Kusaka High School closed for the last week of September. Eventually the cars and the trucks and the flashing lights pulled away, leaving the building chained up and draped in shadow. As I rode by on my way to deliver mushrooms, the school rose slowly from the rice fields. Yes, Kusaka is that kind of Japanese mountain town. The kind where we have to build our schools in the middle of rice fields. It always reminded me of a daimyō castle surrounded by bridges and moats and narrow dirt paths.
And just like a real daimyō castle, the school was built to last centuries. There were heavy metal doors and thick panes of glass with iron-plated storm shutters. Every surface was painted white to reflect the sun and keep out the salty sea air. For eighty years the school had stood up against everything Japan could throw at it: earthquakes, typhoons, flash floods, mudslides. But it couldn’t keep Aiko out. And five days later it couldn’t keep Ichiro out either.
Oddly enough, things were quieter at school after the second suicide. We’d spent all the words we carried around when Aiko died.
Ichiro Kobayashi had moved to Kusaka late last year to live with his uncle. He transferred from a school in Matsuyama and no one really knew why. Some kids on the baseball team said his parents died in a car accident. Others said he woke up one morning and they were just gone. Whatever happened, Ichiro was quiet about it. He was nice to the kids who asked, but you knew he couldn’t say anything. Not wouldn’t say anything. Couldn’t.
After the transfer to Kusaka, Ichiro was immediately promoted to starting pitcher on the baseball team. He made the other students look like the idea of hitting a ball with a bat was so difficult that we should all just give up and do something easier, like calculus or astrophysics. That was Ichiro. Tall, fit, popular. But then he broke into the high school at night and went all feudal Japan on us.
Back in the olden days, long before we settled our differences with celebrity game shows, insane obstacle courses, and Dance Dance Revolution, hara-kiri was how a samurai purged himself of a great dishonor. The warrior would dress up in a ceremonial kimono and cut open his stomach with a short sword. I guess they figured his shame would spill out onto the floor. I don’t know who first came up with the idea that shame is something that can actually be cut from your insides, but I bet it was a process of trial and error. Is this the shame? Nope. Okay, how about this squiggly thing? Still feeling shame. Well, this thing is beating, how about this? Yep. Yep. Feeling less shame already. Feeling less of everything, actually.
The disgraced samurai could choose a friend to stand over him with a long katana blade. When the samurai finished cutting himself, the friend would bring down his sword and end the samurai’s suffering with a single stroke to his neck. That was considered an act of mercy, by the way. I’d sure hate to be that one samurai who had no friends in the village. Who am I kidding? I would have been that one samurai.
But Ichiro wouldn’t have. He had plenty of friends at Kusaka High School. None were with him that night, though. He knelt on the math room floor, alone, a kitchen knife in hand, and bled out in the darkness.
Using his hand as a shodō brush, Ichiro had painted a kanji symbol on the floor. The only ink he had was draining out between his fingers.
烏
Karasu.
Crow.
The blood seeped into the floor. So deep, in fact, that the more the teachers scrubbed the strokes, the more permanently they etched the kanji into the tile. When they stood back and saw what they’d done—how the ghostly word would not be removed—they just abandoned the room. They turned off the lights and shut the math room door and tried to keep Ichiro’s last kanji a secret from the rest of us.
The school remained chained and bolted during the next week. Teachers were assigned to drive by at night to check for broken windows. That probably wouldn’t have stopped anything, but it made everyone feel a little safer.
“Name seven things that make people in this town feel safe.” Haru took a drag on his cigarette and blew out the smoke. Somewhere behind us the television in Lawson’s blared colorful commercials at no one.
“Seven things?” I said, leaning back on the curb.
“Yep.”
“Disposable face masks. That would have to be number one.”
“Of course.”
“Kōban police boxes.”
“Easy.”
“Crossing guards.”
“Okay.”
“Delicately wrapped fruit, a bowl of miso soup, braided rope.”
“From a shrine?”
“Yes.”
“And the last one?”
“I’ll go with a bā-chan pushing a baby carriage.”
“What?” Haru laughed. “No way, that’s totally creepy, and not safe. Seriously, why would a little old lady buy a baby carriage in the first place? Where’s the baby that should be inside? What exactly is inside it now? Is it a doll? A broken picture frame? A human head?”
“Baka,” I said, kicking Haru’s shoe. “You know why they push them around. Some women work in fields and get their spines jacked up from sporing mushrooms all day. Some women lean on baby carriages for proper back support. Some women fill those carriages with groceries because they don’t drive anymore, and when they finally push the stupid thing home again, some women have treats for their sons if they’ve finished their homework.”
Haru crushed his cigarette butt on the asphalt. “Right. Sorry about that. Your parents are old.”
“They’re freakishly old! And my mother pushes around an empty baby carriage. So what? You work at an empty convenience store!”
“Okay, okay,” Haru said. “You know what absolutely makes no one feel safe, though? Bus drivers. At least not the ones who have the brain of a fifteen-year-old.”
“Yori-san? That’s not fair. They fired him and he hadn’t done anything wrong.”
“Of course he did.” Haru lit another cigarette. “He was standing in the parking lot shouting about river trolls tricking the students into killing themselves. He absolutely should have been fired. That is the exact opposite of making people feel safe.”
“He was a nice guy.”
“Who told the school board a kappa was murdering children.”
“I didn’t say I believed him.”
“Well, I’m glad we cleared that up,” Haru said, taking another drag. “He got what was coming to him.”
Haru and I sat on the curb as the evening grew darker around us. It’s true that not many adults liked Yori. He didn’t wear a blue blazer or white gloves like the other drivers who took us around on field trips. He didn’t sit quietly in his chair, face forward, bowing and waving from the wrist like some pageant queen. He wanted to talk to us. He wanted to laugh and have conversations with people who thought the same way he did. For Yori, that was a bus full of high school students.
And we liked him. When he drove us on field trips or other school outings, he always talked to us like we were people, not kids who should be disciplined or ignored. He knew how to drive a bus—sort of—but where he truly shone was in details. Small, intricate, mind-spinning details. He could chat about your favorite food one minute and then manga the next. You could ask him what his favorite Pokémon was and he wouldn’t say “the cute green one with the hat.” Yori could go on and on about Hasuburero and how he evolves for a second time into Runpappa after being exposed to a Water Stone. If you’re an adult and have any clue what that last sentence means, congratulations, you are an otaku nerd. But for us, Yori the Bus Driver always had answers. Even if the questions were silly. Or weird. Or just plain stupid.
“You shouldn’t breathe in the smoke, you know.”
Haru and I flipped around. It was hard to see her at first. She was standing near the far corner of the building. When she walked into the light of the front window, though, I instantly recognized her face.
“Why do you put the smoke in your mouth?” she asked. “Mouths aren’t made for that.” And she would know because the last time I saw her she was on fire in Aiko’s front garden.
“Who are you?” I said.
“Who do I look like to you?” she replied.
“A girl in a gray hoodie.”
“Then that is who I will be.”
“What’s your name, girl in a gray hoodie?” Haru asked.
“Moya.”
She walked over to the curb. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a gray zip-up with ears on the hood. She looked like any other fifteen-year-old who had never been on fire before.
“Moya?” Haru said. “That’s not a normal name.”
“Of course it’s normal. It’s totally normal,” she said, pulling the cigarette from Haru’s mouth and pinching the embers.
“Hey,” Haru said.
“And I didn’t come to talk to you, anyway, smoke-mouth. I came to talk to your friend.” Moya sat down on the curb next to me, knees pointed in, lips cartoonishly pouty.
“Me?” I said. “Why?”
“Because sometimes it can be hard when you’re the new girl at school.”
“Are you … I didn’t know you went to our school,” I said.
“Just moved in. Down the street.”
“What street?” I asked.
“The one over there.”
“I have no idea what you’re pointing at.”
“It’s called … Mountain Street.”
“Mountain Street?”
“Something like that.”
“Did you just make up a street name?” Haru asked, poking his head forward.
“No.”
“You looked up at the mountains and then said Mountain Street.”
Moya leaned in to me and said, “That guy’s rude.”
Haru laughed. “There are, like, ten streets in Kusaka, and none of them are Mountain Street.”
Moya shrugged. “I was kind of hoping a cute boy could help me out with a teensy little problem.”
“What cute boy?” Haru said. “You mean Koda?”
“Let’s just hear her out on this one,” I said. “Also, you’re an awful friend.”
Moya smiled.
“I’m sorry,” Haru said to me. “It’s just, you’re so young, and you wear that giant helmet all the time.”
“What?” I said, looking back at Moya. “No … I … it’s just a regular bicycle helmet.”
“A comically large bicycle helmet.”
“It’s because of the padding, Haru. There’s nothing funny about responsible headgear!”
I looked back at Moya. She wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Gods, you two,” she whispered. “Look, Koda, I need you to steal something for me.”
“Okay, she’s all yours,” Haru said.
“You want me to steal something?” I said. “That’s your teensy problem?”
“Well, you are a thief, aren’t you?”
“What? No.”
“Sure you are,” Moya said. “Look at me. Let me see your eyes. Don’t touch me, though.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“I’m serious, kid.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“I will punch you right in the boy bits if you lay one finger on me.”
“I don’t touch girls!” I blurted out.
“Smooth,” Haru whispered.
Moya leaned in close to my face. “Yep, you’re one of them,” she said.
“One of what?”
“A suri. A pickpocket. A cutpurse. You know, a thief.”
“Um, no. I’m fifteen and I’ve never stolen anything in my life.”
“Normally, kid, this is not a good thing. Everybody hates a thief, especially suri. Also, you’re kind of small. And Haru’s right—you have a ridiculous helmet. But for now, I need something stolen and you’re the only one who can do it. Here’s the address.”
Moya handed me a piece of paper.
“Seriously, who are you?” I asked.
“Have you seen the crows, Koda?” Moya said.
Haru leaned forward. “What crows?”
“I’m having a private conversation with your weird little cutpurse friend here, thank you very much.”
“That’s insulting,” I said.
“Your handsome cutpurse friend,” she corrected.
“Well, all right, then.”
“Have you seen the crows?” Moya repeated.
I looked over at Haru.
“This isn’t an abstract question, Koda,” Moya said. “These aren’t normal crows. They watch you back. Either you’ve seen them or you haven’t.”
I didn’t want to say it, but …
“Yes.”
“Then this is the one time in the history of the world when being a dirty little thief is the best thing you could be. Go to the address. It’s the only way to stop what’s happening to this town.”
“What exactly am I supposed to steal?” I said. Because that was obviously the sanest question to ask.
“A memory,” Moya said, pushing up from the curb.
“A memory? You want me to steal a memory?”
“Of course,” she said, looking down at me like I was the moron. “It will be attached to something you’d find in a river. Maybe a rock. Or a stick. An arrowhead! Arrowheads would be an excellent place to start. Very traumatic. If you see an arrowhead, definitely steal its memory.”
“Steal the memory from an arrowhead? What does that even mean?”
“You’re the suri. Go to that address and steal the memory that’s there. Don’t wait, kid. The Road is spreading.”
With no other explanation whatsoever, the strange girl turned and walked back the way she came.
Haru slowly pulled another cigarette from his shirt pocket. “Well, she is fired.”
“What?”
“I’m firing her.”
“From what?”
“I don’t know. From being a person? She’s cute and all, but she is broken in the head and I am firing her from being a person like the rest of us. What the hell was that about crows?”
“She asked if I’d seen crows.”
“Everybody’s seen a crow before.”
“Then everybody would have said yes.”
I folded the piece of paper and slipped it into my slacks.
“You’re not seriously going to that address, are you? I guarantee it leads to a graveyard. A graveyard for kittens. That she made herself.”
“Actually go there?” I scoffed. “No, I wouldn’t do something like that.”
But yes, I would.