Life Ceremony, page 11
She’d always been on the frail side and had often sat on a bench in the project’s park, watching the other children playing. When she handed back a ball that came rolling up to her feet, she had been surprised by the heat in another child’s hands. The sensation of living flesh was utterly unlike her own pale hands. They were living organisms, and the core of life was firmly embedded inside them, she’d thought at the time. Behind her back, the gray project buildings stood in rows, watching the children in the same way that she was.
When she left home and came to live alone in Tokyo, this office district had been recommended to her because it was so convenient for transport lines. The sight of it somehow made her feel that being here had to be her destiny. Ah, this is how the ugly duckling—the baby swan mistakenly raised by ducks—must have felt when it returned to its own flock, she thought. Yet, unlike in the picture book, Sanae wasn’t returning to a flock of swans, but to rows of inorganic buildings. Although the flock of humans she had mistakenly blended with was far more beautiful, before she knew it, she was being pushed back by nature to where she belonged.
Through a gap in the curtains in her apartment she looked down on the heads and backs of people passing by below the streetlamps. She never got tired of watching people moving around, no matter how long she spent doing it.
The core of life was embedded within people. How beautiful living organisms were! She diligently followed their skin and muscles with her eyes, as though looking at precious cells through a microscope.
Inside the body, squirming organs were densely crammed within a faintly transparent skin. Around them stretched the muscles, like roots, and blood was constantly circulating in the veins that stood out on the neck. Unconsciously, Sanae slipped her face through the gap in the curtain and pressed her forehead to the window to stare at them, but then someone looked at her, as if aware they were being watched. Hastily she left the window and took refuge inside the darkened room.
She saw her pale face reflected in a small hand mirror lying on the low table. She’d forgotten to turn it over that morning, she thought, reaching out a hand for it.
The surface of her face reflected in it was somewhat pasty, and it was impossible to see anything of the blood and flesh that must lie within. Her cheeks and forehead were such a uniform color that she began to wonder whether her insides were filled with the same materials as the surface. Only the eye shadow painted on her eyelid had a faint luster, which made it look all the more like white concrete painted over in one spot.
Recalling the lukewarm carbon dioxide from numerous mouths showering her in the train, Sanae breathed deeply as she gazed into the mirror. But the breeze coming out through the gap between her enamel-coated teeth was cold, as though she were simply blowing air, not breathing.
Sanae sighed, turned the mirror over, and placed it back on the table. She didn’t want to look at herself, as she barely resembled any kind of life-form, so she’d decided never to look in the mirror except when she was getting ready for work in the morning. There was no mirror in her tiny bathroom, and this one small hand mirror was the only one in her apartment. Feeling a little better now that she could no longer see her own appearance, she got up and started preparing her dinner.
It was in her nature to never feel very hungry. She always felt that she was just pouring food into the black hole in her face, as though she were merely a garbage bin for kitchen waste. That felt gross, so she tried taking only nutritional supplements, but then she’d fainted from anemia and since then had forced herself to chuck a certain amount of food into her face hole.
Steam smelling of dashi and miso wafted up as she reheated the soup she’d made that morning. Yet even inhaling that fragrance did not stimulate her appetite, and not knowing what to do, she kept stirring the soup with the silver ladle.
During her lunch break at work the next day, Sanae joined several colleagues in an empty meeting room. Normally they each brought packed lunches they’d either made themselves or bought in a convenience store, but today everyone had the same yellow plastic bags lined up on the table. That morning they’d all gone together to a new bento shop opened nearby. The place sold unusual types of bento, such as taco rice and loco moco, and had a good reputation, so they’d decided to buy lunch there today.
Unwrapping her bento, Emiko pursed her lips. “I was really pissed at that guy in the store. He was so rude!”
“It’s true, he was. They should fire him—he’s only a casual worker. Shall we phone in to make a complaint?”
Everyone seemed irritated by how curt the worker who had taken their orders had been.
One girl scooped up some taco rice in a plastic spoon and put it in her mouth, then grimaced and said, “Yuck, this is disgusting.”
“Right—it’s not just the attitude, the food tastes awful. It’s just the worst. I won’t be going back there again.”
“Yeah, we should have stuck with our normal lunches.”
The meat was dry, and the sauce too strong. It didn’t exactly taste like it was a high-quality product.
Sanae was smiling as she savored her food, and Emiko said to her, “Aren’t you annoyed about that bento place, Sanae?”
“Me? No, not really,” she replied with a smile, and another friend laughed.
“You’re so bighearted, Sanae. You hardly ever get angry.”
“I don’t think that’s really true, though,” Sanae said.
“Oh, it is. Just today Okajima was saying all kinds of things to you, but you didn’t even pull a face.”
Okajima, a woman in the same section as Sanae, was known for admonishing workers in a pretty severe tone and was generally disliked, but Sanae had never gotten annoyed with her even once.
“She probably has a point, but it’s the way she says it! It makes me not want to listen, really. It just gets right up my nose.”
“I hate Okajima too. I’m glad I’m not in the same section as her.”
“Well, nobody likes her! You poor thing, Sanae.”
“But, see, you don’t seem to have a problem with her, Sanae. I’ve never heard you bad-mouth her, and you don’t seem to be merely putting up with her either.”
“You really don’t hate anyone, do you, Sanae?”
“Not really.” Sanae shook her head and smiled. Toward life-forms, all she had was a yearning that left no room for hatred.
“You’re incredible, Sanae. The way you can say that without being sarcastic!”
“You think?”
“I really hate people who say they don’t hate anyone, ’cos they’re hypocrites, but not you, Sanae. I get the feeling that you mean it.”
Sanae picked up her bottle of mineral water from the table. “I’ve never felt particularly irritated by anyone, ever since I was little.”
“Really? I guess you have to be born that way. Myself, I’m annoyed all the time. My skin even gets dry from stress. How lucky you are.”
“No, I’m not lucky at all!” Sanae said, emotion in her voice. She was the one who always envied the other women!
She could see the reflection of light on the saliva inside the girl’s mouth when she sighed. Life-forms were a spring from which all kinds of fluids gushed forth. Saliva was one, and urine and blood and other liquids, and around them hung the rank smell of air permeated with the stench of inner organs that erupted from the mouth. Each of those things was totally lifeless when emitted by Sanae, however.
Sanae gazed steadily at the girl, who now peered back into her eyes.
“What lovely eyes you have, Sanae. You can see in them how much you like people.”
“That’s true. Whenever you look at me, I feel good.”
Embarrassed to realize that she’d been staring at the girl, Sanae looked down.
She couldn’t help staring at the life-forms, to the extent that it might be considered rude, but somehow they didn’t dislike it. They all probably sensed that the gaze she fixed them with was tinged with envy. Sanae’s gaze was always received amicably.
She had finished her meal and was just about to clear it away and go back to work when Emiko spoke to her.
“Oh, I almost forgot. Sanae, I brought this for you.”
“You did?” She took the thin plastic bag. Inside was a plastic case.
“I’ve finished with it, so I thought I’d give it to you.”
“What is it? Music?”
“No. It’s an exercise DVD. You mentioned that your body felt cold, didn’t you? This is pretty strenuous exercise, so I thought it’d be effective for poor circulation.”
What she’d meant about her body being cold was a bit different from what Emiko had understood, but Sanae was glad that she cared, so she smiled.
“Thank you. I’ll give it a go.”
“No worries. In any case, it was lying around at home. Oh, I’ll just pop down to the bathroom before going back to work,” Emiko said, waving goodbye as she rushed down the corridor. Sanae quietly gripped the plastic bag in her hand, thinking of all the excrement filling Emiko’s body.
As Sanae and Emiko were leaving their office building after work, a man standing next to the flower bed outside the main entrance looked up at them. He was wearing a long-sleeved black shirt, unsuited to the summer sun, with slim-fit pants of the same color, and upon catching Sanae’s and Emiko’s eyes, he hastily averted his face and began fiddling with the phone in his hand.
“Who’s that? He looks shady,” Emiko said, making a face.
The man kept his face downturned and repeatedly took his phone out of his pocket and put it back in, but at one point his hand must have slipped as he tried to squeeze the phone into his pants, and he dropped it.
The phone landed near Sanae’s feet, and she picked it up and went over to him.
“Here you are,” she said with a smile.
Surprise registered on his face as he looked at her, and he grabbed the phone from her and ran off.
“You should have just left it. You’re too nice sometimes, Sanae.”
Sanae was recalling the sweat oozing from the man’s forehead and the eyeballs moving around in the gaps in his skin. Looking down at her own skin, she saw that there was not even a hint of moisture oozing from its pale surface, even in this heat.
“Emiko, if I do those exercises on the DVD you gave me today, will I be able to sweat?”
“Oh, that! It does work, you know. I was soaked after doing it.”
“Really?”
A few drops of liquid had formed a stain on the asphalt where the man had been standing. It was probably some of his sweat. Sanae stroked her own still surface and visualized the wriggling flesh within the dripping liquid.
Sanae changed into a thin T-shirt and short pants and switched on the TV. She wanted to try the DVD Emiko had given her as soon as she got home, before even having dinner.
As she placed the DVD in the deck, a foreign woman instructor appeared on the screen. Seeing her body, with its well-defined muscles below the skin, Sanae imagined the muscles stretched within that body and the heart at its center. She almost got carried away, but then the music started and she hastily began moving her body.
After she’d been moving awhile, following the instructions, little by little she felt the contents of her skin undergoing a change. The water inside her body was beginning to ooze out. She even had the sensation that liquid was being forced out through the small pores in the surface of the skin on her forehead.
The sweat oozing from her face didn’t stick, however, but smoothly trickled down the surface. Seeing the transparent liquid dripping onto her arm, she was reminded of condensation on a window. It was just water oozing from her body, not a proper bodily fluid. Air was blowing with more force from her mouth, but this made her feel all the more that she was merely a machine that had a switch somewhere.
After continuing this heavy exercise for about an hour, the sensation that she was a receptacle only grew stronger. However much her inner organs raged and moisture oozed heavily out, Sanae felt that she was simply their container.
Finally she finished exercising and switched off the screen with the remote control. All that was reflected on the darkened TV was a small gray building dripping liquid from the condensation on its surface.
Sanae stood there in a daze without wiping away the water that had oozed out from within her. Suddenly something occurred to her, and covering her shirt with her hand, she pressed on the location of her heart. It was beating wildly, but this just gave her the sensation that it wasn’t hers, more like a goldfish she’d swallowed that was flapping around inside.
She sighed, moved close to the dark screen, and looked at her face. Her eyes, nose, and mouth had dark holes in them, and she could catch glimpses of her tongue in her mouth. It was like a slug stuck to the window, and she couldn’t possibly think that it was flesh with her own nerves running through it.
The next day, there was a company get-together after work, and as Sanae was leaving the office with her friends, Emiko suddenly stopped.
“What’s wrong?”
Emiko looked at Sanae and, without saying anything, jerked her chin in the direction of the flower bed. The same man they’d seen the day before was there, gripping a woman by her wrists.
Sanae heard Emiko murmur, “He was lying in wait for Yuka,” and she looked again to see that it was her younger colleague Yuka that the man was holding. The girl next to her frowned.
“What is that? Is he Yuka’s boyfriend? That’s a really threatening vibe, though.”
“Should we help her?”
“But it looks like serious trouble. Maybe we should get a man to help?”
While they all looked on from a distance, Sanae didn’t miss a beat, walking straight over to the couple.
“What’s going on, Yuka?”
“Sanae,” Yuka said in a feeble voice.
“Hello,” Sanae said to the man. “Do you know this girl?”
The man, his shoulders shaking, noticed the friendly smile on Sanae’s face and let go of Yuka, as though his strength had drained out of him.
“Is anything wrong?” Sanae’s smile grew even friendlier, and the man took a step back, averted his eyes, and walked away, wiping the sweat from his downturned face with his black shirt.
As Sanae sadly watched his departing figure, Yuka gripped hold of her arm.
“Sanae, thank you!”
“You’re sweating heavily, Yuka. Are you okay?”
“Yes . . .”
Sanae gazed at the sweat on Yuka’s forehead and neck, and smiled.
“Sanae, are you okay?” she heard Emiko say behind her.
“Sure.”
“I’m glad you’re safe. Well, let’s get going then. Quickly!”
“Yes, let’s go, Yuka.”
Sanae put her arm around Yuka and realized that her back was wet too. Savoring the moisture seeping into her own dry arm, she pressed her arm against Yuka’s back.
About an hour after the party started, Sanae saw Yuka shakily stand up from where she was seated farther inside, her face pale. She was grasping her lower chest, as though in pain, and as Sanae rushed to follow her, she imagined the liquid that had probably risen up to that part of her.
As she’d thought, Yuka was crouched down, vomiting into the toilet bowl.
“Are you okay?”
“Sanae . . .”
Yuka weakly gave her an apologetic look, then immediately turned back to the toilet.
It was as though there’d been a lot of water hidden away somewhere in that small body, as multicolored vomit of solids mixed in with liquid flowed into the toilet bowl. Food that had been on the table until a while ago had been dissolved by her internal organs and was giving off a completely different stench.
Impressed, Sanae put her face close to the toilet bowl. It had been less than an hour since the food entered Yuka’s mouth, yet it had already dissolved this much! How powerful the internal organs of life-forms were!
Sanae slowly rubbed Yuka’s back, hoping she’d vomit some more water smelling of innards. Right on cue, more liquid came welling up out of her lips.
When Sanae unconsciously started rubbing Yuka’s back harder, there was a strangled cry, and she came to herself.
“I’m sorry, was I being too rough?” she asked, peering into Yuka’s face. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah . . . thanks, Sanae.”
It looked as though even more liquid would overflow from Yuka’s eyes, which were moist with tears from having vomited repeatedly. Sanae gazed at these holes, entranced by the prospect of yet more liquid coming from them, but Yuka sighed, held her hand over her mouth, and looked down. Sanae took out a handkerchief and wiped away the small specks of vomit from Yuka’s chest.
“Oh, you really don’t need to do that for me.”
“It’s okay. When you throw up, it’s best to get it all out. Right?”
The smell of vomit and alcohol hung over the toilet bowl. Savoring being enveloped in the odor of bodily fluids permeated with the smell of viscera, Sanae gazed in enchantment at Yuka, who was its source.
“Yes, I’m feeling much better now . . .” Yuka said, and she stood up and flushed the toilet. The rich concoction of bits of battered chicken and fried noodles dissolved in gastric juice was sucked away, and the toilet bowl returned to its insipid state with just clear water. Yuka gargled with tap water and said hoarsely, “I’m sorry, but I’m going home now. I’ll pay my share later . . .”
“Okay, I’ll go get your things for you.” Sanae smiled at her, mesmerized by the faint smell of viscera that hung about Yuka’s lips every time she spoke.
She went to get the belongings and put her arm around Yuka’s shoulders as she led her outside. Yuka looked up at her with teary eyes.
“Sanae, how come you’re so kind to me?”
