there. Then she beckoned me with a hand, and I drew close too. I peered inside as instructed.

  The fish cannery. The production line operated or didn’t depending on the day, perhaps because of the poor economy, so even if you were lucky enough to get hired on, there were lots of days when there was no work. Yoji still brought cans home for me all the time, though.

  Inside, countless candles flickered and shimmered, densely packed together. The flames were dazzling. People were also in there, standing among the candlesticks. Lots of them. Silent. Stiff, like unlit candles.

  Aah! So this is the meeting!

  I couldn’t believe how easily I’d made it to this secret place. Lost in the moment, I looked for my Bamboo, Mustah, in his black shirt. But the plant was filled with so many people it was hard to pick him out of the crowd.

  The majority of people were wearing hats in primary colors like red and blue, or massive crowns, or had silver decorations swinging on their heads. Right. On meeting nights, Yoji always left the house carrying a red hat. When I saw the Bamboo in a group like this, the hats looked like these festival costumes I’d seen somewhere a long time ago, on indigenous tribes up in the mountains in China. Which I guess meant these were ancient Bamboo who had crossed the ocean from that far-off country. Oh, and sprinkled through the crowd were also people in simple clothing, like what Mustah wore. Maybe these were the younger ones who’d become Bamboo in Japan.

  I listened in and heard someone talking. The voice was that of a child. And there was something like a shining silver throne in the center?

  Marika yanked on my ear roughly.

  “Ow!” I was startled. “W-what?”

  “We’re going. They’ll see us.”

  “Oh! So like—” She abruptly shoved me onto her back, and in the blink of an eye, we were dancing up into the night sky again. Hyoooo! The wind howled in my ears.

  Then I remembered that if you told a human being the time or the place of the meeting, they cut off one of your arms as punishment. But when I thought about it, this stray Bamboo had just killed a living human being and drank his blood. That was a much more serious crime. She’d be locked up in a barrel and buried in the ground for that. So this Marika didn’t go to meetings, and she didn’t care about the rules at all?

  I finally started to be a little afraid. Maybe my head had cleared. When I remembered Mustah, I felt homesick suddenly and started wanting to make it home alive again. I was angry and hurt, but I didn’t actually want it to end like this, with me never seeing Mustah and Yoji again.

  We flew straight ahead into the night sky. Marika was clearly used to flying since she was pretty good at it, but the ride was a bit bumpy. We began making our way back to the town below.

  “So you don’t worry about the rules, huh?” I asked.

  Marika snorted in surprise. “Nako, you really do know your stuff, huh! But, like, it doesn’t matter what I do. No, I mean, like, I decide what I do. I always follow my own rules.”

  The snowfall grew heavier. The full moon began to disappear. My breath was frozen. I was freezing. Maybe because the body of this stray Bamboo was cold as ice.

  “I only eat the bad ones.”

  “Huh?”

  “Like, guys who kill people and don’t get caught! Guys who trap people and then pretend like they had nothing to do with it! I only pick guys like that.”

  So you’re not like God then, eh? I replied, but only in my head.

  The god of this town stole lives, ripped them up from the root, and it didn’t matter how good the person was or how hard they were working to move forward. None of that mattered to this god. This god did the deed like a starving beast. Was Marika’s eating people any different?

  We danced back down to the place we had started from. The man in the work clothes was already frozen solid. Marika kicked at his body violently and sent it flying. Her long black hair was swept up in the wind and swung around wildly, and I watched in fascination.

  “This guy here, he killed somebody!”

  “What?”

  “I been living under the prefab school for ages. I hear all kinds of things down there. Last month, the teacher there, he got killed, you know. This is the guy who did it. For money, that’s all.”

  My whole body shook. I peered at the body lying on its back, a block of ice on the ground. It was the old janitor guy. Mr. Yu’s childhood friend, the one who used to go to school with him way back when. He had aged terribly these last few years. His frosted eyebrows had gray hairs in among the black.

  God never did this for me. Retribution. Punishing the wicked.

  I stood stock-still and looked down at the terrible death agony on his face.

  “Can we hang out again?” Marika’s voice wavered unsteadily and was yet somehow sweet.

  The question brought me back to myself. I nodded slowly. It felt like the earth under my feet had tilted off to one side and a tiny me had slipped and fell into the hands of something very bad. But I wanted to see her again. I did. Before I knew it, I was peeking at her wide eyes and returning her smile.

  The snowfall grew still heavier.

  “It’s time for you to pull yourself together, Kyo! You’ve been totally spaced out for I don’t know how many weeks, and now you’re really losing it!”

  “I’m not losing it. Whatever. Shut up.”

  “Now, look!”

  The next night, I sat on the sofa, mouth half-open, absent even as they nagged and yelled. Yoji was pacing intently around me, while Mustah just watched from the side.

  I hadn’t gone to school again. Because I’d been up until dawn, I’d slept the whole day. And when I’d woken up in the evening, I was annoyed at the idea of sitting and waiting for the whiny Bamboo to leave for work. I wanted to go and see Marika.

  Yoji had somehow realized that something was going on, but he had no idea what it was, and he was irritated. This was annoying, and I kept my eyes turned away.

  “Enough! Just leave him!” Mustah said, in an unusually cold voice.

  What? I felt my heart jump and shrink.

  “Mustah. You say that, but it’ll be too late once something actually happens. It’s just, what exactly is the something…”

  “That’s why I’m telling you—just leave
him!”

  “Why on earth am I so worried, though? Hmm, Mustah?”

  “Let’s just go, Yoji!”

  After they finished their nimble boxing-match grooming session, they flew off into the night sky, from where the snow that had started last night continued to fall. I saw them off out of the corner of my eye.

  A complicated jumble of emotions welled up in my heart; I was relieved but also so sad I could hardly stand it. At any rate, the straightforward love I had had for them, the simple joy of just being with them, that profound happiness—it all felt like a fond memory to me now. Maybe it was because I had been a child then. Growing up, changing. That complexity.

  The flames of the candles flickered fiercely in the frozen wind.

  Snowflakes wafted down to the icy ground. My breath was white. The ends of my fingers were cold. The tips of my long hair were almost frozen now. As I wiped at her face, Marika looked like she could hardly contain her delight. She grinned, flashing the pearly teeth in her large mouth. This grin, the look of her face—it was all very Bamboo indeed, so I was also utterly delighted.

  Tonight made it a whole week of going to hang out with Marika once night fell. I’d washed her ragged clothing, done up the buttons the right way. Her hair had been tangled like a rat’s nest, so I’d cut it short. I’d put lipstick on her too, a little mark of femininity for the girl Bamboo. And Marika actually cleaned up pretty well, revealing a good-looking girl beneath the mess of hair and rags. But every night, by the time we met, she would be filthy again. I got used to it soon enough and set about tidying her up, my own little boxing match. It was fun.

  “But, like, okay.”

  “Whaaat?”

  “You’re the only one who gets to grin here, Nako. I mean, I can’t see my own face! I haven’t seen it in aaaaaages.”

  “But, I mean, you should show up in photos, right?”

  “Liar! I did that forever ago, and it didn’t work.”

  “Probably ’cause you used a digital camera. Bamboo totally show up on film. I don’t know why, though… Right. You wanna try it?” I said, wanting her to like me.

  Marika nodded gleefully, so I got even happier. She let me on her back, and we whooshed through the night sky. When I stepped into my empty house, Marika followed me, ever so timid. She still had her shoes on, though, so I hurriedly got them off of her. And of course the soles of her bare feet were filthy too, so I wiped them off with a cloth.

  I pulled a Polaroid camera off the shelf and took her picture. Marika leaped back like a wild animal at the sound of the shutter, and I laughed. I dried the photo that slid out of the machine and handed it to her.

  “Whoa! My face!”

  “You look really cute in this, huh?”

  “Okay! You too!”

  “Oh! No, I do—”

  Marika grabbed a different camera and pressed the shutter roughly. At an angle so that I was in it too. I snatched the machine from her hands.

  “This camera, you have to take the film in to be developed. And if we do that, they’ll find out.”

  “They? Who?”

  “Oh! Umm.”

  “And, like, this house—whose is it?”

  I tried to answer, said nothing.

  “I got it!” Marika scrunched her face up spitefully, like she was suddenly burning with jealousy. “Some idiot Bamboo’s keeping you here as a pet, right, Nako?”

  “No! That’s not it! It’s…” I fell silent for a moment. And then: “They’re raising me. They love me.”

  “…Why are you mad? You got a super-scary look on your face!”

  “I’m not mad. It’s just, like, I don’t care what you say about me, but I don’t want anyone to say anything bad about them.”

  When I rebuked her, Marika’s face grew even stiffer for some reason. She took up the thread seriously and began to mock me. “Oooh, Nako! Bamboo pet! A big ol’ dummy who’ll do whatever a Bamboo says!”

  “Marika!”

  “Do what I tell you too!”

  I was surprised by how cute her angry face was. So cute that I swooned, and my knees almost buckled beneath me. I’d never gotten the appeal of girls, but in that moment, I felt it like a flash of insight. I was seized by some power I didn’t understand. My shoulders slumped, and I hung my head. “Fine. But what am I supposed to do, Marika?”

  The girl gave me a triumphant grin.

  From that night on, surprisingly, I began to obey Marika’s orders. She made me look into all kinds of things during the day. Which is why I started wearing my uniform, riding my scooter, and going to school again. That said, I didn’t go to class; I just stayed in the library all day. After sunset, I’d meet up with Marika and tell her what I’d learned.

  At some point, it started to feel like a dream. Aah, if only I could be close like this with Marika forever. I mean, this Bamboo needed me. So I also secretly thought that someday, perhaps in the near future, she would transform me.

  Looking at it from this perspective, I really appreciated how keenly Bamboo needed partners. Since meeting me, Marika was a different person. She was clean, her face animated. The time alone must be too great a burden for grass monsters, given that they couldn’t see themselves in mirrors, lived such long lives, and walked the night. Yoji had probably been like that too, back when he was all alone. He’d been reborn when he’d found the partner he had in Mustah.

  But I wondered whom I’d want to be with if I managed to become a Bamboo. Would I hang out forever with my sweet Marika like this? Or would he become my beloved, after all? I didn’t really know myself. I had only just met Marika. But I had been with Mustah since I was ten years old. He hadn’t changed a bit from that night. He was still my Bamboo.

  My research during the day was about crimes that happened in the town above—murders, corruption, cold cases. In both the town above and the town below, the police and the courts were ineffectual. It was rare for anyone to be arrested, no matter how terrible the crime. Meanwhile, Marika needed to eat. And also sought the thrill of the hunt. Which was why I found the criminals, and Marika flew.

  High up in the winter sky, an Asian girl with short hair and red lipstick appeared, and by the time she was charging down toward your carotid artery, it was already too late. For organization men in expensive suits, getting out of foreign luxury cars. For groups of youths who attacked shops in the middle of the night and left the ancient owners dying in pools of blood. For a man who had “accidentally” knocked his stepchild into a well. Divine punishment dropped down from the sky.

  God might not have been able to tell the difference between good souls and bad, but Marika could.

  The extraordinary blood-soaked memory of what I had experienced that night long ago lived on in my heart. It had been there the whole time. I was loved, I had a happy life, I worked hard in school—but it was still there. It was always there. Holding its breath, hiding. Which was why this little game of “stealing flames” was so cruelly enjoyable.

  One night, we were walking along together when we heard a scream. Instantly, Marika got excited and flew off. I chased after her to find a woman on the ground. A prostitute, still young, slender, elegant. Her makeup was on the thick side, but I could tell she was around the same age as me. She had been knocked unconscious. The ass of the man hunched over her was swarthy, shining. The snow danced down around him, and his skin glistened wetly.

  Marika was pleased. She dropped down in a straight line. The man looked over his shoulder.

  “Ah! Marika!” There was a strange edge to my voice.

  “What?!” Marika stopped and floated in the sky, turning baffled eyes on me. “Stay out of my way!”

  “Let him go. Please… He’s a friend.”

  “Hey, is that maybe Professor Nako?” Niita called to me quietly. His pants down around his ankles, he stared at me, looking foolish, naked from the waist dow
n. His knees were on the ground, which was wet from the snow.

  “Huh? Your friend? This sick pervert?” The look on Marika’s face said she was having none of it. And she wanted blood. She bared her teeth ferociously. I probably wouldn’t be able to stop her again.

  I screwed up my face and shouted, “Niita! Run!”

  “Huh?”

  “You know criminals are being hunted down and killed lately, right? It’s all been me and this girl! So listen, just run! Go! Hurry!”

  “You and your friend? Killing criminals? Huh? But what happened to high school?”

  “I’m telling you, go! Don’t look back, just run! Don’t ever let me see your face again—” My throat choked shut.

  In my ears, I suddenly heard Niita’s clear voice from that day long ago.

  Nako! he called, in a voice filled with affection. If you grow up and turn into garbage, then there’ll be nothing for me to believe in in this town.

  I dropped to my knees on the spot and buried my face in my hands. I thought of the time that had passed. Grieved for the things I’d loved.

  The snow sparkled and scattered, fluttering down in the sky. A faint wind blew. I heard footsteps, Niita running away with my past. The snowflakes were beautiful again tonight.

  Niita had changed. And so had I. Now I was partner to a stray Bamboo who hunted people at night. I had also become someone who stole flames.

  For a few days after that, I stayed home, even after night fell. I kept my head down when Marika came flying around outside the window. She might have been a stray Bamboo, but even she hesitated to actually come all the way into the house. After a while, she’d give up and fly off somewhere. But she’d be back again the next night, sitting still in the darkness, like a dog waiting for its master.

  I opened up my textbooks, thinking I might start going to class again, though it was fairly late for that. But it would be winter break soon, and if I worked really hard, I could probably catch up—that’s what I thought. I wondered if it would work.