Life Ceremony, page 10
She was slight, much smaller than I am, and was completely enveloped by my hug. Burying her face in my chest, she said in a confused voice, “What’s the matter, Ruri?”
My hair tangled with hers as I hugged her. The water from the pool had evaporated, leaving just a hint of chlorine.
Hugging her boyish body that had yet to mature into womanly curves, I whispered, “Shiho, thank you.”
We were still in danger of being easily knocked back by strong words or diminished by the values created by the adults who ruled the world. Each time, we had to make our bodies our own by chanting that magic charm. It was really tiring, but if we didn’t protect ourselves like that, our precious world would be destroyed. I hugged Shiho even tighter and said in a bright voice, “Listen to the cicadas. It’ll be summer vacation soon!”
She immediately brightened and jumped in my arms.
“That’s right! It’ll be here soon. Can’t wait!”
She would be going to the mountains this summer and would meet her boyfriend there. And she would have sex with the boy she really loved. Feeling happy for her, I buried my face in her soft hair.
That night, after getting home from the art club, I took off my uniform and crawled into bed.
Mom would be staying late at her part-time job, and my dinner was on the table, covered in plastic wrap. I was hungry, but there was something I wanted to try first. I wanted to see whether I could make the phenomenon of that dream happen by myself.
I closed my eyes and recalled the dream. I visualized the soap bubbles I’d seen in the dream, and as if responding to the memory, something stirred within my body.
I listened to my body’s voice and touched the skin over the responding cells—my Achilles tendon, behind my earlobes, under my knees, the veins in my neck. Little by little the cells began vibrating, and particles, fizzing as though made from stardust, started moving around my body.
I wrapped my right foot in the blanket and pulled it tight. The bits of stardust vibrated and shone and swayed, gradually swelling in time with the movements of my foot.
I was floating inside my own skin. I’d thought that only my blood and inner organs existed in my body. It had never occurred to me that anything like this magical stardust could emerge, and it was the first time in my life that I’d ever realized that there was such a large expanse inside me.
The moment I felt I was about to explode, the particles of light inside me burst, and magical particles instantly evaporated from my entire body. Wondering whether I could see them flying out of me, I opened my eyes a crack and saw my curtain swaying in the night breeze.
The night smells were making the air in my room slowly sway. My hair, strewn over the sheet, was coarser than usual, and I vaguely remembered that I’d been swimming in the pool.
The same pleasant fatigue I’d felt after swimming enveloped my body. I surrendered to the languid feeling of floating and fluttering in the breeze, starting to feel drowsy.
Suddenly looking at my fingertip, I noticed that some of the red paint I’d used when painting after school had stuck to the nail of my thumb, like a childish manicure I’d given myself. I stared at it as I slowly fell into sleep.
Lover on the Breeze
Naoko calls me Puff, because I puff up in the wind and billow in the breeze.
She was in her first year at elementary school when her father, Takashi, hung me in her bedroom. Once he had fixed me in place with silver hooks, he stroked her head in satisfaction.
“Naoko, it’s light blue—your favorite color. Isn’t it pretty?”
“I wanted pink—blue’s for boys.” Naoko pouted, but she couldn’t take her eyes off my ever so pale, liquid-sky blue.
My role was to cover the right side of her bedroom window.
Outside, a white-painted veranda overlooked the garden beyond. The other cloth, my twin, said dismissively, “Now we’re stuck here, we’ll just get dirty in the wind,” and went to sleep. I wasn’t at all sleepy, and I gazed curiously around Naoko’s bedroom at the pink cushions and her shiny study desk. As if aware that I alone was awake, Naoko looked over at me. That’s when she named me Puff.
Come morning, Naoko went off to school, her red schoolbag on her back. Sometime later, her mother, Kazumi, came in to clean the room. “Let’s get some air in here,” she said, coming over to open the glass window behind me. For the rest of the day, until Naoko came home, I floated and flapped, almost swimming around the room.
When Naoko came home, she exclaimed, “It’s cold in here!” and shut the window. And, still with her schoolbag on her back, she said, “Puff, I’m back,” and buried her face deep in my folds.
Despite my name, I hated the wind. In winter it was cold, and in summer it was unpleasantly warm, and the sensation of being touched up all over my body was gross. Naoko always felt the cold and kept the window shut, for which I was thankful.
At night she would quietly bundle me up in her arms and nestle her face up close.
There in the darkened room, I would be caught in her embrace, listening as she murmured my name. Whenever she was sad, she always came to me for a cuddle.
Yukio first came to her room around the time I had just turned eleven. It was the season I hated most, when strong, gusty wind whipped up petals from the cherry tree in the garden and stuck them all over me.
Naoko had just started her second year in high school. Kazumi was jittery, and she kept coming up to the room with juice or snacks. Every time she went out again, Naoko and Yukio looked at each other and giggled shyly.
“Sorry,” Naoko said. “It’s the first time I’ve ever had a boy come to my room, so Mom’s getting a bit carried away.”
“That’s okay.”
Yukio was a rather slight, unremarkable-looking boy. He wasn’t all that tall, either, and his face, with its beautifully pronounced cheekbones, was smaller than Naoko’s.
The surface of his fine black hair shone pale brown in the sunlight streaming through the window. Beneath thin, delicate brows, his eyes were shaped like small leaves, the black pupils reflecting soft brown in the sunlight.
His long arms, extending from the rolled-up sleeves of the white shirt of his uniform, were thin, but the muscles were well defined, contrasting with Naoko’s soft limbs.
Yukio was a little taller than Kazumi, and as he walked, he generated a slight breeze in the room.
“Oh, Puff’s got caught in the window.” Naoko got up, opened the window, and pulled me loose.
“Puff?”
“This curtain . . . that’s what I used to call it when I was little, and the habit’s stuck. I suppose you think that’s very childish.”
“Uh-uh.”
Yukio didn’t laugh at Naoko, just shook his head, narrowing his eyes.
“It’s a good name,” he said simply, and bit into one of the cookies Kazumi had left for them.
Every time his fingers and arms moved, soundlessly, a light breeze blew through the room. It was as if his sinewy limbs were summoning it.
As I watched those quiet arms gently making the air vibrate, it occurred to me that I wanted to feel this breeze flow all over me.
Yukio often came to the house after that. On his sixth visit, the two of them were watching a movie on the small television in the corner of the room when Naoko suddenly tugged at the sleeve of his uniform.
Yukio swayed as though in the breeze and brought his face close to Naoko’s, lightly placing a kiss on her. His thin, pale pink lips fluttered down toward her without a sound. They reminded me of the falling cherry blossom petals as they stuck to the window screen.
Yukio’s eyes were open, his lashes just slightly lowered. Naoko had her eyes firmly closed, so I alone noticed how his lashes fluttered in the breeze.
One Saturday night not long afterward, Yukio stayed over at the house. Kazumi and Takashi were attending a memorial service some distance away.
Laughter sounded continually from downstairs as the pair of them cooked dinner, and the aroma of stew came wafting up to the second floor.
Later they came upstairs and sat side by side eating milk pudding. Naoko had apparently made it the night before and had left it to chill overnight. The soft white custard slipped easily between Yukio’s pale blossom-pink lips.
“This is good.” Yukio looked at Naoko, smiling.
Naoko pouted unhappily. “But the potato salad was a disaster, and you cooked the stew pretty much all on your own.”
“It’s the least I can do when you’re letting me stay over.”
“No way! And anyone can make milk pudding.”
“But it tastes great!”
“But . . .”
After finishing their dessert, Yukio and Naoko stood up and slipped between the white sheets on the bed. I watched intently as his inexpert fingers slipped over her skin and, though he rarely perspired, beads of moisture welled up on his forehead.
Just as a small drop fell from his delicate skin and landed on her collarbone, I noticed her glance over at me.
The next morning, Naoko got out of bed alone, dressed, and went downstairs.
A faint smell of eggs frying came wafting up. It seemed she was getting her own back for yesterday by cooking breakfast for Yukio.
Yukio remained asleep, his shoulder exposed, in the bed she had vacated.
His bony shoulder shivered with cold, and at that moment I slipped one of my silver hooks from the curtain rail.
One by one, my silver hooks slipped free, and as a gust of the wind that I hated so much came blowing through the window, I jumped and let myself be carried on it.
I swam through the room on the wind. It all happened in a moment, soundlessly, as if on the ocean floor. Holding my breath, I quietly let myself down over Yukio’s body.
I could feel that skin I had been watching for so long.
“Naoko . . .” murmured Yukio in his sleep, drawing me into an embrace.
A light breeze as he raised his arms set my body atremble. Every movement of his fingers or legs or shoulders generated a quiet, slightly damp puff of air.
“Naoko.”
Again a light breeze came from his lips.
Each time it blew, I breathed it in, trembling. I finally realized I had been hanging in this room for the past eleven years just in order to be bathed in this breeze.
“What’s going on?”
Naoko’s voice was suddenly harsh. She must have finished making breakfast, for she now stood by the door in semidarkness, staring at us.
“What the—” Yukio sat up, rubbing his eyes.
“What is Puff doing over here?”
“I don’t know. He must have blown over in the wind.”
“As if! You’re telling me he unhooked himself from the rail?”
“I don’t know how that happened.”
Yukio looked at me, puzzled. The bed creaked under his weight, and the tremor caused me to slip to the floor with a faint rustle.
That winter, Naoko and friends from her school club gathered for a small Christmas party in her room. The room was littered with alcopop cans and snack packets.
One brown-haired boy who was sitting in the center of the room telling joke after joke suddenly tapped Yukio on the shoulder.
“Hey, Yukio, have you ever been unfaithful?”
“Of course not.”
“You’ve never done it with another girl? Not even once?”
A short-haired girl who was a close friend of Naoko’s said, “Stupid! Yukio’s not like you,” and slapped him on the head.
Watching them as he sipped his fizzy drink, Yukio said innocently, “Actually, there may have been one time . . .”
“Eh? Really? You never!” exclaimed the girl, drawing closer.
Yukio laughed, then abruptly looked over and pointed at me.
“Just once, I mistook Puff for Naoko.”
“Whaaat?” Everyone laughed.
“I cuddled him and called him Naoko. It really came as a shock when I realized what I was doing!”
“Yukio, you’re so dumb!”
The brown-haired boy alone seemed mystified. “Who’s Puff?”
“It’s Naoko’s pet name for her curtain, like it’s a teddy bear or something. ’Cos she’s still just a kid.”
“Hah! I bet you find that sort of thing cute, don’t you, Yukio?”
Yukio chuckled quietly and poured some more fizzy drink between his lips.
Only Naoko didn’t laugh. She sat huddled in the corner of her bed and glared at me.
One afternoon not long afterward, still in their school uniforms, Yukio and Naoko sat talking quietly in her room, which was filled with evening sunlight.
“You want to split up? Why?”
I was taken aback when Yukio said this, and I trembled even though the window wasn’t open.
“Um . . .”
“Won’t you give me a reason?”
“Well . . . I’m in love with someone else,” said Naoko, staring into space, her eyes dry. “To tell the truth, I’ve known about it ever since we got together. You reminded me of him, and that’s why I fell for you. I’m sorry.”
“Oh.”
Yukio nodded meekly and looked sad. They sat in silence for a while, staring at the sky changing color outside the window, as though watching a movie. The sunset gradually darkened and finally turned to indigo.
Yukio wept a little.
I watched the transparent drops trickling from his eyes, and for the first time, I hated Naoko for making him cry like that.
There, in the room vacated by Yukio, Naoko embraced me. It was the first time in a very long time, and her knees trembled as they sank into the carpet. Her hands gripped me tightly and wouldn’t let go.
Naoko’s unnaturally hot breath felt oppressive, like a gust of summer wind. She made me damp with her breath as she buried her face in me.
Motionless, she closed her eyes as if in prayer.
There, in that room void of the breeze aroused by Yukio’s arms and fingers, my body hung heavily. The indigo-tinged air stiffened in the silence, no longer making any attempt to move.
Puzzle
Sanae slipped into the packed train carriage, as though drawn in by the warm, damp air that spilled out through the doors when they shook open. She slowly sank her body into the wall of passengers, pressured from behind by more office workers pushing their way on after her. She snuggled under a salaryman’s chin, and his damp breath tickled her forehead.
“Are you okay, Sanae?” asked her colleague Emiko, wedged in next to her.
Sanae crinkled her eyes in a smile. “I’m fine!”
As the train moved off, the passengers all raised their faces slightly, as if seeking oxygen.
Surrounded by lips facing upward, Sanae relaxed her body and leaned into the eddy of body heat. Submerged in air full of sighs released from numerous mouths, she closed her eyes and savored the dampness on her skin, floating in it, happy being smothered in the carbon dioxide spewed out by passengers. Long ago the term forest bathing had been popular, but Sanae preferred “people bathing” like this.
Even more people got on at the next stop, and enthralled by the mounting warm pressure, she opened her eyes a little and noticed the salaryman next to her cluck his tongue. She stared almost enviously at the black hole in his face, fancying that she could see through the thin, cracked lips to the red-black tongue bouncing against the inside of his mouth. Feeling her gaze on him, the salaryman looked briefly puzzled, but when he saw her smiling slightly, he seemed to understand that her look was appreciative, and his expression changed to one of pride.
The train pulled into the station where Sanae had to transfer, and she reluctantly joined the flow of passengers getting off. Emiko was on the platform, smoothing down her tousled hair with a sigh.
“Emiko.”
“Oh, Sanae, am I glad to see you! I thought we’d lost each other. Today’s rush hour is just the worst, isn’t it? I really can’t stand it!” Emiko frowned grumpily, then noticed that Sanae was smiling and looked at her, puzzled. “You don’t look fazed at all, Sanae. You’re always like that. You never get irritable, do you?”
“You hate the rush hour, don’t you, Emiko?”
“Nobody likes it when it’s packed like that!”
“Really? Actually, I’ve never felt that way myself.”
Seeing Sanae gazing at the noisy wave of people, her expression still soft, Emiko shrugged. “You have an air about you, Sanae, as if you see life from above the clouds. I’ve never seen you get annoyed about anything. The younger girls were saying the same thing, that you’re always so kind and never, ever get angry.”
“Really?”
“Yes, especially Yuka. She’s always going on and on about how much she likes you. She wants to go out drinking with you again.”
“Yuka likes everyone, though!”
As they got on the escalator, chatting, the next train slid into the platform. Sanae turned in the direction of the sound and looked down on the eddy of living organisms flowing out through the doors, almost reaching out a hand toward them.
“Anything wrong, Sanae?”
“Oh, no, nothing.” Sanae shook her head lightly and turned back to face Emiko. Behind her, the noise coming from the heat and physical presence of the living organisms made the air tremble as it slowly came pressing up behind her.
Sanae lived in a trim little apartment building crammed into a small space in a major office district. As she walked in her high heels between the rows of buildings, she couldn’t shake the sensation that she, too, was one of these buildings.
Gazing at the gradations of gray concrete, she recalled the public housing project she’d lived in as a child. Ever since she could remember, she had felt that she was one of the blocks in that project.
