Earthlings, page 12
“Piyyut, I think the murderer may have stolen the weapon I killed the Wicked Witch with.”
Natsuki, thank you! Natsuki, thank you!
“Hey Piyyut, answer me, will you? I’m worried. I mean . . . what if . . . what if Mr. Igasaki . . .”
Noticing my serious tone, after a short pause, Piyyut said in my right ear, even louder than usual: Natsuki, let me give you some good news. Thanks to you, the Wicked Witch’s magic has completely disappeared from the world. So now there’s no more need for you to transform yourself or fight. Soon you won’t be able to hear my voice anymore.
“Why?”
Because our mission here is over. I have one last thing to tell you. I found you, gave you the mirror and the wand and your magical powers. But that wasn’t by chance. You were a magic warrior sent from Planet Popinpobopia when you were a baby. Actually, once your mission was over, you were supposed to return to Planet Popinpobopia. But it took longer than expected, and the spaceship isn’t around anymore.
“I see. So I’m not an Earthling, after all! I was a Popinpobopian all along!”
I was so excited I clung tight to Piyyut. Piyyut looked pleased and wiggled his ears.
That’s right! You’d already begun to suspect that was the case, hadn’t you? You’d begun to think that maybe, just maybe, you weren’t an Earthling. That’s why you didn’t really fit in, and of course you thought Earthlings were strange. After all, you’re a Popinpobopian.
“Yay! I’m so happy! So that’s what it was!”
“All we Popinpobopians are singing your praises, you know. Everyone is overjoyed.”
“Will I be able to go home someday?”
Piyyut said something, but I didn’t hear what it was.
I fell into a deep sleep. The backpack I’d hidden under the bed was dirty. Tomorrow I would throw it away. And I wouldn’t be using the mirror and wand inside it anymore either. But it was enough just to have been told that I was a Popinpobopian. As I slept, I found myself back under the starry sky at Akishina for the first time in a long while.
After that night, Piyyut never spoke another word again. It was as though he’d been mummified. I laid him carefully to rest in the tin box along with my other important items, the marriage pledge with Yuu and my wedding ring.
The investigation into Mr. Igasaki’s murder stalled. Now and then his family and some cram school pupils would be shown on the local TV channel handing out flyers. I was there with them, encouraged by Shizuka.
Everyone gossiped about how terribly sad it was that such a lovely young university student had been murdered by a pervert, but deep down they somehow seemed strangely glad about it.
From that point on, I lost my magical powers and thereafter lived as an ordinary Popinpobopian, adrift from her spaceship and unable to go home. Life as a Popinpobopian was lonely. I just hoped the Earthlings would succeed in brainwashing me.
CHAPTER 5
When I woke the next morning, my husband was already up and about in the garden.
“Can I have a look inside the storehouse? I’d better wait until Yuu gets up, of course.”
“Sure, but I doubt you’ll find anything much of interest. I used to love exploring it when I was little, but I only ever saw farming stuff in there.”
“I don’t mind, I just want to see inside it!”
My husband had been such a recluse in Tokyo, but here he was so cheerful and energetic. I had the feeling that I was looking at my childhood self.
“Good morning! You’re up early.”
Yuu appeared on the veranda in a sweatshirt and pants.
“Good morning, Tomoya.”
“Good morning! Oh, it was my turn to make breakfast this morning, wasn’t it?”
My husband hurriedly slipped off his sandals and went back inside.
“I’ll help,” Yuu said.
“But then there’d be no point in taking turns! Just take it easy and enjoy the morning air. I want to try making miso soup with the wild herbs I picked yesterday.”
“Don’t make anything too weird, now,” I said, a little worried, but he was raring to go.
“It might be a little bitter, but I’m keen to taste it. Oh, how wonderful it is here!” he said, heading off to the kitchen.
“You’d better put something warmer on. Otherwise you’ll catch cold,” Yuu told me before heading off to the bathroom.
I sat down on the veranda, feeling the old wooden house creaking faintly as Yuu and my husband moved around inside.
Every morning after breakfast the three of us would go for a walk. Yuu had remarked that this was his habit, and my husband said he wanted to go with him.
First we went as far as the red bridge to get reception on our phones to check email and missed calls. Then we would walk slowly along the river until we reached the mountain trail leading to the next village, where we turned around and came back to the house.
Everything seemed novel to my husband. He wanted to go to the next village, but Yuu warned him that the mountain trail was quite tough and he grudgingly gave up the idea.
Sometimes we changed our route and either headed farther up the mountain or down to the abandoned school, but mostly we just wandered along the river.
Now and then we went to make an offering at my grandparents’ grave. On those occasions, Yuu always went back alone and never came with us as far as the grave.
Whenever we were walking, I was assailed by a very strange feeling. It was very odd to see my husband and Yuu walking along side by side. Until very recently, Yuu had belonged to my past and my husband to the present, and it felt like one had turned up out of a time machine.
My husband was always super excited and talkative when out walking.
“While I’m here, I want to take the opportunity to do things that humans absolutely don’t do.”
“Why’s that?” Yuu asked.
“Because that will undo my brainwashing,” my husband answered confidently. “Taboos are just a form of brainwashing too. Seen through an alien eye none of them are worth bothering about. They are irrational.”
“What sort of things do you want to do?”
“I dunno . . . eat something weird, like insects, for example.”
“I’m afraid people around here have always eaten bugs. And they eat grasshoppers in various other regions of Japan, don’t they, not just in Nagano?”
“Oh, really?”
“If you’re interested, I’ll buy some for you next time I go shopping. In some places they eat grasshoppers and hornet larvae, oh, and the pupae of those silkworms you love so much, Tomoya. Although my uncle told me that in this house they never ate the silkworm pupae.”
“Wow! I definitely want to try those. They’re so adorable.”
My husband and Yuu had been getting pretty close these past few days. Yuu was making a point of talking with him a lot, while also putting as much distance as he possibly could between himself and me.
“If the town we live in is a Baby Factory,” my husband said seriously, “this place is an abandoned factory, isn’t it? A factory where nothing gets produced anymore. And where nobody expects to make anything either. I feel so much more comfortable here. I wish I could live the rest of my life here as a discarded, worn-out component.”
“I still get hassled here sometimes, too, though. You’re young, the villagers say. Go get yourself a wife and have kids.”
“That’s the ghost of the factory. Abandoned places always have ghosts,” my husband said, his face serious.
Amused, Yuu laughed. “Yes, there are probably a whole load of ghosts in this village!”
I could hear the sound of water.
Water still flowed in the river that was so much smaller than it had been in my memory. Even after I had stopped coming to Akishina, its sound had been always there within me.
It was strange to see the real-life Yuu walking alongside the sound of flowing water.
On the other side of the river, I could see the graves of our ancestors. When I was in college, I overheard Uncle Teruyoshi and Dad talking on the phone about how the earth on my grandfather’s grave hadn’t fallen in yet. Over twenty years had passed since he died, but even now the mound covering his coffin still hadn’t fallen in.
What did he look like now under that earth? I had attended a number of funerals of the parents of friends or coworkers, but those had been cremations. His had been the only burial. I wondered if any of his hair or skin was left. I’d looked up how long it took for a body to completely turn to soil and found it was over a hundred years, so maybe he was less changed than I’d imagined and was watching us now.
“Natsuki, is anything wrong?” asked my husband, turning to look back at me still standing in the same spot.
I ran over to join them. I watched as some crows on the other side of the river began to cluster around the food we’d left as offerings on my grandparents’ grave.
Our fall vacation was to be one month. That was our limit.
If we stayed any longer, our savings would run out, and people from the Factory wouldn’t keep quiet either. If we were found out, we would be dragged back home.
“You’d better go back before winter, you know,” Yuu warned us. “It snows a lot here. Sometimes the first floor gets completely buried.”
My husband looked disappointed, but I knew we couldn’t expect to have any longer than that.
From the road outside the house, you could see a high mountain. Day by day it was turning redder, and now over half of it was covered in fall colors.
After our morning walk, we would eat grilled oyaki dumplings and discuss what to do that day. Yuu said he would do some gardening, while my husband said he wanted to look for sour dock. I wasn’t sure sour dock grew this late in the year, but he was raring to search for some and wasn’t about to let that stop him. I still couldn’t taste anything, so even if we did find any I wouldn’t be able to enjoy its sourness. That made me sad, so I decided to stay in the house and tidy up the tableware.
“These glasses really bring back memories. I wonder if Uncle Teruyoshi would let me take one home with me.”
“You’d better check with Aunt Ritsuko. She might want to keep them.”
“Okay.”
Beyond the veranda, the trees in the garden were also beginning to change color. Gazing at them, I murmured, “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Akishina in the fall. It was always summer when we came here. I can’t imagine what it must look like in the snow.”
Keeping his gaze averted from me, Yuu said, “The snow’s always deep here in winter.”
“I know, just I can’t picture it.”
“That’s because you only see the things visible to you, Natsuki,” he said pointedly.
I looked down. “But so does everyone,” I argued back in a small voice.
“Plenty of people look squarely at things they don’t want to see and live with them.”
It had begun to dawn on me since meeting Yuu again and telling him I was an alien that he despised me.
“I bet the snowy landscape is really beautiful, too, different again from the fall colors,” my husband said dreamily. “Having spent all my life in Tokyo, I’ve never seen deep snow. It must be so pretty!”
“It’s not as idyllic as all that, you know,” Yuu said, his expression softening as he smiled at my husband.
“But the harshness of winter is part and parcel of this village. I’d love to experience it,” my husband murmured, although he knew it was most likely impossible.
“This place really has gotten under your skin, hasn’t it, Tomoya?”
While Yuu chided my husband, he never contradicted him outright. This was the Yuu that I knew. Even when his own mother had treated him practically as a husband, and even when I’d pushed him to marry me, he had never once refused. Submission had been a coping strategy for him as a child I realized.
“Of course! I want to see for myself what it’s like here in winter and spring, but I don’t suppose I’ll get the chance. You never know what that Factory lot will do,” my husband murmured.
We both felt it. It wouldn’t be long before an envoy would arrive from the Factory. We were shirking our responsibilities as components and would soon be forced to return. And actually, I was longing for that envoy. We would be taken back to the Factory, where my husband would be put to work, and I would be calmly but coercively encouraged to have a baby. Everyone would lecture me on how wonderful it would be.
I was ready for it. This time everyone would ensure I was perfectly brainwashed, and my body would become a Factory component.
My womb and my husband’s testes did not belong to us. The sooner I was brainwashed the better. That way I would no longer suffer. I, too, would be able to live with a smile on my face in the virtual reality world in which everyone was living.
Had my wish come true? The very next day, an envoy arrived at the house in Akishina.
I had just finished lunch and was brushing my teeth in the washroom when I heard a knock on the door.
“Coming!” I called out.
I opened the door to see my sister standing there. She was holding my niece’s hand. I felt her briefly grin when she noticed I was still in pajamas.
“Natsuki, do we have a visitor?” Yuu called, peeking out of the kitchen. Seeing my sister there, his face instantly hardened.
“Good morning, Yuu. It’s been a long time. I’m Kise. Do you remember me?”
“Er, yes. It has been a long time.”
“You two seem to have extended your stay somewhat,” she said to me. “Mom’s beginning to get worried, so I came to check how things were going.” She sounded almost euphoric. The way she was talking was so contrived that I wondered whether she was imitating one of her TV dramas.
“Oh, Kise, how lovely to see you!” my husband said loudly, coming out of the living room. He sounded even more theatrical than she did.
My husband hated my sister.
She was one of those who, upon becoming an adult, had achieved salvation in the Factory. As a child, she hadn’t been able to properly assimilate into society but had found redemption in becoming a tool of the Factory and had grown into its fervent devotee.
My husband always said disparagingly behind her back, “Even by Factory standards, she really gives me the creeps.”
I showed her into the living room and poured her some tea. My niece, who would soon be starting elementary school, was having fun running around the house.
“You’re not thinking of staying here forever I suppose?” my sister said to me. She didn’t touch the oyaki dumplings that Yuu had put out for her, claiming she’d just had lunch.
“Well, no, but—”
“You don’t want to outstay your welcome as a couple, you know. Do try not to be a nuisance to Yuu. Like you were back then.” Yuu paled when she said this. “You really must come back home soon, the two of you, and get back on with your lives. I’m sure you agree, don’t you, Tomoya?”
“Ah . . .” my husband answered vaguely and took a big bite out of a dumpling, as if even being polite was too much bother.
“Well, I only came today to see how you were getting on. Mom’s worried about you too. Staying here in this house with Yuu, of all people.”
“I’m sorry. Perhaps I should have gone away for a while,” Yuu hurriedly apologized. Maybe he felt awkward about the way my husband and I were sitting there, mindlessly letting her words go in one ear and out the other.
“It’s not your fault, Yuu. Haven’t the villagers said anything? I’m worried these two may be causing trouble.”
From the tone of her voice, it was clear that my sister was not speaking for herself but on behalf of society. I envied her ability to do that.
My niece was just beginning to get bored of playing in the house when my sister stood up. “Well, it’s time we were getting back,” she said.
“Oh, won’t you stay a little longer?” my husband said as he quickly stood up and slid open the living room door, eagerly ushering her out. “What a pity you have to go so soon,” he said several times as he placed her shoes ready for her to put on.
“I’ll come again.”
My sister seemed very well aware that my husband didn’t like her. She left the house without even reproaching him for the way he sent her packing.
I accompanied her as far as her car. “Did you drive up that mountain road yourself?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Ah, you’re a good driver! You always used to get so carsick on that road.”
“By the way, you know those people handing out leaflets at the station are in the news again?”
This was so out of the blue that for a moment I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You remember not long ago that high school student in the neighboring town who was brutally murdered and his killer arrested? The talk shows are saying that there are similarities with Mr. Igasaki’s case, even though that happened over twenty years ago. So his parents have started handing out leaflets again. Normally a family would move out of a house where such a terrible thing happened, but they haven’t. Even the neighborhood association commented on that. There’s a rumor going about that his parents themselves are the murderers and hid the evidence. It’s really awful!”
“Wow!”
“You used to hand out leaflets for them too, didn’t you? How about helping out again?”
“Hmm, I’ll think about it.”
I watched her car pull off into the distance before sluggishly making my way back to the house.
My husband was in the altar room yelling, “Aaarrghhh!!! The bastards! They finally came.” He tripped over my bedding and had to grab on to my shoulder to stop himself falling. “She’s been completely brainwashed by the Factory. I’ll never be able to just be myself. And it’s all their fault!”
Natsuki, thank you! Natsuki, thank you!
“Hey Piyyut, answer me, will you? I’m worried. I mean . . . what if . . . what if Mr. Igasaki . . .”
Noticing my serious tone, after a short pause, Piyyut said in my right ear, even louder than usual: Natsuki, let me give you some good news. Thanks to you, the Wicked Witch’s magic has completely disappeared from the world. So now there’s no more need for you to transform yourself or fight. Soon you won’t be able to hear my voice anymore.
“Why?”
Because our mission here is over. I have one last thing to tell you. I found you, gave you the mirror and the wand and your magical powers. But that wasn’t by chance. You were a magic warrior sent from Planet Popinpobopia when you were a baby. Actually, once your mission was over, you were supposed to return to Planet Popinpobopia. But it took longer than expected, and the spaceship isn’t around anymore.
“I see. So I’m not an Earthling, after all! I was a Popinpobopian all along!”
I was so excited I clung tight to Piyyut. Piyyut looked pleased and wiggled his ears.
That’s right! You’d already begun to suspect that was the case, hadn’t you? You’d begun to think that maybe, just maybe, you weren’t an Earthling. That’s why you didn’t really fit in, and of course you thought Earthlings were strange. After all, you’re a Popinpobopian.
“Yay! I’m so happy! So that’s what it was!”
“All we Popinpobopians are singing your praises, you know. Everyone is overjoyed.”
“Will I be able to go home someday?”
Piyyut said something, but I didn’t hear what it was.
I fell into a deep sleep. The backpack I’d hidden under the bed was dirty. Tomorrow I would throw it away. And I wouldn’t be using the mirror and wand inside it anymore either. But it was enough just to have been told that I was a Popinpobopian. As I slept, I found myself back under the starry sky at Akishina for the first time in a long while.
After that night, Piyyut never spoke another word again. It was as though he’d been mummified. I laid him carefully to rest in the tin box along with my other important items, the marriage pledge with Yuu and my wedding ring.
The investigation into Mr. Igasaki’s murder stalled. Now and then his family and some cram school pupils would be shown on the local TV channel handing out flyers. I was there with them, encouraged by Shizuka.
Everyone gossiped about how terribly sad it was that such a lovely young university student had been murdered by a pervert, but deep down they somehow seemed strangely glad about it.
From that point on, I lost my magical powers and thereafter lived as an ordinary Popinpobopian, adrift from her spaceship and unable to go home. Life as a Popinpobopian was lonely. I just hoped the Earthlings would succeed in brainwashing me.
CHAPTER 5
When I woke the next morning, my husband was already up and about in the garden.
“Can I have a look inside the storehouse? I’d better wait until Yuu gets up, of course.”
“Sure, but I doubt you’ll find anything much of interest. I used to love exploring it when I was little, but I only ever saw farming stuff in there.”
“I don’t mind, I just want to see inside it!”
My husband had been such a recluse in Tokyo, but here he was so cheerful and energetic. I had the feeling that I was looking at my childhood self.
“Good morning! You’re up early.”
Yuu appeared on the veranda in a sweatshirt and pants.
“Good morning, Tomoya.”
“Good morning! Oh, it was my turn to make breakfast this morning, wasn’t it?”
My husband hurriedly slipped off his sandals and went back inside.
“I’ll help,” Yuu said.
“But then there’d be no point in taking turns! Just take it easy and enjoy the morning air. I want to try making miso soup with the wild herbs I picked yesterday.”
“Don’t make anything too weird, now,” I said, a little worried, but he was raring to go.
“It might be a little bitter, but I’m keen to taste it. Oh, how wonderful it is here!” he said, heading off to the kitchen.
“You’d better put something warmer on. Otherwise you’ll catch cold,” Yuu told me before heading off to the bathroom.
I sat down on the veranda, feeling the old wooden house creaking faintly as Yuu and my husband moved around inside.
Every morning after breakfast the three of us would go for a walk. Yuu had remarked that this was his habit, and my husband said he wanted to go with him.
First we went as far as the red bridge to get reception on our phones to check email and missed calls. Then we would walk slowly along the river until we reached the mountain trail leading to the next village, where we turned around and came back to the house.
Everything seemed novel to my husband. He wanted to go to the next village, but Yuu warned him that the mountain trail was quite tough and he grudgingly gave up the idea.
Sometimes we changed our route and either headed farther up the mountain or down to the abandoned school, but mostly we just wandered along the river.
Now and then we went to make an offering at my grandparents’ grave. On those occasions, Yuu always went back alone and never came with us as far as the grave.
Whenever we were walking, I was assailed by a very strange feeling. It was very odd to see my husband and Yuu walking along side by side. Until very recently, Yuu had belonged to my past and my husband to the present, and it felt like one had turned up out of a time machine.
My husband was always super excited and talkative when out walking.
“While I’m here, I want to take the opportunity to do things that humans absolutely don’t do.”
“Why’s that?” Yuu asked.
“Because that will undo my brainwashing,” my husband answered confidently. “Taboos are just a form of brainwashing too. Seen through an alien eye none of them are worth bothering about. They are irrational.”
“What sort of things do you want to do?”
“I dunno . . . eat something weird, like insects, for example.”
“I’m afraid people around here have always eaten bugs. And they eat grasshoppers in various other regions of Japan, don’t they, not just in Nagano?”
“Oh, really?”
“If you’re interested, I’ll buy some for you next time I go shopping. In some places they eat grasshoppers and hornet larvae, oh, and the pupae of those silkworms you love so much, Tomoya. Although my uncle told me that in this house they never ate the silkworm pupae.”
“Wow! I definitely want to try those. They’re so adorable.”
My husband and Yuu had been getting pretty close these past few days. Yuu was making a point of talking with him a lot, while also putting as much distance as he possibly could between himself and me.
“If the town we live in is a Baby Factory,” my husband said seriously, “this place is an abandoned factory, isn’t it? A factory where nothing gets produced anymore. And where nobody expects to make anything either. I feel so much more comfortable here. I wish I could live the rest of my life here as a discarded, worn-out component.”
“I still get hassled here sometimes, too, though. You’re young, the villagers say. Go get yourself a wife and have kids.”
“That’s the ghost of the factory. Abandoned places always have ghosts,” my husband said, his face serious.
Amused, Yuu laughed. “Yes, there are probably a whole load of ghosts in this village!”
I could hear the sound of water.
Water still flowed in the river that was so much smaller than it had been in my memory. Even after I had stopped coming to Akishina, its sound had been always there within me.
It was strange to see the real-life Yuu walking alongside the sound of flowing water.
On the other side of the river, I could see the graves of our ancestors. When I was in college, I overheard Uncle Teruyoshi and Dad talking on the phone about how the earth on my grandfather’s grave hadn’t fallen in yet. Over twenty years had passed since he died, but even now the mound covering his coffin still hadn’t fallen in.
What did he look like now under that earth? I had attended a number of funerals of the parents of friends or coworkers, but those had been cremations. His had been the only burial. I wondered if any of his hair or skin was left. I’d looked up how long it took for a body to completely turn to soil and found it was over a hundred years, so maybe he was less changed than I’d imagined and was watching us now.
“Natsuki, is anything wrong?” asked my husband, turning to look back at me still standing in the same spot.
I ran over to join them. I watched as some crows on the other side of the river began to cluster around the food we’d left as offerings on my grandparents’ grave.
Our fall vacation was to be one month. That was our limit.
If we stayed any longer, our savings would run out, and people from the Factory wouldn’t keep quiet either. If we were found out, we would be dragged back home.
“You’d better go back before winter, you know,” Yuu warned us. “It snows a lot here. Sometimes the first floor gets completely buried.”
My husband looked disappointed, but I knew we couldn’t expect to have any longer than that.
From the road outside the house, you could see a high mountain. Day by day it was turning redder, and now over half of it was covered in fall colors.
After our morning walk, we would eat grilled oyaki dumplings and discuss what to do that day. Yuu said he would do some gardening, while my husband said he wanted to look for sour dock. I wasn’t sure sour dock grew this late in the year, but he was raring to search for some and wasn’t about to let that stop him. I still couldn’t taste anything, so even if we did find any I wouldn’t be able to enjoy its sourness. That made me sad, so I decided to stay in the house and tidy up the tableware.
“These glasses really bring back memories. I wonder if Uncle Teruyoshi would let me take one home with me.”
“You’d better check with Aunt Ritsuko. She might want to keep them.”
“Okay.”
Beyond the veranda, the trees in the garden were also beginning to change color. Gazing at them, I murmured, “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Akishina in the fall. It was always summer when we came here. I can’t imagine what it must look like in the snow.”
Keeping his gaze averted from me, Yuu said, “The snow’s always deep here in winter.”
“I know, just I can’t picture it.”
“That’s because you only see the things visible to you, Natsuki,” he said pointedly.
I looked down. “But so does everyone,” I argued back in a small voice.
“Plenty of people look squarely at things they don’t want to see and live with them.”
It had begun to dawn on me since meeting Yuu again and telling him I was an alien that he despised me.
“I bet the snowy landscape is really beautiful, too, different again from the fall colors,” my husband said dreamily. “Having spent all my life in Tokyo, I’ve never seen deep snow. It must be so pretty!”
“It’s not as idyllic as all that, you know,” Yuu said, his expression softening as he smiled at my husband.
“But the harshness of winter is part and parcel of this village. I’d love to experience it,” my husband murmured, although he knew it was most likely impossible.
“This place really has gotten under your skin, hasn’t it, Tomoya?”
While Yuu chided my husband, he never contradicted him outright. This was the Yuu that I knew. Even when his own mother had treated him practically as a husband, and even when I’d pushed him to marry me, he had never once refused. Submission had been a coping strategy for him as a child I realized.
“Of course! I want to see for myself what it’s like here in winter and spring, but I don’t suppose I’ll get the chance. You never know what that Factory lot will do,” my husband murmured.
We both felt it. It wouldn’t be long before an envoy would arrive from the Factory. We were shirking our responsibilities as components and would soon be forced to return. And actually, I was longing for that envoy. We would be taken back to the Factory, where my husband would be put to work, and I would be calmly but coercively encouraged to have a baby. Everyone would lecture me on how wonderful it would be.
I was ready for it. This time everyone would ensure I was perfectly brainwashed, and my body would become a Factory component.
My womb and my husband’s testes did not belong to us. The sooner I was brainwashed the better. That way I would no longer suffer. I, too, would be able to live with a smile on my face in the virtual reality world in which everyone was living.
Had my wish come true? The very next day, an envoy arrived at the house in Akishina.
I had just finished lunch and was brushing my teeth in the washroom when I heard a knock on the door.
“Coming!” I called out.
I opened the door to see my sister standing there. She was holding my niece’s hand. I felt her briefly grin when she noticed I was still in pajamas.
“Natsuki, do we have a visitor?” Yuu called, peeking out of the kitchen. Seeing my sister there, his face instantly hardened.
“Good morning, Yuu. It’s been a long time. I’m Kise. Do you remember me?”
“Er, yes. It has been a long time.”
“You two seem to have extended your stay somewhat,” she said to me. “Mom’s beginning to get worried, so I came to check how things were going.” She sounded almost euphoric. The way she was talking was so contrived that I wondered whether she was imitating one of her TV dramas.
“Oh, Kise, how lovely to see you!” my husband said loudly, coming out of the living room. He sounded even more theatrical than she did.
My husband hated my sister.
She was one of those who, upon becoming an adult, had achieved salvation in the Factory. As a child, she hadn’t been able to properly assimilate into society but had found redemption in becoming a tool of the Factory and had grown into its fervent devotee.
My husband always said disparagingly behind her back, “Even by Factory standards, she really gives me the creeps.”
I showed her into the living room and poured her some tea. My niece, who would soon be starting elementary school, was having fun running around the house.
“You’re not thinking of staying here forever I suppose?” my sister said to me. She didn’t touch the oyaki dumplings that Yuu had put out for her, claiming she’d just had lunch.
“Well, no, but—”
“You don’t want to outstay your welcome as a couple, you know. Do try not to be a nuisance to Yuu. Like you were back then.” Yuu paled when she said this. “You really must come back home soon, the two of you, and get back on with your lives. I’m sure you agree, don’t you, Tomoya?”
“Ah . . .” my husband answered vaguely and took a big bite out of a dumpling, as if even being polite was too much bother.
“Well, I only came today to see how you were getting on. Mom’s worried about you too. Staying here in this house with Yuu, of all people.”
“I’m sorry. Perhaps I should have gone away for a while,” Yuu hurriedly apologized. Maybe he felt awkward about the way my husband and I were sitting there, mindlessly letting her words go in one ear and out the other.
“It’s not your fault, Yuu. Haven’t the villagers said anything? I’m worried these two may be causing trouble.”
From the tone of her voice, it was clear that my sister was not speaking for herself but on behalf of society. I envied her ability to do that.
My niece was just beginning to get bored of playing in the house when my sister stood up. “Well, it’s time we were getting back,” she said.
“Oh, won’t you stay a little longer?” my husband said as he quickly stood up and slid open the living room door, eagerly ushering her out. “What a pity you have to go so soon,” he said several times as he placed her shoes ready for her to put on.
“I’ll come again.”
My sister seemed very well aware that my husband didn’t like her. She left the house without even reproaching him for the way he sent her packing.
I accompanied her as far as her car. “Did you drive up that mountain road yourself?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Ah, you’re a good driver! You always used to get so carsick on that road.”
“By the way, you know those people handing out leaflets at the station are in the news again?”
This was so out of the blue that for a moment I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You remember not long ago that high school student in the neighboring town who was brutally murdered and his killer arrested? The talk shows are saying that there are similarities with Mr. Igasaki’s case, even though that happened over twenty years ago. So his parents have started handing out leaflets again. Normally a family would move out of a house where such a terrible thing happened, but they haven’t. Even the neighborhood association commented on that. There’s a rumor going about that his parents themselves are the murderers and hid the evidence. It’s really awful!”
“Wow!”
“You used to hand out leaflets for them too, didn’t you? How about helping out again?”
“Hmm, I’ll think about it.”
I watched her car pull off into the distance before sluggishly making my way back to the house.
My husband was in the altar room yelling, “Aaarrghhh!!! The bastards! They finally came.” He tripped over my bedding and had to grab on to my shoulder to stop himself falling. “She’s been completely brainwashed by the Factory. I’ll never be able to just be myself. And it’s all their fault!”
