The day before Aiko’s funeral I steered my bicycle down the backstreets to the Lawson’s convenience store. Of course, the easiest way to get to Lawson’s is riding straight down Route 33, but my folks are afraid I’ll fall asleep and drift out into traffic. So I take the backstreets. And always wear my special helmet.
Sometimes I pretend my bicycle is a Yokosuka seaplane. And instead of riding down dusty old backstreets, I’m flying along the coast of Japan, delivering shiitake to all those people who can eat mushrooms without throwing up.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to fly. To be a pilot who could soar above the clouds and leave the tiny roads and the mountain villages behind. Sometimes I even pretend I was alive during the Pacific War. You should totally be a pilot, Koda, someone would say. You never suddenly fall asleep. In fact, I’ve never seen you sleep for even a single moment. You could fly to America and back without ever getting tired.
And I’d say, Yeah, I pretty much never sleep. Got too many things to do.
This would get back to the admiral of the Imperial Navy, who would give me my own Zero-sen fighter plane.
Fly like the god wind and crash your plane into the enemies of our beloved emperor, the admiral would say.
Or, I’d interrupt, instead of doing that—and this is just a thought—I could fly around the world. Which would also be good for the emperor and all that other stuff.
The admiral would step back and size me up. I don’t like it. I do not like it one bit. But you are the boy who never sleeps, so here are the keys. Make the emperor proud. And by the way, take off that helmet, boy. There are no helmets allowed in the Imperial Navy.
Yes, sir! Gladly, sir! I’d say, punting my stupid helmet off the side of the aircraft carrier.
But then I get to the convenience store and remember I’m just a high school kid with a secondhand bike and a sleeping disorder. Oh well, there’s always the ride home.
“I’ll take a bowl of oden,” I told Haru as I walked into the store.
“What do you want in it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Konyaku, tamago, a little daikon.”
“Broth?”
“Sure.” I slid Haru two go-hyaku coins.
“Nah, take it. On the house.”
Even though he was three years older than me, Haru was my only friend in Kusaka. That makes it sound like I had friends outside of Kusaka. Nope, he was my only friend, period.
Haru lived with his uncle in a broken-down house at the end of our street. His uncle was the kind of man who would push a shrine maiden down a flight of stairs for a warm glass of sake. Or for anything really: a coin, an old boot, a bit of tinfoil. The man was simpleminded, and a bastard. Not a good combination.
Haru didn’t graduate from high school. He dropped out, stayed in Kusaka, and eventually picked up a job at Lawson’s. I usually stopped in after school or when I was in the area delivering shiitake to the vegetable stands behind Route 33.
“How’s your paper?” he asked, sliding a pair of chopsticks across the counter.
“The one from homeroom?”
“Sure. The one about the robot.”
“Robot?”
He pulled a cigarette out of his shirt pocket. “It’s not about a robot?” he asked.
“No. When did you ever have robot homework?”
He shrugged.
“And that is why you didn’t graduate,” I said.
“Let’s go outside,” Haru said, walking around the counter.
“Can you just take a break like that?”
“I don’t know. There’s no one here anyway.”
We sat down on the curb and Haru lit his cigarette. He held it out to me, but I ignored him. I might be the only fifteen-year-old in Japan who doesn’t have a fascination with smoking. Just not that interested in it. I did try it once. My face got all puffy and my skin turned bright red. It was like my body was somehow allergic to breathing in poison.
And really, none of the other fifteen-year-olds should be smoking either. It’s obviously against the law. But no one takes that seriously when you can just walk down the street and drop a couple of coins into a jidōhanbaiki.
In Japan we love our vending machines. We’ll put anything in them: cigarettes, batteries, TV dinners, raincoats, pornography, used underwear. Think of almost anything, and I’ll bet you can find a jidōhanbaiki somewhere in Japan that’s selling it. I’ve seen a six-year-old kid buy a two-liter bottle of sake from the vending machine down the road. I guess his father was too lazy to get up and buy it himself. At least, I hope that’s what was happening.
“People like robots, you know,” Haru said.
“Hmm.”
“Maybe it’s a girl robot. She could wear this sexy outfit and fly around rescuing people.”
“You remember what homework is, right?”
“Vaguely.”
“The paper is on something we regret,” I said.
“Shimizu-sensei?”
I nodded.
Haru took another drag. “I bet he regrets assigning that now.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Didn’t you say that girl talked to birds?”
“Aiko talked about birds. There’s a difference.”
“But they were birds that weren’t there?”
“A bird,” I said. “It was mostly this one bird. Yatagarasu. But yes, he wasn’t there.”
If Aiko was crazy for talking to something no one else could see, then a lot of people in Japan are crazy. The ghosts of ancestors, gods and goddesses, spirits from local shrines—most people worship things they’ve never actually seen. I didn’t care if Aiko was a little too quiet or spent her breaks on the balcony looking for a three-legged crow. Crows are cool enough, or so I used to think.
“Who drinks bathroom cleaner?” Haru asked. “Who wants to die like that?”
“It was a message,” I said.
Haru snubbed his cigarette and flicked the butt into the parking lot. “How do you figure?” he asked.
“Well, they closed the school after Aiko’s body was found, right? They washed down the doors and the genkan and the stairs. They polished and mopped everything to get the school back to the way it was. But now the building just reeks of cleaning fluid. They didn’t remove Aiko from the school at all. They just scrubbed her deeper into the walls.”
“That’s pretty sick.”
“They realized it, but only after it was too late. You should see the place now. No one messes around in the halls or plays badminton in the courtyard during break anymore. Everyone just stays inside with the windows open and the fans on,” I said.
“And I thought this mimonai Lawson’s job was bad.”
“It was a message, Haru. No one can ignore her now.”
“I bet it was a message about that driver—what’s his name?”
“Yori-san?”
“Yeah, the crazy guy who drives the bus.”
“Yori.”
“I bet the message was: He finally did it. The creepy little driver finally killed one of us.”
I pushed up from the curb. “Whatever. I gotta go.”
“Seriously? Are you mad? It was a joke, Koda. Not a good joke, I see that now. But c’mon.”
I kicked out the stand on my bike and steadied the box of mushrooms tied down to the back. “I’ve got deliveries to make, Haru. See you tomorrow.”
“Whatever,” he said.
I fastened my helmet and pushed off down the street behind Lawson’s. The sliding door dinged softly behind me.
Forget Haru. I didn’t know why, but Aiko had chosen me just before she died. She had walked up to me and whispered in my ear. All I’d ever done was stare at her from the back of our homeroom class, but for some reason she stepped into my dream and told me she had nowhere left to hide. Her death wasn’t random. It meant something. It had to. I just couldn’t see it yet.