The Future Is Japanese (19 page)

Ghosts’ shadows blacken the narrow, winding twists between trees. We run toward them as they stream toward us. Within moments, we’re engulfed in dark.

I scream into the mass of ghosts. “We’re looking for her father! You know where he is!”

Torchlight illuminates Melon’s upturned face. She’s all flickers and contrasts.

Something changes in the flow of ghosts. They move around us as if we’re an island, leaving an empty space. A yurei floats into the opening.

Melon’s father.

He wears the button-down shirt from the picture, faded and grayed. Too-long slacks drape over his feet—if he has feet. Empty cuffs hang two feet above the ground.

He doesn’t have tumbling hair like traditional yurei, but what hair he has obscures his eyes. Impossible to tell where he’s looking. What he’s thinking.

“Manabu?” Melon’s voice shakes.

The ghost’s words scrape against each other like pumice stones. “
I was alone
.”

“Speak in English?” Melon pleads.

“
They didn’t think I could do it. They thought I was a coward
.”

“Please. I know you used to speak English with my mother. She can’t even say
domo arigato
.”

“
No one would hire me. I spent all day in the park
.”

A wind that affects nothing else blows around him. His clothing streams away from his body. Sometimes it presses tight against him, revealing the outline of his skeleton. His hair remains motionless, concealing his face.

I shout at Melon, “He’s not even listening to you!”

She ignores me. “I’m your daughter! From America! I knew you’d understand me. You know what it’s like to be alone.”

“
I told my mother I’d talk to her landlord about the plumbing. She said I didn’t have anything else to do. She pestered me until I said yes. She called my cell phone while I was sitting in the park. ‘Why haven’t you done it yet? You can’t even talk to the landlord.’ She didn’t think I could do it. She thought I was a coward
.”

“Please! I don’t understand! Talk to me in English!”

“
I had an interview that day. Maybe I’d have gotten the job. Who knows? I went to the landlord. I told him to fix my mother’s plumbing. He said he’d get to it. I slammed him against the wall and told him, ‘Get to it now.’ He didn’t think I was a coward then
.”

“Your … your mother’s toilet …?”

“
He said he was going to call the police. I told him, ‘Go ahead.’ They could find me in the park. I left his house, but I didn’t go to the park. I bought a train ticket instead
.”

I grab urgently for Melon’s hand. “He’s stuck! Listen! It’s what they’re like. They’re fixed … fixed on loneliness, on kissing someone, on playing games …”

“
I was alone. They didn’t think I could do it
.”

Her father has reached the end of his story that is also the beginning. He’s repeating himself now, but Melon’s still listening to him, not me. Yurei stream around us, their hair growing longer and shorter as the torchlight flickers.

I have to do something to get her attention.

I fumble in my pocket. The mokume-gane wedding ring. Polished by my worrying fingers, it glistens. I hurl it toward the yurei.

They descend, magpies after something shiny. Claws emerge from hair. Wordless, screaming voices rise.

“You see?” I shout. “That’s all they are! Picking after scraps of lives
they chose
to leave behind!”

One snatches the ring. It disappears under the veil of her hair. Others screech.

Melon’s father drones. “
They thought I was a coward. No one would hire me
.”

I rip open my pack and pull out the trash. Scissors, nail clippers, comb, compact.

I throw them toward the trees. Where each item falls, flocks of yurei descend.

“
I spent all day in the park. I told my mother I’d talk to her landlord about the plumbing
.”

“It might make sense to kill yourself if you thought it would stop the pain. But look at them! It doesn’t stop! It just keeps going!”

“
She said I didn’t have anything else to do
.”

“There’s no family here! Look at them!”

Two yurei attack each other in the air. Their claws rake toward each other’s throats.

“They’ll tear each other apart for a shred of something living!”

“
She pestered me until I said yes. She called my cell phone while I was sitting in the park. ‘Why haven’t you done it yet?’
”

It’s not enough. Melon’s gaze is still on her father. Full of longing. Full of hope.

I grab for a side pocket of her pack. She wrenches away, but I snatch the zipper. Open it, pull out what I saw her tuck there: the photo of her father’s corpse.

I throw it at the ghost’s feet. At once, he falls silent. As he recognizes himself, he becomes an arrow of greed and obsession. He dives to retrieve it, Melon forgotten.

“Do you see?” I ask. “Do you understand?”

I see the moment when Melon’s gaze hardens. She turns away from her father. I grab her hand.

Wordlessly, we run through firelit dark, terrain rough beneath our feet. We stumble over roots and rocks. Barely manage not to fall.

The howling yurei horde pursues. I pull more trash from my pack. Strew it behind us. It slows them down, but they’re still too close.

Melon shrugs off her pack. Abandons it.

I follow her lead and throw the expensive stuff. The trainers from the hanged man. A fan of money.

Our temporary lead widens. We glimpse sunlight through the trees. Burst into day so bright it makes us blink.

The shadows speed behind us. We’ve nothing else to throw.

From ahead, a drifting scent: mandarin oranges.

There she is, floating above the fork of a tree, the twisted thing that tangled me in this. I want to snarl. I want to punish her. But she’s our only chance.

“Please!” I shout. “We need to get out!”

She doesn’t rotate toward my voice. Was already facing us. Was probably watching all along.

She asks, “
The usual price?
”

“
Yes!
”

She floats toward us. Dread pricks the back of my neck.

“
Why are you helping now?
” I ask.

“
Now there are two of you to pay
.”

In front of us: her hair extending toward our bodies. Behind us: the yurei horde blocking out the light. Her hair reaches us before the horde does. Wraps us in its cocoon.

Tendrils tangle my eyelashes. Intrude into my ears, my nostrils. Horrible bug-shudder of dead-touch all over. Inescapable. We’re buried alive in her hair.

Joy sparks her split ends like static electricity. Will she ever let us go?

Eventually, the hair unwinds. I can move my fingers. My limbs. She unveils my sight last. The yurei horde is gone, passed while we were hidden.

“Thanks,” I say.

There’s acid in my tone. It’s hard to thank someone after they risk your life.

Gratitude in my tone too. Hard not to be grateful after someone saves you.

She floats a meter away from us. Her hair is back to its normal length, sweeping to her knees, no longer voluminous enough to engulf two people.

“
Consider your parents, your siblings, your children
,” she says. “
Tell the police about your troubles
.”

A lock of her hair separates from the rest. Points to a gap between trees.

“
End of a tape road there
,” she says. “
It’ll get you out
.”

She rotates to watch us leave.

“I wonder who she was,” Melon says. “Maybe she’s from old Japan. Like her kimono.”

“Hard to say.”

“Maybe she’s the first one who died in the forest.”

“Maybe.”

Melon and I sit in the parking lot. During the day, it’s filled with tourist buses. Now, no one else is here.

We’ll go back to town soon. Now we need rest.

“What am I going to do?” Melon asks plaintively.

Hard to answer a question like that. So painfully honest.

“You should call your grandparents.”

“They don’t care.”

“They might.”

She shakes her head. Looks away.

“Someone will care.”

Her voice is quiet. “Yeah, right.”

She inhales raggedly as if she’s going to cry, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t say anything either.

Speaking feelings is hard for me, but I try. “You’ll be happy. Someday. Even for a few minutes. It’s more than the ghosts get.” Remembering what the yurei said in the forest, I add, “All roads lead to Aokigahara. You may as well walk slowly.”

The words leave a too-sweet aftertaste. Sentimental. But they make Melon smile.

Maybe a little sweetness will keep her from dying so young.

Isn’t that why I’ve spent seven years in Aokigahara? Wishing to stop a girl from dying young?

We sit quietly for a few more minutes before we walk to town. I sit by while she places an international collect call to her grandparents.

Two
AM
.

Wind whistles without blowing.

My Sayomi.

She coils hair around my wrists. Draws me closer.

She’s different. Almost transparently pale. So cold that her embrace is like spring rain: sudden, drenching, cold.

Hair strips my clothes. Winds between my thighs. A humid smell rises between us. Tears and desire mingle on our skins.

She opens me. Begins her caress. Cold: both shocking and exquisite.

We half-embrace, half-struggle on the floor of my single room. Same as we’ve been for seven years. Caught between yearning and anger.

Does she blame me? For leaving? For failing to see what I should have seen?

Do I blame her for drawing me back? For tangling me in death while I still lived?

I push my fingers between her thighs. In her midst, a spot of warmth. She tenses as I find it.

Hair simultaneously pushes me away and draws me closer. Its tips tie themselves in knots. Sayomi’s expression is furious, rapturous, relieved.

All things I’m feeling too.

My tongue, melting her ice.

Her cold numbing my lips.

We shiver together as she comes.

At the apex, she screams. For once, it’s not rage. It’s consummation. It’s expiation. It’s catharsis.