I was looking out of the bus window when Kenji tried to squeeze in next to me.
“Koda, I need the window seat.”
“I’m doing something right now.”
“What are you doing?”
“Thinking about something. It’s very important. I shouldn’t be disturbed.”
“I need to sit there,” he said.
“No, you don’t.”
“I’m serious. I get motion sickness.”
“Ugh. Aren’t you supposed to sit with your partner?” I said, scooting over to the aisle.
“You are my partner.”
“No, I’m not.”
I slid my backpack onto my lap and sucked in. Kenji tried to push himself over to the window, but the seat wasn’t cooperating.
“Just—like, turn your head.”
Yep. I’d rather not have your butt shoved into my face.
“A little more. One last squeeze. Almost there … yatta.” The springs of the seat shuddered in defeat.
“I get sick if I’m not by the window,” Kenji said again, adjusting and reaching into his backpack.
Yeah, well, I get sick when sweaty butts are shoved in my face. We all just have to deal with stuff in life, I thought.
“Uso,” squealed a girl from my class. A whole mess of them were sitting at the front of the bus giggling and talking about Hello Kitty, probably. Or makeup. Or Hello Kitty makeup. I bet they have that.
In the middle sat the jocks. Well, as close to jocks as Kusaka High School gets—so in the middle of the bus sat the guys who could run a race without getting a bloody nose.
In the back of the bus sat the delinquents. These were the kids who talked back to the teachers, hardly ever did their homework, and probably did macho things like fighting with knives, wrestling boars, and riding bikes without safety helmets.
Then there was me. And Kenji. He was sitting hunched over a portable video game. He was easily the biggest and loudest kid in class, but no one wanted to actually hang out with him. If he hadn’t spent so much time being a jerk to me, I might have felt sorry for the guy.
The bus suddenly rocked from one side to the next. Students grabbed their seats. The talking and the giggling instantly died. Ikeda-sensei pushed his huge frame onto the small bus with the small hired driver.
“That’s more like it,” he said. “You think Hayashida-san likes driving a bus with you chatterboxes working your jaws nonstop? Would you like it if someone came to your house and crammed cicadas in your ears? You wouldn’t like that, would you? All day. High-pitched semi. Squealing. In your ears. That’s what you sound like every single day.”
Ikeda-sensei adjusted his thick glasses and turned to the bus driver. “Gomen, ne. Children are rude little monsters. No getting around that.”
The driver smiled and nodded in his blue blazer, cap, and white driving gloves.
Ikeda-sensei turned back to us. “Tell Hayashida-san thank you for being willing to drive your noisy, yapping mouths around all afternoon.”
“Arigatō gozaimasu,” we said.
“Louder!” Ikeda-sensei barked, slapping the back of the nearest seat.
“Arigatō gozaimasu!” we yelled in unison.
The bus driver lifted his gloved hand and gave us a little wave.
“We can go now,” Ikeda-sensei said.
The bus engine started up, and the first-year class from Kusaka High School pulled away from the parking lot. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the noise of Kenji’s video game. I pictured myself in the cockpit of a Boeing 777 Star Jet, feeling the vibrations through my seat as the plane roared down the runway. The nose finally tipped up and the acceleration of the plane pushed heavy on my chest.
From the window, I watched my town fade into the distance below. At this height, Kusaka sat awkwardly between two mountain ranges. I’d never really thought about it before, but imagining the town from above, I wondered why anyone would have settled here. Sure, Kusaka River would be nice for crops and fishing, but there wasn’t much else around. Kusaka was just the middle of nowhere.
From way up here I could see Kōchi City in the far distance. There were other towns dotting the horizon, too: Sakawa. Nōzu. But Kusaka was isolated. Lonely. Hidden deep in a valley overflowing with bamboo forests, leafy green ferns, and dried persimmon stumps.
Maybe that was the point. Maybe this was all on purpose. Maybe the families who came here two hundred years ago chose this valley precisely because this was the one place no one would come looking for them.
“Koda.”
I jumped a bit. Moya was leaning over the aisle with a cellophane bag in her hand.
“Moya, what are you doing here? I didn’t see you get on the bus.”
“Well, I did.” She untied the gold ribbon at the top of the bag.
“Shimizu-sensei is on the Road,” I whispered frantically.
“Right. And that ogre sitting in the front is, too.”
“What ogre?” I said.
“Koda!” Ikeda-sensei barked. “Keep it down.”
“That ogre,” Moya whispered.
“Ikeda-sensei?”
“Here, take one,” she said, offering me the bag of cookies.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Just some kappa eggs I found.”
“Kappa lay eggs?”
“I like to steal them out of their nests at night,” Moya said. “Then I boil the babies inside and dip them in chocolate.”
“That sounds kind of gross. But I like chocolate, so—”
“What is wrong with you, Koda? I was joking.”
“I’ve never had kappa before,” I said.
“Kappa babies!”
“Dipped in chocolate,” I reminded her.
“You’re sick. They’re just cookies.”
“Are they good?”
“Well, they’re not made from babies, if that’s what you’re asking. You monster.”
I picked out a cookie and put it in my mouth. “Mmm. Does not taste like a dog biscuit.”
“That’s a rude thing to say!”
“I said ‘not.’ Your cookies do not taste like dog biscuits.”
“Baka. See if I ever bring you dog biscuits again.”
“These are dog biscuits! I knew it!”
She shrugged. “They’re cookies to me.”
I spit the not-cookie into my hand and dropped it on the floor. Kenji looked over at me. I tried to smile, but I still had biscuits in my teeth. He shook his head and went back to his game.
I leaned forward and glanced across the aisle. Moya was pretty. Not your average J-pop-singer-whose-poster-hangs-in-the-train-station pretty, though. She had a foreign look to her. Her eyes weren’t very dark; they were almost gray in the sunlight. Her nose was thin, not short. Her cheekbones sharp instead of round. She didn’t have maru-gao like a lot of the girls in my class. A round face isn’t a bad thing, of course. It’s soft and cute. Kind of the ideal Japanese girl. But Moya didn’t have maru-gao; she had kitsune-gao, a sharp, angular face—a fox face. It was pretty, but it made her look cunning. Devilish in a way. In hindsight, it should have been obvious what kind of yōkai she was.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, crunching on another biscuit.
“I bet you don’t.”
“You were wondering—why Kusaka?”
“Nope.”
“Why did the seven noble families come here and not to some other mountain village in Japan?”
“Not what I was thinking.”
“Look at this place, Koda. It’s secluded. Completely cut off. Its only tether is that freeway that runs through the town. It’s obvious, isn’t it? This valley is where people—and others—come to hide.”
“What are they all hiding from?”
“Koda!”
I flipped around to the front of the bus. “Yes, Ikeda-sensei?”
“I understand you were hit by a van, I do. Congratulations for that. But unless that vehicle knocked the ears clean off your head, I know you can tell when you’re talking too loud. I can tell. Hayashida-san can tell…”
The bus driver blankly waved.
“Everyone can tell. Now you’re going to keep your chatty mouth shut, or I will come back there and shut it with my hand. Wakatta?”
I nodded. “Wakarimashita.”
Ikeda-sensei turned back to the front of the bus. Kenji giggled but didn’t take his eyes off the little flashing screen in his lap. I leaned back in my seat and looked over at Moya. She slid down and crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at the back of Ikeda-sensei’s head. It was going to be a quiet bus ride after all.
* * *
Thankfully we arrived at the Kōchi Cultural Center without Ikeda-sensei having to physically shut anyone’s mouth. Moya stood up and quickly left the bus. Her face didn’t have that follow-me-around look, so I decided not to chase after her.
I walked between the seats and stepped off into the parking lot. The teachers were wrangling the students, lining us up according to height.
“Yoku kiite kure,” Ikeda-sensei started. “While you are here at the Cultural Center you will be representatives of Kusaka High School. There will be art projects from schools all over Kōchi Prefecture. You must be respectful. You must not separate from the group. You must not, under any circumstance, touch anything. Not the watercolors. Not the pottery. Not the mobiles. Nothing. Do you understand?”
“Hai,” we said.
“I don’t think you understand,” Ikeda-sensei said, pushing his glasses farther onto his face. “If you break any one of these rules, you will be bringing a great dishonor upon your own head, as well as upon your school, your teachers, and your family name. You don’t want that, do you? That would make me very unhappy. I don’t like to be dishonored. I don’t like to be shamed. If you separate from the group or touch anything at all that doesn’t personally belong to you, I will knock your head through a wall of my choosing! Do you understand now?”
“Hai,” we said.
“Wakatta?” he yelled.
“Hai! Wakarimashita!” we yelled back.
“Let’s go.”
Now, you might be thinking that a field trip to a cultural center sounds like about as much fun as a trip to a library or a prefectural government office, and you wouldn’t be that far off. Look at all the fun things to do, you might say. Look at that bench. You could, like, sit on it and stuff.
Good point, good point. Who wouldn’t love that?
Exactly. And look over here! Paintings! By elementary school students! Isn’t this awesome?
Well, I got bored of elementary school paintings in about eight seconds. Ikeda-sensei tried to act interested as he walked us by wall after endless wall of watercolor paintings, but it was a losing battle. Farms. Zoos. Families. Pets. More farms. More pets. Smiling faces. I’m so bored. Look. Another room of watercolors. Farms. Zoos. Families. Pets. Gods, get me out of here, please. What did I ever do to deserve this?
“Stay with the group,” Ikeda-sensei barked at a delinquent kid. He thundered past me to snatch the wandering punk by his collar.
Now’s your chance, my brain said.
“Chance for what?”
Your chance to get out of here. There has to be cooler stuff than this. Kids suck at painting.
“To be fair, you suck at everything when you’re six years old.”
Let’s go!
“Shut up, brain.”
Seriously, who’s going to notice if you sneak off?
“Um, that giant ex-sumō who likes knocking kids through walls.”
He’ll never see you. He’s too fat and slow.
“Ooh, if he heard you say that, he’d slap you right out of my head.”
Now! He isn’t looking!
“You go. I’ll stay here.”
Just say you were looking for the bathroom, my brain said. Do you really want to stay here? Look up ahead. There are nine more rooms of these watercolors.
“That can’t be right. Oh, wait, yes it is.”
Now look over there. Tell me what you see.
“Shodō?”
That’s right. Calligraphy.
“We’ll get there eventually,” I said.
Will we? After the watercolors, then comes the pottery, then the mobiles, then the who-knows-what. By the time we get to the shodō exhibit, it’ll be too late. We’ll have to go home. We’ll miss it.
“I guess I could say I was looking for the bathroom.”
Besides, you’d hear Ikeda-sensei coming from across the building. He’s so fat. And ugly. And stupid. Go! Right now! Hurry!
I stepped out of the line. Yes, I’d lost an argument. With myself. It wasn’t the smartest thing to do if I was trying not to get punched through walls, but it was shodō. Old-style Japanese calligraphy does look pretty cool. Stupid brain with its observations and reasoning.
A couple of the kids around me started whispering. I ignored them and scurried off around the corner. They might tell Ikeda-sensei, but I doubted it. What prison inmate rats out an escape plan to the guard everyone hates? Besides, it’d be more fun to see Ikeda-sensei punch me through something, so they’d probably let me skip out for as long as I could and then laugh while I was broken and bleeding. School friends are really the best kind of friends.
I quickly and quietly jogged over to the shodō display. The walls were lined from top to bottom with bright white papers and deep black ink.
I took my time walking through the calligraphy exhibit. Most of the kanji were painted by students from high schools in the prefecture. Some showed real craftsmanship and skill. Others were rushing to get their assignment done.
I stopped. From across the room I saw it. The one kanji I love more than any other. Okay, “love” is a strong word to use for a symbol painted on a piece of paper. But, no, I think I might actually be in love with this kanji. I want to marry it.
飛
Tobu.
To fly.
It looked like an airplane to me. Two wings with rudders. A seat. A steering column. It was all there. Ready to take off from the paper at any moment. So complex. So beautiful. I reached out to feel it. Someday, I’d climb into one of those things. I’d point the nose right at the sky and I’d just fly up and away from everything. I’d keep going and going until I broke through to the other side. I’d fly past the gods and goddesses and on to the place where lost souls go. I’d look down and watch for people I know. People like Aiko and Ichiro and little Taiki. I’d look for—
“Omae, nani shiten da yo?”
I flipped around.
“I said, what the hell do you think you are doing?” Ikeda-sensei yelled.
I hate my brain right now.
“Nothing,” I said. “I was just … looking for the bathroom.”
“Did you find one? On that piece of paper?”
“No … I just saw it and thought—”
“You thought you’d stroll over and deface a work of art!”
“I wouldn’t really call this one art. I mean, it was a good effort…”
A few of the visitors in the exhibit looked at me and then quietly slipped around the corner.
“Koda, get out,” Ikeda-sensei whispered. “Now.”
“Okay.”
I put my head down and hurried toward the exhibit door. If he hits me, brain, he’s going to get you first, I thought.
But Ikeda-sensei didn’t knock my head into a wall as I walked past. Instead I heard a thousand talons scuffling in the ceiling above me. I stopped and looked up.
“Sensei?” I said.
“Caw,” the ceiling answered.
My gym teacher’s giant hand locked on to my shoulder. Without a word, he lifted me off my feet and threw me into the brass handlebar of a side exit. I couldn’t keep myself from yelping like a puppy before crumpling to the ground.
“Sensei?” my teacher repeated. “Sensei?” he mocked again. “Oh help me, sensei. The scary birds are coming to get me, sensei.” He dragged me through the door and tossed me against a wall. “Disgusting man-child.”
Ikeda-sensei turned back to the exit and slammed the door behind us.