The room was still dark and abandoned when I woke up. I gripped the door frame, slowly pulled myself to my feet, and stepped into the hall. Somewhere below me I could hear balls hitting floors and walls and old backboards.
“Were you in Ikeda-sensei’s room?”
I turned, my head still feeling swimmy. It was my best friend, Kenji. Great.
“No,” I said. “The door was open, so I came over to close it.”
“I’m going to tell,” he said.
“Do it, Kenji. But make sure you wipe the cookie crumbs off the front of your shirt first.”
I guess I wasn’t the only one who was going to be late to gym class.
“Baka,” he hissed, and scurried off down the hall.
I rubbed my head where I’d smacked it on the floor.
By the time I got changed into my white shirt and blue shorts and slipped into the gymnasium, the boys were on one half of the court throwing basketballs at an uncooperative hoop and the girls were practicing proper volleyball form by hitting a ball over an imaginary net. Ikeda-sensei was sitting on the lowest bleachers.
No one liked Ikeda-sensei. He was an ex–sumō wrestler teaching math and physical education at a high school. If that sounds like a demotion, you’d be thinking the same way he does. The doctors couldn’t explain it, but Ikeda-sensei’s eyesight went from eagle perfect to mole-man blind in less than a year. He had to get these superthick glasses, drop out of his sumō stable in Ōsaka, and return home to this dinky town. As you can guess, he was a very large, very angry, very blind man. Students didn’t like him, parents didn’t like him, fellow teachers didn’t like him. He was as big and mean as an ox. And like any ox, Ikeda-sensei was to be avoided at all times.
“Koda, over here!” called out Kenji, apparently still on a sugar high from his secret cookie break. “You want to shoot a basket?”
He asked that last question with a demonic grin crawling across his face. He knew I didn’t want to shoot a basket. He knew I couldn’t make a basket if I was standing on a ladder clutching the rim with one hand. But all the other guys had stopped and everyone was staring at me.
“That sounds like fun,” I said through clenched teeth.
Kenji hurled the ball at me. I grabbed my head and dropped to the floor. Which seemed like a totally reasonable thing to do when someone was trying to murder you with a rubber ball. No one saw the potential danger in this, so they all just laughed instead.
I picked myself up and smiled at Kenji. “Tossed it a little hard there, didn’t we?”
“Gomen,” he said back. “Forgot who I was throwing it to.” He grabbed another ball and gently rolled it along the ground. Fifteen seconds later the ball bumped against my toe like an infant’s kiss. I kept my eyes locked on Kenji and snatched it off the ground.
I walked up to the orange line and bounced the ball with both hands.
“Gods,” someone whispered.
Well, if this was the one time the gods were looking down on me, I hoped they’d guide the ball through the air and help me slam that hooping net—if that’s a thing people say. I shot the ball. And missed. Not the hoop part, I missed the backboard. And the pole. And the wall behind it. I did hit the bleachers, though, which, considering how all of my other gym classes have gone, was a record.
“Ooh, so close,” Kenji said gleefully. “All you have to do is aim higher. And throw the ball a little harder. Well, a whole lot harder. Just pretend you’re a normal boy and not a five-year-old shōgakusei. Then shoot the basket. It’s my fault really, I should have clarified that.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said. “Like this?” I grabbed another ball and threw it. Hard. I don’t think I’ve ever thrown anything in my life as hard as I threw that ball. And I didn’t miss! Did I make a basket? Of course not. But I did hit the hoop. Take that, Kenji! The basketball zinged off the rim like a stray cannon shot. Over the heads of the boys standing by. Over the divider line. Over the imaginary volleyball net.
“Yabai!” the girls screamed.
Oh. That’s not good.
It was like the ball was drawn straight to the side of some random girl’s head. She never had a chance.
“Koda!” she screamed. “Are you serious?”
“That’s enough!” Ikeda-sensei barked from the corner. “Everyone shut your awful little mouths!”
“But Koda threw that ball at my head!”
Technically the ball was chucked at the basket, and somehow in all the bouncing that ensued her head got in the way.
Good point, brain.
“Quiet, all of you,” Ikeda-sensei shot back.
“Koda hates me,” the random girl cried.
Not true, not true. I don’t hate you. I barely know you.
It’s the gods that hate her, my brain said.
Obviously.
“Stop fooling around,” Ikeda-sensei bellowed, lifting his huge frame from the bleachers. “Get back to your drills.”
The girl with the basketball head wound receded into a gang of her supporters. Kenji walked up behind me and slapped me on the back. “Couldn’t have done it better myself.”
He’s going to choke on a salmon bone one day and pee himself in front of the whole class, said my brain.
I laughed. If you’ve ever seen Kenji maul his food at lunchtime, you’d know he was bound to choke on something sooner or later. And after he does, I’m going to slap him on the back and say, Couldn’t have done it better myself.
Good one, my brain said.
* * *
I rode my bike slower than normal along the backstreets after school. I’d been lucky that no one important was on the second floor when I took my little tumble in the math room. That was three sleep attacks in just a couple of weeks. My narcolepsy was definitely getting worse.
Moya had asked if I’d seen the crows. Aiko had been searching for a three-legged crow named Yatagarasu, and Ichiro wrote karasu on the floor before he died. Maybe the crows had been following other kids at Kusaka High. Maybe they’d been following me. If I could do something to stop them, then it was definitely worth a ride to Moya’s mysterious address.
I jerked my bike to a stop in front of an old, abandoned house. Not a kitten graveyard, exactly, but not a place you’d want to be walking around at night. I took off my helmet and unfolded the piece of paper Moya had given me. Yep. This was it. I swung my foot over the seat and walked through the front gate, which was almost welded shut with rust. I stepped up to the front door and slid it back with a loud, metallic scrape.
“Gomen kudasai,” I called inside. My voice echoed through the musty genkan.
Nothing.
“Gomen kudasai,” I called again.
No one answered. I was about to shut the door when I heard the muted sound of laughter. From a television set.
“Daremo imasen ka?” I called louder.
“Who is it?” came a raspy voice from down the darkened hallway.
“Okita Koda desu.”
“Who?” the hoarse woman called back.
“Koda. I, um, deliver mushrooms.”
“What?”
“I got your address from this girl … in a parking lot. She said you might have something for me.”
You are the worst thief in the entire world! “Excuse me, ma’am, I’m interested in possibly stealing something from you—if you have the time, that is.”
Shut up, brain.
“Who?”
“Her name was Moya. I have this piece of paper, if that helps.”
Why would that help?
“Go away, young man. We don’t need mushrooms here.”
“No, I don’t want to sell you mushrooms. My name is Koda Okita.”
“I don’t know who that is, young man.”
“Right. I did just explain this, though. I’m Koda Okita. I received your address from a girl at Lawson’s. I think you have, um, a memory for me?”
“I’m very busy,” the voice said. “I don’t have time for salesmen.”
“I’m not—”
“Thank you, goodbye.”
“Um.”
“Please shut the door.”
“Right. Ojama shimashita.”
I slid the front door closed. Well, that was a big fat fail. The dusty placard on the front read “Yamamoto.” Which didn’t help much. How many Yamamotos live in Kusaka? Fifty? A hundred? It might be the most common name in all of Japan. I still didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking for. Or how it could possibly stop the crows that were killing people in this town.
Maybe this was a bad idea. When a girl who snubs cigarettes with her fingers hands you an address late at night, you don’t visit that address. That’s how people end up getting murdered. “Mountain Street.” Moya was probably just some stress-head who actually knew nothing about me or Kusaka Town.
I shut the gate to the Yamamoto home and walked out into the street. Everyone in the world has stress, but in Japan we’ve turned it into a national art form. Think about all the stress heaped on us students: If you don’t pass your exams in high school, you won’t get into a good college. If you don’t get into a good college, you’ll never get hired by a decent company. If you don’t get into a decent company, you’ll become an outcast and probably die alone in an apartment the size of a broom closet while your ancestors look down and weep from shame. Or you’ll become a shiitake mushroom farmer. Which is pretty much the same thing.
Stress starts when you’re a kid, and it doesn’t let up until … I guess, until you die. There’s social stress: Am I part of the in-crowd? Do people know my name? There’s job stress: Am I the last one to leave? Does the boss know my name? There’s romantic stress and parental stress and transportation stress and stress you get from walking down the street and wondering if that girl passing you will nod, or smile, or pretend you don’t exist at all.
That’s a lot of stress. Everybody has it. Old or young. Rich or poor. Nobody wants to be left on the outside. Nobody wants to be alone. And sometimes that stress builds up until something cracks inside.
I had met this guy the summer before on a train from Kōchi City. He smiled and sat down next to me, ignoring all the other empty seats in the car. I kept on looking out the window, but I could feel him watching the back of my head. I started to think he was one of those train perverts. You know, the kind who waits until the train lurches to the side, then reaches out to grope you. I scooted over a bit.
“I’m a very generous man,” he told me.
I scooted over a lot.
“Do you know how generous I am?” he asked.
“Nope,” I said, looking up at the ceiling.
“I would give you this book here.”
He set down a tattered pile of loose papers on the seat between us. I looked over. They were pages ripped out of a 1996 Honda owner’s manual. Looking back, I don’t think he knew that.
“I like the part when the rōnin is caught between two warring families and he tricks them into killing each other,” he said. “You should read that part.”
Yep, I’m pretty sure he didn’t know it was a car manual. Of course, I hadn’t actually read that particular car manual. It could have been the most awesome samurai-themed Honda owner’s manual ever.
“I’ve been more generous than this,” the man continued. “I had a friend who’d been in a car accident and was paralyzed from the waist down. He came to me and said, ‘I wish I could go to the school dance.’ So I let him borrow my legs.”
“Your … legs?”
The man frowned. “He gave them back, of course.”
Stupid me.
“Just like he promised. Returned them the next day and the doctor sewed my legs back on. No problem.”
Not a glint. Not a wink of the eye. Not a corner of a smile. Nothing. He was as serious as an old man with reattached legs could be. The brakes screeched as we pulled to a stop.
“Kusaka Station,” the voice buzzed over the intercom. The doors slid open.
“This is where I get off,” I said.
“Yes, me too.”
“Oh. Good.”
“I have to get to the doctor’s office by noon. I’m lending out my brain today. I can’t be late.”
“Good luck, then … with your brain and everything.”
He bowed.
I’m sure he won’t miss it, said my own brain.
And that’s what the daily grind can do to people here. It creates a nation of stress-heads. Moya was probably just one of them.
“Oi!” someone yelled.
I looked back at the house to see a man poking his head through the second-story window. He was pretty old—forty or something—and from what I could tell, he was wearing welding goggles, a cape, and a sugegasa straw hat. Speaking of broken.
“Koda-kun?” the man yelled. “Koda Okita?”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean ‘yes’? It’s me!”
“I…”
He removed the hat and peeled the goggles off his face.
“Yori-san?” I said.
“Come on up, Koda. I’m really glad you came by.”
“I didn’t know you lived here, Yori. I would have asked your mother—”
“Sister.”
“Yes … your sister. I would have asked your lovely sister if I could speak with you.”
“She’s not lovely. She’s a hag, but don’t let her scare you off. She won’t move from the floor in the front room. Come in, come in.”
So Yori the Bus Driver was my mysterious contact? Okay. I walked back through the overgrown garden and slid open Yori’s rickety front door. “Gomen kudasai,” I called in again.
“Upstairs, Koda.”
“Sumimasen,” I said, ducking inside. Yori’s sister grunted and turned the volume up on the TV.