Peach

It was me. I did it.

Little old me.

No one knows.

(Since then. A hundred years.)

The fog’s thick tonight. A good night for hunting!

I stood atop the telephone pole on one leg and looked down on the road below. The flashing lights. The downtown back alleys. Everything stained and sooty.

A golden cat raced by, a stray. It was of a foreign breed and had probably been pretty expensive. A man and a woman strolled past it from the other direction. A sleepy-looking middle-aged man and a skinnyish girl wearing glasses. The man was saying something. The girl nodded at the right moment and lifted her eyes my way for a second. A winter wind blew and set her scarf flapping uneasily.

That gust pushed the fog away, and the moonlight from above threw me into sharp relief on top of the telephone pole—a girl standing on one leg, a scarecrow. I winked and waved saucily with my right hand at the girl below. I didn’t have a left arm, so the sleeve of my coat fluttered emptily.

When her eyes found me, Momo—“peach”—nodded with what looked like relief. Her lips moved. Ma. Ri. Ka.

The gusts of air carried with them the hustle and bustle of the main street, the flirting lilts of the girls, the rough singsong of the drunks. Pounding music wound its way toward us. The honking of an irritated driver.

I’m jumping! The wind roared in my ears. Sudden drop! Night bird style! I had been living for more than a hundred years as a Bamboo, so I was used to this by now.

From behind, I swept down toward the strange man walking alongside Momo. Going into stealth mode, even my breath subsonic, I flew in at a low altitude, almost crawling forward, my belly scraping air. My long black hair flew up like a mane around me. The hem of my trailing black coat flapped and fluttered, the cloak of the god of death herself.

“…Having lived this long, I think human beings…life is a series of choices…I don’t regret anything…But…sometimes, well.” The man was speaking passionately about something.

I drew in quite close, nodding slyly with a serious look on my face. Seeing me, Momo sneered secretly from behind her black-framed glasses. A small smile, malicious and mischievous, but somehow timid.

“I have no regrets, but…I guess it was just after I turned forty. I started thinking that life gets revenge on you for the choices you made in the past. Like, if you hadn’t done this that time, it would’ve turned out like this, you know? Every day was like that.”

“You said before,” Momo replied, in a quiet voice, “that you didn’t go out with anyone in high school.”

“Yeah. I thought I was fine with that. But now, that choice is really getting its revenge. Which is why I’m doing this with a young girl like you,” he said, turning back toward Momo.

And then, in the blink of an eye, a third head between their two. He finally noticed my presence and took a sharp breath. Whatever else I might be, I’m Bamboo, so I offered up a creepy smile, very aware of my monstrous appearance.

The man stared at me, long and hard. He then looked at Momo, comparing my face with her suddenly demure look. “Ha?” He let out a shallow breath.

I’m way cuter than Momo. My eyes are wide in the center, round, with a particularly sharp outline. Before all this happened to me, I was probably not bad looking. But now the tip of my nose had been shaved into a pointed blade, two small holes peeking out from below, and when the wind picked my hair up, you could see my left ear had also been cut off, gone forever. My left arm had been ripped off too. I don’t show up in mirrors, so I haven’t seen myself in a while, but when I show myself like this, pretty much everyone…

“Unh! Aaaaaaaah!”

…screams like that, so I’m fairly certain I’m pretty frightening now. Although Momo seemed fine with the way I looked. Maybe she was just used to it, though.

The man pitched forward, almost falling in his attempt at escape. I watched him go, still hovering about twenty centimeters off the ground. I mean, this kind of thrill’s the whole point of the hunt! Beside me, Momo yawned very deliberately as if to make that point. I guess it was already time for her to go to bed. That yawn was basically like she was telling me not to have fun with this, to just hurry up. So I’d better get to it, then.

I kicked at the air and flew. I stretched out my right arm and left leg. Sudden ascent! And then sudden descent, spinning at high speed, tumbling! Thwk! I landed in front of the running man, and I slowly looked back at him, the hem of my long coat flapping.

The man looked even more surprised, almost like a small child, an innocent. His face said he couldn’t believe this was happening to him. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He believed that nothing bad could ever happen to him.

A hundred years since then. And I’ll never get used to seeing it. I can’t help but get excited. The look on his face. In his eyes. Dear God. It’s like I’ll never be able to tear my eyes away from this. A hundred years, and still…

I sprang up and perched like a bird on his solid shoulder. I chopped my heel into the back of his neck, bringing it down like a judge’s gavel. The man crumpled to the ground with a thud.

The ephemeral flickering of the electric lights. The alley of the shopping district. The foggy night. Cold. Cold. Very.

Momo approached sluggishly, took the man’s wrist, stuck the needle in, almost bored with the familiarity of the act, and drew out the arterial blood. The syringe comically large, like our bodies had gotten smaller.

The man grew pale. “Unnh,” he groaned, regaining consciousness. “W-why kill me? If it’s my wallet…take it!”

“Yes. Naturally, we’ll also be accepting your wallet,” Momo said, calmly. She was so collected, a doctor in the making.

“What…are you doing?”

“Well, we’re taking your blood.”

“…What?”

“Five hundred milliliters.”

“W-why?”

“Oh, we simply must have it,” Momo said, giggling softly. She was having fun, a mischievous child up to no good. Adopting a singsong tone, she chanted, “Weee are a paaaair of wannabeeeee gods of death. That. Is. Why!”

I heard quiet footsteps from a ways off. Men, from the sounds of it. Several of them. Young voices laughing. Carefree, fooling around. Maybe they were drunk.

I met Momo’s eyes, and we nodded to one another. She pulled the heavy syringe up and tossed it into the rucksack on her back. A motion she, too, was used to now. The rucksack sank heavily and bit into her overly slender shoulders, almost cruelly.

Momo stood up and looked down on the man. “Catch! And…”

“Release!” I finished.

My voice was husky and old, in stark opposition with my face, totally different from Momo’s vibrant, youthful tones. Here alone, my age showed through. After all, I’d made it past the hundred-year mark and was still alive. The same as always. Forever immature.

The men turned the corner and came into view. Kicking at the air with my right foot, I planted my left foot hard on the man’s back. It was like I was kicking a soccer ball toward the goal. His body danced up into space. I held Momo on one side with my right arm, and she suddenly giggled soundlessly—a childish coolness to show that she wouldn’t be impressed no matter what she saw. Her heart wouldn’t be moved; she had decided life was nothing. Swallowed up by the fog, we—a pair of would-be gods of death—disappeared.

The men noticed the human figure on the ground and stopped. One of them looked up our way. Momo shuddered in my arm, and I panicked, ascending rapidly. To space! Cold, cold space. Dark blue. The chill air of night crept into the two caves of my sculpted nose, and a single tear spilled from my eyes.

We rested briefly on the roof of an old mixed-use building, alighting like little birds. Momo pulled the heavy syringe out of her rucksack and handed it to me ever so carefully. Then she sat formally on her knees and set out for herself a triangle sandwich and a can of coffee purchased at a convenience store.

Supper alone, together. A night like any other. I relaxed and sat down, cross-legged, before drinking the blood. I’m an elderly Bamboo, after all. I can’t keep going the way I used to.

“Hey. We should get going, you know?”

The words came at me, and I gasped. A serious chunk of time had gone by. I staggered to my feet.

Momo, always the considerate one, decided we should take the stairs down to the ground instead of flying. Each floor had a bar on it, and the laughter and flirtations of the people inside wafted out to us in the stairwell, riding a wave of music.

Momo hung her head sadly. We couldn’t go through any of the doors. I mean, no one was waiting for us inside or anything.

“What should we do, Marika?” she asked, once we were outside again.

“What do you want to do?”

“Huh? It’s up to you. You’re the boss of me, after all.”

“Okay, then. How ’bout we head out to a different town?” I grinned as I showed her the wallet I’d taken from the man’s coat pocket.

The tension drained out of her. She looked relieved somehow.

“What? What’s up?”

“You’ll take me, right, Marika? However far away, wherever you go. You’ll take me, right?”

“Of course.” I was baffled. “What’s going on in your head, Momo? For starters, how would I lure my prey without you? I keep telling you, I need you too.”

“Good.” Momo started walking again, swaggering a little now.

I staggered after her, hiding my nose under a surgical mask, the kind you wear when you have a cold. Turning toward the station, we held hands as we walked down the main road, the seductive voices of women flirting and the music from the various bars growing louder, vying to drown the other out.

Momo’s been with me for the last six months. Before she came along, I’d been alone for a while.

Long hidden away in a mountainous region of China, Bamboo are monsters of the giant grass, botanical vampires. We live by drinking human blood. After a time, those original Bamboo were driven out of their idyllic, isolated village deep in the mountains, the kind of place found in the old Chinese fable “Peach Blossom Spring,” and criminals and whatnot were among the Bamboo who eventually drifted all the way to this island country. They hid themselves here and there, occasionally attacking humans.

When I was fifteen, a Bamboo killed my family, but he didn’t quite manage to finish me off, and I was the only one to live, infected as one of them. It’d been nearly a hundred years since then. Now I was a Bamboo through and through. A Bamboo uncomfortable with other Bamboo. A monster all alone.

It was almost a coincidence that I met Momo. I wanted to light some incense for a friend who’d died—a human—so I went to the wake. He and I went way back; he’s the reason I look the way I do now, scarred within an inch of my life. His house was in some impoverished and corrupt village at the tip of a certain peninsula. When I got there, I found his adopted daughter—a high school girl he’d taken in and raised as best he could—huddled up in one corner of the room, sobbing pathetically, naked, her body covered in bites, cuts, and traces of blood.

Momo.

At the time, I’d never even imagined we’d become close. I simply looked at her out of the corner of my eye and silently lit the incense. In that town, danger was a matter of course; it was unthinkable that a child or a girl of marriageable age could live there without anyone in her corner. And now that Momo’s adoptive father was dead, she needed someone to watch out for her sooner rather than later. I rolled my eyes. That’s just how it was in that town.

I’d flown into the room, so Momo was naturally surprised. She kept her eyes on me through her tears.

“Um!” When I moved to leave, a trembling voice called out as if to stop me. “Are you a Bamboo?”

“You know the Bamboo?” I looked back, and Momo was smiling, almost flirtatiously, despite the fact that she’d been crying up until that moment.

Her parents had never been a part of her life, and an incident in the house that had taken her in left Momo alive, and alone, and then scooped up by another Bamboo man. This Bamboo had then asked a human he trusted to become her adoptive father. So she had made it this far in life because there were people of all kinds helping her. Left to her own devices, Momo would have died long ago.

Momo was weak. And because she was weak, she was pretty good at latching on to people who appeared to be strong. She followed me silently, without so much as a glance back at the home of the adoptive father who had done so much for her.

Our situations were oddly similar, and we were about the same age in appearance. When she started to walk beside me, I got the feeling we might get along. It was the first time I’d had a girl by my side, but I got used to it pretty quick.

And now it had already been six months.

We got on the night bus and huddled together in a ball in a corner seat.

“Go to sleep, Momo!”

Momo nodded. When she was sleepy, she was as docile as a child. She took off her glasses and put them in the pocket of her gray duffle coat.

Our seat was dark. The bus was full but quiet, like all the other passengers were ghosts. A bus that ferried the dead.

Cold. Cold. Me and my body that generated no warmth. And hadn’t for a hundred years now. Me, a girl who had died ages ago that night. A member of the walking dead. Momo fell back in the seat as if she were the dead one. Her warmth came through to me, and I shivered.

Momo.

Momo was alive. She was living, a life always right beside me. Maybe that made me happy, but being happy was dangerous.

“Hey, Marika?”

Daybreak was approaching. I could hear the soft breathing and snores of the people asleep on the bus. They slept easily, unaware of the Bamboo in their midst. The red taillights of the cars in front of us flickered like will-o’-the-wisps. It was still chilly inside the bus.

“Marika?”

“Hmm?”

“Stay with me always, okay?” Momo whispered in my ear. “Marika. Marikaaaa. I don’t want you to disappear on me! I mean, like, when I think about me sleeping all nice and sound like this, and then one night I wake up and you’re gone, I get so anxious.”

“Yeah, yeah…”

“You’re the only one…who knows…”

“Huh?”

“What happened to me.”

“Ohh, that?”

“I mean, I’m never going to tell anyone else my whole life!”

“But what’ll you do if you fall in love? Won’t you have to be honest with them?”

“I won’t. I won’t tell.” Marika opened her narrow eyes and shook her head stubbornly. “I won’t tell. I won’t.”

“Mm.”

“I won’t. I won’t.”

“Mm.”

“I mean, if I never tell, then someday…it’ll be like…it never happened…maybe.”

“Yeah?”

“No way! It’ll never be like it never happened. But you’ll know, Marika,” Momo said, her voice trembling. “You’ll remember for me. Immortal Bamboo…you’ll save me.”

The bus shook even more fiercely. I sat up. “But Bamboo aren’t immortal.”

“What?”

“I told you. We live around 120 years. I figure I’ve got a little over ten years left. And just like bamboo, bam! In the end, we bloom these beautiful white flowers, and then it’s all over.”

“No!” Momo exclaimed, quietly. Uneasy tears rose up in her eyes, like a child. “Don’t die!”

“I told you—we don’t die, we disappear.”

“Marikaaaa, that’s so scary.”

“Well, when the time comes, I’ll show you some real flowers!” I said with a sneer.

Momo sulked for a while, all “I don’t want you to,” but eventually, she murmured, “Okay, then promise me. For sure, okay?” and dropped quickly into sleep again.

We reached the next town before dawn. We stayed in an old business hotel, and after closing the windows up tightly, Momo set up the simple blackout tent she kept in her rucksack for me. I slipped inside. I felt her presence outside, and I closed my eyes.

“Night, Marika.”

“Night…Momo.”

Switch. Now it was my turn to sleep.

I did it. It was me.

Me.

…But.

(A hundred years. A hundred years.)

Atop a telephone pole. Just after nightfall.

I was standing on one leg like always, wobbling back and forth like a roly-poly toy for fun. The ultramarine sky of summer was incredibly expansive even at night. It threatened to suck you in. Momoooo, still nothing?

Tonight, we were in a refined, expensive residential area that unfolded near the mountains. There weren’t too many people on the streets at night. The cicadas were singing, and I could hear automobile engines in the distance. The houses were all magnificent and massive, lit up invitingly.

Momo finally appeared from around the corner.

Tch! I clicked my tongue. She’s got an older woman on her arm now, doesn’t she? I told her younger’s better. Well, whatever. We do this every day—I can’t afford to be too fussy.

I dropped down rapidly, the hem of my long skirt billowing out, my long hair fluttering up, a lion’s mane in the wind. I alighted without a sound behind the two of them, holding my breath, keeping myself hidden. And the game begins again. I liked my prey the most at this moment, when they were focused on talking with Momo, unaware of the Bamboo behind them. Humans smiling, their guards down. Like idiots.

Her salt-and-pepper hair was permed. A dry neck poked out from a high-quality linen blouse. Her voice, though, was still younger than mine. But I guess it would be.

“Once you get to that house, turn at the second corner—oh! To the left. When you do that, there’ll be a house that’s been painted green, all right?” The older woman kindly gave Momo directions, Momo looking like she would burst into laughter at any second, nodding with a meek look on her face all the while.

I pushed my head between them, and Momo snorted, suppressing a laugh. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, her smile deepening.

My prey finally cocked her head, curious at Momo’s sudden silence, and looked over at the girl beside her. Now, she’ll notice this girl with no nose, no ear, and no arm, and she’ll scream. Heh heh, this is fun! Another night hunting.

She shrieked.

The instant she did, I tumbled through the air several times and landed on my back as if blown away by a sudden squall.

Stunned to her core, Momo turned around. My prey also stopped and looked down on me in surprise. “M-miss—er? Huh?” She began to look back and forth between me and Momo. My strange appearance. Momo and the unfathomable look rising up on her face. Sensing danger, her face stiffened. She retreated one step, then another.

A small dog popped its head out of the bag on her shoulder. Bark bark! Bark! Bark!

I started shaking.

“What?” my prey murmured.

Momo hurriedly reached out. She tried to grab the woman’s neck, but Momo had never really done anything like that, and she lacked nerve. The woman pulled away from her. My prey staggered into a run, almost pitching forward onto the ground.

“S-someone! Excuse me! Someone! Help!” The woman tried to shout, but her voice betrayed her.

I put my right hand down on the ground and staggered to my feet. Even though I was long used to not having it, the lack of a left arm made it hard to get my balance back immediately, and I fell on my back. “Dammit,” I muttered, as I kicked at the ground and flew up.

“Marika? She’s getting away!”

“Ngh! Like I’d let her!” She’s supposed to be my prey. She’s a human. How dare she! I flew into a rage.

The dog kept barking.

Dog! A dog… Honestly! Don’t worry about it. It’s fine… Fly!

My prey rounded the corner and tottered out of sight.

I’ll get you!

I could hear her wild breathing. Haah! Haah! Haah! The sound of the heart of a human getting the wrong idea—that I was some kind of killer—and panicking. Slowly but surely, this was starting to be fun again. It was plenty exciting. The nightly hunt! Old hat for me now.

The dog barked.

I descended abruptly, but I so spectacularly failed to stick the landing it was kind of amazing. I fell directly behind my prey like a piece of garbage flung onto the road. I might have been old, but this was over-the-top! Not at all Bamboo-like! Hurry up! Jump one more time! In a syncopated, staggering rhythm, my prey dropped her bag and let out a high-pitched scream before running, escaping.

I flew again. The shrill barking of the dog grew distant. My prey kept running. She jerked her chin up; it looked like she was struggling. I descended and perched on her shoulders, a large eagle. I had finally caught her!

Dig my heel into the back of her neck! I did it the way I always did, just enough so that she wouldn’t die. At least, that’s how it should have been. But.

Crack! I heard the sound of bones breaking.

Huh? I slowly got down from her shoulders. Floating horizontally, I stared at my prey’s face in profile.

The middle-aged woman slumped to the ground. Her head hit the asphalt, face turned to one side. Eyes wide open. An expression of surprise was frozen on her features. Just as I wondered if her limbs weren’t shaking slightly, the shuddering stopped.

Momo finally caught up with us. She bent over, breathing hard, her hands on her thighs as she looked over at me. Sweat was pouring down her forehead, and the scholarly black frames of her glasses were also askew. She peered at my prey.

“For real, Marika?!” she cried out, in disbelief. “Come on! What about catch and release? This is supposed to be a game! Isn’t it, Marika?!”

“It was the dog!” I roared.

“Huh? The dog? Why?”

“What was I supposed to do?!” That’s right! I mean, come on! But on this trip with Momo, I had promised to take only blood, not lives. But, like, Bamboo mess up sometimes!

“Marika.” Momo’s voice was so quiet I almost couldn’t hear her. “You killed someone, and you’re asking me what you were supposed to do?”

“Sh-shut up!” I dragged the body away roughly and tossed it behind a tree in a children’s park. In the distance, the dog was still barking. The dog… I wasn’t going to listen to that thing anymore. I bit into the neck of the dead woman and furiously drank her blood. She wasn’t young, but I wasn’t in a position to complain.

The summer wind blew, and the scent of blood mixed in with it. The night turned dark red. When I was finally full and absently lifted my head, Momo was standing stock-still.

“Marika! Marika… What is this?” She was crying. Making that face.

Huh? Is she saying this is my fault?

I snapped. “It wasn’t on purpose, okay!” I stood up, not wiping the blood away from my mouth. “Just forget about it! Come on, let’s go!”

“But she was a nice person…”

“She was an old bag you didn’t know,” I said, surprised at her reaction.

Momo stared hard at me and said nothing.

For some reason, I brought up my right hand and slapped her. She burst into tears. I turned my back on her and bit my lip hard. She didn’t seem like she was going to stop crying anytime soon. This was a problem. Stop. I’m telling you, don’t be difficult.

I left the park and started walking. The night road. When I walked, even the air shook like it was boiling. The cicada song gradually returned to my ears. It was like the closer you were to the asphalt surface of the ground, the higher the temperature.

I looked back. Momo was still crying, but even so, she was following me. I was relieved. I floated up from the ground and tried flying. Slowly. And I looked back again. Right around the end of the residential area. The dark national highway.

Momo was still following me.

I spun around and came down lightly beside her. Her tears kept coming. But when I reached my arm around her slim waist, she didn’t resist… What a relief. We’d made up once again. I flew into the air and struck a pose that made us look like a strange constellation in the night sky. Momo’s sobbing suddenly got louder. I basically had no idea why she was crying and getting so sad over the fact that someone she didn’t know had died. Momo was a weird kid, you know.

A tunnel. An unbending white passageway from the subway station. Dead silent. Like no one else existed in this world.

Because I forgot to steal the woman’s wallet, we were spending the night here today. The cold tiles were apparently comfortable; Momo slowly closed her eyes. Crouched up against me, her tears stopped, and I felt a weight lift from my chest.

Suddenly, just when I was thinking she was asleep, she asked, “Why did you get so freaked out when the dog barked?”

I opened my eyes. For some reason, Momo was watching me closely. Was she still thinking about that thing from before? I rolled my eyes. I wrapped my arm around her and looked away.

“A long time ago, I had a dog. I suddenly remembered. That’s all!”

“You’re a Bamboo, but you had a dog?”

“No, that’s not it!”

“Huh? Then…is this when you were a human being? You never talk about that. What was the dog’s name?”

A faint breeze blew through the tunnel, the wind lukewarm like tepid water. It was just us in there, so the tunnel was silent again. Momo still seemed sad, but nevertheless, she was apparently trying to bore a hole in my face with her eyes.

I sighed and opened my mouth. “Fal. Falstaff.” I gave voice to the dog’s name. For the first time in around a hundred years.

An avalanche of memories tumbled from the night sky…

I grew up in a nice residential neighborhood, like the place we were hunting tonight. Square three-story house. One older sister. She excelled at everything. I was just average. My father, a manager at a pharmaceutical company, was incredibly together, a man who hated dishonesty, who loved the straight and narrow. Given that his work involved selling pharmaceuticals wholesale, he should have been forced to toe the line with the mafia, but he always went head-to-head with them.

One day, he came home from somewhere with a dog. Said it was a present for me. This was a mixed blessing.

It was right before my younger brother was born, and I guess my parents thought I might hate him. So they decided to turn the focus of my attentions on a dog.

“This is your dog, Marika,” my father said. “He’s your responsibility. You’ve got to take good care of him.”

So, reluctantly, I started taking the animal for walks, making sure it peed and stuff. And the puppy was stupid. I’d teach him things, and he’d forget all of it right away. Training him was super annoying. But he loved food and walks and playing. And he slept like the dead. I wasn’t falling for him and loving him the way my parents had hoped, though.

But one day…

“One day?”

“You’re still listening? I was going to stop. I thought you went to sleep. One day—so, like, I was almost kidnapped, okay?” The memory flickered back to life as I continued. An ancient Bamboo reminiscing about the old days—just remembering was an effort in and of itself…

The denizens of the underworld despised my father’s strict management policies. So one day, when I went out to walk Fal, I was suddenly surrounded on all sides by black cars. And I thought, “Oh! This looks like the end!” I surrendered to my fate pretty easily. Because there wasn’t anything I really wanted to do in life to begin with, you know? Unlike my father and my sister, I wasn’t particularly smart or anything.

And then Fal, this supposedly stupid dog, started barking his head off and biting the men who closed in on us, nipping their ankles. So they kicked him, and he went flying like an old rag. I thought he was dead. I mean, he was a pretty small dog, kind of puny. But he sprang up and came running back over, barking half-crazedly the whole time.

One of the men pulled out a gun. He fired at Fal as the dog was racing around on the ground. Fortunately, he didn’t hit him, but then Fal sunk his teeth into another ankle and stayed put there. So I knew the second shot would definitely hit him. I threw myself at the man with the gun. I never dreamed I had that kind of courage in me, you know? The bullet went off course and hit Fal right in the tail. He let out this earsplitting yelp as half his long brown tail went flying. And then he started barking even more, if that was possible, bleeding the whole while.

In all the commotion, I guess someone called the authorities to report what was going on. The police arrived, and the black cars all raced off in the blink of an eye. Fal had saved me.

After dealing with the police, we took Fal to an emergency vet and got his tail treated. He howled in pain. He was really suffering, and he bit my hand hard. And then he turned his little beady eyes up at me as if to say, “Sorry for biting you.” I stroked his head. He whined pathetically.

That’s when I really started doting on that dog. It was like we had forged this bond or something. I went out of my way to give him delicious treats. I would brush him and tell him how much I loved him, my little darling. I hugged him, rubbed my cheek up against him, ran my hand down his back lovingly.

Eventually, my little brother was born…

“And then?”

The white tunnel, illuminated. The air a mix of summer heat and the cool from the day’s air conditioners. It wasn’t a popular spot; it was still just me and Momo.

I shrugged lightly. “Look, I told you before, didn’t I? My family was killed too, just like yours. I said we had a lot in common that way, right? So, like, one night…when I went home…”

“Where were you coming home from?”

“Mm. Hmm.” I nodded vaguely. “The minute I was there, standing in front of my house, I knew something was different somehow. But something else had happened that day too, so I thought maybe it was all in my head, like it was me that was different. But that wasn’t it… There was a strange man in the entryway. A Bamboo. The mafia in that town hired Bamboo, too. My father, my mother, and my sister were lined up on the floor already. My little brother was hidden under the sofa. Wrapped in a blanket. Yeah, he was alive. The Bamboo hadn’t noticed him. But he noticed me. I guess he was already full—he didn’t drink all my blood when he attacked me. The police took me away, just another dead body, and then in the morgue of the police hospital—”

I woke up all alone in the middle of the night. Everything was cold, and the whole world looked different somehow. I jumped up in terror and slammed into the ceiling. I couldn’t control my power then. I fled the hospital, killing a doctor along the way, so the police came after me. They shot at me, and several bullets hit me right in the chest. But I didn’t die. I didn’t have the first clue about what was going on, so I just hid for a while.

“And…ever since, all these years, I’ve been a Bamboo.”

“What happened to your little brother? Did they rescue him? And what about your dog?”

I closed my eyes. I didn’t get why Momo was worrying about a kid she didn’t even know.

The tunnel was quiet, filled only with the echo of our voices. The place was deserted. And chilly, despite the summer, almost like the morgue that day.

“Marika…”

“Go to sleep, Momo!”

“Hmm.”

I opened my eyes again. Momo was quiet, a pensive look on her face. I wondered what she was thinking about.

“Momo, tomorrow we’re going to take the subway someplace far away. We have to get away from this town. I mean, it’s gonna get pretty sketchy for us when they find that body!”

She said nothing.

“We haven’t killed anyone before this, so we were safe. Those guys’re up to some shady things too, you know?”

Still her mouth stayed tightly shut.

“Just go to sleep, Momo.”

Momo’s answer was so quiet I couldn’t catch it. What was up with her?

And then it was autumn. And Momo suddenly grew up.

“Come on, Momo. Let’s go!”

“Hold on. Just a little longer.”

“Huh? How long’s a little?”

“I told you, I still need to talk to him, Marika.” She spoke to me like she was admonishing a spoiled child, and I looked back in surprise.

A lukewarm breeze danced around me, tangled with the leaves of the trees, and made my black hair dance like a long tail. Then it set the left arm of my thin khaki coat fluttering. “About what?” I asked, my voice muffled on the other side of the mask that covered my nose and mouth.

Night was just starting to fall at the convenience store along the national highway running through a provincial city. Momo was standing in front of the magazine racks, talking to a boy in glasses. He had been there the day before too, at the same time. He looked my way with a kind smile, the photography magazine he had been reading still open in his hands.

I tugged fiercely on Momo’s sleeve, and she looked at me with a sigh. “I said, wait!”

“It’s just—we gotta get going.”

“You’re such a pest! God!”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Impossible that Momo would talk to me like that. I slumped forward and stepped out of the store. With nothing in particular to do, I flitted around in the night sky until Momo finally came out. She waved amiably toward the inside of the store and then started walking briskly.

A small truck whooshed past on the highway.

Momo didn’t want to move from town to town all the time anymore. Even though she knew it was dangerous, she wanted to stay in the same place for several days at a time. She’d turned into a grown-up, become obstinate. She wasn’t as docile as she used to be.

Slowly spinning, I oriented my face so it was upside down relative to Momo and peered at her. “Get it together. Let’s go to the next town already.”

“Marika. I just—” she started to say, then stopped. But her feet didn’t. She moved steadily forward, her face hard for some reason.

“Found tonight’s prey!” I joked, still upside down.

“You look like a calligraphy brush when you fly like that, Marika. It’s weird.”

“Let’s get that dumb guy from before. You know, the one you were talking to. Say something to lure him outside.”

“What are you talking about? Honestly!” Momo’s voice was ice.

I hid my anxiety and kept flying, grinning. Then I whirled around, turned myself right side up again, and started walking alongside her. We were god-of-death wannabes. The perfect pair. That’s what we were supposed to be, right? I gotta keep up with Momo and charge forward into the future!

“Okay?”

“…No.”

“Why not?”

“Because!” She sighed in obvious annoyance.

The wind blew. Dry and light, the brown leaves danced, shed by the roadside trees. They writhed like dying insects on the asphalt, stirred up by the wind. What on earth was her problem? It was like she just kept getting further and further away from me.

(Already a hundred years since then. Unnh. I can’t actually believe that much time’s passed.)

And how many days has it been already in this backwater dump?

I was pretty sick of this boring provincial town and was worried about being found out. It wasn’t a big place, which meant outsiders stuck out in a pretty real way. And yet Momo was all low-key and laid-back. My patience was wearing seriously thin.

We were inside a closed, but large, coffee shop along the highway, the place we had made our headquarters. Totally dark and dusty. I was sitting on top of an old square arcade table with a video game built into it when Momo finally came back. Where’ve you been wandering to, Momo? Honestly—huh?

Someone came in behind her. It was that guy. Wearing his idiot glasses. The one reading the photography magazine.

Still sitting cross-legged on the table, I slowly floated up to sit in midair. My long hair swung eerily from side to side. I wasn’t wearing a mask, so my shaved nose was in full view. The boy drew back in fear.

“What’s going on, Momo?” I asked, my voice that of a wrinkled old woman.

“So, like, Marika?” Momo’s was that of a bubbly young woman. “I need to talk to you, actually.”

“Talk? Start with what he’s doing here!”

Momo dropped her head, looking conflicted. And then she pulled her head up again. “Marika. I, like…I’ve decided to stay in this town,” she said, almost as if she were making up her mind right then and there.

“Huh?”

“I told him all about me! And his family runs a photography studio. They’re looking for someone to work in the office, and he says they’d hire me! He says everyone should settle down and have a job with responsibilities!”

“What?! Are you serious?!”

“I—! I don’t want to travel aimlessly like this anymore. We’ve been doing this for a year, you know. I’m a year older. And I’m tired of it.”

I can’t even believe this! I was dumbfounded.

Momo and the boy exchanged looks.

In other words, she’d found someone new to protect her, so she was done with me. For a second, I didn’t know what to think. My feelings about Momo and my feelings for myself sort of slammed up against each other. But the Momo ones lost pretty quick.

I’ll take him from you! Dark flames shot through my body. Reaching my right arm up to the ceiling, I spun around at top speed, a juggernaut heading straight for them.

Now, a night of hunting! The thrill is everything! It’s all old hat to me!

The boy fled behind the dusty counter, keeping Momo behind him. Old coffee cups and piles of plates crashed to the floor and shattered. I could hear Momo screaming. The wooden counter was brittle from years of wear. I whipped my right arm down as hard as I could to flatten it. I reached out to the boy, grabbed his thin neck, and pulled him up. Momo was yelling something. The boy was shouting, “Momo! Run!” But she turned around.

“Marika, what are you?! I don’t even know!” Her eyes were wild.

I looked down on her coolly.

“Why do you go around attacking people? I’m sick of it! I mean, we do this terrible thing to these grown-ups, total strangers. I hate it. I’ve hated it for a while now. I’ve hated it so much I could hardly stand it! But I was scared that if I left you alone, you’d kill people again. I couldn’t let you out of my sight. So I’ve been dragging myself along after you, all the way to this place… My hands are so dirty…”

“Huuuh?”

“Marika, please! Promise me you won’t kill anyone anymore! For my sake. I just need you to promise, and then I can relax. I can stay in this town. I can finally grow up.”

Anger and sadness surged up in my heart. And also exasperation at this happening now, after all this time. “I-it’s just, I don’t have any choice, do I?!” I shouted back. “I mean, I’m a Bamboo! I-I’m a monster!”

I turned toward the wall and slammed the boy into it. He bounced and came to a stop on the floor. A chair fell over with a clatter. A moment later, the coffee maker hit the ground, and the glass carafe broke.

From time to time, I heard the sound of a car racing along the highway outside.

Momo’s eyes glittered, tears threatening to fall even now. I had absolutely no idea what was making her that sad. Seriously. Seriously. I honestly didn’t get it.

“You’re wrong, Marika. I mean, the first Bamboo who took me in, he worked a regular job. H-h-he…” she said, like she was squeezing it out, like it was painful. “He was a good person.”

“What the hell?”

“I was a total stranger, and he saved my life. And he died for it.”

“Huh?”

“So I—all this time, I felt like I wasn’t allowed to be happy. But I had it backward—that’s exactly why I have to be happy. I figured that out talking to this boy. I can’t keep living this life. I have to actually live for real. For Mustah’s sake. And for Kyo’s. That way, their flames will always keep burning. Right, Marika? I mean, you know that, too. I’m your best friend. There was a time when you loved me, wasn’t there?” Momo pleaded, still looking about to burst into tears. “Right?”

I glared at her. I don’t know! No idea what you’re going on about, Momo! I’m telling you! For real! S-so—

“I’ll tell you then!” I roared. My hair practically stood on end, I was so angry.

I mean, the pathetic kid who had trailed after me that day, weeping sadly, nowhere else to go—she was gone now. That adorable, pitiful Momo had completely disappeared. At some point along the way, she had turned into a regular grown-up. She’d changed. Into this boring jerk. Unreal! We were too cool for this. We were gods of death! We had so much fun. Did you forget all of that? Stupid Momo! Stupid!

I drifted along, parallel to the floor, and then righted myself next to the boy lying on his side. I went around behind his head and brought my heel up. The usual way.

And Momo shrieked. She charged at me. So quick I was dumbfounded. Are you Bamboo, too? Slammed into me. Tangled together, we crashed into the dirty window. The glass broke, and the cool outside air poured over me. We tumbled to the floor, covered in shards that glittered like ice. Momo was at my back and had both hands wrapped around my throat, and she was not letting go. She absolutely would not let go. I bared my tapered teeth and howled for all I was worth. I shivered from the chill of the cold air.

“This! This! This!” Momo hit me. “I won’t let you kill people anymore! Marika! I won’t let you be a murderer! I mean, like, not a single person in this world deserves to be murdered. E-e-everyone—they’re trying as hard as they can, just to make it through this life. I finally get that now. Uh-huh. I didn’t understand it before. I thought human beings were dumb, worthless. Which is why—I can’t travel with you anymore. I can’t be with you for even one more night. This—!”

She’s so weak.

“This! This!” she shouted, straddled over me lying on my back as she continued to whack me with her pathetic tiny fists.

“I won’t let you do this!” I stared up at her. “I’m totally taking you with me, Momo! We’ve got forever ahead of us! You can’t fight that. You got some nerve for a human!” I put a little effort into it and rolled across the floor so that I was on top of her now.

She stretched out her skinny arms and slapped my face, still yelling. “You damned vampire! I hate you! You suck! Murderer! Pervert! You always have to take them down with a kick to the back of the neck with your heel, huh? And you always look like it’s sooooo much fun! It’s not just that you want blood—you actually love preying on people. Why, okay?! Why is that the only thing you do?!”

“I killed the dog.”

“You pervert! Is it that much fun? A hundred years of kicking people in the back of the neck? Go to hell! Vampire! …Wait, ‘dog’?”

“I killed Fal,” I said abruptly.

(It was me. I had done it. I still hadn’t been punished for it.)

“…What are you talking about?”

Shaking, I got down off of Momo. I crouched on the floor. The boy staggered toward us, and Momo got up, coughing. They stared hard at me. I started speaking in a small voice.

My little brother was born. I was jealous. Fal did his usual playful frolicking, wagging the half a tail he had left, following me around. We were super close. Maybe I made him do it. Maybe he was just curious too. Fal went over to my brother’s bed. I watched him and grinned. My brother started crying in terror. This happened three times.

My father called me in to see him. Because the third time, my brother got hurt. It was shortly after he’d been born. My mother wailed and screamed like she had lost her mind.

“It’s your dog. Take responsibility and dispose of it.” My father always got right to the point. I couldn’t disobey him.

He didn’t tell me to take the dog to the pound. He just left it to me. I couldn’t go home with Fal.

That evening, thinking it was our usual walk, Fal was really excited, running and wagging his butt along with the half tail. We slipped through the expensive residential area, out to a field spreading out behind the neighborhood that he liked. I dreamed about how far I could run with him. That’s what I really wanted. If only this childhood could last forever.

An hour passed, and the sun finally started to set. Before I’d gotten Fal, this was the time of day I’d have been playing with my friends in town. Once he was gone, I guessed I’d go back to that. If only this childhood could last forever. I stood stock-still. I saw my father’s imposing face in my mind. Fal looked back, smiling. He realized I was crying and cocked his head to one side. But his mouth was still grinning happily. At that moment, I brought my heel up. A quiet cry slipped out of me. “Aah.”

He looked up at me like he couldn’t believe it. His noble eyes were clear, firm in the belief that the girl who was his super best friend would protect him forever, that nothing bad could ever happen when we were out walking, that he was safe. Those eyes.

The sun went down. I sat there for ages.

I dug a hole with my hands and buried Fal. My dog. The dog who had saved me that day. My dog, only mine.

I stood up slowly. And then I went back to my house.

The minute I was there, standing in front of my house, I knew something was different somehow. I thought it was all in my head, that it was me that was different. But that wasn’t it. The door was open, and a Bamboo was standing there. I smelled blood.

He attacked me, and when I woke up in the morgue…

“I was a Bamboo.”

Which is why.

No one knows.

I still haven’t been punished.

Even though it’s been a hundred years.

“My little brother, an orphanage took him in. He grew up, he lived, he died.”

“Marika…”

“Fal’s long since turned to dust. He’s nowhere in this world. My best friend. That little dog’s gone now.”

“Marika.”

“I can’t forget his face that time.”

“So then you were doing that over and over again? Attacking when they were safe, kicking their necks to take them down. Stealing their blood and their money. Night after night,” Momo said. “You have to stop it already! I feel bad for you, but I can’t keep doing this.”

“Momo—”

“Marika, I want you to stop attacking people.”

“But I—! I think I’ve only got another ten years to live! At least stay with me till then. I promised I’d show you flowers blooming in the end, didn’t I? Did you forget?”

“No, I’m telling you I can’t—”

“That’s not what you promised!” I clung to her, desperate like she had been that night. When had our positions been reversed? It was like I was the kid with no place to go now.

But Momo shook her head stubbornly. “It’s time to say goodbye. I have to claim my own life.”

How dare she?! Talking like a self-help book or something?!

“Momoooo! You big stupidhead!” I shouted. No way. This is totally not how it’s supposed to go.

We glared at each other. And then Momo averted her eyes uneasily.

The sound of a car horn, then an engine, came from outside. No one said anything.

And then, from far away, trembling, the boy said, “Um.”

“Shut up!” I scowled at him.

“Wah? Ah?” He jerked his head back.

“This is none of your business! This is all because you had to come along and butt in!”

“I’m sorry…”

Silence hung over us once more.

“Um, I…” Ever so timidly, the boy started to speak again. “Marika, I don’t think it was your fault. Um! About what you said before. I mean, your father shouldn’t have said that. You, like…you were just a kid.”

I looked at the boy out of the corner of my eye and shook my head. “I’m the one who kicked him. It’s my crime.”

“But—”

“What?”

“I forgive you. If I were the dog, I’d forgive you.”

“Huh?” I stared at the boy. “You’re not the dog! You idiot!”

“I’m sorry… But.” The boy cleared his throat. He lowered his eyes, momentarily confused. And then he lifted his face.

I said nothing. The boy and I stared at each other.

“I’d have…forgiven you…a long time ago.”

The wind blew in through the missing window. After that, the boy, Momo, me—none of us said anything anymore. Like any further discussion was completely forbidden, something that didn’t belong in this world.

Time flowed like cold water.

The sun came up. Time to say goodbye.

Momo stood slowly and then set up the blackout tent before gently guiding me inside it. I gripped her slender wrist and looked up at her.

“Marika, before…” She gently shook my hand off. “You were really going to kill him when you brought your heel up, weren’t you?”

“What? …Not telling.”

“She wouldn’t have, Momo. Marika’s not that kind of girl. I know it.”

“I know Marika better than you do!”

“Momo—”

“I am the one! I know her better than anyone!”

“S-sorry…”

I couldn’t say anything. I stared up at Momo, her back turned to me now. But suddenly I reached out for her pale legs from inside the tent.

“Momo! Don’t go! Stay with me! I get it! He can stay with us too. It can be the three of us! Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me in a place like this. If I don’t have you, I—” I squeezed it out: “I’ll be so alone.”

The words felt painfully real. One more time. “Alone…I won’t be able to bear it…”

But I got nothing in reply.

Morning steadily drew closer. I heard their footsteps as they left. All alone, I went to sleep.

Night fell once more, and I woke up. Darkness filled the coffee shop. Momo was gone; no trace of her remained. I could tell from the air that she’d left me forever several hours earlier. I got out of the tent and stretched slowly.

Night. An autumn night.

I was again a Bamboo alone. Fifteen years old for a century already.

I couldn’t really put it into words, but something seemed different from how it had been up until last night. When I stepped into the night and started walking, the heels of my boots ringing out, it wasn’t my beloved Momo’s voice that came back to life in my cold, empty Bamboo heart, but rather the voice of that stranger, the boy.

I’d forgive you.

(A lie. A lie.)

I’d have forgiven you a long time ago.

(Really? Really?)

I went outside and looked up at the night sky. The air was horribly cold, chilled. It was the start of winter.

I was seriously heartbroken.

Reaching my right arm out into the sky, I kicked at the ground and shot upward. Night bird style! The sky that night was vast and beautiful.

Jasmine

Asked for directions, I turned around in front of the large supermarket by the train station. As I did, the child holding my hand threatened to run off on her own to the opposite side of the street. “Whoa, now!” I hurriedly scolded her, loudly. “No running!”

The season was on the verge of passing from winter to spring, into that warm, pleasant season. It was loud in the tumult of the change from evening to night. I passed groups of junior high students on bicycles, senior citizens apparently on their way back from a gathering. A housewife around my age pushing a stroller yawned when I passed her. In the distance, a crow cawed, followed by the honking of a car horn.

A map was thrust in front of me, and I peered at it. Right hand. The shape of the fingernails looked familiar. Small, round nails.

“Oh my!” I lifted my face. “It’s you, isn’t it, Marika?”

The skinny girl standing in front of me opened her eyes wide, shocked to the core. That face! I couldn’t help bursting into laughter. She hadn’t changed even a bit, not one bit, from the girl I remembered; it was almost surprising. The large blacks of her round eyes were wet, like she was crying, and the nose hidden under the mask was also exactly as it had been. The voluminous, long black hair danced in the warm breeze.

She wore a light-pink spring coat, and I was suddenly jealous of the adorable, dainty design, something which no longer suited me. The left sleeve fluttered and flapped.

Frightened, the girl took a step back.

“Right? It is you, Marika?” I said her name again. “Hey!” I grabbed her wrist with my free hand and felt her trembling. She jumped like she had been burned.

“What? Er, um. So you remember me, Momo?”

“Huh? What’re you talking about? How could I forget? Don’t be silly. But where have you been all this time? You’ve been a good girl, I hope? Oh! Or maybe all this time, I—” I interrupted myself. “You knew I was living in this town? What? And you never came to see me?”

“You totally hated me, so…” Marika hung her head, embarrassed.

“What! Hmm. Oh, I guess I did.” I suddenly remembered the fight we’d had when we parted and dropped my head, uncomfortable.

Silence.

Marika lifted her face ever so timidly. As she looked up at me, she started to smile again. Goodness, why did she seem so happy? She was still, always, a strange child.

“Anyway, Momo. You remembered me, huh?”

“Well, of course I did. But what’s going on, out of the blue? I mean, it’s been ten years, hasn’t it? Maybe longer?”

“So, like, Momo?” Marika came in close, almost in a panic. “It’s like, my time’s up. I can tell. That day, I promised you, so I came back here. I wonder…if you remember? You know, the flowers? The flowers I told you I’d bloom? My final flowers. I think it’ll be late tonight or tomorrow evening.”

Flowers? Final flowers? What on earth was she talking about? As I cocked my head to one side in confusion, a distant memory flickered on the screen in the back of my mind.

I was sure I’d heard this story about flowers blooming. About how Bamboo lived for 120 years or so. And how in the end, they bloomed beautiful white flowers just like the tall grass.

Right, I had cried and begged her, Stay with me forever, okay? But if you do leave me, then…at least show me those flowers, okay? But that had been over ten years ago. Back then, I’d felt like this far-off future would never come.

But actually, the season for those flowers was around the corner. Just like that. The flow of time is quick like water, I suppose. A person’s life—it’s surprisingly short.

Marika slowly removed her mask, exposing her tragic face. The child ducked behind me, afraid. I patted her head to reassure her while I looked down at Marika. She really hadn’t changed at all. It was almost frightening, you know?

Marika reached her right arm out like a ghost and wrapped it around my neck. She put some power into it, squeezing. I felt an instinctive terror. Right, Marika wasn’t human. She was a sad monster who had lived 120 years as a little girl.

“M-Mari—”

“Heh heh.” But she soon pulled away and flashed me a grin as if to hide how she clung to me. “You seem regular happy, huh, Momo? Like a textbook, you know?”

“I-I—Marika. You saved me… To this day, you’re the only one who knows.”

“I told you, enough of that. Okay? Come on, Momo!” Marika whirled around on one heel and started to run. Aah, just like always, she moved effortlessly, like an animal.

Dragging the child behind me by the hand, I hurriedly chased after her. I couldn’t run like I used to anymore, though. I stomped along somehow.

The moon was coming out, like a ship putting out to sea. The darkness behind the supermarket. The fog gradually growing thicker.

It wasn’t the fog of that early evening from back when I hunted with Marika; it was a cold fog, something not of this world. I heard a dog bark somewhere. I could see a vision of a puppy racing along behind Marika, wagging his stubby tail. What, a dog? What was that about again? I was sure I’d heard that story too. But it was a long time ago, at any rate, and I was so busy all the time now. Huh? Marika? Where did you go?

I reached the empty lot in the back. Marika turned around, grinning from ear to ear. The fog grew even thicker. It really wasn’t of this world.

“So, okay, Momo?” Marika beamed, as she started to tell me something. Like she wanted to confess a secret she had kept for too long. “Like, I—”

But she abruptly fell silent, a look of surprise on her face. She took a breath and then opened her mouth to try to speak again, but it seemed that her moment had come sooner than she’d expected. She didn’t have the time left to finish telling me, her old friend, what she had started to say.

“Marika?”

(Mo. Mo… So I… So I…)

“Marika?”

(Traveling. With you. That time. Was fun… I. Love…)

“Marika…”

The wind gusted up, and I lost sight of her.

And then, before I knew it, these tiny white flowers—flowers I’d never seen before—sprang up all around, blooming one after another in succession, so bright, so vivid that they dyed the night sky white. Until finally the blossoms fell to the ground and scattered, and the skinny figure of the little girl was no longer anywhere to be found. So this was the death of a Bamboo! A monster so strong, so frightening, and yet ultimately ephemeral.

“Marika!” I called out in a small voice.

But I heard nothing in reply. I would never know what she’d been trying to tell me in her final moments.