The Shut Ins

by Katherine Brabon

  I don’t recall that we were good friends in elementary school, but I was aware of him enough that when we both began at the same junior high, at the age of thirteen, I recognised him. We shared a desk and sat in silence. One day, on my way to school, I saw Hikaru walking. It must have been early in the school year because the morning was warmer than usual, and I remember the sun hitting the concrete buildings.

  We walked to school together that day, and began to walk to school together after that. Along the way, I remember, there was a construction site. It seemed to have been abandoned. I think it was like that for all our junior high years. I never saw any workers there. Hikaru and I would stop sometimes at the unfinished building and look at it for a long time. A few times, we went inside the empty shell. Why did they never finish it? I did not understand the pointlessness of it. Hikaru said he liked the site because it didn’t feel part of the regular world we lived in.

  We were friends, but awkwardly. Sometimes we had very long conversations; sometimes we could not find anything to say to each other. When Hikaru started skipping school, in our last year of junior high, he would go to the construction site. It was the time for our high school entrance exams. He would spend the day moving from building to building, he told me, sitting or reading or closing his eyes in the winter sun. Sometimes I sat with him before school. I always got up to leave in time for class, but Hikaru had folded in on himself, gone quiet, tucked away from the world. Like I said, the normal path did not come naturally to Hikaru. I always thought his mind must have been strong, to block out the consequences like that. When the bell would have been ringing at school to signal the end of the day, he walked home. He did this a lot in our final year. But Hikaru’s father had paid for an expensive cram school which his mother forced him to attend, and Hikaru miraculously passed the high school entrance exams.

  We ended up at the same high school. It was not a particularly prestigious school, not one good enough to get you into Waseda University or anything, but it was acceptable. My parents were satisfied and I was quietly relieved to know Hikaru would be at the same school. He altered my life in ways I knew were significant, even if I could not name them. Hikaru represented something different. Although I had a few girlfriends, I was comforted by Hikaru’s quiet, slightly detached presence. He seemed out of place in the world, but there was something reliable about his character. If he said he would come to my house at seven forty-five before school, he would be outside the house at seven forty-five. The other people at school were not so reliable. Of course I was teased sometimes for being his friend, but this does not seem to have had any lasting effect on me. In fact, I can’t even remember the words that were said to me by my schoolmates.

  We continued to go to the abandoned construction site, even though it was not on the way to our high school. Something about the place drew us both to it. I cannot speak for Hikaru, but I felt that it was a place without time and expectation. Once, I stayed there for the morning with Hikaru. During those few hours, as Hikaru and I walked around—it was cold and he gave me his jacket—I was numb to the consequences of my actions. It was a new feeling, both freeing and troubling. I have felt it on rare occasions since. I wondered if this was how Hikaru felt all the time, when he refused to go to school. I had the feeling of crossing over into a place that buffered me briefly from the world, but I sensed that if I stayed there too long, I would never come back. As if caught in a maze without an exit, I wouldn’t be able to return. I went to school at midday. When my parents punished me for skipping school, quite severely, I felt almost a sense of relief because I had made it back to the world where people lived. I had an inkling of Hikaru’s world over there; it seemed perilous and alluring. It still seems that way to me.

  Three years later, with just a few months left of high school, Hikaru’s mother arranged for him to go and live with her brother, who owned a shop on the other side of Nagoya. Hikaru told me this news as we sat against a wall in the construction site. The place was completely still. Hikaru had barely been to class that year, the last and most important year of school. And in the two years of high school before that, he would be absent for weeks or a month at a time, and I would not see him anywhere, not even at the construction site. His parents had decided that a drastic change was necessary.

  A few days later, Hikaru was driven to the other side of Nagoya to live with his uncle Koji and work at his shop. We were seventeen. Perhaps it was then, at that significant age when everything feels heavy and your stomach flutters at the smallest events, that Hikaru began to truly to leave this world and inhabit somewhere else—the other side that people like me don’t really get to see while we live in the ordinary world.

  After work I meet J at a small bar. The place has wooden tables and a middle-aged bartender who moves between his posts in silence. We talk about the girl who died in our apartment building.

  ‘I’ve heard about it before,’ says J, taking a large mouthful of beer. ‘Using bath salts and cleaner. It’s dangerous. And it’s selfish; they can kill other people while they’re doing it.’

  J says that the key to success is collective effort. Individual whims and weaknesses are emotional and unhelpful. The girl has violated what he believes in. J wears his work suit now, his thick hair has gel in it. It’s warm inside the bar; his wedding band looks stuck on his finger. J is steady, works long hours, and is comfortable with being part of the systems that make the world run smoothly. He respects the company. My work is part time and, to J, unnecessary with his wage. I teach Japanese to foreigners. To him, my work is sort of a hobby. When we first met I was shocked by J’s pounding, almost desperate sex that seemed to suggest a buried longing, something violent. I sometimes think about this side of him when we’re sitting in a bar in our work clothes, surrounded by other people who have also just finished work. Once every few weeks we meet up with some of his colleagues and their girlfriends. A couple of times a year we spend a weekend near the coast or at a hot spring in the mountains. These trips are planned well in advance. Our life is predictable in that way.

  ‘I saw the mother of an old school friend yesterday,’ I say. ‘I haven’t seen that friend in so long.’

  J is looking at something on his phone. He nods with faint interest. It is too hard to convey the story of Hikaru to him. Part of me curls inwards, holding this secret.

  We return to the apartment. The building is quieter than usual, or perhaps I’m imagining this because of the girl’s suicide. I hear no voices in the foyer, no TVs blaring through doors. Our apartment is dark and cold. J pours a can of beer into two glasses. He turns on the TV and sits on the floor cushion. I make a simple dinner.

  J pours a whisky after dinner, drinks it in one and then pours another. He says we should probably visit my parents on the weekend; would I organise this? I murmur in reply—I know I will have to do it. We visit J’s parents a respectable number of times a year, even though they live all the way down in Kyushu. He makes us do the same for my family, who still live in Nagoya. He never seems to enjoy these visits, to his parents or mine; it’s just something that has to be done. My parents approve of him. To be a new wife is a good thing, my mother says. Fewer people are getting married and having children these days. Who will keep the country going in the future?

  J falls asleep almost instantly. Whisky does that to him. I lie awake and look up at the walls, the door, the ceiling. Faint grey light creeps in through the blinds from the streetlights outside. I roll over and pick up my phone. I look again for Hikaru, but he does not exist online. It is disconcerting, knowing that I cannot make him live again in my mind through whatever images might be out there. I have no idea what kind of existence he occupies now.

  All those years ago, Hikaru had come back from his uncle’s after three months. Something happened there to make him return. It was summer, school had finished. I got a place at a university in Nagoya. I don’t think Hikaru ever entered that world of college and jobs and relationships. The journey to live wi
th his uncle was a last attempt at a life in this world, a life lived according to the rules of others.

  During that summer after I finished school, I called the Satōs’ number, and I emailed Hikaru. His mother always had an excuse—he’s not well, he can’t come to the phone, he’s not able to talk right now. Hikaru never replied to me. I knew something was strange, that Hikaru had gone somewhere. I didn’t know how to say this to anyone, I didn’t know what to ask Mrs Satō. I started university, became busy, a new life began. I struggled to find a shape for it; my life felt temporary, expectant, reliant on something else happening. Perhaps I was waiting for Hikaru to return. The feeling of waiting stayed with me. I still feel it now. I gave up calling and after that summer, ten years ago, I didn’t try to make contact with Hikaru or his mother again.

  The next evening, I look out for Mrs Satō in the subway corridors. I look out for her near the department stores. People move quickly through the passageways, bound for places, full of purposes they believe are important. Their faces appear neutral. They carry bags or briefcases. I remember that her name is Hiromi. Mrs Hiromi Satō. I called her Mrs Satō back then. I board the subway carriage. I had hoped I would see her.

  J sends a text message; he is going drinking with colleagues tonight. I stand in our boxy shower tub, running the hose over my body, and think of the girl who died a few floors above. Her parents were asleep in the next room, according to the whispers in the hallway on the morning it happened. I wonder if it was bullying that took her life. That’s usually the cause when it’s someone so young. J had said that the building company would charge the girl’s family an expensive clean-up fee, for all the trouble.

  I pour a glass of beer and drink it standing in the kitchen. I make some instant noodles. I lie in bed. J often has long client dinners or drinks with colleagues after work. It’s just what is done, a responsibility.

  Around three in the morning he walks in with slow, heavy footsteps and the chill of the February air. He opens the sliding screen door, undresses and lies down on the futon with his boxer shorts on. He falls asleep quickly. The smell of beer and remnants of the cold wash over me. On a Saturday in late February, J and I go to a hot spring resort in Takayama. This is something we organised a long time ago. We stand side by side at Nagoya Station, waiting for the train. The Wide View Hida Express passes through from Osaka on the way to the mountains in Gifu Prefecture. I remember when Nagoya Station was built in 1999, when I was thirteen. At the time it had the largest land surface of any station in the world.

  ‘We’re going back to where you were born,’ says J. ‘You can show me around.’

  ‘I don’t remember it.’

  ‘Of course not.’ He puts his arm around my shoulders. ‘It was just a joke.’

  He’s in a good mood. His colleagues take short trips away with their partners, and he says we should be like that too. To J, this is the right thing to be doing.

  The reasons my parents offer for why we left Gifu when I was a baby include: a provincial mountain town was no place to raise a child in modern Japan; my father wanted a proper job in a proper company; my mother wanted to escape the alpine winters. In their apartment in Nagoya, there are hardly any photos of my parents’ old life in Gifu. There are a couple of me as a baby, labelled in grey pencil: Gifu, 1986 and Gifu, Mai. But they show me inside a house, just your average living room with tatami floors and screen doors, so really they could have been taken anywhere.

  The train arrives. We sit next to each other and put our takeaway lunch boxes on the fold-down tables in front of us. The train begins to move. J opens some kind of business magazine and crosses one leg at the knee. A few kids in snow jackets play in the seat in front. Neat businessmen sit on the other side of the aisle. I look out the window as we clear the platform, the city, the suburbs. Tall reedy plants bow to one another like old ladies whispering secrets. We sit mostly in silence and at midday, we eat our lunch. The train slows as it carves through the alps. Finally I see the snow.

  We arrive in Takayama. A heavy layer of snow stretches along every street, so heavy it’s as though it never ends and it’s winter everywhere in the world. A thin man in a black suit and winter coat holds up a sign from the guesthouse, and we follow him to the courtesy bus. J looks pleased that everything is unfolding as it should. We are shown to our room, where we take a bath together. It is a small cedarwood square bath. I like the smell of the soft wood. We share the water in silence. J steps out first and holds a towel out for me. I wrap it around my body, feeling a moment of safety, then J puts his hand under the towel, puts his warm, wet fingers inside me and we kiss. Lately when we have sex, which isn’t very often, I think of J’s eagerness to have children. I’m waiting for him to say it is time and I don’t know what I will do then. The futon has not been set up yet, so we lie on a blanket on the floor. I float away with my mind, as though the sex isn’t really happening to me. Hikaru passes through my thoughts. I consider the various possibilities for finding him. I hold my small secret and look out the window as J heaves and sweats above me.

  J is sick the next morning. He blames the seafood at the guesthouse dinner. I think he drank a lot of sake too. He comes back from the bathroom and lies under the futon covers. His face shines red. He tells me to go and do something. I take the bus alone to an outdoor hot spring. The sunlight is piercing; the bus chases a precarious white road.

  I sit on a stone step in the outdoor bath. Snow floats through steaming air, children trot between baths, women speak and laugh. I enjoy the warm, liquid grip of water around my neck. Across from me is a woman with her small child. The mother is young, with long hair. She holds up a small piece of snow, the toddler looks up and takes it in their fingers, pressing it to their mouth. Both of them are naked and they look happy. I don’t know if my mother ever took me to an outdoor hot spring when we lived in Gifu Prefecture. I don’t even know the name of the town where we lived. If my mother had bathed with me as a baby, I think it would have left some resonance, which I do not feel, between us. I do not think she bathed with me. My old grandmother was the only sign of Gifu in my life, bringing new smells when she visited—cooking with herbs and vegetables brought from the mountains, and serving Hida apples, sliced, for dessert. Then she died and Gifu disappeared. I look down at the snow melting instantly on my warm body, my arms and chest. In the mountains of Morocco, great veils of dark sand fly over with the desert wind and coat the snow, turning it red. The skiers—do their blades carve white sashes through the snow? Do they pierce the red veil? I touch my stomach through the water.

  Night arrives too quickly and I return to the guesthouse. The room is warm, a confined humidity despite the winter outside, suffocating with J’s smells, sleep and breath, his upset stomach. He is sweating in his sleep. I open the window slightly, for air, and leave the room again.

  Takayama glows, orange snow, wooden rooftops, umbrellas protecting against snowfall. I walk in it. Still warm from the guesthouse room, snow melts on the skin on my hands. Down a ridge, I hear drums and come upon swollen light, a deserted car park, schoolchildren practising a drumming performance. It’s the kind of drumming that starts in your chest rather than outside it. I walk towards the sound like a woman hypnotised. I look at the children and their classmates watching the performance, and I wonder if one of the girls could be a version of me, the girl I was going to be before my parents uprooted me from that path and took me to Nagoya. After a few moments, I’ve found the one who might be me. She has long hair to her elbows, she’s thin, not tall, is rugged up in a coat and hat. She stands slightly to the side of the group watching the performance, and smiles while the others watch or whisper to each other.

  Hikaru, maybe he found his other one; another self he knew he could have been. I invent fantastic things that have happened to him in the ten years that have passed. I also think of the people I see sometimes, living in tents or makeshift shacks in Nagoya, their plastic bags and buckets, blue tarps and hanging clothes surrounding the
m with a sad kind of order.

  When I return, the guesthouse room feels small and ancient and too far away from the brightness of a city. I join J on the futon, leaving the window open, for air.

  The next week, on my way home from work, I see Hiromi Satō again in the basement of Nagoya Station. This time she is less formal with me.

  ‘It must be a good sign,’ she says, smiling. ‘Two encounters after all these years.’ Her expression is warm. She holds two thick plastic shopping bags, one in each hand, and has a black handbag over her shoulder. It’s rush hour; we are two rocks in the current of the crowd. Hiromi suggests we have tea, perhaps on a weekend, if it’s not too inconvenient for me. I give her my card with both hands. We nod and bow to each other and then return to the current of people in the passageway of Nagoya Station. Hiromi goes one way, I take the other.

  On a Saturday morning not long after, as J sleeps in, I put on a navy blue dress and flat black shoes. I pull on an overcoat and walk to the station. The streets are quiet, the day is bright but cold. I know the way to the Satōs’ apartment; it’s the same one they lived in throughout our school years. I take the subway to Yagoto, a green suburb with large apartment buildings. I remember Mr Satō, the husband of Hiromi, as a striking man, tall with thick white hair. He is a manager at a significant construction firm in Nagoya.