“This girl…”
Huh?
Ruirui stretched out a plump, childish hand and pointed at me, and I realized that Marika hadn’t told them I was actually a boy, in hiding because the organization in the town above was after my life. Even after being tortured like that, she hadn’t given them a single extra thing.
So that’s it. Okay, I’ll keep it to myself. I won’t tell a soul. You can relax. Marika’s animated voice filled my ears, and I held back my tears.
“Who, I wonder,” Ruirui continued, “is this master Marika spoke of?”
Someone came up from behind me and twisted my arm in the opposite direction. I cried out in pain.
“All we know is the address. A small cottage by the beach. Now, there aren’t too many Bamboo living in that area. Because we are descended from a mountain people and do not care for the sea, hmm? So it would seem we have a somewhat eccentric Bamboo on our hands. We were, however, not able to get a name from the criminal, unfortunately. Now then, let us see…”
The cavernous space was utterly silent. My own cries were the only interruption.
Finally, they dragged people out of the herd of Bamboo. One from deep on the right. And one more from the opposite side. A man with dark skin and a beard in a black shirt—Mustah. A red hat in the folk tradition and a white shirt—Yoji. Both were expressionless, like waxwork. They were trying not to look at me. I too desperately tried to avert my eyes. My arm was wrenched again, and I screamed. Yoji twitched and looked back reflexively. I twisted my neck and tried to get them out of my field of view.
“About the only ones who live in that area are these two, hmm? Gyah gyah gyah!”
“I don’t know. Either. I’ve. Never seen. These people! Ah!” My arm was jerked back so fiercely I thought it would be ripped off.
“It’s obviously one of them!” Ruirui continued in his high voice. With a look in his eyes that said he wouldn’t let us get away. “Or should we burn both?”
Burn? Execution by fire?
I gasped.
Noticing that the color had drained from my face, Ruirui flashed me a curious smile. “Now then, who raised you?”
My mouth was dry. Outside, a bird sang. The sky had been pitch-black, but now a faint light was starting to grow in the direction of the ocean. The flames of the candles flickered and snapped in the wind. The snow was ice-cold.
“It’s getting to be dawn. We’re out of time. Aah, such a bother. It’d just be easier to punish them both, hmm?”
“Stop. Please stop.” I shook my head. And I looked at Mustah and Yoji, my face still turned to the ground.
They both had someone behind them twisting their arms and pushing them forward. I couldn’t read either of their faces. They weren’t signaling me in any way, either, not trying to tell me, Kyo, do this, Kyo, do that. Yoji with his pale skin, his quiet eyes. Mustah’s entire body was stiff either in anger or in fear.
I remembered that I’d fought with Mustah before and we still hadn’t made up. Lately, it was always like that. It had been better when I was a kid. I hated this. I couldn’t stand it.
“Now then, now then.” Ruirui’s voice echoed through the great hall. It was almost like he was speaking right next to my ear. A hypnotic echo.
I inhaled sharply. The snowy wind blew in from outside, threatening to extinguish the flames of the candles. The color of the sky gradually changed.
“Which one were you raised by, Nako, or whatever you’re called?”
“Stop… Don’t ask me…”
“Then they’ll both die. Is that what you want?”
“No! No!”
Mustah. My Bamboo. Please! Don’t die!
I reached out a trembling hand and pointed squarely at the Bamboo in the white shirt.
In that instant, I knew it. I was still only seventeen years old, but this was the greatest sin of my life, the one I’d never be able to atone for. Even so, I couldn’t not commit this sin.
I was basically the same as the shitheel god of this town! Someone who happily destroyed good people without any distinction between the good or evil of their souls.
Or… It suddenly hit me.
Maybe God had never been happy about any of this.
Maybe.
I didn’t know anything. I was so very foolish.
Day started to break, and the Bamboo disappeared one by one from the cannery. The flames of the candles were also extinguished and the candlesticks put away. A stake was hammered into the ground near the entrance, and they chained Yoji to it. And not just one hand like me; they wound the chain tightly around both hands, both feet, his neck, and his torso.
“Now, then!” Finally, I heard Ruirui’s voice echoing throughout the now nearly empty cannery. He too was making to leave, receding step-by-step to somewhere. “Yoji shall be burned at the stake. For the crime of taking in a human child, raising it, and teaching it details about the Bamboo. This is a very serious crime. Gyah!”
Mustah had vanished at some point. Ruirui’s laughter also departed up into the night sky, while I sat stunned on the ground.
Yoji had only just talked with me at the house. Calmly but clearly, he had carefully explained to me the reasons why I couldn’t spend time with a stray Bamboo. In the end, I had agreed, and we had nodded at each other in understanding. Even though he had had such a small amount of time left in this life of raising me, of courting this danger.
“Accept everything,” Yoji said, mysteriously. And then he cocked his head to one side and stared at me.
Yoji! That face! I would never forget it as long as I lived.
Finally, all of the Bamboo were gone from the plant, leaving only Yoji and me, chained up. The sun slowly rose in the eastern sky, and the weak light of winter shone in through the open doors. A cold white fog—no, smoke started to rise up from Yoji’s body. I let out a long scream.
He looked straight up at the sun. Eyes narrowed at the brilliance of it. His body was still, like he was praying. It wasn’t fear.
But the moment I understood that it was all over—that face in profile! What can I say?
As I watched his pale skin burn black, my face crumpled. His body also writhed and burned, smoking. He was ostensibly being burned at the stake, but there were hardly any flames. Yoji gradually grew smaller, charred. There was the smell of charcoal, and then finally he shook slightly. And vanished.
Yoji had been around for a long time. Since long before I had been born. He had seen history. He was the kind of person who reread a book of poetry he’d brought over from China and wept. Gentle, lyrical, and wholehearted in raising the human child he had taken in for just over seven years.
What does it mean to be alive? I asked myself. The answer was, of course, the same.
That your heart moves. Love someone, find something beautiful, seek growth, be incredibly ashamed of yourself. And feel strongly.
This Bamboo’s kind heart had moved like that in life. And yet.
All the good people went too soon. The boss had taken my sister. Niita, Mr. Yu. Me, Yoji. We had made them die!
The peaceful sky somewhere off in the distance was overcrowded with the souls of good people.
Staring at the charred ground, nothing but the stake and chains remaining, I sent my heart off into space. I fled into my memories of sweet, pleasurable days.
Eventually, the sun grew high in the sky, and I could hear the voices of children playing from afar. But I couldn’t bring myself to cry out “Someone!” for help. My head still hanging, noon came, and then the day fell back into shadow bit by bit.
And then, around the time the dusk shone red, announcing the arrival of night, the sound of footfalls came from a distance. When I lifted my head, I saw a human silhouette racing into the plant. I strained my eyes.
It was a man covered head to toe in black fabric. Something like the
curtain for a darkroom. His face was hidden beneath it; I couldn’t see a bit of it. He held a large ax in his right hand. He looked like the god of death himself. But I wouldn’t flee anymore. I simply stared up at him.
There was a voice. “Kyo!”
The brandished ax shot into the air. The blade glittered sharply.
“I’m here!” Mustah’s voice.
The ax was brought down heavily. With a dry sound, the chain binding me to the stake was cut. I felt a yank on my arm, and then I was inside the thick, black fabric. Before I knew it, arms were wrapped tightly around me. The scent of bamboo filled my nostrils.
You came to save me? But it’s so dangerous still. The sun’s not down yet. Yet you worry about someone like me? How deep does your kindness go exactly?
Mustah…
I tried to say I was sorry, but the words wouldn’t come out. Even so, I forced my voice out to apologize finally, trembling.
“Kyo.” Mustah’s low voice came in my ear. “Look.”
“I’m sorry, Mustah. I’m so sorry. Yoji… I…I…”
“You, okay, you stayed with a couple of guys like us.”
“Mustah.”
“And don’t go saying you didn’t have anywhere else to go!”
“Uh-huh…”
“Come on. Don’t hurt like this, Kyo. Forget it already. Everything about this night. This had to be our fate, the three of us. The good stuff, the bad stuff, all of it… This kind of thing’s in that book of Chinese poetry Yoji liked. Although I can’t actually read it. A long time ago, he told me. On a night when we sat next to each other on the bench and talked.”
I wiped my tears away and looked at Mustah. Under the black fabric, I couldn’t really see his face. I couldn’t tell if he was grinning foolishly or was morose and sullen.
He helped wipe my tears away with the back of his hand, clumsily. I held my breath inside the fabric.
“Mustah…”
I heard a noise and saw a different blade had appeared in his hand at some point. Scissors. He cut off the hair that hung down to my waist. My head shorn, I covered it with both hands.
“Change your clothes.” He handed me Yoji’s shirt and jeans.
Why? I asked with my eyes inside the black fabric.
“You’re not safe anymore. I mean, you know too much about the Bamboo. They won’t kill you, y’know, but they’ll probably lock you up somewhere and keep you there until you die.”
“Then…”
Mustah’s eyes glittered under the fabric. I stared back at him, clutching the clothing to my chest. The answer came back to me.
“So! You have to run!” And we flew.
Given that he had fabric over his head and was holding me on top of that, Mustah’s flying was much more erratic than usual. He spun round and round, descending abruptly until we were scraping along the ground before pulling back up again. Still, we somehow managed to finally make it to the small train station in the town above.
The sun sank down into the horizon. Mustah threw the fabric aside and finally revealed his face to me. I was relieved to see his usual smile. Or maybe he was just trying to put me at ease.
We slipped through the gates of the station and ran into the building together. Now that night had fallen, people would be coming to find me once they realized I’d escaped the cannery. Mustah found a train heading toward a distant town, the next one to depart from the station, and he thrust me onto the platform, practically flying even now.
“Kyo, this one!”
I leaped aboard the train in a trance, and then something was shoved at me from behind. Something cold. I took it wordlessly. “Little Kyo’s Piggy Bank.” With all the money I had made at my part-time job.
I didn’t have time now to think through all the different things going on. I had to live. Fight. I had to run.
But…Mustah! Wait, my Bamboo!
“I won’t see you again?!” I shouted, and everything felt wrong somehow. I mean, I was back to looking like a boy now. For the first time in seven years. Once my long hair was cut, my cute scarf removed, my skirt tossed aside, I was instantly the very picture of a seventeen-year-old boy. My thin, girlish voice was strange now. My words floated off into space, blown away by the winter wind. I felt like they might even shatter like actual ice.
But still. I did actually adore my Bamboo the way a girl my age would.
“Is this the end? For us?”
“It’s not gonna be the end or anything, Kyo!”
“Mustah…”
“I mean, the end of us is your real beginning, y’know!”
“Mustah!” I shouted, resisting. No, not that. I knew it. I don’t want this. To forget, how awful, no. Mustah…
More and more people crowded onto the platform. Mustah quickly looked around in a panic, fearful of the possible pursuers among them, thinking that they might have already found us. And then he peered at my face.
I was crying again. I sounded pathetic. “I’ll never see you again? That can’t be, Mustah. My—Mustah! I mean, Yoji’s gone now too. If I go away too, like…”
“What, you worried about me? Hey, come on, I’ll be fine!”
“That’s—” I hiccupped. “But who’s going to comb your hair all nice and neat every night? Who’s going to straighten the collar of your shirt for you? You’re not actually going to live with another Bamboo? Not with me, not with Yoji? That’s…”
The house where the three of us had lived popped up in the back of my mind. The house I had left last night like always, not expecting that I’d never be able to go home to it again. That beloved house filled with memories. A new Bamboo, a stranger to me, would come and go, sit next to Mustah on the bench, and then together… Rage suddenly started to burn coldly in my chest.
Mustah shook his head. “He was the only partner for me.”
These words, spoken with such conviction, now slowly wounded me for some reason. “H-he was…”
“So, from now on, well, I’ll just go it alone.”
“Alone?”
“Stop crying, Kyo. As of tonight, you’re a boy again. No, as of a long time ago—the truth is, you were always a wonderful boy.”
“Mustah!”
The time for the train to depart was approaching. Crowds of people walked along the platform. People jumping onto the train in a panic, buying things at kiosks. I still had things I wanted to say, but I could no longer speak. And then the doors rattled shut, and we were separated by glass.
In a panic, I ran along inside the carriage and yanked open a window. Mustah also ran down the platform, drawing closer.
“Mustah!” I could only say his name, my heart filled with love.
He put a hand to my chest. Huh? What’s he doing?
“Don’t forget, Kyo!”
“What? What? Mustah!”
His eyes were terribly quiet. I held my breath. A powerfully gentle light shone on his face as though the late Yoji had possessed him. Like Yoji was there too, guiding me somehow.
“You have a flame here. You’ve always had it, from the moment you were born. That’s why we protected you so desperately. You are fire. Until their very last day, until their lives are exhausted, humans are fire.”
“Mustah…”
“Humans are fire!” The train started moving with a klank. “Don’t forget!”
Mustah ran along the platform, chasing the train. I heard the voice of that other Bamboo, the one who was gone now, gently overlaid on Mustah’s.
“As long as you always remember that, you can live through anything, no matter what kind of hard times life has in store for you. Fire! We loved that bright, special flame so deeply it practically made us crazy! No one else in this world could ever take your place. Each and every human being is a special fire! So don’t go out. Live. Please, promise me you’ll try. Say you’ll figh
t. An eternal promise between the flame in your chest and your Bamboo, a promise that can never, ever be broken!”
“Mustah!” I bobbed my head up and down. “I promise. I promise. My Bamboo. My fire for you.”
I promise to live. So you don’t have to worry about me anymore. Don’t fret over me. Don’t hurt for me. I’m okay now. I know I’ll get stronger. Tomorrow I’ll be a different me. And the day after that, yet a different me. So…
I stretched my arm out as far as I could and gripped my Bamboo’s hand. His dark skin. The palm of his hand, cold like ice. My own hand was horribly hot, like it might melt my Bamboo’s.
I wanted to say, I love you. I wanted to become docile like a small child again and just tell him how I felt. I wanted to be straightforward. But I couldn’t say it. I had already gotten too big for that.
So instead of words of love, I simply said his name over and over.
Rocking back and forth, the train picked up speed. And then…
Mustah.
Mustah.
The train pulled away from the platform. I stuck my head out the window and strained my eyes and watched as the silhouette of my Bamboo standing stock-still on the end of the platform, seeing me off, grew more and more distant.
The train hurtled forward. Time, too, passed instantaneously, a train itself running along a different set of rails.
Girl
Fifteen years passed. I managed to live undiscovered and uncaptured by the Bamboo administration of that distant town.
When I thought about it, they had cast a fairly tight net around that place with their power, but perhaps it was something like a spiderweb, a barrier stretching out in the sky above the town. If a human being ran far enough away, their power suddenly couldn’t reach you. Plus, they would have been looking for a girl.
That night, on the train, I ran from them, with nowhere in particular to run to. And then I got off in a town far, far away. Completely unlike the town where I was born and raised, it was an easygoing, peaceful place, with none of those tribal organizations of my home. And without the gangs, the economy of this town was quietly stable, so there was no great difference between the haves and have-nots.
A Small Charred Face Page 9