“You’re sure you feel all right?” Haru asked when we got to my house.
“I just need something to eat. I’ll be fine.”
Haru locked up my bike for me, nodded, and walked in the direction of his uncle’s home. When he was out of sight, I unlocked my bike, clicked my helmet on, and rode off to find the last kaki tree in Kusaka Town.
The logs of the footbridge thumped beneath my bicycle tires, jostling my helmet over my eyes. I stopped and pushed it up again. A wall of camphor trees stood before me like the front lines of a samurai army. I couldn’t see any way around.
“Koda, over here,” a voice called from behind the lines.
“What about my bike?”
“Leave it.”
“What if someone steals it?”
“Lock it, then leave it.”
“I don’t know. It might look abandoned way out here.”
“A flock of crows just tried to break your neck and you’re worried about someone stealing your bike?”
“Well, it’s a good bike.”
“It’s a pink bike.”
“It’s a red bike,” I clarified. “It’s been … used a lot. The color’s faded.”
“Listen, Hello Kitty–chan, lock up your pink bike and get your ass in here.”
“Then we can talk about keeping my neck unbroken?” I swung my leg over the seat. “I feel like we skipped over that part when you were saying rude things to me. Also, do you think I should keep my helmet on?”
“Does your helmet have any Hello Kitty stickers on it?”
“Of course not,” I said.
“What about Pokémon?”
“Not on the outside.”
“Dear gods and goddesses,” Moya said. “Of all the kids in Kusaka, you had to be the pickpocket. Get in here now.”
I left my awesome not-pink bike by the footbridge and squeezed through the line of camphor trees. On the other side stood a thin bamboo forest, and in the middle of that—a single kaki tree. Moya walked through the bamboo and sat down beneath the withered branches of the tree.
“How did you find this place?” I asked.
“It’s a safe haven. I brought her here when the kaki trees began dying out. She’s the last one left.”
“She?”
“Persimmon trees are unlike any other trees, Koda. They have gender. This one is female.”
“Does your girl-tree have a name?” I asked with a smirk.
“Does your ugly pink bike have a name? No? I didn’t think so. Stop hovering out there and come inside.”
“The tree?”
“Yes. Sit down.”
I ducked under the branches and knelt down next to the gnarled trunk. Moya watched me but didn’t say a word.
“So,” I asked, “how do you know this tree is a she?”
“You don’t see it?” Moya said.
“Am I supposed to be seeing something? I don’t even know where to look. That part over there looks weird. Is that it?”
“What? No! Gods, I mean the soul of the tree, you pervert. Can’t you see the soul of this tree?”
“Um, no. Can you?”
“Kaki trees are special, Koda. Do you know why?”
“Because they’re trees that have souls?”
“They are resilient. They represent the goodness in this world and the will to survive.”
“This one looks like it’s already given up,” I said.
“No, you’re wrong. It is very difficult to kill a kaki tree. Floods and insects and birds and disease—those are all things that kill regular trees like those mighty camphors out there. But not the thin, sickly-looking kaki tree. Even death cannot kill a kaki tree.”
“What?” I said.
“Before the kaki tree sends out its fruit in late fall, it dies. Or at least, it mostly dies. The branches shrivel, the leaves fall away, the trunk takes on this twisted, gnarly shape. And then in the midst of its own death, when it looks like it should fall over and be forgotten, it suddenly sends out this explosion of persimmons. Dozens of bright orange fruits pop out. The tree is reborn! For the next several months, the kaki tree pieces itself together and goes on living stronger than before. It’s almost impossible to kill a persimmon tree.”
“Then why is there only one left?” I asked.
Moya’s face dropped. “They’re almost impossible to kill.” She picked up a brittle leaf from the grass. “There is an infection in this town, Koda. A cancer much older than Kusaka itself. It isn’t a person or a god or a spirit you can fight against. It’s darkness, hopelessness, emptiness, despair. It exists everywhere in the universe where the light doesn’t shine. Eventually everyone and everything everywhere will succumb to it.”
“Now see, you go talking all normal for a while—well, normal for you—and then you say totally freaky things like that.”
“That kind of darkness is a long time off, though. Maybe a thousand billion years from now. But when the nothing of the universe encounters a particularly bright light, it’s drawn to it. The darkness surrounds the light, tries to twist and fold and consume it. That is the Tengu Road.”
“The Tengu Road?”
“It is the nothingness that’s all around us,” Moya said. “The Road breaks down the universe piece by piece until everything you see will be black and empty and cold. Normally people don’t even notice the Road, but Kusaka is different. The Road is seeping in here faster than anywhere else. And whatever it touches, it eventually destroys.”
“So do you, like, ever get invited to sleepovers? No? Here’s a hint: it’s because you say things like that.”
“I don’t know what a sleepover is, Koda, but the Tengu Road probably hates that, too.”
“Right.”
“Listen to me, the Road infects things differently. The kaki trees were points of light and hope in this town. As the Road flooded in, though, it suffocated them one by one.”
“Gods, Moya, this is not the conversation I pictured us having.”
“And humans don’t fare any better. Those who become infected by the Road go mad. They wander down empty paths of hopelessness. Some survive this encounter, but most do not.”
“The Yamabuki Three were on the Road.”
“Despair overtook them. When the crows started watching, the cancer flooded their minds.”
“Watching them? Gods above, Moya, they’re watching me! I see the crows!”
“Calm down, calm down, Koda. You’re freaking out. Just listen to me.”
“Okay, fine, what?”
She waited until my breathing returned to normal.
“You are going to die.”
“I’m going to what? Are you serious? Have you ever given bad news to anyone before? You are absolutely terrible at it!”
“No, no, that’s a good thing.”
“How is that a good thing?” I shouted.
“Because the Road won’t take you like it took the others. You’re different. If you’re very lucky you’ll die in about eighty years like a normal human being.”
“I hate how you said ‘normal’ there.”
“You’re a dirty little memory thief, Koda. That’s not really normal.”
I dropped my head into my hands. “Moya.”
“Yes?”
“Why am I on the Tengu Road? I’m a nobody. I’m a sick, weak kid who is constantly hurting myself. I’m the kind of person you forget five minutes after meeting me. I’m a shiitake farmer with no future. I’m not important to anyone, anywhere.”
“You’re a kaki tree, Koda.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not true,” I said, looking up.
“Not literally a tree, no, but you have great strength inside you. You may be scrawny and goofy-looking and incapable of running forty meters without injuring yourself—”
“Bedside manner, Moya.”
“But you have potential in that gnarled trunk of yours.”
“What am I?” I asked her.
“You’re someone who sees things that other people don’t,” she said.
“I see misery that other people don’t.”
“Yes. But unlike the suri who enter the Tengu Road and lose themselves, you want to help people. You want to reverse the pain and suffering you see, not poke it and spread it around. That makes you more kaki tree and less—”
“Tengu?”
“Well, technically, yes.”
“But that’s where most suri end up?”
“Certain suri do … make a home of the Tengu Road.”
“I don’t want to make a home on any road. Especially not one that leads to freaking mountain demons.”
“That’s why I sent you to Yori’s house, Koda, to steal a memory about Shibaten. That river troll holds the key to breaking the Tengu Road in Kusaka.”
I leaned back against the trunk of the kaki tree. “I was at Yori’s house, Moya. He doesn’t know where Shibaten is hiding. There’s nothing in his house but cosplay videotapes and anime figurines.”
“He has to have the memory,” Moya said quietly.
“I’m sorry. He doesn’t.”
“But the bus driver said he saw Shibaten.”
“He felt his presence around the school. He didn’t actually see anything.”
Moya stood up and walked to the edge of the kaki tree. “No one else has seen Shibaten in two hundred years. Yori was our only link. If we can’t find someone who has a memory of the kappa, then Kusaka is lost.”
“I wish there was something…” I started, but trailed off. I suddenly jumped to my feet and ran to Moya. “I have to go.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m a suri. Those traumatic memories aren’t going to steal themselves!” I tried to give Moya a peck on the cheek, but I was really excited and smacked her in the chin instead.
“Ow, Koda, gods!”
Whatever, I had a town to save. No time to worry about awkward kisses. I ran out from under the kaki tree and darted through the bamboo forest.
“All right, then,” Moya called after me. “Ride like the wind on your little pink bike, my brave thief.”
“It’s red!” I shouted back.