So We Look to the Sky

by Misumi Kubo

  When I caught her eye in the corridor, she raised her eyebrows into a troubled expression, as if she was close to tears.

  “I’m sorry to ask you this, Ryota, but would you give this to Takumi?” our homeroom teacher Notchy asked me once lessons were over. Sitting on her chair in the break room, twirling her dyed brown hair around her index finger, she handed me an envelope.

  “Tell him it’s about the payments for the third-year trip, will you? And also . . .”

  Notchy was on the chubby side, and when she shifted her weight the chair let out a nasty squeak.

  “I’m really sorry to have to ask this of you, but . . . Will you see how he’s doing? I mean, he’s barely come into school at all this term, and then there’s all this stuff today. I’ve been thinking I should go myself, soon. But, I mean, I know you two are pals. I was thinking I’d get you to scope out the situation first.”

  She looked up at me with an almost guilty expression.

  “Okay, I’ll go before work this evening.”

  Notchy looked a little relieved and grasped my arm with both hands.

  “That would be great, I’m really sorry.” Then she started lavishing me with praise for my grades shooting up so dramatically. Finally, she reached into the pocket of the white lab coat she was wearing. “Here, a little reward,” she said, handing me a throat lozenge.

  I was sucking on that overly mentholated lozenge as I pushed my bike toward the school gates when a couple of shifty-looking middle-aged men who clearly had nothing to do with the school called out to me.

  “Hey! What year are you in? Do you know Takumi Saito in freshman year?” A narrow black voice recorder was thrust toward my mouth. One of the men, a tall guy in a striped shirt, showed me a copy of the piece of paper with Takumi’s cosplay photos that had been in everyone’s desks. I snatched it away, scrunched it into a ball, and threw it down on the path.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” The man grabbed my arm angrily. I turned back toward the staffroom and called out as loud as I could, “Hey, teachers!”

  Notchy stuck her head out of the window, and not long later she was running toward the gate along with a few other teachers.

  “Shit!” the men said as they jumped into their car.

  I was getting on my bike when two girls in the kind of maid uniforms I’d seen people wearing on TV came up to me.

  “Hey, Lord Muramasa goes to this school, right?” The girls spoke in high-pitched, lispy voices like they came straight out of an anime. One of them was also clutching a piece of paper, this time with a single picture of Takumi in cosplay blown up very large. I tore the paper out of her hands, ripped it in half, and threw it on the path. “Hey! What are you doing to Lord Muramasa?”

  I got on my bike and pedaled away, the sound of the girl screaming hysterically following after me.

  What the hell was going on? And who was Lord Muramasa? The only thing that seemed beyond doubt was that whatever was going on, Takumi was slap-bang in the center of it.

  “I’m coming in,” I said as I opened the door to Takumi’s room, which was even messier than it had been when I’d come with Nana during summer vacation. What with the manga, CDs, computer games, and convenience store bags full of what looked like trash strewn across the floor, there was now no room to step at all. As I stood there, a random pile of manga I must have caught with the door cascaded to the floor. The duvet on the bed had a lump in it, which I knew had to contain Takumi, but I couldn’t get to it for all the stuff.

  “Notchy told me to give this to you. And here are your handouts.”

  I put the envelope and a bunch of papers on his desk. It was piled with books that looked as if they’d never been opened. On the corner were a few bowls and plates wrapped in plastic. Most likely today’s lunch. There was a heaped bowl of rice, one of miso soup, and a main dish of potato croquettes with a garnish of shredded cabbage and tomato. My stomach rumbled.

  “Have you given up coming to school or what?”

  No reply.

  “It was crazy today. Someone handed out all these photos of you.”

  Still no reply.

  “There were these weird journalist people and girls in maid costumes and stuff.”

  The lump in the duvet moved a little, and I got a glimpse of Takumi’s face. His already pale skin seemed to have got even whiter, so it was practically see-through. Was that what happened to you when you didn’t leave the house? His hair had grown down to his shoulders, and there was stubble around his jaw. He was fast asleep. I could hear him snoring softly. Looking down at my feet, I saw the opened case of a brand-new game that had just come out. The controller lying under his bed was connected to the TV at the corner of the desk, whose screen said game over. November sunlight was streaming through the window, shining on Takumi as he slept there like a baby and all the dust-covered objects filling the room around him.

  “Lord Muramasaaaaa!” I whispered.

  No reply. I picked up a manga and threw it at the lump in the futon. The lump in the bed stretched and let out a long, sleepy groan, then curled up again. Suddenly, it struck me how ridiculous all this was, and I walked out. On the way downstairs, I heard voices from the big tatami room that joined with the kitchen. Peering through the glass door, I saw Mrs. Saito explaining something to a group of women with huge pregnant bellies. From time to time, as she was speaking, Mrs. Saito would pound her back with her right fist, as if she was in pain.

  I was making my way toward the front door when I heard a scuttling sound from the direction of the kitchen sink, as if there was a crayfish or something moving inside there, and then a jet of water came spurting out and landed with a splash on the floor. Alarmed, I went to peer into the sink, and saw that the some of the clams left to soak there in a silver bowl had opened their shells and extended their siphons, waving them around in the water as if they were looking for something. I reached out a finger to touch one of the clam’s siphons, and it let out another spurt of water as if in protest. I gently flicked the edge of the bowl with my finger, and the clams hurriedly drew their siphons back inside their shells. There was just one whose siphon was still dangling out. I picked up the solitary clam and squeezed its shell tight shut between my fingers. There was a little sucking noise, and after a while, the siphon stopped moving, as if all its power had drained away. I stared down at the clam now resting on my palm then put it back into the water. Feeling strangely satisfied, I put on my sneakers and left Takumi’s house.

  That evening, the temperature dropped suddenly, and it was freezing cold. Akutsu and I had finished work and were bicycling back home. The road leading up to the tunnel that we had to pass through to get to the project snaked this way and that, and sometimes taxis and trucks looking for a shortcut back into town would come racing down those bends. That night, a truck appeared out of nowhere, hurtling at breakneck speed right toward where Akutsu was pedaling in the middle of the road, standing up in order to make it up the steep hill. The driver slammed his fist on the horn. I was convinced he was going to ram right into her, but Akutsu immediately cut her handlebar hard and swerved to the left, losing balance and toppling to the ground along with her bike. The truck went thundering past without even so much as slowing down, passing right beside her head. I stopped my bike by the side of the road and ran up to her.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Stupid fucking truck!” Akutsu said, getting to her feet and brushing herself off. She’d scraped her elbows but seemed to have avoided any serious injuries. The nylon tote bag that had been stuffed inside her front basket now lay in the middle of the road, and its contents—her cell phone, a handkerchief, a bag of candies, a small fabric pouch, and a clear plastic folder with a bunch of paper inside—were strewn across the road. Thinking to help her collect her things, I leaned over to pick up one of the pieces of paper, but Akutsu dashed over and snatched it right out of my hand.

  What the hell? I thought. Looking down in the light of the dim streetlamp at the papers scatt
ered across the road, I realized what they were. It was the photos, the cosplay photos of Takumi that had been in our homeroom desks.

  Crouched down on the road, Akutsu gathered up the papers one by one. Her shoulder-length hair, which had come undone, was hanging over her face. The cold breeze came in through the thin fabric of my coat and seemed to chill me to the very core. Rubbing my hands together to warm them, I leaned against the guardrail and looked down at the town. I could make out traffic lights, streetlights, houselights, and the headlights of moving cars. It looked like a different world from the place I was in right now. I thought of Takumi curled up in his house by the river and Taoka living in his fancy apartment by the station. When I thought about how far away they were from me, standing here with the cold night wind blowing around me, I felt a weird prickling feeling in my chest. I wanted to be in a warm room that didn’t let the draft in or else have someone prepare me three meals a day or something. I wasn’t really bothered about the details of the situation—I just wanted to feel protected by something. Anything.

  I turned around to see the mouth of the tunnel hanging wide open. The sight of it with its orange lights inside made the hurting in my chest even worse. Akutsu put the stack of papers she’d collected back inside the transparent folder. Under the glow of the streetlight, I could see she’d scraped her face just above her lip, and it was bleeding a bit.

  “Give me half of those,” I said, reaching out a hand.

  She looked me and smiled, then reached up her tongue and licked at the blood on her lip.

  “I don’t have a bike.”

  It was the next morning. I’d finished with my paper route and was waiting for Akutsu by the swamp when she came up from behind me and spoke quietly. Though it was really the last thing I wanted to be doing, I let her get on the back of my bike and headed for school, praying silently that no one would see us riding together.

  There was still almost an hour before lessons started, and though the school gates were open already, there was hardly anyone around. Thinking we’d be too easily noticed going in through the main gates, we went around to the back and entered by the door near the gym, taking care not to be seen by the brass band club who were in the middle of their early-morning practice.

  I hurried in the direction of the freshman-year classrooms with the bunch of papers Akutsu handed me, while she ran up the stairs to the third floor where the sophomore-year classrooms were. Diving inside the neighboring homeroom, I went around putting the sheets with Takumi’s photos on inside each of the forty or so desks. It was pretty similar to my paper route. I could hear the muffled sounds of the brass band in the distance. The ticking of the clock above the blackboard seemed excessively loud. My face was hot, and my mouth got so dry I could feel my tongue sticking to the roof. When I was about halfway through, I thought I heard someone coming down the hall. As the sound of shoes squeaking on the linoleum got louder, the beating in my chest grew faster and faster. Hugging the papers to my chest, I crouched down and hid underneath one of the desks. I heard the door slide open and the footsteps draw closer. I screwed my body up as small as I possibly could and shut my eyes tight.

  “I’m gonna do the ground-floor lockers next,” said Akutsu’s voice from above. I opened my eyes and saw her knee-high socks just inches away. When I peered up, I saw she was smiling and rolling her eyes.

  “Once a wimp, always a wimp! Isn’t that right, Goldie?”

  I finished distributing the sheets Akutsu had given me and was making my way back to my homeroom when I heard someone saying, “You’re in early!”

  I looked around to see Notchy standing there in her lab coat.

  “Uh, yeah! I thought I’d come in and get some work done,” I said hesitantly.

  “Listen, if you find any more of those things of Takumi’s, do me a favor and bring them to me, will you? Seems like there’s someone intent on leaving them all over the place. Heaven knows why.”

  I nodded and promised to do that, feeling the sweat run down my back. Glancing ahead, I saw Akutsu heading toward us down the hallway carrying a stack of papers.

  “I’m, I’m feeling really hungry! I might go and buy something from the shop,” I said in an excessively loud voice, so as to be sure Akutsu would hear. I was so pained by my appalling attempt at acting I felt ready to cry. Akutsu looked at me and nodded, then turned and disappeared into the girls’ bathrooms.

  Notchy held out a plastic bag from the convenience store containing a bun filled with sweet red bean paste and a carton of coffee-flavored milk.

  “Here, have this. Please. I know you have a part-time job and everything. You shouldn’t push yourself too hard.” Saying that, she went down the stairs toward the staffroom. I felt the energy suddenly drain from me, and I sank down to the floor, watching her disappear from sight.

  Later, on the way home from work that night, it was Akutsu’s back I was staring at as she walked along in front of me, engrossed in something on her phone. As I watched her, I thought about when we were back in elementary school. As kids from the worst projects in town, Akutsu and I didn’t have even an inkling that shoplifting was a bad thing to do. We learned how to do it from older kids, and we passed the knowledge down to the younger ones.

  In the shop by the school that sold cheap candy, Akutsu and I had stood and waited until the shop lady was distracted, then started dropping little paper-wrapped chocolates into our pockets, one by one. It wasn’t long before our pockets were full to bursting. The very moment the chocolates came spilling out onto the floor, I felt the lady’s hand grip my arm. She escorted Akutsu and me into the back room, where she made us sit up straight on our heels while she lectured us.

  When I saw the huge Buddhist altar behind her, crammed full of memorial tablets, I suddenly felt scared. I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong, but big round tears came pouring from my eyes and I apologized immediately. Akutsu said nothing.

  What bad little children needed to set them right, the shop lady informed us as she opened a drawer in her wooden tea cabinet, was moxibustion. She brought out a moxa set and deftly formed the dried mugwort into a cone, which she placed on the back of Akutsu’s hand. Then she took out a match and lit the tip of the cone. Something about the combination of its smell, which caught at the back of my throat, the plume of smoke rising up toward the ceiling, and the sight of the red flame gradually creeping closer toward Akutsu’s skin sent me into a total panic.

  “We’re sorry, we’re sorry!” I shouted, but the lady didn’t say a thing. It looked to me like the dark, wrinkled hand gripping Akutsu’s tiny arm could break it with a single flick of the wrist. Akutsu kept her eyes open, staring at the red bead of flame. Even when it was almost touching her skin, she didn’t shut her eyes. There was a smell like burning meat, and Akutsu twisted her arm and the rest of her body. Her eyes filled with tears but, unlike me, she didn’t wail or cry out. Just then, we heard a customer calling from the shop. The moment the shop lady got up, I grabbed Akutsu’s hand, and we ran for it, dashing past the shop lady and running outside.

  I remember we walked back to the projects in total silence. When we got to the swamp, Akutsu looked at me and said, “Hold out your hand.”

  She pulled out three small chocolates from her pocket and placed them on top of my palm. I looked down at them, three chocolates in different flavors sitting there.

  “Let me have the strawberry one,” she said, and then unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth. “See ya.”

  Akutsu walked off toward her apartment block. When I looked at her hand clutching the strap of her backpack, I saw not only the red burn mark left by the moxa from before but other round brown scars like stains on her hand that I’d never noticed.

  I wondered, now, if the marks were still there. Still pushing my bike, I charged forward until I was walking alongside her and tried to look at her hand as she fiddled with her phone, but it was too dark to say for sure if there were any scars.

  “I’m done with it,” I tol
d her as we walked along.

  Akutsu looked up from her phone at me.

  “Fucking wimp,” she spat.

  “You’re like best friends with Nana, and she’s going out with him. Why would you want to do something like that? I don’t get it.”

  Akutsu returned her eyes to her phone, typing something at breakneck speed.

  “Do you have a thing for him or what?”

  “You did it, too, remember!” she said, glaring up at me once more. “And you’re supposed to be Takumi’s friend! You’re just as bad as I am. I don’t see what right you have to go lecturing me! I think you’re jealous of Takumi, and that’s why you did it. I know Takumi’s mom is a single mom and shit, but his situation is still a lot more cushy than yours.”

  I didn’t know how to reply. Just then Akutsu broke into a run down the road toward the station, the opposite direction from the projects.

  “Hey! Where are you going?” I called after her, but she ignored me and crossed the street. I turned and went after her.

  “Leave me alone!” she yelled, without turning to look at me.

  “You haven’t even got your bike. You know it’s dangerous to walk back home alone.”

  “You sound like Taoka,” Akutsu said, turning off into an apartment building by the road. From her bag, she took out a bunch of the same papers she’d had at school today and with a grim look, began wedging them into the thin slots of the mailboxes. I left my bike standing in the road and went up beside her.

  “Give me half.”

  Akutsu glared at me.

  “Look, I’m used to doing this from my paper route. Give me some. With a technique like that, it’ll take you all night.”

  I wrested some papers from Akutsu and began to put them inside the mailboxes at twice the speed she had been doing it. We did a few blocks of apartments near the station, until almost all of the pictures of Takumi in cosplay were gone. Outside the entrance of our last block, we sank down onto the sidewalk, utterly exhausted. There was a sudden honk very close to us, and we both looked up startled.