The Future Is Japanese (18 page)

I don’t tell Melon. It would only scare her. She’ll eventually work it out.

Maybe by then I’ll know what to do.

The girl’s frightened inhalation warns me to halt.

I’m about to step out from underneath the canopy’s shadow. In front of us, a lightning-struck tree has fallen across its sisters, creating a small clearing.

Encroaching on its boundaries, dozens of yurei. Flocking. Screeching.

It’s daytime, but shadows swarm around the ghosts, creating temporary dark. Some hold torches aloft in locks of their hair. Firelight picks out undertones of blue and green in their white kimonos. They swoop and dart like carrion-eaters, all suddenness with no grace.

Leaders emerge into the clearing. Pass through. There are many, many more behind.

The girl trembles. Goosebumps prick my skin.

Any moment, they could smell us. They may already be watching behind their hair. Clawed hands could part their veils at any instant.

Hundreds stream by until, at last, the grimacing legion is gone, shadows and firelight with them, leaving behind mist and silent trees.

The girl starts forward into the clearing. No! I throw my arm out to stop her. She cringes as she glimpses what I’ve seen.

One last yurei sitting on the lightning-charred stump.

The air is so cold. My exhalations are ice.

The yurei’s scent drifts toward us.

Mandarin oranges.

Relief instantly warms me. “Don’t worry,” I tell the girl. “I know this one.”

The yurei’s head rotates toward our approach. Her body remains motionless. If she had a living neck, it would snap.

“
Thanks for your advice the other day
,” I say acidly in Japanese.

“A moment, please!” she replies in English. “Consult the police before you decide to die.”

The girl gasps. Her expression shows fear.

“Don’t worry,” I repeat. “This one always quotes the signs. She thinks it’s a joke.”

Melon trembles. She braces her hands protectively across her stomach. I think but don’t say,
You’re the one who wanted to meet a ghost
.

“We can’t get out,” I tell the yurei.

She switches to Japanese. “
All roads lead to Aokigahara
.”

Melon breathes raggedly. I can’t tell how much she understands.

“Hardly anything leads to Aokigahara.”

“
All roads lead to death. Aokigahara is death. All roads lead to Aokigahara
.”

“
You are not being helpful!
” I reply angrily in Japanese.

“
The forest wants you
.”

“
I’ve been here a hundred times! Why does it want me now?
”

I glare at the yurei. I know her pricks and pranks. She’s keeping something to herself.

The girl breaks in, using halting Japanese. “
Please! I need to find my father. Can you help me?
”

The yurei turns again, that neck-snapping turn. “Your name is Melon.”

Her English is very bad.

“Yes,” Melon says. She’s afraid, but it doesn’t silence her.

The yurei calls back to me, “
You come a hundred times alone and once with this one. What do you think is different?
”

Melon looks between us, confused. The Japanese is too fast for her. “Please,” she repeats. “My father’s name is Manabu. He died here.”

“Why should I help you?” the yurei grumbles. She adds in Japanese, “
She doesn’t have anything I want
.”

“
She has the same thing you get from me
,” I say. “
She has skin that wants to live
—”

The words aren’t entirely out of my mouth before I realize what the yurei is implying.

I gape at Melon. “What did you really come here to do?”

Melon hasn’t understood our words, but she knows how to read my shocked eyes. She tenses. I move forward to catch her, but I’m too late. She flees.

The yurei rises to watch her go. Her hovering form casts a sharp shadow across the lightning-struck log.

For a moment, I’m too confused to pursue. Everything is going wrong. The trees closing in. Sayomi refusing to let go.

“
One girl wants to die
,” the yurei says. “
One girl is marked by a ghost. Both belong to us.
”

“
What do I do? How do I get out?
”

“
The trees have been waiting to claim you. They won’t let you out while they’re feeding on her
.”

“
Then I’ll chop them down! Damn it! What do I do?
”

The yurei says nothing. She won’t help. She got what she wanted yesterday and now she’s watching her prank play out.

Damn her. I run past, following Melon.

“
Please reconsider!
” the yurei calls after me. “
Think of your family!
”

Melon’s still walking when I find her, but she’s turned herself in circles and hasn’t made it far.

She jumps when she feels my hand on her pack. She struggles to keep me from pulling it off, but I’m stronger and her straps are loose.

Inside: gear, clothes, hygiene items—and there: I rattle an enormous bottle of analgesics.

“What’s wrong with you?” I ask. “Why do you think you need these?”

I push the lid down and twist. Throw the open bottle. Pills rain down in a hyperbola.

I grab another. Melon fights me for it. I twist free of her grip. Scatter another pill rain.

“Do whatever you want!” she shouts. “You think I need pills? Look where we are!”

Bottle of vodka at the bottom of the pack to wash it down. I dump it. Make some mud.

Melon stomps off. Leaving her pack behind. Leaving me behind. I jog after. Catch her in a couple steps.

“Poison’s not even a good way to do it. Stick to rope. It’s faster.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

“I’m not giving you advice! How old are you? Sixteen?”

“Seventeen.”

“What the hell is wrong with you at seventeen that you think you need to come here?”

She whips around to face me. The ferocious movement makes me stagger back.

“You think I can’t have problems because I’m seventeen? My mother ran off. Okay? She ran off to Chicago when I was seven and left me in Omaha with my grandparents. They don’t even like kids. Last year, she comes home just long enough to give me my father’s name. Only time I’ve seen her since I was twelve. So I take the money I’ve been saving for college and I buy a trip here. To meet my father’s family. But they don’t want me either! Who am I to them? Some kid from another country? I’m here to find my father!”

Spit from her shouting lands on my face. I’m too stunned to answer. Not used to people emptying themselves. Not to me, the woman with the onryo who spends too much time with the dead.

At last, I think of words. “You think you’re going to find family here?” I gesture at the trees. “Make a family of ghosts?”

“Why not? You’re fucking one.”

She can see that hurts. She’s happy to have landed a punch.

“Leave me alone,” she says.

“The trees won’t let me.” I hate to say it, but it’s true. “I already half belong to them. They won’t let me leave without you.”

Doubt flickers across Melon’s face. She didn’t intend to force me to die with her.

I push at her weakness. “Your father. Will you promise not to kill yourself if I help you find him?”

She hesitates. Nods. I can see from the flicker in her eyes that it’s not a real promise. She’ll still kill herself to stay with him if she can.

As long as she’s with me, I’ve got time to convince her otherwise.

We retrieve her pack and walk in silence.

The girl’s shoes squeak as we walk uphill. Our unwashed smell clings to our clothes.

Why do I care if Melon dies and takes me with her? I’ve been here seven years, flirting with death. Letting death kiss me. Waiting for her to bring me to a height I can’t safely leap down from.

I always knew Sayomi would take me eventually, but not now, I never wanted it now. Seven years of soon, later, someday.

Maybe I never wanted to die at all.

We tread on springy feathers of lichen. Creepers wind around tree trunks like yurei hair, beautiful and confining. Fingerlike branches point in a thousand different directions.

Between trees, a shadowed mass blooms where there should be day.

The horde of ghosts.

I grab Melon’s elbow. I know where to find her father.